Day 26- Victor's Interview

I go through my makeover barely conscious, finding that the trio don't really notice if I reply to their ramblings or not. Rogellus shows no sign of understanding my mood either, but at least my time with him is brief.

Suited up, I am directed through to a waiting room from which I will enter the room where I will be crowned. Woof is waiting for me.

"Can you do this?" he asks.

After a few moments of genuine contemplation I nod. "I just want this all over and behind me," I say. "I don't think I'll really manage enthusiasm, but I'll at least stay calm, maybe thank my sponsors, say how honoured I am to win."

"As long as you can fake it well enough, sounds good," he says. "President Snow doesn't care if you are delighted with winning or crushed totally, as long as you do nothing to suggest the Games are wrong, the Capitol isn't great or the districts have it hard."

"Anything that even hints at rebellion," I say, confident that Woof's candid words mean he is confident this conversation is truly private.

He nods solemnly. "They're ready for you," he says, seeing something behind me.

"Thanks," I say, nodding at him, before stepping onto the elevator that takes me up into a packed stadium-like room. Tiered crowds surround me, with a pair of chairs off to my right, Caesar Flickerman in one, a podium ahead of me and President Snow seated in a throne to my left, while a glance around, as I try a tentative smile and raise an acknowledging hand to the cheering crowd, reveals a huge television screen behind me.

Claudius Templesmith's voice, I can't see where from, announces me as the winner again, before Caesar ushers me over to him. He stands to shake my hand and congratulate me before gesturing for me to sit.

"Well congratulations Rory," he says enthusiastically.

"Thank you," I reply, though it is lost under the sound of the crowd cheering again.

"How are you right now?"

"Tired," I reply, and though I didn't intend it that way, the crowd chuckle at that. I "And relieved," I decide to add, thinking I should reply with more than a single word, "I wasn't sure I was going to make it a few times in there."

"Neither were we," says Caesar, "but before we talk about those times, let's all remind ourselves of them. President Snow, Rory, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the highlights of the 49th Hunger Games."

And I have to re-watch the entire games, which is horrific. But I don't dare look away, for fear of getting in trouble. Claudius and Caesar's commentary only makes it worse, making light of our plight, but I try to hide my distaste, teeth gritted in anger.

First I see the deaths at the bloodbath in full. Jonathan was first to fall, via Cleo's arrow, then I relive Varro's savage murder of Clarissa and Mitro. I see Grove knock Silver to the ground to escape him, Shayla's evil smirk as her arrow buries itself in Alecto's skull, Barr's chest explode as Perrin hurls a spear through it and Cleo and Jade racing light-footed across the snow, catching Syme and Daisy respectively, Cleo cutting the boy's throat and Jade breaking Daisy's neck.

I get a chance to hear the careers' conversation after Jade kills Silver. "I heard him talking to our mentor about getting us in our sleep," she says, "he couldn't be trusted, he had no honour. Besides, he's not much of a loss; he couldn't even kill the boy from 7." The other four murmur agreement and all is forgotten seemingly.

I see Kyla's terrified face as she runs from the careers until Jade catches her and slams a knife into her neck. I see Carson at the feast, not making it 20 yards before Jade's shuriken cuts into his skull, as well as reliving my raiding of the supplies, meeting with Jeremiah and a lot more seemingly insignificant highlights of me.

Zianna tries to sneak up to the Cornucopia, and actually succeeds as Cleo and Varro talk, but Cleo spots her leaving with a backpack and knife and nails her with an arrow through the skull.

Next I see Cleo's delight as she catches Tamla, and I can't help but wince as her knife cuts Tamla's side as my district partner tried to dodge. Then the terror on both their faces as the bear bursts into view, raking Cleo across the chest with its claws before she stabs an arrow into its eye, and it runs.

Then I see Cleo's death, and it's not what I expect. She makes it back to the other careers, well Varro, at the Cornucopia, and Jade and district 4 soon return. They lie her on her back, she's clearly very weak, and Jade pulls the others away before saying "She's not going to be any use. Any medicine she gets sent will be a waste of money sponsors could use to help us. I'm going to make it quick for her."

Again there are no arguments to her authority, and she heads back and leans over Cleo, kissing her full on the lips, and lingering, playing for sponsors if ever anyone did, before jabbing a knife into her neck and grinning as her eyes roll back.

The video when confirms what I had thought, Shayla had spoken back to Jade and received some good punches in return, before Jade torturously slices her arm, Shayla managing to get away by biting Jade's face, just buying enough time to grab a couple of arrows and her bow. Jade doesn't attempt to follow, except with an evil glare into the trees her former ally ran through.

I am forced to relieve the horrific events of the fifth day…seeing Tamla's happiness after receiving the medicine is difficult now I know what is coming. I have to sit through my own despair, both after Tamla dies and as Shayla lies there paralyzed.

