Colours
01.
Cashmere's favourite colour is sepia. She doesn't want to look at the bright, neon colours she's told to dress herself in for eager Capitolites - no, she would rather die a thousand deaths than voluntarily wear those hideous pink and purples that she's told 'suit her'.
Oh, they wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the arena that she played in, but that year the tributes were let loose in a world of soft, creamy pastels and harsh, glimmering neons that wove themselves together into a maze of too many colours. She had won because she had pushed the career pack through hell and back, forcing them to stick together through sheer determination in a maze that seemed to rip away their very souls. When no one was left, they were all just weary enough for her to slash her way to victory with long, jagged throwing knives.
The Capitolites had loved it, of course. Their personal favourite was a dress simply screamed pink, something that they thought fit the young girl that they had crowned victor of the 64th Hunger Games. She felt like a flower in that dress - a dying offshoot of the person that she once was, sustained only by the Capitol letting her go back home to District One and pretend that everything was alright.
No, Cashmere's favourite colour is sepia. Like… like a sunset on a hazy day when you're all alone on the top of some grand hill. It's red and it's brown and it's right.
She'd like to be alone more often.
02.
Gloss's favourite colour is crimson. Yes, there's nothing better than the colour of freshly spilled blood to him - oh, how it takes him back to his glory days! Oh, he loved his time in the arena. Playing the role of the young god that the careers were meant to be suited Gloss perfectly - he hunted, he killed, no, he slaughtered the competition in the arena the Capitol gifted him.
In the rainforest that housed the twenty-four tributes of the 63rd Hunger Games, Gloss had led his career pack to victory - for the first two days. That was when the girl from Two had decided that he was a liability to the pack, too powerful to keep alive any longer. They had drugged him and threw him over a waterfall, all too nervous to try to properly kill him without retribution - Gloss had proven to be the most popular tribute that year in all aspects, with the highest score and a stunning interview with Caesar Flickerman that seemed to set the Capitol aflame.
They hadn't counted on Gloss, who had learned to hold his breath underwater after his two older brothers tormented him by dunking him in dirty bathwater when he was younger, surviving the fall.
From there, he took on his role as the stalking tiger. He followed the careers throughout the arena, killing the three other tributes that the careers couldn't find as he did so, and found them just as they found themselves in the final four.
He ripped them apart with his daggers, leaving the grass soaked with bright, luscious, warm blood.
When they had learned of the Quarter Quell twist, Cashmere muttered that she would have wanted anything other than to go back to the arena. But when Gloss rose into his new rainforest, he knew that there was never anything better than this.
03.
Enobaria's favourite colour is fuchsia. Yes, that's right, the woman that's known for ripping the throat of her last kill's favourite colour is a shade of bright, flashy, nauseous pink. But Enobaria loves the colour - she likes its inoffensive, beautiful hue. There's nothing murderous about fuchsia, there's nothing violent about fuchsia, there's nothing dark about fuchsia. If she had her way, she'd be decked in the stuff - but her fashion sensibilities kick in every time she's tempted to wear a dress in the colour.
Enobaria doesn't look good in pink.
But she loves the colour - after her arena, where her final kill was immortalized with her sharp, golden teeth, people feel uneasy around her. She always thought that winning the Hunger Games would mean that she would finally be accepted, that her childhood years of struggling to be noticed by someone, anyone, would be replaced by acceptance.
When she had entered the Hunger Games, she thought that this would be her moment. And it was: she became the sole survivor of the career pack in the final ten after a run-in with a pack of lions in the zoo that the 62nd Hunger Games was set in, hunting down the other nine tributes with the grace of the predators around her. She took down four before she reached the final two, killing the boy from Seven with nothing but her teeth when he knocked away her sword. It was her moment to become an admired victor, to be adored, to be loved.
But the Capitol took that away from her when they decided that she was nothing more than a predator with sharp fangs.
So Enobaria wears the colour sparingly. A gem on a necklace, an undershirt, a floral pattern on her training outfit that she taught classes of career hopefuls in, she likes to wear it whenever she gets the chance to.
