Trigger Warning: This chapter might edge towards the M-rated. It deals with one of the more unpleasant aspects of victor prostitution (although the whole thing's pretty unpleasant). However, the scene starts after the incident has finished so it doesn't get too graphic. There's also some torture, abusive parenting/guardianship and mentions of drug addiction and suicide.

Apologies in advance if this chapter makes you cry. I think that this is where the sadness peaks so it's all happier from here. This is just something I feel like I have to write to do justice to one of my favourite characters (spoiler alert: I'm not talking about Granitte).


Granitte Sacro, District 2

"Pure sadism!

Pure sadism!

Pure sadism!

Pure sadism!"

Car Seat Headrest, Vincent


The Five Most Important Kills of Granitte Sacro's Life

1. The Tribute

Granitte Sacro stood over the helpless body of her final opponent. All she could remember about her was that she'd once been the girl from District 3. But now that meant nothing. Now she was a piece of meat that Granitte could carve up.

She'd enjoy every moment.

For the time that passed while she was torturing that girl - Granitte had no idea how long it had lasted - she was powerful. She controlled her own little universe of flesh and blood and bone and muscle.

She was just gouging out her victim's eyes when the girl finally bled out. Granitte was seized by a sudden disappointment. Maybe she knew, deep down inside, that she'd never be that powerful ever again.

That dark, empty, worried feeling was soon proved right. After she was lifted out of the arena, she learned that she was in over her head. Granitte was the powerless one.

She was the one who'd suffer.


2. The Sadist

Granitte Sacro struggled against the handcuffs that kept her chained to the bed in a lavish Capitol suite. She wished that someone would give her something to wear but none of the peacekeepers on the scene seemed to care that the murderess they'd just caught was wearing nothing more than some shimmery, barely-there lingerie. In fact, they all seemed to be rather enjoying the sight.

It all felt twisted to Granitte. Kill a tribute in an arena and you were a victor. Kill a Capitolite in his own bedroom and you were a murderess.

Trying to avoid the stares of the peacekeepers, Granitte hung her head. A dark, damp tangle of hair hung in front of her face. She tried to brush it away only to realise that her hands were cuffed. She tried to toss it back but it just flopped back down. The peacekeepers whooped as she squirmed, awkwardly.

"Gentlemen," a familiar voice said, cold and harsh. "I'd like a moment alone with Miss Sacro."

A man sat down before Granitte. He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ear. His hand lingered. Granitte hissed and tried to recoil.

She was staring into the golden eyes of President Coriolanus Snow.

"Hello, Miss Sacro," Snow said. "Would you care to tell my why you murdered your client?"

"Don't touch me," Granitte whispered. "Please."

"What did he do that pushed you over the edge?" Snow asked.

Granitte let out a shuddering breath. "He held a gun to my head. He told me to do everything right or he'd kill me. So I... I did everything he told me to. And then he pulled the trigger. It... it..."

She broke down.

"It wasn't even loaded," Snow finished.

"How..."

"You're not the first victor to be purchased by Mr Graves," Snow said. "He happened to be Amber LeClerc's very first client. She didn't smother him, even though he threatened her with a gun. She knew that her family's lives were on the line..."

"I just snapped," Granitte said, tears spilling down her face. "I'm sorry. Please don't kill my family. My little brother..."

"He'll be lucky to survive," Snow said. "Do you know what happens when a girl from District 2 kills a man from the Capitol?"

"I'll do anything," Granitte blurted out. "I'll have sex with anyone. I'll have sex with you if you want."

"But Miss Sacro," Snow drew backwards. "I don't think anyone would want to come within six feet of you if news of this got out. Everyone will be so scared that you might snap again. Once a killer, always a killer, I'm afraid."

"Then I'll kill anyone you want me to," Granitte pleaded. "Please, I just don't want my family to die."

Snow's eyebrows raised. "I do happen to have a lot of enemies. Perhaps we could come to an alternative arrangement. I'll see if I can get you out of this mess."

"Thank you, sir," Granitte bowed her head. She shivered. Gently, Snow picked a sheet off the bed and draped it over her shoulders.

