The lost child lay between us like an unfathomable chasm, something I could never cross or even attempt to do so. Yondrie's silence almost swallowed me whole. I knew she blamed me and perhaps always would. One day she would talk again, maybe even forgive me, but she would always bear the scars of what I had done.
I had traded one evil for another. I had become the Hanging Tree.
Suddenly I understood my father so much more.
Less than a year later when the sun stretched long into an afternoon and her silence had broken into short words, Yondrie sat across from me at the dinner table.
"I'm pregnant," she stated simply.
And there was only one thing I could say, "That's wonderful."
The front door banged open as Dahlia came bounding back from school, from her first year in the real world.
"Mom? Dad?"
Yondrie leaned in. "I'm keeping this one, Jay," she whispered to me, her eyes fierce. "No matter what happens."
I didn't dare disagree.
"Mom?" Dahlia said, coming in just as Yondrie left. She looked at me for an answer.
"Don't worry about it, Dahls," I said, gesturing for her to sit down. "How was school?"
"It was good." She shifted in her chair. "My teacher talked about you actually."
So this was finally the day. "Really?"
"Yeah."
"And what did she say?"
"That you're a victor," Dahlia recited. "That you're the only victor in all of District 12 and that I was really lucky that you were because that's why we have such nice things."
I winced. I was always worried that Dahlia might be picked on because she dressed better and ate better than any other child around, including the mayor's.
"And did your teacher explain how I became a victor?"
Dahlia nodded her head. "It has to do with the Games. You won out of all the kids in all of the districts because you were the last one alive." She seemed to think on this for a moment. "What're the Games like, Daddy?"
"They're scary," I replied. "It was more luck than skill that made me win."
And I realized that that line, that one line spoken to my child was the truest thing I had ever said about the Games.
"I suppose it must be hard," she said. "If I was in the Games, I would fi-"
"No, Dahlia," I cut in. "Don't say that. Don't ever say that. You are not going into the Games. Understand?"
"Yes, Daddy," she said. But I saw the spark in her that said otherwise.
"Good." And I quickly changed the topic to something else before she came up with some other notion on the Games that I never wanted to contemplate again.
The child was born in May, between Dahlia's and the lost child's birthday. From the beginning he was a quiet one, birth so quick and him barely even making a cry. Even in my arms he slept easily and without a fight.
He looked exactly like me.
His birth seemed to heal Yondrie as much as she ever would be. She laughed at Dahlia's smug little smile that it was the boy she had always wanted. She even smiled at me.
"What do you want to name him, Jay?"
"Cam," I said immediately. "My grandfather's name."
"Cam Tipper," she said, looking at our son. "It sounds like a good name for this little man.
He yawned as he squirmed into a deeper sleep. I sat on the bed, Yondrie and Dahlia beside me and we sat there for hours it seemed, finally allowed to be at peace.
The banging on the door in the middle of the night was frenzied and terrified. I opened it to find my mother quite older and smaller than I remembered.
"Jay," she said. "It's your father. There's something wrong with him…I don't think he has long left. I know you've refused to talk to him but-"
I didn't hear the rest because I was yanking on my coat and running out the door.
"Let's get the doctor's opinion first."
I spent the last three days of my father's life at his side, perhaps trying to hopelessly make up for time lost. He didn't wake up too much and when he did, he was delirious, thinking me seventeen and dead in the Games, begging my forgiveness, or thinking me seven and explaining in simple words how to trap. But worse still were the times when he awoke and thought me nothing but a stranger.
The doctor wasn't optimistic, his lungs had been ground into nothing working in that wretched mine and nothing he did seemed to soothe Dad's awful fever or wracking cough.
But then, on the very last day, Dad finally broke his delirium.
"Well, I must be really gone now if I'm seeing Jay back here," he said wearily, barely managing the strength to look at me.
"It really is me, Dad," I said and then rushed out, "I'm sorry that I left so abruptly. I'm sorry that we never talked. I'm sorry I forsook you when you needed me most."
"You didn't, Jay. You always gave us money, no matter how you felt. And I'm sorry, too. For everything."