It reminds her that, even though everyone tells her otherwise, she isn't an animal.
04.
Brutus' favourite colour is plain old grey. He doesn't have any specific preference for it, it's just comforting to wear the shade to him. People always described him as simple, as normal back when he was a little kid with brothers that outshined him at every moment. The only reason that he began training for the Hunger Games was that one of his older brothers was doing the same - the one in question, Cassius, dropped out of the Academy three weeks before his sixteenth birthday.
For Brutus, the Academy was a revelation. Here he could be someone, do something, prove himself to be greater than the shadows that his older brothers cast over him. He trained incessantly, injuring himself time and time again just to gain that extra muscle, to get that much better with a sword, to gain the speed needed to outwork his opponents at every turn. It paid off in one glorious day, when he was told by the head victor of Two, Cassian Slate - the man whom Cassius had been named after - that he would be the one to represent District Two in the 51st Hunger Games.
The Games were just the icing on the cake for Brutus. Set in a burning forest, where trees flickered yellow and orange at their tips before crashing into the ashes below, Brutus chased nine other tributes to their death before stabbing them through the heart with his long spear. He would have gotten ten - he almost got ten - but the boy from Twelve had the nerve to die from smoke inhalation before Brutus found his corpse curled up against a tree.
After that, Brutus became a star to gleam brightly for Panem. For one long year, he was the most famous man in the nation. No one's name was known more than Brutus' - well, except for one President Snow.
When he came back down into obscurity, newer victors taking the spotlight, he took solace in the colour grey.
It's simple, but it's strong. Like him.
05.
Wiress' favourite colour is yellow. It used to be something else, but she can't remember what it was anymore. It's hard to remember much now, especially when there are so many things for her to notice.
Like the little pinpricks in the wall of her home, marking the spots where cameras and recording devices track her every move. Like the way waiters at Capitolite restaurants twitch whenever she says something that seems innocuous, reaching towards her pocket before jerking their hand back to normalcy. Like the way Beetee catches his breath when he's nervous, a single bead of sweat trickling down his brow.
She used to be smart. She didn't win the Hunger Games because she was stupid - she had charmed the audience into sending her sponsor gifts that kept increasing in value until, to the delight of the viewers on the fourteenth day, she twisted her gifts into an operational grenade.
Her handcrafted grenade shattered the arm of the only boy left in the arena, the one from Four, and the girl from Six was weak enough, going without food in the abandoned city that they'd been thrown into for five days, for Wiress to stab her. She remembers that she killed her last opponent painlessly - a small mercy for the kill that would guarantee her victory.
After that, something in her broke. She lost what made her bright, what made her special, and the Capitol forgot about her. But Beetee didn't - no, he and Kaelynn were kind to Wiress. They treated her gently.
Yes, her favourite colour is yellow. It's a pretty colour, it helps her remember things, and it's calming. It's a good colour.
Wait, isn't her favourite colour hazel? She can't… she can't remember anymore.
06.
Beetee's favourite colour is dark green. It suits his ashen, ill-kempt complexion and is the perfect colour for the suits that he likes to dress himself in when he wants to feel ready for anything. It's a good colour, a sturdy colour, a colour that makes him look as smart as he is.
He didn't get to wear green in his arena. He was thrown into a prison complex for the 39th Hunger Games with the other twenty-four tributes, all fitted into orange jumpsuits that clung to his sides much tighter than a normal jumpsuit would. He had discarded the tacky outfit for something more subtle when a sponsor sent him a dark grey outfit, allowing him to slip into the shadows and properly hide. Orange isn't the easiest colour to hide.
It had worked, as he had expected. After slipping past the careers too many times to count - seventeen, to be exact - Beetee had found himself in the control centre of the prison. Using his valuable experiences as a worker in the factories of Three, as well as the knowledge he had gained from studying electronics and engineering throughout his time at school, Beetee rewired the systems to imprison the rest of the tributes in small sections of the prison. He let them tear each other apart until seven corpses lined the hallways of the prison, then took care of the last career by electrocuting him with wire, an overloaded electric circuit, and the fastest sprint he had ever found himself running. The career died instantly, and Beetee became the second victor ever from Three to win the Hunger Games.
