Disclaimer: I don't own THG or any of the characters.

Warnings: violence, rape/non-con, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, drug/alcohol abuse, mild sexual content, language

Sorry for the short chapter. I tried to flesh it out, but a lot of it felt like filler so I scrapped it. The next one will definitely be longer.

Thanks for reading!

The President gathered together with his advisors and gamemakers for a cabinet meeting the morning the victors were due to return to the Capitol for the close of the tour.

"Sir," Seneca Crane said when the meeting was almost finished, "we had one more topic we wanted to bring up to you. We know you're starting to get bids for Miss Everdeen, but...we think it would be best if we wait to start her for a couple of years. Until her popularity with the districts dies down at least. She's only 16 and if they find out…" But he didn't need to finish his statement. "In the meantime, we can use the opportunity to drive the price up for her, to make her even more desirable. The whole 'good things come to those who wait' idea."

President Snow narrowed his eyes, clearly unhappy with the situation. But then he sighed in resignation. "Fine. And Cato?"

Seneca waved a hand dismissively. "Oh, he's fair game. No one will riot at the sale of his body."

xxxxxxxxxx

No one had told Cato that, in the Capitol, the word victor was synonymous with prostitute. At least if you were good-looking. Which Cato was. Very, in fact.

Finnick approached him at the closing event of the tour, the Presidential gala, to warn him, but Cato laughed in his face. "Maybe they made you their whore, but they won't do it to me," he scoffed.

The comment should have offended Finnick, but he just sighed and looked like he felt sorry for Cato. "Your parents," he said. "I saw the interviews. You're not close to them, but do you care about them?"

Cato could not for the life of him fathom why this pretty boy was asking him about his parents. "None of your fucking business."

But Finnich was unfazed. "I had parents once. Before I told Snow I wouldn't be the Capitol's whore. You may have read about their deaths. Or maybe you haven't. It was a fire. A terrible one." And then he left.

Cato didn't know if Finnick was telling the truth. But he knew one thing. He didn't want to find out the answer the hard way.

And so when the time came, he did as they told him.

It wasn't that he minded the actual act or even the people he was doing it with. For the most part they were rich Capitol women in their 30s and 40s who had had a lot of plastic surgery. If any of them had hit on him he would have had sex with them anyway.

It was the point. That they had told him he had to. That he was powerless. That he had no control, and therefore had no dignity.

His resentment toward the Capitol, which had been conceived somewhere in District 5, began to grow rapidly, until it gnawed at his insides, another parasite to join the guilt with which Thresh's sister had impregnated him.

And then, one night, at one of the numerous parties the victors were forced to return to the Capitol for, he turned to see a lecherous old man leering at the Girl on Fire, and running his hand down her back. She made a face and edged away from him.

Jesus. He'd forgotten about her. God knew who was paying for her and what she was being forced to do.

The thought made Cato want to vomit.

And he wished more than ever that he had managed to strangle her to death on top of the Cornucopia.

xxxxxxxxxx

Everyone knew that Seneca Crane occasionally indulged in a little morphling.

Still, the entire Capitol was shocked to learn that he had died of an accidental overdose a few weeks after the tour concluded.

Well, almost the entire Capitol.

The red-headed Avox girl who had roofied Seneca Crane and then injected him with a lethal dose of the opiate was not at all surprised.

Neither was Plutarch Heavensbee, who had procured said lethal dose and handed it off to her in a darkened hallway.

But he acted shocked when President Snow called him to appoint him as the new head gamemaker.

xxxxxxxxxx

They happened to be at the bar at the same time, getting their glasses refilled, when Katniss noticed it.

He had loosened his tie and rolled the cuffs of his shirt up in that way that made all of the women (except for her of course) swoon. One of the cuffs had ridden a little too far up and there on his forearm was a perfect ring of shiny, pink flesh. As though a week or so ago he had taken a lighter and run it from the underside of his forearm, up the side, over the top, and back down to his starting point, which, in fact, was exactly what he had done.

"Why do you do it?" she asked.

"What?"

"That," she motioned her head toward his forearm. "Burn yourself."

He looked panicked, but just for a second, and then he shrugged. "It was an accident."

"An accident?" Her tone was skeptical.

"Yeah. Cooking." He tugged his sleeve down.

"Somehow I doubt that. I think it's probably as much of an accident as this," and she looked down and poked her knee out so that the soft skin on the inside of her thigh, laced methodically with straight, perfect little cuts, flashed into view.

"How'd you get those?" he asked stupidly, though he already knew the answer.

"Cooking." She adjusted her leg to conceal her cuts again. "So why do you do it?" she asked again.

"I don't know. Why do you do it?"

She fixed her gaze over his shoulder, staring off at nothing. "Because I have to pay for what I did in the arena. And no one will make me."

The bartender returned with their drinks. She picked hers up and pivoted to walk away.

"It makes me forget about the games," he said softly to her back. "It gives me something else to concentrate on."

She turned back around to face him.

He touched the rim of his glass to the rim of hers.

She looked up at him.

He looked down at her.

And, for the second time, together they partook in unholy communion.