As he went to discuss her release with the peacekeepers, Granitte felt like she had someone looking out for her.


3. The Client

Granitte Sacro stared across the table at the man that she was about to kill. This wasn't her first target. She'd slit someone's wrists and hung someone from their own ceiling. But she'd felt a little guilty. They'd been enemies of her new friend, President Snow, but neither of them had been comfortable with purchasing victors.

President Snow's ambitious former brother-in-law, Ephialtes Cardew, had no such qualms. Apparently, Granitte wasn't the first victor he'd met at this fancy restaurant before taking them home. But she'd be the last.

When Ephialtes excused himself to use the restroom, Granitte slipped the pill into her mouth, careful not to swallow. Over the last few weeks, she'd taken plenty of chemicals to prepare her body for accidentally swallowing some of the poison but she'd been warned by Snow that accidentally poisoning oneself is never a very pleasant experience.

Ephialtes returned. Granitte ate carefully, the pill tucked under her tongue. She kept shooting Ephialtes glances and smiling, coyly. This was the hard part. She hated flirting. Finally, she moved in for the kill. She rested her arm on the table and Ephialtes leaned across to squeeze her hand.

Granitte leaned in to kiss him.

It was the first kiss of Granitte's life that she actually enjoyed. Not because she liked the feeling of sliding her tongue into a stranger's mouth but because she knew that this was the kiss that would kill Ephialtes Cardew. It was easy to transfer the poison from her mouth to his.

The moment she'd pushed the pill past Ephialtes's lips, she pulled away.

"Let's take this somewhere more private," she said, trying to keep the nerves out of her voice.

"Good idea," Ephialtes said. "You've been a most delightful dinner companion, Granitte. Are you sure that this is your first date?"

Granitte smiled, blushing. Snow had covered up the whole incident with Mr Graves. To all but a select few, Ephialtes was Granitte's first client.

"This is," Granitte said. "You're my first."

Her smile widened as her client took a sip of wine, swallowing the pill.

Two hours later, when Ephialtes Cardew slipped into a fatal coma, Granitte Sacro slipped out of his apartment, triumphant.


4. The Brother

If there was a victor that Granitte Sacro hated, it was Amber LeClerc.

Everyone compared her to the first torturer in Hunger Games history. She was either like Amber LeClerc but less pretty or like Amber LeClerc but much, much prettier. Usually, the latter was accompanied by a leer that made Granitte's skin crawl. Granitte wasn't jealous of Amber's looks. She'd long ago accepted that the woman from One was fair, neat and tame where she was dark, messy and wild.

But she did envy how Amber was able to endure night after night of torture at the hands of Capitol men. While Granitte had cracked on her first night, Amber was still going, year after year. She loved her family too much to put them at risk, apparently, and the knowledge of that made Granitte feel like a failure to her own family.

It got even worse fourteen years after Granitte's games. Amber's niece, Caramel, had volunteered for the Hunger Games and won. Everyone started going on about how Amber was the best aunt in Panem, despite Stallie Burton from District 10 being the first victor to mentor a niece or nephew to victory.

As an aunt, Granitte hoped for her niece, Ageis, to go into the games and win. Unfortunately, her brother, Perseus, refused to send his daughter to District 2's training academy. He was overprotective, having lost his wife and Ageis' twin sister to childbirth. Granitte thought he was a coward. She tried so many times to convince him to sign Ageis up for the academy but he never agreed to it.

One day, in the middle of a particularly heated argument, Granitte snapped.

One moment, Perseus was alive. The next, he was broken and bleeding at the bottom of the stairs. Granitte covered her tracks by setting his house on fire - nobody else was home, since Ageis was at that school for sissies that Perseus had sent her to. Over the years, Granitte had become skilled at making it look like an accident.

To honour the cause that she'd killed her own brother for, Granitte adopted Ageis. She made the girl train harder than any Elite had ever trained before. At first, Ageis was incredibly irritating and cried a lot so Granitte beat her until she learned not to be such a weakling. She watched her niece grow into a younger and tougher version of herself and felt satisfied.