"I understand now," I said and took in a breath not realizing how hard it was to say the words until that very moment. "I've had to make difficult choices now too. And I understand why you had to."
"I'm sorry that you have to understand," he said and smiled with a life of pain behind him.
"I can't make up for everything," I continued, "but I thought I could let you have this." And then I brought in Cam who awoke to my carrying him but didn't make a sound, just sat and stared at this world and this strange man who now held him.
Dad didn't stop smiling and couldn't help asking me every single question he possibly could about Cam until we both lapsed into silence, the only sound his labored breathing.
"Jay," he finally said, "do you remember that day in the forest before your first Reaping?"
I nodded my head. "Of course."
"I've thought about that day over and over. I know I shouldn't have taught you that song so young or our history, maybe at all-"
"Dad, you had to."
"But the reason I became so upset," he continued on, "was because you were so brave. Singing that song, the fight in your eyes. So much like your grandfather. That's something I never could be and perhaps I resented it."
Brave. The word echoed around me. Never once in all my life did I ever think of myself as brave.
"You fight when others stand down. You defy when others cower. You have some spark in you I will never understand, the spark of the rebels. The spark that will one day free Panem. Never lose that, understand me?"
"I never will, Dad. I promise."
"Good," he said, closing his eyes. "Good."
He never woke again.
Afterwards I asked Mom to come live with us. She refused, saying we had our hands full as it was and that she wanted to be close to Dad's spirit.
Maybe even then she knew she was dying, she only lived another couple months. The doctor said her heart just gave out. I don't think I've ever heard an explanation more true than that.
For the next several years our lives were largely uneventful. Dahlia and Cam both grew each day, Yondrie spent her time gardening, and I mentored the Games for District 12 every year with no success.
Every day Cam seemed to resemble me more and more. But that was as far as our similarities went. In personality, he was nothing but gentle and sweet, someone who never wanted to hurt a living thing. He sang as soon as he could talk, the mockingjays always picking up his songs. He was never surprised by this though. He only giggled and began to teach them something else.
Dahlia seemed to sense this gentleness too. She watched and protected and played with him whenever they were together. Many hours they spent in the empty houses in the Victors' Village, the greatest playground District 12 was ever to see.
But that was as much kindness as Dahlia usually showed. I thought her strong-willed and stubborn as a baby and a young child. But as she grew older she seemed to possess a mean streak. More than once she got into fights with other girls and even some of the boys. Sometimes it was for the most mundane of reasons. But a lot of other times it wasn't.
"They were saying things about you," she said to me once when she had come home with blood streaming from her nose. "They said you're a murderer, that you killed the kids in your Games and took pleasure in it. They said that you purposely send the kids from our district to die every year because you enjoy seeing them bleed. They said such horrible, horrible things!"
"Dahlia," I said. "I've heard them say as such and worse to my face but you don't see me getting into fistfights over it."
"Well they're wrong and I'm not just going to stand there and take it," she said and looked at me with such pain in her eyes. "Why do they say such things about you?" she whispered.
I sighed. How was I to explain any of this? "You know people around here don't like me, Dahlia," I finally replied. "Let's leave it at that."
She nodded her head and then threw herself into my arms. "I love you, Dad. They don't know you like I do."
And fight withstanding, I couldn't help but smile. "I love you too, Dahls."
But at times that seemed to be the least of my worries concerning Dahlia. She also seemed to hold a disturbing fascination with the Games. She was always asking me what weapons I had used and whether I had decided to fight in the Bloodbath and who I had trusted and why and how did I know that I could trust them. Sometimes I felt like screaming at her to stop this horror. But I knew I couldn't. After all, I was the one who had given her this sick gift.
Even without seeing my Games she seemed to have my talents. The times I went outside the fence and took her along she showed a proficiency at throwing knives at ten I had never seen anyone possess.
Anyone except me.
I tried to stop her. I forbade her from using knives and got rid of any found in her possession. But somehow she always found more.
I tried to direct her interest to anything else, but she wasn't interested. She was only interested in the curve of a knife, a statistic in the Games, or a fistfight at school.
