Enobaria Rossetti, District 2
"We were wrecks before we crashed into each other."
Car Seat Headrest, Sober To Death
Enobaria Rossetti, victor of the Sixty-Second Hunger Games was doing something terrifying, something massively out of her comfort zone.
She wasn't just going on a date. She was going on her first date with a woman she liked.
She'd met Amethyst at a support group for Elites. Enobaria hadn't expected something like that to be set up, given that only two Elite victors had survived the war and Annie Cresta, for all her oddness, had a great set of coping mechanisms. But there had been so many academy students who hadn't been chosen as volunteers to consider. Many of them had gone on to join the peacekeepers or to carry on contributing to their academies.
Others had turned to violent crime, unable to control their impulses. Enobaria had always felt a sort of kinship with them. She'd always had trouble controlling herself, even if she'd never killed anyone outside of the arena.
Amethyst, meanwhile, was the kind of calm and collected that one became when one had three younger sisters. She was a lovely, kind woman and Enobaria could see why she'd never been anywhere near the chosen volunteer for the Sixty-Third games. She'd had all the skills but too much heart.
Which was good for her, because that was the year that Gloss had killed all his district's top candidates for volunteer by accident. Enobaria couldn't quite believe that that idiot had managed to win his first games because he was extremely incompetent. Cashmere and Brutus would probably both still be alive if Gloss hadn't decided to attack that big alliance. Even a year later, Enobaria would wonder why he did it. Her conclusion was that he'd had such an obsessive hatred for Ramona Hirose that he was willing to sacrifice everything just to kill his enemy's mentor.
Even then, he hadn't realised that Coco and Granitte had beaten him to the punch when it came to murdering Ramona's loved-ones.
"What are you thinking about?" Amethyst asked, reaching across the table to squeeze Enobaria's hand. Dinner had gone well. Enobaria had found the one restaurant in District 2 that had a vegetarian option, which was perfect given that neither of them particularly liked meat.
"The Quell," Enobaria said truthfully. "The part where Gloss screwed everything up."
Amethyst's eyes turned sad. "It's a shame. He was my favourite victor from my district. He treated his final opponent with so much respect. Not that what you did was bad. It's a matter of context, I guess."
"Nice save," Enobaria muttered.
Enobaria's final opponent had been Eidolon Wrack from District 4, the largest tribute since Paragon Butler from the Forty-Seventh. In an arena with no weapons, he'd been able to rack up the highest kill count of the games using nothing but his bare hands. He'd strangled Radiance Schmidt, the gorgeous, golden-haired girl from One, after the last outlier had died. He'd tried to do the same to Enobaria.
He'd forgotten that she'd had teeth.
Recently, Enobaria had stopped thinking of Eidolon as the monster who'd murdered the first girl she'd ever loved and started thinking of him as a person.
Eidolon's younger sister, Honeydew, had volunteered for the Sixty-Third Games aged seventeen, since Four had struggled to find volunteers after what'd happened to Eidolon. Gloss had killed her quickly and respectfully when they'd reached the final two, after spending most of the games being her loyal ally. It had left a bad taste in Enobaria's mouth - but not as bad as Eidolon's throat had tasted. She hadn't understood it at first, being an only child. Only now, after growing closer to Amethyst, did she realise why.
She felt guilty. She'd been so angry at Eidolon that she'd forgotten that he'd had a younger sister waiting for him. All she'd seen was revenge, revenge, revenge...
Maybe that was why Gloss had charged into a foolish ambush to kill Wiress. Revenge, revenge, revenge...
"Who do you think had the worst final kill?" Enobaria asked, before remembering what had happened to Amethyst's younger sister. "Wait, forget I asked."
"No, it's okay," Amethyst said, gently. "I don't think anyone can beat the Fate of Eight."
Enobaria grimaced. "Not even Mason?"
"Not even Mason," Amethyst said. "At least she had a motive."
Revenge, revenge, revenge... Enobaria thought.
"If someone I cared about died and I didn't know who'd killed them or how, I'd be pretty angry," Amethyst said. "I was angry enough about Régine as it was."
It was the first time that evening that Amethyst had mentioned her sister.
Régine Maurin had volunteered for the Sixty-Eighth Hunger Games. She'd been brutal and brilliant with a knife. Enobaria had always been flattered by the girl's crush on her, even when Régine had started carving her name into her victims.
