Trigger Warning: Substance abuse, so much substance abuse... That's right. We've reached the female morphling.
Lua Toyota, District 6
"There's no time for innocence
Make me an offer I cannot refuse."
Sufjan Stevens, Make Me an Offer I Cannot Refuse
Hubcap Warden knows the face of a victor when he sees one.
His older sister, Taia, is a victor. She still has that haunted look in her eyes from the arena. Hubcap thinks of himself as his own special type of victor. He'd fought to inherit his father's morphling empire. He sees the eyes of a killer every morning when he looks in the mirror.
The girl seated before him is not a killer.
Somehow she'd won the Hunger Games.
Her name is Lua Toyota. She'd broken a record. She's Panem's youngest ever victor, at fourteen years and seven months on Reaping Day. Some people would argue she's a contender for that man from Seven's title as least deadly victor of all time. She'd spent the entire games hiding.
But some would argue that Lua Toyota had been brilliant. Her hiding place had just been a few metres from the Careers' camp. She'd been so stealthy that the mutts the gamemakers had sent after her had just killed the Careers instead. The Capitol are trying to pass her off as a master mutt-tamer, who'd manipulated giant lizards and swooping condors into attacking her opponents instead of her.
It'd been the most ridiculous lie that Hubcap had ever heard. And he'd heard plenty of lies. It's clear to him that Lua Toyota is nothing more than a little girl who'd lost herself playing hide-and-seek.
There's only one reason why she'd be here. To find herself again.
"I'd like some morphling, please," She says, softly. "I heard you had the best supply. I've got money."
She pulls a handful of crumpled denarii bills out of her purse. Her fingernails are covered with intricate black spirals. The likelihood is that she'd done them herself, for both hands. The Capitol had made a big deal about how Lua was ambidextrous. Maybe it'd been because that had been the only interesting thing about her before she'd won.
Hubcap smiles. "Only the best for a victor. How would you like to take it?"
"With a syringe, like they did in the Remake Centre," Lua says, dreamily. "I want to make myself better."
"Do you have any experience with morphling?" Hubcap asks.
"No," Lua shakes her head. "I'm just starting out."
Hubcap can tell. She looks absolutely pristine, like a child's doll with golden-brown skin and perfect, black ringlets. The Capitol seem to be getting into a habit of making victors gorgeous. Hubcap feels a little sad that, by the time Lua's of age, she'll be a glassy-eyed, yellow-skinned shell, even though she's young enough to be his daughter. A lot of his best employees are teenagers and, in getting Lua Toyota addicted, he'll definitely be denying them a pin-up girl.
But he'll be making a ton of money. That matters a lot more to Hubcap than what his teenage runners think.
Hubcap knows that he'll need to be very careful with Lua Toyota. As one of the richest fourteen-year-olds in the district, she's bound to bring him a lot more money than the average teenage junkie. But he'll also need to look out for her health. He doesn't want to find out what would happen if the peacekeepers found out that his drugs had made a victor sick. Or worse...
He unlocks a drawer and produces a couple of syringes. He talks Lua through a few of the safety lessons that most addicts have to learn if they want to live much longer than a year or two. Never use a stranger's needle. Never take dirty morphling. Never shoot up air. He mentions the Thirty-Fourth Hunger Games, the one with the hospital arena where the boy from Five had won after killing several tributes with a syringe. Lua comments that she doesn't remember it well because she'd only been eight years old at the time.
Hubcap feels old.
He carefully packs the syringes and a few vials of his best morphling into a suitcase and hands it to Lua. She takes it with shaking hands.
She's shaking already? Hubcap wondered, silently.
"Thanks," Lua mumbles.
"Come back when you run out." Hubcap says, as she leaves.
Hubcap Warden is grateful for Lua Toyota. Without her, he wouldn't have been able to rule the district with an iron fist for so long. Out of District 6's four victors, one of them is his sister and two of them are his best clients. It's a shame that District 6's fourth victor, Mercedes Matthews is so sensible, or he'd have had a full set.
It's such a shame that the Third Quarter Quell is bound to claim two of them.
Royss is doomed. He's District 6's only male victor. He's guaranteed a spot in the Quell. As for the women, each of them have a one-in-three chance of being reaped. Hubcap hopes that the odds are in his favour and that he won't lose Taia or Lua.
He knows that the odds aren't in his favour, though.
Hubcap comforts himself with the thought that he's not from District 8 as he walks into Victor's Village. There'd been a crackdown on morphling since Lumas Taffeta had died of an overdose almost a year ago. Now Eight stands to lose both their remaining victors in the Quell and Hubcap has to be a lot more careful. The peacekeepers won't mind him visiting his sister to comfort her the night before the reaping, though.
After a brief conversation on Taia's doorstep, Hubcap moves on to Lua's house. After a few rings of the doorbell, the victor opens the door and invites Hubcap in. They keep talk to a minimum as he hands her the vials of morphling. It's how they've done it ever since their very first deal. Lua isn't a very talkative person. She prefers to paint. Hubcap used to guess how she was feeling from the colours smeared all over her arms, just like how he'd measured her decline from healthy girl to addict from the yellowish tint to her skin and the feverish shine in her eyes.
However, since this has the potential to be their last meeting, Hubcap decides to start a conversation.
"Nervous about the reaping?" He asks.
"No..." Lua says, absently. "I'd rather go in than watch Taia go in."
Hubcap's heart melts. Just a tiny bit. He needs to get out of there before he wraps the skeletal woman in a hug and begs her to volunteer to save his sister if she has the chance.
"Well," he says, "May the odds be ever in your favour."
"You too."
He leaves, silently telling himself that he's not crying. He's just got a bit of dust in his eye.
When Lua is reaped, Hubcap doesn't cry. That speck of dust is still in his eye.
And when she dies to the claws of a mutt, just like the Careers had died in her arena, Hubcap doesn't cry. He doesn't break down with sobs so powerful he can hardly breathe. He just has a cold.
If there's one thing he's learned from his sister, it's to, when in doubt, blame germs.
This chapter's a little shorter than the last batch because we already know Lua from Catching Fire, just under a name that's less of a Bright Eyes reference (I ran out of ideas). Lua's a victor who came close to holding two records. She's the second youngest victor of all time (Finnick beats her by two months) and she's the second victor to win the games on zero direct kills (however, the deaths caused by the mutts sent to kill Lua are all counted as Lua's indirect kills so she doesn't quite match Nate's record).
I've read a lot of stories where the female morphling was addicted before her games and the male morphling was forced into addiction by the trauma he'd suffered in the arena so I decided to switch things up a little. Lua became addicted to morphling partly because of the trauma and partly because the Capitol didn't quite get the dose right when they gave her a full body polish. It's likely they gave her the same dose as Coco who's a) a lot bigger, b) more mentally resilient and c) less able to access morphling. Even though these processes have been invented, it's still a bit of a learning experience for the Capitol. Next time they give a victor too much morphling, it won't be by accident...