By the time Dahlia was eleven and the 39th Hunger Games was nearing, I was utterly exhausted, at her and another failed Games. I was starting to suspect that the President was purposefully deterring sponsors from me, perhaps as a warning, perhaps as a way to punish me, perhaps as a way to keep me paranoid.
Well, it was working.
I was talking to Yondrie that day when the icy feeling of horror that I usually felt about the Games overcame me, though I could think of no honest reason why. I tried to focus on Yondrie's words but the feeling came back again and again like a second heartbeat.
And then I heard it, as clear as day, "As you can see, the arena for the 25th Hunger Games was in an opposing style, one part of the arena to foil the other. It was the first time this sort of style was used in a Games and for several years after it became quite popular."
I don't remember what Yondrie said. All I remember is turning and walking straight into the living room where the television flickered with life. Dahlia was sitting there. Cam too, five-year-old Cam who probably had no clue what he was watching.
It wasn't uncommon for channels to replay Games from different years, especially when one was as notable as mine. In between the current Games, citizens of the Capitol still needed their fix and the Gamemakers of past and present were always releasing past Games with never before seen footage or a newer commentary, like this one. But I had specifically forbidden Dahlia from watching anything of the sort.
And now she was disobeying me. With my Games.
The next line stole whatever words I had from my tongue. "And just coming out of his tube is the victor of this Games, Jay Tipper from District 12, their first and so far only winner."
And there I was, seventeen once more, looking scared and shaky and totally out of it.
"He may not look like much but he had a thirst for killing which seemed to rival the tributes from 1 and 2. In fact, this shaky teenager would go on to score 10 kills, one of the highest for any victor, or for that matter, any tribute in the Games so-"
That was enough. I couldn't bear to hear anymore. I snapped off the television and then turned to Dahlia.
"What have I told you time and time again? But do you listen?" I yelled.
But she wasn't easily scared off. She crossed her arms. "It wasn't my fault, it just came on. Besides, it's not like I'm doing anything wrong. Watching television isn't a crime in this country."
"Well, it's a crime in this household and I've made that clear. Unless there's mandatory television on you don't get to watch anything for the next two weeks."
"That's unfair!"
"Well, it's the way it's going to be."
She stared me down with contempt. "I hate you," she spat.
Cam, not one for fighting, began to cry.
Dahlia jumped up from the sofa.
"You're just upset because I'm exactly like you," she hissed. "Well, guess what? I am and that's never going to change! In fact, when I'm old enough, I might just volunteer for the Games because I know I can win and I know I'll enjoy every step on the way!"
She stomped upstairs, right past Yondrie, and slammed her door so hard, the house shook for a good minute afterwards.
I found I couldn't sleep that night.
"What is wrong with that child?" I whispered once Yondrie demanded to know why I was staring at the ceiling so intently. "Even at her age I never held such an obsession with the Games."
"She's just curious," Yondrie replied. "It's natural for a child to be so, especially one like her. Imagine if your father had done something worth fame and fortune only you weren't allowed to know, even though everyone else knew and talked about it and even taunted you with it. It's your defining moment and she doesn't even know what happened."
"Well, sometimes I almost wish I hadn't won the Games," I snapped tiredly, "at least then they would've left us all alone." I regretted the words as soon as they came out of my mouth.
"You don't mean that," Yondrie said quietly. "They would've never left any of us alone."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I never regret that I came back to you, that we had Dahlia and Cam. No matter what I went through, what I will go through, it was worth it for you and them."
We fell silent, it was so rarely we talked about the Games.
"It still haunts you, doesn't it?" she finally said, barely louder than a whisper. "Sometimes you get that look in your eye, the one you had just after the Games, like you're a million miles away."
"It's the strangest things that bring me back," I said just as quiet. "Sometimes it's a string of words. Other times it's a look or a smile or a laugh. Sometimes it's nothing. I just have nightmares like I did so soon after the Games for no reason at all and I spend the day after waiting for someone to strike."
I almost didn't say the next part. "Cam reminds me so much of Danila. Every day. I…I can't explain it."
"Maybe it's life's way of giving him back to you. After what happened."
