Chapter 6: Around and Around We Go
Helvius found the Capitol during Games season both more and less fun as a Victor than as a tribute. More, because he could actually go places. Less, because he had to deal with all of the absolute imbeciles that could be found in said places.
He also had to have a very unpleasant conversation with brand-new president Cornelius Snow about certain, half-secret things that were expected from Victors. He probably would have had said talk with old Coriolanus during his Victory Tour if the man hadn't been on his deathbed at the time.
Fortunately, Cashmere had warned him about this, and because his lack of family or friends that could be threatened, he was able to say, "Any chance I can just take the appointments with people who don't disgust me too much?" without serious repercussions. Cornelius actually seemed to find his attitude rather amusing.
Not like I'm incredibly popular anyway. A lot of my novelty wore off when I didn't play to the crowd enough. And his "die hard" fan group mostly consisted of idiots not much older than him who had sponsored him and "related" because they believed that they hated their own parents.
Do they even know what real hatred is?
He now knew that, like him, Cashmere certainly did.
As his fellow Victors from One had barred him from ever mentoring, he got to spend most of his time in the Capitol eating, drinking, and fraternizing with anyone he thought would piss the other Ones off. A lot of the other Victors, Career and outlier alike, were wary, but a few turned out to be fun.
But, like District One, the Capitol could get monotonous.
On Day Fourteen, while he ate lunch in the cafeteria of the fancy hotel the Victors were typically housed in, Helvius reflected that the Games this year were getting extra dull, in his opinion. I mean, I never really enjoyed them anyway, he thought as he glanced at the massive screen on the wall showing the life feed. But still.
Twenty-four had been whittled down to the final eight. A fight between the headstrong boys from One and Two had led to the pack splitting up before all of the outliers were hunted down. The boy from Four had gone down to the now-dead pair from Nine days before the pack split; out of the remaining Careers, the girls from Four and One had gone with the latter's district partner, and the pair from Two had gone off together. The glasses-wearing boy from Three kept himself from being hunted down in the basement level via traps that he seemed to relish the effects of, while the powerful girl from Ten prowled the upstairs maze of rooms like a Career. Two strong girls from Ten in two years, at least that's different…
The final tribute, the sixteen-year-old boy from Six, had survived thus far by staying out of everyone's way. On Day One, he'd run from the Bloodbath, found a tiny bathroom tucked away down a dark hallway, flopped down in the bathtub behind a mildewing shower curtain, and had been there ever since.
Not surprising, as he's obviously been detoxing from morphling. Probably couldn't move if he wanted to.
Judging by how he looked whenever the cameras cut, he wouldn't be there much longer. The brownish water that dripped from the bathtub's faucet every so often had kept him alive, and the shakes from withdrawal had appeared to fade with time. But without food, he couldn't outlast the others.
"Anything interesting from Gloss and Elegance?" Helvius asked absently as Cashmere took a seat across his otherwise empty table. Her brother and One's most recent Victor pre-Helvius were mentoring this year.
"Our tributes as the Four girl are closing in on the girl from Ten." Cashmere sipped from a glass of wine.
"I noticed." Helvius raised his eyebrows. "It's barely noon, Cashmere. You trying to beat Abernathy's daily record or something?"
"I'm almost forty and can drink when I want, you obtuse creature. So shut up."
He shrugged and took a bite of pasta, looking up at the television to see another clip of the boy from Six playing.
His brown eyes were open, glazed over. He looked so thin that the narrow bathtub all but swallowed him. Occasionally, his hands would move a bit, fingers rubbing against the chips in the old porcelain around him.
Helvius's gut clenched as he remembered another boy from Six, a younger one, collapsing with an arrow in his heart. Piston. His name was Piston. He'd found that out during his Victory Tour. He never had a chance anyway...
"He's dead if no one sends him food," Cashmere commented, echoing Helvius's earlier thoughts about Six's current tribute.
He swallowed. "I guess. Pity Victors can't sponsor their own tributes."
The Ones, Twos, and Four girl are the only ones with sure sponsors at this point, all being good-looking and lethal. The pair from One were particularly gorgeous; however, Helvius remembered them from his class at the Academy. Assholes, the both of them. Girl from Ten is good, but won't stand a chance against three Careers even with sponsors. Boy from Three is smart and vicious, but his traps aren't electrified or anything like that. And he's hungry. Sooner or later, he'll go down to.
And the boy from Six would definitely die of hunger, unless…
Helvius stiffened. Now that's an idea.
Leaning across the table, he said, "Hey, Cashmere, can Victors sponsor tributes from districts other than their own?"
"Hmm?" Her gaze flickered from the screen back to him. The focus had switched back to the larger of the two Career groups again. "Oh, I see what you mean. If memory serves...Technically, yes. But not many want…" She stopped mid-sentence, eyes narrowing. "Oh. I see."
Before he could speak again, she let out a heavy sigh and leaned back with her wineglass in hand. "You are such a pain in the...Fine. Do whatever the hell you want, kid; you will anyway."
A tiny grin appeared on his face as he stood up. "Sure thing, Cashmere. I wouldn't dare get you in trouble with your dearest brother."
"If you're quite done eating, please leave. I do not want to know the details."
Still grinning, he left the cafeteria, went back to his room, and picked up the provided phone. This is going to piss off my fellow Victors so much, even if they don't know who did it…
He didn't want the extra attention and scrutiny that came from being an unusual sponsor. And what if someone, like Snow, decided he was crossing a line and made his donations illegal? Not going to happen. I'm doing this.