I see Amelia suddenly come face to face with the bear mutt and die with one powerful swipe of a paw, and my flight from the bear and smoke, before my reunion with Fern. While I have to choke back tears, I also can't help a little smile at seeing her face again, and at our initial bickering before the moment I hand her my knife.

Next follows a lot of highlights of me and Fern which I find surprisingly easy to watch, almost managing to block what I know will happen as I relieve some good memories. They are interspersed with several incidents I missed- I see Perrin almost sliced in two by Grove's axe blow, as the big district seven boy ambushes the career, who was collecting firewood.

I see Cinnamon and Coulette making an alliance, which seems very friendly until the district eleven girl is betrayed by her younger ally, Coulette literally stabbing her in the back.

The following few days were light on deaths, so the highlights concentrate mainly on me and Fern, and it's getting harder to cope with now- so I'm actually relieved when Varro's death is brought up, after an epic fight with Jade which he had initiated. It is clearly edited down to a couple of minutes, but eventually Jade flips him onto his back and rams her long knife through his eye and into his brain.

Our fireball ordeal looks horrific, the memory of it vivid but the details hazy at the same time, before I try to prepare for what I know is coming. In the end I do have to glance down as Jade kills Fern, looking back to the screen in time to see the surprisingly stealthy Grove lunge out of a bush and cleave Jade's skull open.

Grove is next to meet his demise, triggering a clever tripwire set up by Coulette that swings a rock into the back of his head, knocking him out and allowing Coulette to kill him while he is unconscious.

I wonder, as I watch myself struggle to cope after Fern's death, if the reason the crowds can cheer such a pitiful victor, with so much crying and moping, is the fact that I managed to overcome all that to kill and win. Yep, I decide, I'm sure they're pleased that I unleashed my inner murderer in the end, that's what they're really after.

They show my flight, and that of Jeremiah and Coulette, from the quicksand and bear and rat mutts, before the feast is skipped over quickly to reach the conclusion- Jeremiah tracking down Coulette and brutally and stabbing her to death after she had almost managed to get him as he approached her apparently helpless injured form.

I find him shortly after, and the final battle is shown in full. I involuntarily feel the area of my scar as I watch him injure me before grimly staring the screen down as I kill him, sickened by the crowd's almost delirious cheers.

And with that it's over. And it's significantly decreased my desire to talk about it, which was hardly high as it was, but I know I'm about to have to.

The interview goes on for what seems like hours. Caesar asks me about the easier stuff first; my thoughts on the arena, what my plans were at various points, the first feast. I praise the quality of the gamemakers' tree-light traps and the muttations, describe my tiredness in the later stages, thank my sponsors for the various gifts I received…

Then we get to the meatier stuff.

"You seemed to function quite well on your own early on," Caesar says, "but you still seemed very pleased to find an ally in your district partner, although the circumstances could have been better."

"I was," I say, pausing for a second to try and ensure I'm composed. "I mean, it's always better to have someone watching your back and I genuinely trusted Tamla. Plus I had been worrying about her, and felt better being able to watch out for her too. I suppose I always knew deep down she would have to die for me to win, but you don't let yourself think about that in there, or at least you try not to."

"Tamla was quite badly injured when you found her," he continues, "but she recovered with your help and that of your sponsors. It must have been a real kick in the teeth to lose her so soon after that. You must have been very angry. Did you blame yourself?"

"I did a bit," I admit, "I should have made sure one of us was keeping watch. But you're right, mainly I was angry."

"Which brings us to your showdown with Shayla," he says. "Tell us what happened."

"I was angry," I say. "Having someone to blame gave me something to do, some purpose to stop me dwelling on what had happened. I was lucky I found her and that she was injured, but once I'd hit her I…I just didn't deal with what I'd done very well. If I'd done the same to Jeremiah or Coulette at the end, then I'd have finished them. I was always in it to win…but never to make anyone suffer like that. It was the first time I'd killed and I didn't deal with it well, but being in there for a couple of weeks toughened me up a bit." I didn't like the last bit, making it sound like being able to kill more easily was a good thing, but knew I couldn't come across as too blood-shy.

"So then," continues Caesar, "you found yourself alone again, but not for long. On the seventh day you had a very eventful morning, didn't you?"

"Definitely," I reply, "I suppose I was just lucky I ran into Fern and not someone more hostile. Between the muttation and the gas I was so panicked that I wasn't really paying attention to what was in front of me."

"That encounter certainly showed you she wasn't as vulnerable as she appeared, didn't it?"

I nod. "My throat was sore for quite a while."

"How important do you think it was to your winning that you met Fern at that point?" Caesar asks.