"Yeah," I said. "Maybe."
The room fell silent again as it began to rain, slowly at first and then growing so loud it was almost a roar.
"The truth is, Yondrie, I'm terrified," I said even if it did make me sound like I was seventeen once more. "I don't know what's going to happen to Dahlia or Cam or even us. I barely even know what I'm doing."
"I am frightened too," she said. "I always have been. New fears come to replace old and on and on it goes. We can just try to be strong, Jay. That's all any of us can do."
She kissed me then and I didn't let go of her for a very long time.
Dahlia turned twelve the year of the 40th Hunger Games and so I had to bring her down to the Justice Building to sign her up for the Reaping. I hated how they made us do that, made us wait in line and fill out a form and sign our consent as if we were just registering our child for school or some other mundane thing. The only good part was that with my wealth as a victor we needed no teserrae and Dahlia's name was only going to be put in once.
But it was difficult all the same. Dahlia peered up at me the entire time we were there and asked about a dozen questions for every line I filled out.
The Reaping came, just like it did every single year. Yondrie went about dressing Dahlia in her finest clothes and braiding her hair in extravagant patterns. I walked her all the way to the square.
"Are you frightened?" I asked. "It's okay to be scared."
She shook her head. "I'm not scared at all." And she dropped my stride and joined the other twelve-year-olds, her tall frame a head above all the others.
I took my place on the stage as the escort started the ceremony. It was some inane, prattling woman – as they all were – whose name escaped me. Shortly after my Games, Georgia and the original prep team had all disappeared. I supposed they could have moved on to other jobs but again the paranoia within me wondered whether it was a warning by President Snow that I could just as easily be replaced.
"As always, ladies first," the escort said and she went to the female reaping ball.
I squeezed my hands so tightly I thought for sure I was cutting into my flesh. It was one thing to imagine one day Dahlia might be here, might be taken. It was quite another to be actually here, to see her frame stare back at me with her eagerness.
No. Maybe it was the paranoia. Snow couldn't take her yet. She was far too young. He'd take her when she was older, if at all.
It was just a slip of paper.
And yet that paper held the one name I never wanted to hear.
Everyone was looking at me with pity and sympathy, something I hadn't seen from most of them in a very long time. I tried to look calm and collected as Dahlia slipped up onto the stage because this was about the Games now and about getting her sponsors and not giving Snow the satisfaction of watching me break down. So I stared ahead, like Mags did all those years ago, and tried to distance myself as much as I possibly could.
Dahlia didn't need to pretend. She sauntered up with a smirk on her face as 12 gave a bare applause.
"Oh, isn't this exciting?" the escort said. "A tribute who is the daughter of our very own victor. But we still have a boy to pick as well!"
I closed my eyes. I could feel 12's resentment. They knew that whichever boy was picked would be overlooked compared to my own daughter. I couldn't deny it either. Maybe I couldn't have stopped Dahlia from coming up here but I would get her out even if it killed me and everyone else besides.
"Silas Bennett."
The name pricked something in my mind and even before I opened my eyes and heard him cry out, I knew who this poor child's father was.
Kit.
It would almost be funny if it wasn't so deadly serious.
That chair again. That damned stupid chair. Except I wasn't sitting in it this time.
"I'm going to bring her home, Yondrie," I said. "I am."
Yondrie seemed unable to hear. She was patting Dahlia on the knee and saying, "Remember to do what your father says. He knows best. And follow all the safety instructions the other instructors tell you," like this was some sort of happy trip outside the fence.
And Dahlia was certainly playing the part. "Of course, Mom," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not a little kid anymore."
"Yes," Yondrie said, "yes you are."
We all fell silent, some unspoken agreement between all of us not to mention this looming threat, the only sound being Cam's giggles as he sat on his precious sister's lap.
Yondrie's eyes filled with tears as a Peacekeeper came to take her and Cam away. "We knew this would happen one day," she whispered to me, "but I'm not ready."
"It's going to be alright," I said still just trying to convince myself. "If anyone can make it, it's Dahlia."
I called over to Dahlia once Yondrie had left. "I'm just going to check how the boy is doing, alright?" I said. "Are you good staying here?"