He was happy that the stylists had dressed him in shades of green for his victory tour. They understood what worked for Beetee.
It's nice to have someone who understands what works.
07.
Mags' favourite colour is blue. It's a special favourite for the citizens of Four, who grow up on the shores of the sea and learn to swim before they walk. The sea isn't their enemy, it's their protector - the only one kind enough to give them everything they need to survive in the nation of Panem. Mags, just as every other child who grew up in District Four, learned to love the sea young. After all, it gave her blue - the colour that she loved the most.
The sea had been kind to her in her arena as well. When she had been gifted an archipelago as her arena, she had vanished into the scenery and hid on sandy shores on which she skinned the fish she caught. No other tribute was able to find her for the entire Games - the boy from Four, the only other tribute, suited for the arena like she was, had decided to ally with the boy from One and take care of the rest of the competition.
He had come across a trace of her once, seeing a footprint close to the forest where she had hidden in, but district loyalty allowed Mags another few days to breathe. Before long, it was just the three of them - but the boy from One was not as kind as Mags' partner, gutting him in the stomach before hunting for Mags.
The boy from One was not prepared for Mags' net to entangle him in an unbreakable knot, and was definitely not prepared for Mags to cut his throat as easily as she did her fish.
She still remembers his screams as he died, lasting almost as long as the blood that seeped from his neck. But that, too, the sea washed away.
The sea was kind to her in more ways than one.
08.
Finnick's favourite colour is amber - well, it once was. He had admired the shimmer that the colour gave off, its luxurious look that he had always wanted to match. As he grew older, lost the puppy fat of childhood, and began to tan instead of burning, he became amber himself - and then golden as he became the youngest victor of the Hunger Games ever.
His admirers commented that he glowed brighter than amber ever could, and Finnick agreed with them at first. How could the Capitol be wrong about the youngest victor, the newest victor, the brightest victor of the Hunger Games? How could he not be better than amber's glorious sheen if even President Snow agreed?
But as his admirers turned to unwanted lovers, and his sentences soon became laced with the secrets others told him, he realized that the Capitol was more wrong than he ever imagined. He wished for the days before the Games, when he was the boy who adored the shine of millennia past. It remained his favourite colour, and he thought it would be forevermore.
But after he first saw the girl who would become the victor of the 70th Hunger Games? After that moment, the only colour for him is the sea-green of Annie Cresta's eyes.
09.
Lisse's favourite colour is violet. It's fitting - violets are the most prominent of the flowers that she tends outside of her home, the ones that she cares for the most and has the most love for. Her mother used to wear violets in her hair whenever they had them, and Lisse told her that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She loves the soft purple, the silkiness of the colour, the quiet warmth it seems to exude.
She seems to be cold a lot lately. Perhaps it's because of the arena she played in - Lisse was tossed into the coldest arena the Capitol had ever seen, turning her fingers blue and her face a bloated purple as she tried not to cry. She didn't dare to - in the harsh arctic arena, crying would freeze her eyes closed.
She hadn't even killed the last tribute - the boy from Ten had frozen to death before she had the chance to die herself, leaving her the victor of the 57th Hunger Games. She didn't join Seeder as the only victor to not kill, however - she had killed the boy from Twelve in the bloodbath, choking him to death with a rope so she could take the backpack that he was clutching. It was the reason she had lived while all of the others had died, Lisse argued to herself on the lonelier nights. If she hadn't killed him, she wouldn't have had the jacket that kept her alive. She wouldn't still be here.
When it gets too overwhelming, she goes back down to the flower bed and begins digging up the weeds. The violets don't judge her. They never will.
10.
Nassor's favourite colour is black. Black isn't a colour, others would tell him as he proudly declared that it was better than their snobby pastels, their murky greens, their dozens of crude reds. It's a shade, you fool! When will you ever learn?
