A/N: I always liked Cecelia and the fact that she had kids and didn't turn to morphling or spirits. Review and tell me what you think.
I don't own the Hunger Games or its characters
Cecelia Sirett
I won the 60th Games by strangling a girl with my bare hands. My fingers stayed locked around her neck long after she stopped weakly scratching at my face, after the life left her body, and after my name was announced, the word 'victor' now forever attached. I didn't let go until the ladder dropped, and then, it was only to switch my iron grip to the nearest rung. I had to make sure she was dead, that she wouldn't wake up and make me stay there.
It wasn't fair. I didn't deserve happiness. I didn't deserve a new house that smelled of potato soup and warm briskets, and felt like home. I didn't deserve Peter, the loving man that lit the lavender candles on our wedding day and told me that he would never let me go. I didn't deserve my three kids. When I first held Edger in my trembling arms, for a blissful moment, I forgot about the nightmares, and the arena, and the girl with the red welts around her neck. And when Tobias and then Francis joined, and the three boys chased each other down the hallways, giggling and red-faced, I felt more than happy; I was whole again.
It isn't fair, but it's coping, surviving. It's cooking breakfast in the morning and reading bedtime stories at night. It's selfishly blocking out horrifying memories. And maybe we all deserve some happiness in this concrete and smoke, even me. That's what I have to tell myself when Edger comes home from school with shining eyes and asks me why I strangled a girl that had said, so shyly, during her pre-Games interview that she wanted a family of her own one day.