She nodded her head.
"You do realize you're shaking."
"I'm fine, Dad," she said and then repeated, "I'm not a little kid anymore."
"Of course. How could I forget?" I said, kissing her forehead before I left.
Kit was already there with his son, a boy who looked barely fifteen. Even so he seemed the eldest of Kit's brood, a ragtag group of five kids who surrounded Kit's every movement. A wife and mother had clearly been in the picture until recently; the child asleep in Kit's arms looked only six months old.
Kit looked up as I walked in and we seemed to stare at each other across some great divide that neither of us would ever be able to cross. Kit was only thirty-two, like me, but he seemed centuries older. No more was the boy who laughed and flirted at the Hob. Instead, a man stood, one who had been ground into the dust like my father. His eyes were lined with worry and suffering and his hair looked like ash.
I didn't know this man.
"Now, Silas," he said to this boy, "pay attention to what the others have to teach you. You listen to Mr. Tipper here. Despite what others say, he's a good man. You show him how well you can shoot a bow. He'll teach you far better than I can."
I wanted to refute that but didn't feel it was my place to interrupt or quite frankly, be here at all. I was about to leave when Kit handed off the sleeping baby to a girl who looked about twelve or thirteen and walked towards me.
After all these years I had no idea what to expect. He probably wasn't afraid of me anymore but I didn't know if he despised me, especially after this twist. I held out my hand to shake.
He embraced me instead.
"Jay," he whispered hoarsely. "Jay, Jay, Jay. What happened to us?"
"We got old. I think," I replied and finally saw that smile of his youth, though he was missing a tooth or two now.
We both fell silent as we stepped outside. I suppose time has a way of doing that to people, erasing the words and the laughs they could have so easily shared once long ago.
"I know I can't ask you to choose Silas over your daughter," he said finally, his voice breaking. "But if it's possible…if somehow Dahlia doesn't make it…"
Maybe some things time erased. But there was still the core that remained.
"Kit," I said, "if Dahlia dies and your son is still living I will do everything in my power to bring him home. Everything. I will behave like he's my own."
"Thank you, Jay. I'm sorry about what happened after the Games, I-"
"It doesn't matter anymore," I said.
"Thank you," he said, smiling once more and I knew that we were talking about something far more important than some stupid Games.
That night, after everyone else had gone to sleep on the train, I woke Dahlia.
"Dad? What's going on?"
I pressed my lips together as I turned on the screen. "We're going to watch my Games."
I could tell she was excited, moving to the edge of the bed while the screen flickered to life with the words OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION OF THE 25TH HUNGER GAMES, THE 1ST QUARTER QUELL before jumping to President Laurent (with his face now obscured and voice changed to President Snow's) reading out the twist of that year's Games before abruptly moving to the Reapings.
I sat behind her as it showed only the districts that played the biggest role. 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and finally 12. They played my Reaping in full, including Yondrie screaming my name and kissing me. Dahlia seemed surprised by this.
"You and Mom were in love all the way back before your Games?"
I nodded my head. It struck me as strange that Dahlia didn't know this, but then again it wasn't like Yondrie and I ever talked about things like that.
There're a lot of things we never talked about.
It continued, showing training and interviews and then finally the Games. I didn't flinch watching it but I didn't look at Dahlia either, just stared at the screen until my eyes became blurry and I couldn't see anything at all. Only when it ended with the announcement of me as the winner did I finally turn to Dahlia.
Even from her I expected to see fear then but I still saw only pride.
"I'm going to win, Dad," she said to me, her voice fierce. "Let's show them what our family's made of." And I saw none of Yondrie in her.
I see only me.
I suppose it should have come as no surprise – after all she had wit and charm I never had plus the skills to show them off in a way I never did – when she became one of the most prominent tributes before the Games.
Everything she did seemed to attract attention. She walked into a room and made friends with everyone. She went into training and never missed a target. Even in the Tributes Parade where District 12 again had the most forgettable costumes, everyone noticed her bright smile and genuine eagerness.