Less than an hour later, a parcel of food and a bottle of clean water was delivered through a hidden ceiling hatch to the boy from Six. It took him several minutes to open it with his trembling hands. He seemed to have enough sense to take it slow. It was enough.
By the time a second food and water parcel was delivered on Day Fifteen, the eyes of the boy from Six were no longer glassy. By Day Sixteen, he was on his feet again. On Day Seventeen, he left the bathroom and ended up in a cobwebby office, where he found a knife-like letter opener while rummaging through some drawers.
In the meantime, the larger Career pack had killed the girl from Ten and the Twos had tracked down the boy from Three. Right after the Ten died, the Four girl took off on her own, only to be swarmed by cockroach mutts when she tried to eat delicious-looking cake in the mansion's cavernous kitchen.
On Day Eighteen, the Ones and Twos clashed in a crumbling ballroom. The ensuing fight left both the boy from One and the girl from Two stumbling away, badly injured, while their district partners bled out on the dusty tile floor.
The boy from One died that night. On Day Nineteen, the girl from Two, struggling to regain her strength and find her final opponent, wandered into the office the boy from Six had chosen as his new hideout.
He got her from behind with the letter opener. One stab to her throat and it was over.
Lee Anders of District Six became the Victor of the Eight-Fourth Hunger Games.
It took a long while for Helvius to work up the courage to even talk to him.
Yet Six's unexpected victory was a turning point. As long as no one stopped him, Helvius would sponsor outliers who he thought had a chance, even if no one else did. He would do what little he could to help prevent more Victors like his fellow Ones. To undermine the stupidity of the Games, just a little bit.
I think Miriam would approve, in a way.
As the yearly cycle of theater and bloodshed continued, the outcast of his district did just what he promised himself he'd do.
Colin Coalgrove, the small, clever boy from Twelve, died four days into the Eighty-Fifth Games at the hands of the Career pack.
Quin Cornwall, the snarky field hand from Nine made it further into the Eighty-Sixth, but she and everyone else found out the hard way that she was allergic to a usually-edible type of nut found in her Arena. The medicine that could have saved her didn't get there in time.
Mika Applegate from Eleven did win the Eighty-Seventh Games. Helvius didn't tell her about his sponsorship afterward, still keeping a low profile. But the rosy glow from his indirect victory pushed him into starting his first real conversation with Lee Anders.
Cy Smith from Three was eighteen, smart, and strong; he took out a Career by himself on Day Six of the Eighty-Eighth. Not long after that, the rest surrounded him, and they didn't make the kill quick like he had.
Sylva Forester from Seven did well in the Eighty-Ninth, until a snake's venom with no antidote left her in agony. Her district partner, Alder Sawyer, killed her out of mercy. The silver lining was that he won a couple days later.
Ruta Acres from Eleven placed second in the Ninetieth Hunger Games. He was incredibly powerful, but the girl from Two was more skilled with her twin swords and made a worthy champion in the eyes of the Capitol.
Dyt Gilet fell to mutts, yet his district partner, Cerise Patel, won the Ninety-First for District Eight. Helvius found her to be tolerable, as his fellow Victors went.
Lana Sparks from Five was only twelve, smart and quick on her feet. The eventual winner of the Ninety-Second Games cut her to ribbons over the course of an hour.
Shimmer Boleyn was One's first Victor since Helvius.
He hadn't cried over any of the previous tributes he'd sponsored before, especially not in front of anyone else. Luckily for him, Lee didn't judge.
He sponsored the Avi Ruster from Six during the Ninety-Third Games, mostly because Lee said the boy actually had a chance. He didn't tell Lee about being Avi's sole sponsor until after the agile sixteen-year-old had died at the hands of the Career pack.
Lee just looked at him with eyes that were never fogged with drugs anymore and said levelly, "I knew it was you. Your attempt at disguising your voice was crap. Even Axela could tell it was you, and she was high."
Feeling defensive for probably no good reason, Helvius snapped, "Did you know I sponsored you, too?"
He didn't know what reaction he expected, but it definitely wasn't the one he got.
Fifteen-year-old Wren Callahan from Twelve placed fifth during the Ninety-Fourth. She got further than any tribute from Twelve in exactly twenty years.
During the Ninety-Fifth Games, Helvius paid for most of the spear that was sent to the girl from Eight. That same spear killed two Careers in the finale, though not in the hands of Twyla Bobbins.
Surly Buck Shepherd from Ten got taken out by mutts during the Ninety-Six.
Danna Harrier, also from Ten, took a nasty fall and broke her leg not far into the Ninety-Seventh Games. Helvius was able to sponsor medicine to alleviate the pain during what time she had left, but even the Capitol couldn't mend a broken bone from afar. The Careers got her a few days later.
None of those Careers survived the finale; only the fifteen-year-old boy from Nine did.
Pitch Turner of Seven felled the overall favorite tribute of the year during the Ninety-Eighth, using an ax bought with Helvius's money. With their male tribute dead, District One had to settle for the victory of their second-best tribute that year. She was serviceable, but she didn't even managed to kill Pitch herself; the Twos did that.
Then the Ninety-Ninth Hunger Games came around, and Helvius managed to pick an eventual Victor again. He supported an angry tribute, a troublemaker.
Not long after, he would find himself regretting that he sponsored him at all, that boy who had once had a brother.
But that's a different story.