He ignored them, just like his mother taught him to. Nassor didn't need to listen to anybody but himself - well, other than the peacekeepers and his mother when she was in a bad mood. He was wise enough to follow her rules whenever her pay was reduced. Perhaps his stubborn individuality was the reason he was reaped - ignoring the warnings of his father and siblings, Nassor took far too much tesserae for his own good so that they could have decent meals for once.
It had led to him being thrown into the Hunger Games on his seventeenth birthday.
Then again, individuality was the reason that he won the Games. He had avoided the ill-fated alliances of the 52nd Hunger Games and took his own path, thereby saving himself from being stabbed to death in the arguments that took down both the career pack and the large bands of outliers that year. Instead, the boy from Five had paddled throughout the swamp his Games were set in on the raft he had escaped the bloodbath with - keeping himself alive until the final two without meeting the alliances. Nassor's still proud of the fact that he managed to drown the boy from Four, of all places, after chopping his arms off with a machete. It was a necessary measure to win - the boy wouldn't have felt it after he succumbed to the blood loss and lack of oxygen, of course.
But yes, black is Nassor's favourite colour. After all, he looks good in it. He can't say that about anything else.
11.
Esme's favourite colour is pink. She always wore it as a little girl, proudly choosing it as her colour of choice over the purple that her sister decided on wearing, and tried to include it in every outfit. Her blonde hair and blue eyes made her a good fit for the colour - so when she was reaped for the Hunger Games at the age of seventeen, she found herself walking onto the stage in an innocent pink dress.
That innocence is one of the reasons she was initially overlooked by Capitolite betters - at least, until she scored herself an eight in the private sessions. Rumours spread throughout the Capitol quickly about the girl from Six who was stronger than she looked, and when she made the wise choice of running away from the bloodbath and into the misty fields of her Hunger Games, the Capitol rewarded her with the paints and knives that she had asked for.
Armed with her paints, Esme proved herself to be quite the master of camouflage - sneaking up on tributes and stealing away with bits of food without ever being noticed, even being able to escape the attention of the careers in their initial forays into the arena. When the Games started winding down to a conclusion, she demonstrated her second talent - her ability to kill with knives.
Of course, her final two kills took a dreadful toll on her mental health, and the fact that her mentor tried to treat her with morphling of all things, only made it worse. But Esme doesn't mind - morphling lets her forget everything and just think of pretty things.
Her only regret is that morphling isn't tinged pink.
12.
Oberon's favourite colour is murky orange, the same colour of the substance that he injects himself with every day to feel a new high. It lets him forget that he killed three little boys and girls to win his Hunger Games. It's not pretty, but it's better than hearing their screams every waking moment.
Sometimes, he wishes he was deaf. Sometimes.
13.
Johanna's favourite colour is brown. There are a lot of nice browns - the colour of strong coffee, the colour of dirt that's rich and crumbly underneath her feet, the colour of pine bark that threatens to turn purple before her very eyes. She likes the simple things in life - being able to wake up and breathe the fresh air of every new day, and to feel the warmth of the dirt underneath her feet as she walks outside for a barefoot run each morning. It's a good start to her day, and coming to her home, painted a dingy brown that Blight scoffs at every time he comes to visit, makes her feel even better. She likes annoying her fellow victors with her ugly home.
She doesn't like pretty things - oh, no, she's never liked pretty things. She's always been filled with grit, taking on her older brothers in arm-wrestling matches when she was little - and winning, for that matter - and chopping trees down with her father as soon as she would let her. It was only because of the shock of it all that she cried throughout her entire time in the Capitol - if she had gotten a hold of herself and actually thought for one moment, she would have protested the way her stylists made her out to be like a porcelain doll.
But she had gotten a hold of herself when she reached the soft brown trees of her forest arena - two axes later, she proved herself to be the most dangerous person one could meet in her Hunger Games, much to the dismay of her victims.
She had murdered three other teens, all of them from the final four.
She thought winning the Games meant she would get to go back home, to enjoy life like she used to, but Snow had other plans. When she had argued with him and refused to do the things he told her were the essential aspects of every victor's life, she had come home to the fact that her family had died in a fire. She never showed it, but she's been terrified of fire ever since.