In many ways she was like a Career tribute. She certainly had the training – if self-imposed – and unlike me and the rest of the outlier districts, she had never known hunger. And that concerned me, not only because of her arrogance and attitude, but because of how the real Careers and other tributes perceived her. I saw their looks of contempt as she walked into training, saw their calculations. They knew that if they wanted to win, Dahlia was the first one they needed to take out.
"You can't always just go into a room and show how deadly you are," I told her once at dinner. "Others are watching and if they know your exact strengths and weaknesses then they know what to target when you're in the arena."
"So, what? You're saying I should look weak? Those Careers should be afraid of me, they're the ones who always send fear into everyone else. Let them see how it feels for us!"
I sighed. Every moment was painful. Every moment I wondered if this was the last time I would ever say this to her, last time I would ever have her in front of me again. I wondered if I was teaching her enough, wondered if I was telling her everything she needed to survive.
But that's the thing about the Games. You never know what you need until you're right in the center of trouble.
Silas was equally hard to work with but for different reasons. It pained me to know that this was Kit's boy and that either he or Dahlia would soon be dead, if not both. He was shy, seemingly without Kit's rambunctious nature although this may have been because he feared me; more often than not my tributes were quiet around me. However once I saw how good he was with a bow and told him so, he gave me a smile so much like Kit's it took me a moment to realize it wasn't him.
How was I going to do this?
"Jay!"
I smiled despite my pain. Here was the one thing I always looked forward to out of the horror of the Games. The one person who would always be my ally.
"Mags!" I turned as she clapped me on the shoulder. "It's been too long!"
Technically it was illegal, here on the training floor or really anywhere else, for mentors from different districts to talk and associate with one another. But it was not really enforced, especially when the mentors were being friendly.
"I saw the Reaping for 12," she whispered, just low enough for the Gamemakers not to overhear. "I'm so sorry."
I shrugged my shoulders like it was not a big deal. Snow could take everything else but he couldn't take my pain.
"Dahlia," I called out as she slammed another knife into the target before her. "Do you remember Mags? She visited our home once, you were fairly young at the time."
She peered up for a second before lining up for another shot. "Yeah. I remember."
I winced as the knife left her grasp. Though I knew it was for survival now, it still pained me to see the ease of which she held them and loved them like she was born to do.
"You've grown into a beautiful young lady," Mags said politely.
"'Beautiful young lady'," Dahlia muttered as she flipped the knives in her hand. "I prefer precise, deadly, and underestimated," she said, sinking a knife into a target with each word.
I was not amused. "Dahlia…"
"But thank you for the compliment," she said, turning to Mags and giving a genuine smile. "I know you're not one to speak lightly so I know your words mean much."
I rolled my eyes. Maybe Dahlia was right, she didn't need to fear the Careers as much as they needed to fear her.
I had a pretty good idea what Dahlia and Silas both showed the Gamemakers in their private training session and so I was unsurprised with their high results.
"That 9 can't be mine, can it?" Silas asked timidly, only a bare amount of trust for me.
I smiled. "Of course it is. You earned it. And any sponsor would be foolish not to see that."
Dahlia on the other hand was a little less modest.
"I deserved higher," she said, flipping her hair. "Are those Gamemakers blind? I never missed a target. Every single one of my throws would have killed a person. A 10? I should have gotten a 12!"
It made me angry. I had already been approached by several top tier sponsors willing to support Dahlia through the Games. Doing anything to attract attention now was only doing more and more damage. I had tried to tell her that but as usual, she wouldn't listen.
It didn't matter anymore I supposed. Most of the other tributes already viewed her as a threat. It wasn't like she couldn't do any worse.
The interviews came and went pretty quietly. Dahlia was most likely the highlight of the evening, what with Flickerman replaying the footage from my interview and pointing out our similarities. Perhaps we were but up on a stage, we were two different people. All my life I had shied away from the camera. Now Dahlia sat practically beaming in it.
Poor quiet Silas looked quite insignificant after her. He whispered all of his answers as the rest of Panem strained to hear.
Then came the last night, the last few hours I would have with Dahlia. I thought she would finally be a little nervous but after the interview she just fell asleep, her face again looking like the innocent angel she wasn't in life.