But there'd been a girl from Three with soft, brown eyes and a flask full of poison. Not that the poison had killed Régine. Ramona Hirose had at least had the decency to stab her closest ally and comfort her as she bled out rather than let Régine's body slowly fall apart from the poison.
In Enobaria's most vain moments, she'd laughed at how Régine had fallen for a girl who'd had so little in common with her. It wasn't that she was jealous, since Régine had been a little too young for her. It was just that Ramona was so cold and calculating. And short.
But Enobaria had one thing in common with Ramona, aside from her black hair and brown eyes.
There'd been so many poisonings in the Capitol during the war. Granitte, Coco and Mink had all died from poison. Revenge, revenge, revenge...
Maybe they had two things in common. Enobaria was certain that she'd survived the war. She also knew that Ramona's body had never been found.
"What's wrong?" Amethyst asked. "Did I get too sad?"
"No," Enobaria said, realising that she needed to stop living in the past. "I just wondered if..."
"If Hirose's still alive?" Amethyst asked. "I wonder the same thing. I hope she is."
"Really?" Enobaria asked.
"When I first watched... the finale, I hated her," Amethyst said. "I joined the peacekeepers. I wanted to hurt people because I hated her so much. But part of me was jealous. Because that smile on Régine's face when she was dying... That was the happiest I'd seen her.
"I remember when she came out to Mother and Father. They told her that it was wrong for girls to like other girls. And I wish I could have told her that I felt just like she did but I was too scared. If I'd told her that it was all okay and normal... maybe she wouldn't have volunteered. But it took Ramona Hirose to say it. I know she cared about my sister. She just killed her so she'd live. If she's already dead then..."
Enobaria knew. If Ramona was dead then Régine had died for nothing.
"It's okay," Enobaria whispered. "I know that Régine would be glad that we made it through the war. The war is over. The games... the games are over."
There were tears shining in Amethyst's eyes. Enobaria leaned across the table to touch her face.
"Please don't cry," Enobaria said, softly.
"I just can't believe how many people are left," Amethyst said. "I was there, in the fighting. I thought that, when the war was over, I'd just be alone on an empty wasteland."
Enobaria used to wish that she'd been there as well, defending her district from the rebels, even though she knew that all the victors who'd stayed behind had been killed. Now she knew better. It was partly because the rebels seemed more invested in keeping her alive than the Capitol had been. She had the Mockingjay to thank for that.
It was most because, the moment Amethyst's squad had been withdrawn from District 3, where she'd originally been stationed, and moved to District 2, Amethyst had defected and signed up with Lyme's army of rebels. She'd wanted a leader who understood what it was like to lose someone to the games. Enobaria knew that, if she'd been here to fight, she would've fought against the woman who would've become her girlfriend.
"You're not alone," Enobaria said. "You've got me. And we've got the rest of the world to explore."
"That's scary," Amethyst said.
Enobaria understood what she meant. The entire country was going into unfamiliar territory. There was so much pressure not to mess things up.
But, knowing what she'd become familiar with in the time before the war, Enobaria was glad to leave it behind.
"Then we'll do it together," Enobaria said. She leaned in to kiss Amethyst and began to let go of the past and all that hunger for revenge. There was nobody left to fight.
There was only the new world, the new friends who lived in it and new freedom.
I wasn't originally going to do a chapter where one of the seven surviving victors from Mockingjay adjusted to life after the war but Enobaria won me over. She has the hardest battle to adjust to life after the war because all the other survivors were rebels while Enobaria lucked out by not dying in the Quell and then spent the war being passed around like a hot potato. Luckily, she got her happy ending with Amethyst. Originally, I wasn't sure who I wanted Enobaria's girlfriend to be but then I remembered that Régine had an older sister and thought that it would be cute to see them together, even if it's pretty unlikely for two siblings to both be lesbians. It's not totally impossible so I made it happen.
The main thing people think about when thinking of Enobaria is that moment where she rips a guy's throat out with her teeth. I've seen lots of interpretations of it across different stories but never one where she does it out of revenge and never one where her victim is a fellow Career. Enobaria and Radiance had a bit of a romance, which is one of the reasons why Régine gets such a big crush on Enobaria. It's actually one of the first victors' stories I ever thought of, since Régine is the first character whose backstory I really planned out. I haven't found the right story to publish it in yet but the next major story I write will definitely feature it, since it'll focus a lot on second place tributes like Silver, Régine and Eidolon.
Next chapter, it's Gloss' turn. He got a few mentions in this chapter due to his fabled incompetence but it's time to find out exactly how incompetent he really is.
