Tarquin Baretti, District 2
"Did I fail?
Did I fail?
Did I waste my time?"
Car Seat Headrest, Famous Prophets (Stars)
Tarquin Baretti was the last true victor.
He spent the last year of his life complaining about the two from the Seventy-Fourth Games. Victors killed their final opponents. Tarquin killed his own final opponent - a stealthy boy from District 10 - with a brick. He dashed the other boy's brains out.
Victors weren't supposed to fall in love with their final opponents.
Victors weren't supposed to be put into the games again, either, although Tarquin was tempted to volunteer, to steal back some thunder from the Twelves. Brutus talked him out of it.
"You're only twenty, Tarquin. Live your life," he said.
So Tarquin tried.
Brutus didn't let him mentor. He asked for his old team, Agrippinia and Tacitus. It was nothing personal but Tarquin couldn't help thinking of Cato, how he'd failed the boy. District 2's youngest victor was left to his own devices for most of the Seventy-Fifth games, with only some retired victors for company. Lyme wasn't around much and Vitellia was so quiet but Constantine was always up for a conversation.
All that changed when war broke out.
District 2 was the most resistant to the rebels, even more so than Five. Tarquin watched the news as district after district fell to the rebels. There were only three of Two's victors left in the Victor's Village. Lyme had vanished. Brutus was dead. There was no news of what'd happened to Enobaria and the mentors.
Tarquin would remember the day he realised that his side was losing the war for the rest of his life. There'd been a rebel bombing in Five that'd destroyed a dam and flooded part of the district. Constantine had always been upset by bad news about District 5. Apparently, that was his pet outlier's district.
Tarquin never really understood pet outliers. Maybe it was just because the closest outliers in age to him were Johanna from Seven and Binah from Three, neither of whom he cared about. If there was one outlier he could relate to, it was Liza Flouria. She knew what it was like to live in someone's shadow.
Until she wasn't living anymore. The only thing Tarquin had felt watching Liza die in the Quell bloodbath was annoyance that a One had killed her.
Constantine was different. When he heard the news that Luka Starkwain was missing, presumed dead, he cried. He insisted on Tarquin and Vitellia moving into his house, so they'd all be together. None of them felt safe leaving the house anymore.
So when the peacekeepers decided to cut their losses on defending Victor's village, they all got taken together.
Vitellia fought back. Whether it was because she believed she could win or because she wanted to die, Tarquin never found out. They shot her dead and took Constantine and Tarquin to prison.
Tarquin lost track of time.
He began to realise that they'd never let him go.
They took Constantine fist. He'd been in the cell across from Tarquin's. When Tarquin heard gunshots, he knew that his last remaining friend wouldn't be coming back.
And that he'd be next.
Tarquin Baretti, Panem's last true victor, held his head high as they marched him out of his cell and stood him against the wall. On his last ever walk, he remembered all the events that'd led to this.
He'd trained. He'd volunteered. He'd killed. He'd hoped for glory - a lifetime of being celebrated.
But here he was, about to die at twenty, in some prison.
He must've made a mistake. Maybe he'd been too arrogant or naïve, believing that he was untouchable. Tarquin had never felt invincible. The last outlier left, the boy from 10 had been skinny and shy but he'd also been smart and stealthy. Good with a knife. He'd put up a fight. Tarquin didn't want to admit it to anyone but he'd actually been a little scared that Ten would kill him. He'd been desperate - the only moment like that in his pampered, sheltered life - when he'd brained that boy with a brick.
He still didn't know the boy's name. Elites weren't supposed to learn outliers' names.
They offered Tarquin a blindfold. He refused it, said he wanted to look death in the face.
He stared into the eyes of each member of the firing squad as they readied their guns.
"I'm the last victor," he said, proudly. "I'm not your victor. I'm not the Capitol's victor, either. I'm my own victor."
He wasn't sure that he meant it. He just wanted to make the most of the last few moments he had. He wanted to be remembered for something and he felt like he hadn't done enough.
This was the first time that Tarquin Baretti felt used by the Capitol. They'd set him up to die like this. They'd failed him. But he never had time to voice his anger.
They filled him with bullets and carried his body away to be cremated. All that was left of the last true victor was a red stain on a wall. The rebels denied what they did to him.
The rain over the years washed him away.
Tarquin doesn't get to be a victor for very long so his chapter didn't turn out very long. He's pretty close to being the stereotypical 'Capitol lapdog' Career that Katniss mentioned. He followed the system and the system failed him but the Rebels don't give him any time to move on from that. Tarquin's attitude towards the end sort of reminds me of Aeneas. They've both lived through wars and learned the hard way that neither side is completely right.
Next chapter is the Seventy-Fourth games (double thirty-seven, yay). I'm going to do Katniss before Peeta because Peeta's chapter will make a better finale. I expect that Katniss' chapter will be quite short and not really focused on her because she had three whole books to herself and it seems unfair to give her too much focus.