But sleep didn't find me so easily and so I went to the roof to search for silence and maybe some peace before the world shifted irreparably yet again.
I didn't see the shadow of a figure until it touched the tip of my shoulder and I jumped back, always ever ready to fight since the Games.
"I'm sorry," came Mags' whisper. "I didn't mean to frighten you."
I could only exhale, trying to stop the fear that seemed to pour out of me wherever I went.
"You ever wanted to have kids, Mags?" I asked, perhaps a strange follow up but also long overdue. It struck me how little I did know of Mags, how little I had looked past my fear and my pain to see the others around me who probably suffered the same.
"Once," she said with a broken smile I had yet to see. "But you don't want to hear about that, Jay."
"No," I said. "If you don't mind I would actually really like to hear."
So she told me all that had happened. Of winning the 13th Games and the guilt it had given her. Of the promise she made to herself to become a better person because of it. Of a boy she had loved who refused to marry her after what she had done in the Games, despite her change of heart. Of the children and family she wanted to have which now would never happen.
"I'm so sorry," I said as she neared the end, as the sun rose for another day. I didn't know what I would've done without Yondrie and yet Mags had had to do without.
"Oh, don't feel too bad for me, Jay," she said with a wave of her hand as she seemingly swept all the pain away for another time. "The tributes are my children now," she said, giving me a smile. "And I am always proud of my children."
And even though it was the worse day of my life, I couldn't help but be grateful for that.
I never held Dahlia so tightly as I did in front of that hovercraft.
"I'm not scared, Dad," she said.
Of course she wasn't. She never was.
"I love you so much," I said. "And no matter what happens out there, remember we're all so very proud of you."
"I know," she said. "And I love you too."
I paused, unsure if I should ask of this favour but plunged ahead anyways. "I need you to do something for me, okay? I want you to look out for Silas."
She tilted her head. "Like avenge his death? Like what happened in your Games?"
I shook my head, her violent mind even too quick for mine. "I mean if you see someone about to kill him and you can protect him, do it. I understand that there can only be one victor but you and Silas are from the same district. Support each other if you can."
"Okay," she said. "I'll try. But that's all I can do."
"One more thing," I said and then pulled out the mockingjay pin, so old now yet still gleaming in the morning light. I placed it in Dahlia's hand.
"Your pin?" she said. "From your Games? But what does that have to do with-"
"It's our family's pin," I said to her. "It was made by your great-grandfather after the Dark Days. It was meant to…" I sighed, knowing I couldn't tell her everything it meant with so little time and with the Capitol all around us. "It means that we do not condone. Remember that. Even if you find it fun, even if you enjoy it, it doesn't mean that it's right. It doesn't mean that we will ever condone what they do to us."
She didn't answer, instead pinning the mockingjay to her chest but when she looked up her eyes were steel.
"I won't ever condone," she said. "No matter what happens, I will always remember what you have taught me and the things they have done to us."
She walked towards the hovercraft without another word. I didn't stop her. With her eyes flashing and her tall stance, all I could think was that this was exactly how I looked to President Snow all those years ago. Defiant yet helpless against the coming storm.
In general a mentor was pretty busy during the Games; trying to sweet talk Gamemakers and sponsors, being interviewed, figuring out where your tributes were and what they needed most. But there were two exceptions to this. The first was if or when your tributes died as the Capitol forced all mentors to stay as long as the Games continued, most likely to drive in the fact how powerless we all were. The second was now.
The Cornucopia Bloodbath was always the highlight of the Games, superseded only by the final battle for the victor. The Capitol pretty much stopped all work that day, allowing everyone to celebrate the beginning of the Games. And Capitol citizens took full advantage, large screens plastered on every street and high-end parties going long into the night. Certainly us mentors didn't want to be out there with their sickening happiness. But we also had no business to attend to so early on.
So while our tributes fought and the Capitol partied, us mentors gathered round the large screen set up in the training room and braced ourselves as the Games began anew.
Mags stayed close as I came down to watch, the rest murmuring a few condolences and giving me empathetic glances.