When Granitte's parents - Ageis' grandparents - died, Granitte was relieved. Now Ageis had no family members left apart from her - the untouchable victor. Ageis would never have to bow to the Capitol's demands.

But Granitte was so used to being Snow's assassin that she found it hard to break free.

While Ageis was training up, District 2 produced more and more victors. First there was Lyme, who was so enthusiastic about everything. Then there was Enobaria, who deserved a good few years of mentoring, even if it meant that Granitte was forced to retire. Now that Granitte didn't have easy access to the Capitol anymore, she was allowed to stop killing.

The problem was that she didn't want to.

Starved for violence, Granitte took her anger out on Ageis whenever she could. It was amazing how many hits a thirteen-year-old girl could take before she collapsed.

Finally, Ageis reached volunteering age. Granitte cried with joy as her niece volunteered for the Sixty-Seventh Hunger Games. She kept a close eye on the odds table throughout training. With her score of eleven and her confident interview, Ageis was the favourite to win.

Granitte should have been watching the bottom of the table, in particular the skinny, scowling street-urchin from District 8. But Lumas Taffeta hadn't done anything of note until his interview. Even then, his rebellious tirade against peacekeeper violence which caused him to be dragged offstage was amusing to Granitte.

The smile was wiped off her face when the boy charged into the bloodbath and strangled one of Ageis' fellow Elites with a shoelace.

For the Sixty-Seventh Hunger Games, two outlier boys dominated the arena. One, a chubby, pampered rich boy who'd lost his mind and become a cannibal, the other, a needle-thin, homeless orphan with an attitude problem and a long history of garrotting people to survive on the streets.

Despite her confidence in Ageis' fighting abilities, Granitte was grateful when her niece made it to the final two. Her final opponent was Lumas Taffeta, the rebel. After being paralysed by some venomous spiders - courtesy of the gamemakers - he'd come close to being eaten by Titus Ford but a cave-in had killed the cannibal and saved Taffeta's life, even if it had cost him his leg.

Now Taffeta was running scared. Using his three remaining limbs and a rope he'd grabbed at the bloodbath, he'd managed to struggle up a steep rock face, onto a ledge wide enough to sit comfortably on. All the while, Ageis was climbing the cliff, making steady progress.

Granitte was so busy preparing to cheer for her niece, she couldn't see what Taffeta was doing with his rope. Even if she could see, she'd probably have assumed that he was tying a noose to hang himself with rather than die at Ageis' hands.

It was only when the bolas thrown by the desperate, cornered outlier caught Ageis around the neck and caused her to lose her grip on the cliff face that Granitte realised the truth.

She'd been denying it for the last ten years. She'd killed her brother so a scrap of a boy from the textiles district could win the games and continue to defy the Capitol. She'd killed her brother so his daughter would end up exactly like him, broken by the fall.

She'd killed her brother for nothing.

If there was a victor that Granitte Sacro hated, it was Lumas Taffeta. It was easier than hating herself.


5. The Victor

At first glance, there was nothing special about the file that President Snow had handed Granitte Sacro.

She'd returned to the assassin business two years ago, the same year that Lyme's son had died in the games and she'd retired from mentoring, leaving a backup position open for Granitte. There was nobody forcing her to kill people, since every member of her family had now died, but she enjoyed it too much to stop.

As Granitte opened the file, the name of her target jumped out at her.

"He's a victor," she said, stunned.

"Yes, Miss Sacro," Snow said. "Since the Seventy-Fourth Games gave us two victors, I thought it'd be wise to correct the numbers a little. Do you have an issue with that?"

Granitte read the name on the list a second time and grinned. "No, not at all."

The victor she'd been asked to kill was Lumas Taffeta, the boy who'd killed her niece.

The day the mentors were expected to leave the Capitol, Granitte waited on the train to District 8, disguised as an avox. The only weapon she needed was a small syringe in a sealed plastic bag. It contained the most toxic batch of morphling that District 6's illegal narcotics labs could produce. She was very fortunate that her target was a notorious morphling addict, though he'd cleaned up a little in recent years. It was rare she got the opportunity to overdose someone.

