Trigger Warning: mentions of substance abuse.


Swatch

Tonight is my last night in District 8.

My mother escaped and fled to District 13 nineteen years ago, when she first learned she was pregnant with me. She hadn't wanted to raise me in this grim factory district. I'm glad she left. Even though it's a war zone, I can tell it was awful before the war began.

But it's also the first district to be liberated from the Capitol. Today's attack forced the last of the peacekeepers to surrender. Tomorrow, our squad will be separated, split up and assigned to other districts.

I think we're all glad. There's little loyalty in squad 024.

It all started when the squads were being formed. Each squad was assigned a District 8 local to work with. They'd have less combat training but they'd have more familiarity with the environment.

We got the victor.

I never watched the Hunger Games. I don't know what happened in the arena that made Lumas Taffeta the way that he is and I don't think I want to know. He's a hard, thin, angry man. He's in his mid twenties but he carries himself like a man much older than that. It's partly due to the leg he lost in the arena. It was long enough ago for him to adjust, giving him only a slight limp. There's a lot of pain in his eyes. Once, he rolled up his sleeves to beat a peacekeeper we'd captured, and I spotted scars from shooting up drugs on his arms. They looked old, which meant he must've been really young when he did it. I didn't ask about them.

That's one of the first rules of being in a squad with Lumas Taffeta. Never ask. The answer's never pretty.

There's not much to do in the evenings. We all crowd around the TV to watch the news to celebrate our takeover of the district. Well, all of us apart from Taffeta. He doesn't do anything with us. He turns on the TV he'd taken from his old Victor's Village house and watches it alone. We all feel a little uneasy not being able to see what he's up to. But we still feel uneasy when we can see what he's up to.

Taffeta is our torturer. We've come to accept it. Lock him alone in a room with a captured peacekeeper and he'll come out with a stream of useful information about future attacks and security codes. He's saved countless rebel lives, probably.

But he always pushes the peacekeeper too far. They always die from their injuries.

"He didn't tell me enough," Taffeta would always say.

It would always lead us to wonder if anyone would ever say enough for him. He hated the Capitol more than those of us born in District 13 did. We wanted to beat them but we had nothing personal against them. We hadn't suffered under them. Taffeta had. He'd suffered so much that he'll probably never be able to hurt the Capitol enough to fix himself.

Suddenly, the news cuts out and something different appears on the screen. President Lobos is sitting on a bed, looking uncomfortable. Even though he's a famously handsome victor, I'm always struck by how uncomfortable he looks on camera. It's probably one of the reasons why his propos are never as successful as the ones the Phoenix makes.

"I know I'm a villain to you," Lobos says. "The rebellion seems a lot more heroic than the city that has ruled over you for years, especially since Snow didn't do the best job. But what makes a someone a villain during the war? Maybe it's how they treat their prisoners."

He beckons to someone outside the camera's frame and a woman in a white dress sits beside him on the bed. She's very pretty, with dark hair, delicate features and wide eyes. She won't look at the camera.

"This is the Ramona Hirose," Lobos says. "The woman who poisoned Coriolanus Snow."

Suddenly, there's a cry of rage and a crash. Taffeta.

We all hesitate for a moment, too scared to act. Then, hesitantly, we creep along the corridor.

We find him kneeling on the floor in front of his TV. There's a fist-shaped hole in the screen and blood running down one of Taffeta's hands. He must've punched his TV.

"No," he whispers. "No. No. No. No. No. Ramona…"

"What happened?" Abercrombie asks, the first to find his voice. He's our squad leader.

Taffeta looks up at us like some cornered feral animal. There are tears in his eyes. For the first time, he looks like someone his age, maybe even younger. Maybe this is the scared kid from the arena showing.

But I have no idea what it took to get him to show. Taffeta can torture a peacekeeper to death without batting an eye. Whatever he saw must've been really horrific to get him to break down in tears.

"I broke the TV…" Taffeta says, his voice small.

"We've got a TV-"

The words have barely left Abercrombie's mouth when Taffeta rushes past us and down the corridor, to where Lobos' propo is still showing.

"Have I ever hurt you, Ramona?" Lobos asks.

