Trigger Warning: Suicide
.oOo.
The first parents he remembered weren't Father or Mother, no, they had far too many important things to do to play nursemaid to a little boy, but there were always so many servants and nannies and tutors that he hardly missed them. He was a fortunate child, they said, to have such successful parents. Not every child could have a successful future as a Gamemaker nearly guaranteed. The little boy heard those words so often that he could do little but believe them. He would succeed, like the boy in the story Miss Victoria told. Icarus's father had made him wings that he used to soar above the clouds. He became Icarus, flapping the beautiful wings that Mother picked out as his costume for his fourth birthday party all over the penthouse.
It wasn't until he was older that he learned that the boy's wings had betrayed him, that the inventor's son had flown so high that the sun melted the wax, destroying his wings and sending him plunging to the sea.
Miss Victoria was gone now; at least, she could no longer tell stories. Miss Augusta told stories as well, and in time, he came to love them almost as much as Miss Victoria's. Not the knights, no, they were dull and wanted nothing more than the heart of a beautiful princess. The dragons, however, fascinated him. They soared like Icarus had, but their strength allowed them to fly far higher and their wings did not melt beneath the sun's heat. In caves they stored mountains of gold and could make the villagers cower before them for no reason other than their own amusement. His father was a dragon, he knew, and someday, he would be a dragon as well.
Dragons blossomed in the margins of his school notes and occupied his dreams. Sometimes, the boy thought of the tributes in the arenas his father designed, wondered if they, like the knights of old, could slay a dragon.
Twenty years later, he decided he had pondered that question for long enough. In his first year as Head Gamemaker, the boy, now a man, unleashed the monster that had so long been brewing in his dreams. The tall, burly tribute proved himself a true knight, and the man could not help but be disappointed.
He believed he had surpassed the dragon, that he had become infallible. For five years, he moved the tributes in the Arena around like pieces on a chessboard. In his sixth year, he met one child who refused to play by the rules, and in a fatal moment of weakness, he allowed her to win.
With a bowl of berries in front of him and a length of coarse rope in his hand, the man realized that he had been right as a boy. He was not the dragon but Icarus, and now he had flown too high. He felt the scorch of the Girl on Fire melt away his wings, and as he kicked the chair out from underneath him, he finally understood Icarus' final plunge.
.oOo.
A/N: The character in the last chapter was Cashmere. Thanks for reading! This chapter was heavily inspired by Estoma's fic Depraved and Devious and written for the What's in a Name? contest on Caesar's Palace.