She keeps two buckets next to her bed every night - one filled with water, one filled with salt and sand.
14.
Blight's favourite colour is silver - it's a gorgeous one, but not something that most people choose. He's alright with being the one who's unnoticed, with being the runner-up, with being the one that people forget about.
The Hunger Games tried to make him their gold standard, but he merely faded into the background when Johanna - blessedly - won the Games for District Seven in the 71st Games.
Since then, he's lived quietly. He doesn't talk much to Johanna or the other victors - Johanna and Flavia often try to visit to force him out of his home, while the other men seem to realize why he stays home. He enjoys being by himself, he enjoys not having to worry about taking care of someone else, he enjoys the fact that he feels safer when he's all alone.
His arena had been the smallest since the first three Games - a simple mansion, with no way out and all too few places to hide. He had won because he was strong enough to haul himself into the rafters and wait for most of the tributes to be killed by the careers, then watched as the boy from Ten tore into them with his sickle.
The boy almost won the whole thing as he finished off the last career, - even Blight thought that he'd be the one to win - but he hadn't known where Blight was hiding. He looked for him for half a day, but didn't check the one place where Blight was: five feet above the boy's head, enough time for Blight to knock the boy down and to cut through his neck with the axe he had taken from the cornucopia.
The Capitol offered him glory, and he turned it away. He's alright being the silver standard for now.
It's safer.
15.
Cecelia's has too many favourite colours to count - well, except for red for obvious reasons - but one of her most favourites is pastel blue. She likes to bake with her children when she's at home, the youngest two excited for sweet delights while her older boy enjoys learning the intricacies of baking and how to mix batter correctly. It's a fun activity for everyone, and they always paint their baked goods in a thousand different colours of frosting. The colour everyone can agree upon when they need only one? Pastel blue.
"Mama, why do we live like this?" one of her younger boys had asked during the middle of baking a rich, luscious chocolate cake. "Stefan at school says you killed someone - is that true, Mama? What did you do? Why do we get to be so happy?"
"Well..." Cecelia had hesitated at first. She hadn't told her children much about the Hunger Games. She had preferred to put that behind her, to put away how she had torn children apart in her Games. Hers had been a harsh swamp, where she had used the limited cover to sneak up on others, to trick them into thinking she wasn't there until she was the only one who was. Add the fact that the career pack had torn itself apart far too soon to pose a threat, and she was crowned victor of the Hunger Games. "Well, I've done some bad things, but I've done some good things too. When I came to District Eight, I knew I wanted to live here to have each of you!"
They accept the answer, and continue to giggle as the older boy flicks frosting at his younger siblings. As she watches, Cecelia smiles gently. It's good to see them having fun.
She doesn't tell them that they're each named after one of the tributes that she was put in the Games with, and they decorate the cake with pastel blue.
16.
Woof's doesn't have a favourite colour. He doesn't tell anyone, but the first victor from Eight is colour-blind. He can't tell which colours are which, let alone choose one to be the one he likes the most. He supposes he likes whichever one the sun is coloured - that's a nice enough colour. He likes that one. It's useful. He hopes that the colour's like the same feeling he felt when his first victor came back to him in the 47th Hunger Games after twenty-four years of solitude, of pain, of tears, of regret. Far too much regret.
Nothing could match that. Nothing.
17.
Nieve's favourite colour is sienna. It's pretty enough for her, a kind of red that's just faded enough to seem harmless. She loved bright red as a little girl, dressing herself in the stuff and putting on bright red lipstick whenever she wanted to impress one of the boys in the bar she waitressed at. Red was bold, red was glorious, red was stunning. It was everything that she ever wanted to be.
And then she was reaped for the Hunger Games.
Her first kill died too quickly for her brain to process properly - after the girl from Eleven had collapsed in mud of the arena, her blood flowed quickly before stopping. Nieve hadn't known if she was dead or not, but she didn't stick around to find out - she took off, away from the bloodbath with a pack and a spear. She was safe.