Hirose shakes her head. She's looking down at her hands, which are folded in her lap.

"I'm fine," she says. Her voice is hollow.

"She's lying," Taffeta cries. "The bastard. He's making her lie! She's scared."

"How can you tell?" Palacios asks. He's the only one of us who moved to Thirteen recently enough to have kept track of the games. All I know about Ramona Hirose is she's a victor from District 3 who assassinated a president but Palacios probably watched her on TV for a few years before that. "That's just how she usually looks."

Taffeta shakes his head. I realise he must know Hirose. They come from the same generation of victors. Maybe he even cares about her.

That would explain a lot. Maybe Taffeta hates the Capitol so much because they're holding his friend hostage. Maybe he's so vicious because he's scared for her.

"So, while I'm keeping my prisoner in comfortable conditions in my mansion," Lobos says. "The rebels are torturing captive peacekeepers to death in District 8. Am I still the bad guy, Panem? Because if torturing prisoners to death is something that makes someone a hero, I can always start with Ramona. After all, her boyfriend is the one behind the deaths of countless captive peacekeepers. What do you say, Lumas Taffeta? I know you're watching this. Do you want a taste of your own medicine?"

"No!" Taffeta cries.

There's a gasp in the room. It's hard to imagine Lumas Taffeta in love with anyone. It's even harder to imagine someone loving him back. I picture them together in my head. Taffeta and Hirose.

It makes such little sense that it must be true love.

Hirose gasps. This must be the first time she's heard this news. Her eyes fill with horror in seconds, as she realises exactly what her boyfriend has become.

"No…" she says.

There's a brief moment of stunned silence. Then she starts talking, a little too fast. She's desperate.

"Lumas, you can't do this anymore. What are you going to have if you can't save me? If you killed all those people for nothing? You're going to have so many regrets. I know you're better than this. I miss you so much, Lumas. If I ever get out of here, I want you to be the same person you were before. Don't change, please…"

A tear rolls down her cheek. Taffeta takes a ragged breath.

"I'm sorry, Ramona… I made a mistake. I… I'm sorry."

Hirose can't hear him. She hangs her head, crying quietly. Lobos looks from her to the camera.

"Well, that says it all, really," he says. "If you won't listen to me, listen to her. Consider yourself warned, Taffeta."

The broadcast cuts out, leaving us in silence.

"I thought he was trying not to be the bad guy," Palacios says, trying to break the silence.

Taffeta laughs but it sounds like a sob. He looks absolutely broken. None of us are quite sure what to do. Here's the most volatile, most dangerous, most terrifying member of our squad on the verge of tears.

I don't know why I do it. I kneel down beside him. Maybe I can offer him some comfort. After all, he's always been slightly less dismissive towards me than the others. Maybe it's just because I'm the only person in the squad who also has District 8 blood.

"You never said you had a girlfriend," I say.

"Why say it?" Taffeta asks. "None of you would be able to do anything. You'd just pity me and pity won't save her."

"Was that why you tortured those peacekeepers?" I ask.

Taffeta sighs.

"Yeah. I thought they'd tell me how to get Ramona out of there. It's stupid, I know. Why would a peacekeeper in District 8 be any help breaking into Lobos' mansion? But I kept thinking Just one more peacekeeper. The next one will know how to save her," he sobs. "It's like I'm on morphling again. It was like that. Thinking Just one more hit. over and over and over again.I see something that could be a solution and I just can't resist. I just can't stand the thought of missing my chance to save Ramona and losing her forever. But I keep making these mistakes. She's slipping away from me. And do you know what the worst part is?"

"No," I say.

"Ramona knows I love her. And maybe, if I'd never told her, I'd be able to let her go. But she believes I'll be trying to save her. If I stop trying now, I'll be letting her down. I can't let her down. But I just don't know what I'm doing."

"This is war," I say. "Nobody knows what they're doing."


I decided to give a random background character a POV just to show how much the war has changed Lumas. He's not himself anymore, trying so hard to rescue Ramona that he's becoming more and more like the enemy. Then there's Manel, who's threatening Ramona but only to get Lumas to stop torturing people. The line between good and evil is getting pretty blurry. There's no real good guy side this war, only desperate people doing desperate things.