I want to yell at him to not say her name, but manage to keep my emotions in check. "Vital," I say. "Without her I wouldn't have had the same sense of purpose. I wasn't in the best place in my head after what had happened with Tamla and Shayla and having someone else to talk to gave me some focus."

"You met her on the eighth day," states Caesar, "and that was the start of a fairly quiet week or so for the pair of you."

I nod. "Apart from the lightning trees we didn't really come across much danger for a while."

"Which gave you plenty of time with each other," he says with a crooked eyebrow. "There was a fair bit of snapping and some tension between you initially, but you grew very close very quickly, didn't you."

My voice is unable to hide the lump in my throat as I reply quietly. "We did. She did a lot for me in there, I owe her my life. And…and I just loved being around her."

I find myself wondering how much detail Caesar is going to go into regarding our relationship, even as half a tear fights its way free from the corner of my eye. The look in his eyes makes me think he has noticed. It seems genuinely sympathetic, which surprises me, if only a little. He doesn't actually seem that bad for a Capitol person, in the interviews at least. Sometimes I wonder how much of him is an act.

His next question interrupts my thoughts. "Your arm was healed, you'd found a safe hole to sleep in and your relationship with Fern was blossoming. But you always knew it would get busy again, how did you cope with the anticipation?"

"I tried to focus on Fern," I reply honestly. "It was pointless to make plans, as it usually is in the arena. We just decided to wait and react."

"You almost had to react on the thirteenth night," he continues, "but Jade and Varro didn't discover you."

"Thankfully," I interject. "I'm still not sure quite how neither of them won, they were such dangerous opponents."

"The most dangerous?" he asks.

"I think so," I nod, "along with Grove. And I only saw her briefly in the arena, but Coulette was obviously very dangerous too."

"Would you say you were lucky then," he counters, "meeting Jeremiah at the end?"

"I don't think so. When it came down to it he was a very skilled fighter. If there was a reason I was lucky, it was that I didn't hate him. I don't think I could have fought with the same control against Jade if she had survived."

"How did you feel about the events of day fifteen?" he asks. "You were obviously devastated at Fern's death, as you clearly cared very much for her, despite never losing sight of the fact it was a doomed relationship. But what about Grove killing Jade and then sparing you?"

I'm grateful for a question at the end that actually requires thinking about, because I can barely stand him talking about Fern. "I…at the time I didn't really think about it, I didn't think about anything. I suppose in hindsight I'm very thankful to Grove. I hope his family are proud of the mercy he showed me as much as the skilled warrior he showed himself to be."

"There was no regret you hadn't got to fight Jade yourself?"

"No," I state simply. "She was dead, that was the most important thing. I don't know how I could have beaten her in a fight, it was better she died by any means necessary. For my chances…" I feel he is expecting more, about Fern, but I can't do it, and thankfully am not pressed.

"Well Rory," he says after a weighty silence. "That is almost the end. You provided us with a different journey to many Victors, but I know that audience grew very fond of you. You were a worthy winner."

"Thank you," I say, before trying to end on high as far as President Snow will be concerned. "I would like to thank everyone for their support. I am very proud to be their Victor and hope they enjoyed the forty-ninth Hunger Games."

A cheer echoes around the room as I am lead over and crowned by President Snow.

"A good show," he whispers in a deadly low voice as he crowns me. "You had best keep it up."

I simply nod at him, before lowering my head in a half-bow.

He walks away and before I know it I am back in the district 8 quarters, where Woof is waiting. "Well done," he says brusquely. "Get some rest, you'll be headed back home tomorrow morning."

"I…thank you, I guess," I stutter. "I don't know how I would have got through this without your help."

"Ah piss off," he growls at me, "don't go getting sentimental."

I do as he says, heading into my room, managing to hide the smallest of half smiles that his reaction brings. I feel guilty at it as I lie on my bed, I still feel so raw from the loss of Fern, I shouldn't be able to feel anything but pain. The pain is there though, constant. I want to see her just one more time, not that her face isn't burned into my brain forever, I just want to apologise to her, tell her I love her. But I'll never be able to do that. How can I live like that?

'You promised her' my brain prompts me. I recall the conversation like it was seconds ago. I promised her four things. One is already done- I won. A second is a given, nothing could ever make me forget anything about her. The third will be simple enough, if painful, I can speak with her family on the Victory Tour. The fourth though… "carry on with your life" she had asked from me. I will carry on living, but I know that's not what she meant, she meant a life, a real life, not just an existence.

I will not stain the memories by breaking my promise to her. I owe her that much. I need to have a proper life. That means laughing, being happy sometimes. She wouldn't want me to spend all my time depressed, she was far to selfless for that.

I sigh. Maybe it will be easier once I see my family again, but right now winning the Hunger Games seems like a minor challenge compared to keeping my word.