Her second kill took too long - the boy from Six had gotten caught in one of the traps that she had set up for wild game in the muddy fields that made up their arena, and had screamed in agony as he tried to wrench his foot loose of the spike that cut through his shoe and up through his arch. Horrified, Nieve had tried to kill the boy before someone else heard them - not to mention the careers, who were stalking the arena at that moment - but he had fought long and hard enough to almost kill her. Almost.
Her last kill was just right - in the amount of time that the boy from Seven took to bleed out, Nieve was able to empty the contents of her stomach onto the fields and then stumble onto the hovercraft. She wasn't prepared to become a victor, and the Capitol wasn't prepared for her. After a rushed victory tour, she was dumped back into Nine to be with herself and her thoughts.
That was alright by Nieve.
After that, she still felt longings for red. But after the arena? After the killing? After the blood?
Yes, sienna just suited her just fine.
18.
Leander's favourite colour is the same shade as red currants - a dark red that's bright enough to attract attention, yet scare away those who see it. Most of the tributes in his Games had disregarded the berries as one of the many poisonous foods available to them, but Leander took full advantage of the wild berries - it was the reason that he didn't starve to death in the wild garden his Games were set in.
He can't eat currants anymore, though. If he tries, he'll retch - all he can remember is the scent of blood that his two kills contained, intermingled with the wild perfume of the garden around him.
But he still likes the way they look.
19.
Amaryllis' favourite colour is the same as her mother's hair - a light, wild orange that Amaryllis inherited as she grew into her unruly locks. She loved her hair, combing it every day to look even as half as good as her mother's. Her entire life, all Amaryllis ever wanted was to look just like her mother.
When she was reaped for the Hunger Games, she left meekly. She knew that it was her time to die, and made no fuss about it. Instead, she enjoyed what simple pleasures the Capitol could give her, and her interview consisted of a quiet chat about the different cows that she milked back at home. But one of the careers must have angered the Capitol enough to teach the richer districts a lesson that year - when Amaryllis ran from the cornucopia and into the enchanted village that tributes were given that year, most of the other tributes ran to the cornucopia.
Then the cornucopia exploded.
The Capitol, rightfully, exploded as well - with outrage as Amaryllis and the other seven who had chosen not to head into the bloodbath were the only ones left to duke it out. The Games became a deadly game of hide and seek, where the few who were brave enough to fight searched for other tributes and avoided the pixie mutts that tried to lure them to their death. Amaryllis was one of the hiders - at least until the girl from Eight found her, and Amaryllis tussled with the girl until she wrenched the girl's fingers out of her sockets and stabbed a knife through her ear. From then on, she was nothing but a hunter - looking for others so they wouldn't look for her.
When she killed the girl from Five so that she could finally go home and away from the arena that reduced her to a mere animal, Amaryllis wondered if her mother would recognize her now.
20.
Casimir's favourite colour is a rich coffee brown - like the back of the guitar he liked to play while he was tending the cattle his family owned. It's for a rather simple reason - it's the same colour as his eyes. He doesn't understand why more people's favourite colour is the same as their eyes. Why don't they pick what's given to them? Why don't they like what they have already?
Casimir had been promised privilege, as one of the few families in Ten who earned enough to own their own cattle. He thought he would live to be one of the men who could sit outside of their homes in their old age, puffing out clouds of tobacco and judging the new generations who worked the soil in front of them.
The Hunger Games had different plans of course, and he was tossed into a garbage dump that seemed to never fail in getting uglier by the minute.
It was a surprise that he won. He didn't intend to kill two in the bloodbath, he didn't intend to kill three during the Games, and he didn't intend to kill the two tributes from District Seven, who had paired up and finished off the careers before searching for him, of all people, but Casimir quickly found himself to be the only one left from the 66th Hunger Games. He had entered the Games as a humble sixteen-year-old, but left it with the scent of rancid, rotting garbage clinging to his body - and the taste of blood on his lips. It's no wonder that after the Hunger Games, Casimir never touched meat again.
He still likes coffee brown. It's calm, it's a strong colour, and it's purposeful.