Her heart raced with hatred as Taffeta limped into view. He wasn't alone. There was a woman with him.

Her name was Ramona Hirose, though it had been Ramona Hirose-Snow for the three years she'd been married to the president's grandson. She'd won the games after Taffeta's by poisoning her allies. Hirose and Taffeta had somehow become close friends, despite Hirose being a filthy-rich, tea-drinking snob and Taffeta being the filthiest thing ever to crawl out of District 8. All the Ones were absolutely terrified of Hirose but Granitte thought that they were a bunch of sissies to be scared of someone so pathetic, someone who hadn't made it a month after her husband's death before attempting suicide.

Granitte's eyes narrowed as the two victors drew closer to the train. It was unlikely that Hirose would join Taffeta on the train, since their districts were on opposite sides of the Capitol but if she did, it wouldn't be too hard to dispose of her as well. She wouldn't even need to forge a suicide note, since the Capitol already knew that Hirose was suicidal. But two dead victors on the same train would definitely arouse suspicions, even if it was completely clear how they'd both died.

Fortunately for Granitte, Hirose was only there to say goodbye to her friend with a quick kiss on the cheek and a held gaze that lingered just a little bit too long. Taffeta boarded the train without her. The moment the doors closed behind him, he let out a sigh. There was a strange look in his eyes, something almost like... longing.

Lumas Taffeta was in love with Ramona Hirose. He'd never live to tell her.

Granitte waited until Taffeta was asleep to strike. She climbed on top of him like he was one of her victims in the arena. This time, she had to be careful not to damage him too much. Snow would be able to cover anything up but it was better to leave him with as little to cover up as possible.

To Taffeta's credit, he recovered from the sight of an Elite pinning him to the mattress quicker than Granitte had expected. After the initial moment of panic - one that no-one would hear save the train workers, who'd been threatened into silence, and the avoxes, who were silent anyway – he started glaring at her.

"Let me guess," he growled, a feral look in his blue eyes. "You're here to kill me."

"Impressive," Granitte drawled. "So your brain isn't completely fried from all that morphling."

She pulled the syringe from her pocket and carefully opened the bag.

"Do you know what this is?" Granitte held the syringe right in front of Taffeta's face.

"Your d-" Taffeta began, before he realised what kind of death he was staring in the face. His eyes widened with fear and his voice died in his throat. "No. Not that..."

Granitte let someone of the morphling drip onto Taffeta's face, laughing at the way he shuddered. "I'm not a junkie like you but I'd say there's enough morphling in this syringe to kill a man."

"You don't have to do this," Taffeta said, eyes blazing with fear and anger. "I didn't kill your niece. The system did. The Capitol put pressure on her to volunteer. The Hunger Games forced me to kill to survive. Now its power is fading. The Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games are just the beginning, this could-"

Granitte clamped her hand over Taffeta's mouth. She couldn't kill him when he was like this, as bold and defiant as ever. She had to break him.

And she knew exactly how.

"I'd say that you are just the beginning, tunnel rat," Granitte hissed, slowly peeling her hand away. "Want to know who my next victim is? I imagine she's someone very dear to you."

"No..." Taffeta gasped, realising who Granitte meant.

"I'll be sure to tell Ramona that you loved her before I kill her. How much effort do you think I'll have to put in to get her hanging from the ceiling? Imagine it, tunnel rat. The rope around her pretty little neck. The ugly way her body dangles. Her airless cries for help. Or maybe she won't even cry for help. Maybe she'll just accept her fate. Maybe she'll be relieved to die..."

"Stop it!" Taffeta spat. "I swear, if you hurt her, I'll..."

"You'll do what?" Granitte asked. "Haunt me? You'll already be dead by the time I go after Ramona. There's nothing you can do. You can't save her."

And, just like that, the floodgates opened.

"Please don't hurt Ramona," Taffeta sobbed. "I can't let someone else die because I loved them. I can't... She just did what she was told. She doesn't deserve to die."

"Not everyone gets what they deserve." Granitte said, her voice hollow. "Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a man who held a gun to my head and told me to do some things that I wasn't quite comfortable with. But I did them anyway. And do you know what that man did? He pulled the trigger."