The first shots of the arena now flickered onto the screen. The arena wasn't particularly spectacular; a traditional Cornucopia, a long field for tributes to fight in, a mountain range, and a small forest. Not much room to hide. I clenched my fists.
Now the tributes coming out of their tubes. It saddened me to see how tiny Dahlia looked compared to the rest, the only twelve-year-old this year.
"And there's Dahlia Tipper, daughter of District 12's only victor, Jay Tipper."
"Well, she certainly seems to take after her father. Look at her, so young and yet so ready to fight."
It was humiliating having to sit there and listen to them talk about my family like they had any sort of right to. Such an insignificant detail compared to the rest yet it seemed to cut deeper than anything else the Capitol could devise. But at least they mentioned Dahlia like she was a viable tribute. They brushed over Silas so quickly he barely appeared onscreen, that terrified face never gaining sympathy.
The sixty seconds seemed to go faster than any other minute in my life.
And then it began.
Filming the Cornucopia Bloodbath had always been a difficult process as everything moved so quickly. Usually the cameras tried to go wide to show as much as possible, saving specific kills and details for the replays later on. Only if nothing else was going on did they go close in.
Every moment and every shot I searched for Dahlia. I saw that she pushed off, that she was going into the Cornucopia against my instructions. Her hands closed around the gleaming throwing knives just as the first couple of kills began.
It was hard to see who was dying as these kids had no numbers on their coats or shirts like my Games, I mostly knew from the mentors in the room who cursed or turned away suddenly as a tribute's blood began to spill.
As soon as Dahlia had her knives she was one of those who killed, throwing several knives at tributes who tried to close in on her, one of those I saw was even about to kill Silas, who had fallen on the ground in a scramble for a bow and some arrows.
Good girl, Dahlia.
She helped him up and even grabbed a backpack in the process. Both were about to go running into the forest when it happened.
Fire sprouted up from the ground, huge flames that licked the sky, all around the field, cutting off every escape and forcing the tributes at the Cornucopia to stay together and fight which from what I could tell was everyone except for one boy who had run straight towards the mountain range at the very beginning. Even from inside the tributes' center I could hear the crowds of the Capitol screaming in anticipation.
I felt Mags squeeze my shoulder and I almost had to look away. Dahlia might be able to fight, but she couldn't fight them all.
She tried. Anyone who got near her she fended off. Silas pulled out his bow and arrows and shot until he had nothing left. But then came a boy with several large spears, a boy I did recognize because of the way he had looked with such hate at Dahlia in training, the boy from District 5. All the way at the other end of the Cornucopia I saw him shoot the spear at Silas and watched as it went right through his chest. He only had time to cough up blood as he died.
Kit. I'm so sorry.
Then the boy came for Dahlia. She had no more knives. She had no escape as he threw her to the ground.
"No. No, please!" she said, now looking frightened, the only time in my life I had ever seen her so terrified.
It sounded and looked so much like my nightmares from so long ago when she hadn't even been born. I should have known this would have been the end result. I should have known it would always end like this.
"Or what?" the boy jeered. "Your father's not going to come and save you."
I don't remember her death. They must have showed it, obviously. And I must have watched. All I remember is going up to the 12 suite and ripping everything apart. I only stopped when they restrained me and shot me up with some sort of drug. I don't remember anything beyond that except for the train back to 12 – a rare exception to the rule of mentors staying in the Capitol – the rest of the Games playing out dully.
I did learn that Dahlia placed fifth out of twenty-four, Silas sixth – the highest any of my tributes had ever gotten. After Dahlia died, the fire broke, sank back into the earth like it had never existed, like some cruel mockery of what my father had said the rebellion was.
One boy escaped before. Three survived the Bloodbath. Twenty tributes died at the Cornucopia, the highest of any Bloodbath ever.
The Games were short that year, only three days long, and considered to be one of the most boring. It was rumored that a lot of the Gamemakers got in trouble for engineering that forest fire. Nothing like it ever occurred in the Games again.
But the damage was done.
In the end the victor was the one person I wished would have been killed.
The boy from District 5.