And coffee lets him stay awake at night.
21.
Seeder's favourite colour is turquoise. She doesn't like to tell many other people, but she loves elegant things - luxuries are rare in Eleven, but she'd always pause a few seconds to gaze through the windows of the glass shop to look at all of the colours.
She always liked turquoise the best - it was a perfect mix of two colours she very much appreciated. Blue meant that the day would be a calm day, which meant that she wouldn't have to slip on the branches in the orchard because of the fierce wind or a coming storm and risk getting whipped, and green meant spring - which meant her family would actually eat well for once as they all headed to work in the fields. Yes, green and blue were good things.
For twenty-three days, she was surrounded by nothing but green and blue in the Hunger Games. She had run from the bloodbath and into the sparse fields, where she had foraged for food and water until she lay down to die. But fate had other plans for Seeder - no other tribute had luck finding a sustainable food source, and sponsor gifts were strictly forbidden from sending food that year.
On the nineteenth day in the arena, Seeder somehow mustered up the courage to drag herself to the riverbank, and drank her fill before lying back down and falling into a sleep that lasted four more days. When she woke up, she found herself the only one who hadn't shriveled to death - and the first ever victor to win without killing another tribute.
The Capitol had tried to make her a regal queen for her subjects, the first to win without fighting for it, but they gave up on the theme and settled for killing off her father and letting her settle back down in Eleven. There were tears, but she found herself fitting back into her old life well - only for a few weeks was the facade of normalcy interrupted, when she was told to head to the Capitol with the next two sheep for the slaughter. But she continued on, hoping against hope that she'd find a victor one day. Just one more. Just one. Just one…
When Chaff won, she was wearing turquoise.
22.
Chaff's favourite colour is baby blue, like the colour of the sky on a calm day. It's always been his favourite colour, ever since his mother wove him a baby-blue blanket and let little Chaff sleep with it in his crib. He still has a patch from the blanket in his house somewhere, stored away in his bedroom as a memory long past. He loved that blanket. He loved it so much.
In his Games, tributes were dressed in the thickest clothes imaginable. The arena was an iceberg - one bad slip, and you would be sent tumbling into the arctic water. Another few minutes, and your cannon would be the next to boom. Chaff had kept himself out of the water for the most part, working with a large outer-district alliance to keep himself into the Games until there were only five of them left. At that point, it descended into a free-for-all, leaving only Chaff and the boy from Three to bleed out on the iceberg, waiting for the other to die.
He had won the dying game, but at the price of a hand. Chaff's left hand was too frostbitten to be treated by the Capitol doctors, so they had amputated it in exchange for his victory. Chaff doesn't mind only having one hand now - he refused a prosthetic, not wanting to deal with the hassle of a plastic hand that would only get broken and cause him problems. You only need one hand to raise a glass of beer, after all.
But yes, baby blue is a lovely colour. It's too bad that more things aren't more blue - the world would improve if it was as soft as the colour, Chaff thinks.
Himself not included.
23.
Katniss' favourite colour is green. It's not something she's ever thought about, it just is - like how she can fire arrows perfectly, like how she's learned to hunt, like how she won the Hunger Games and survived a second. It does no good to dwell on things, she's found. It's easier to let things go, to think of the things that are instead of the things that aren't.
On Prim's birthday, though, she disappears for the day before Peeta finds her curled up in the forest late at night. And on the day that Prim… that Prim…
On that day, Katniss stays in bed.
Peeta brings her flowers, and they sit together for the day. They don't do anything, just look at the green that their bedroom is painted in.
It's just enough to get her through the day.
24.
Peeta's favourite colour is orange. Not a bright orange, but a soft orange, like the sunset in District Twelve. Like the icing of his first cake. Like the colour of his older brother's hair. Like what Katniss' face looks like in the sunlight.
That's real.
Lately, though, he's developed a taste for green.
A/N: Happy holidays, happy New Year! Here's a project I've been holding onto for a while, a small collection of every victor from the Third Quarter Quell's favourite colours, , and today feels like a good time to release it. Enjoy.
Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