"And it wasn't loaded?" Taffeta asked, eyes lighting up. "You're not going to kill her, are you? You don't have enough power. You're only allowed to kill me because I'm a rebel. You're just like that empty gun."

"How does everyone know that?" Granitte roared. She grabbed Taffeta's wrist and began to plunge the syringe in. He screamed with pain as the drug flooded his bloodstream. Granitte watched his pupils dilate until his irises were drowning in black. His body spasmed.

"Ramona!" He cried. "Help me!"

"Nobody's going to help you," Granitte gloated.

Taffeta didn't even hear her. He was clearly fading away from reality. Granitte listened to him babble incoherently, begging for Hirose to come and comfort him. His words grew quieter and more desperate as the life left him.

"I love you," he slurred. "Please, Ramona..."

Then he fell silent forever. The rebel was finally dead.

But the rebellion in him had never died.

Granitte longed to follow through on her threat to kill Ramona Hirose but Snow wouldn't allow it. He wouldn't even allow Granitte to volunteer for the Quell. She found herself in the Control Centre, mentoring Enobaria.

Ramona Hirose was in the seat right next to her.

Granitte was relieved when Wiress Plummer died and Hirose left the room, claiming to need some space. The victor from District 3 had been making Granitte nervous. Hirose seemed even more brittle than she usually did, even paler in her back widow's clothes. Granitte knew that her husband's death had made Hirose a sad-eyed and meek shadow of her former self but there seemed to be something a little more 'off' than usual about her. Maybe it was just because Taffeta wasn't around to fill her creepy silence with his noise.

Granitte wondered if Hirose had loved Taffeta. If she had, the only way that Granitte would be able to find out would be with an entire torture chamber. Hirose didn't give much away.

On the third night of the games, Granitte began to feel sick. She told herself that it was just stress over Enobaria's precarious position in the Games but soon she found herself spasming with pain on the floor as cramps shot through her entire body and thick, tar-like vomit clogged up her throat.

In the final moments before Granitte's body gave out from lack of oxygen, she realised what had happened to her.

Poison.

It had to be Hirose. Somehow, she'd found out what had happened to Lumas Taffeta and she'd wanted revenge.

The last thing that Granitte Sacro experienced was a feeling of deep regret that she'd lost everyone she'd ever loved. She'd avenged her niece's death. Hirose had avenged Taffeta's murder. But nobody was left to avenge Granitte.


Well... That chapter is probably the most devastating chapter I have ever written or will ever write. I'm not proud of it at all but, since I had to kill Lumas off, I decided I had to give him a proper death scene and there wasn't really a way of fitting it into his chapter. Take comfort in the fact that he was defiant until he was too high to be defiant and Ramona got her revenge on Granitte. As well as this, the next major story I'm planning to write is an AU where Ramona does manage to save Lumas. It's a little ambiguous what he sees as he's dying but it could be an alternate version of himself with Ramona.

I also feel like I need to mention that, when I first wrote Lumas, I told myself "This man shall not be Ramona's love interest.". That went well. Somehow, that was the thing I changed about him and not his tragic death.

As for Granitte, she's one of the evil ones. The idea of a victor being Snow's personal assassin isn't completely original. Oisin55 did it first and I'd recommend checking out his stories because they're what got me hooked on Hunger Games fanfiction. I decided to set it up differently, though. Granitte only became Snow's assassin because she just couldn't take victor prostitution. I'd always planned for a victor to just 'snap', since they're only human. There's only so much they can stand. As well as this, I wanted to work Lumas' murder into another victor's chapter so the stars sort of aligned there.

Granitte could've crossed the line from 'slightly more violent than usual Career' to 'total villain' at a few points in this chapter but I think it was when she started abusing Ageis. A lot of Granitte's violent actions are either due to being a Career or out of revenge but her treatment of Ageis was just out of wanting to hurt someone. Even then, Granitte probably didn't deserve being threatened by her first client. The second scene of this chapter is one of the most disturbing things I've ever written.

I promise that next chapter will be less heartbreaking. I've got something fun planned.