Bonus chapter : what happened to the Victors who died off-screen ? With a canon death at the end.
I'm hitting a snag with the next chapter (and it's so hot right now in France that my brain is melting), so you're getting this instead.
Warning : Victors, not the sanest ones. Possibly triggering material. Does anyone actually ever stop reading because of these warnings ?
Nori, District 4, Games 24.
Nori stopped running. She was too old for this shit. If she was to die, she'd die her head tall.
Mags' funeral boat burned bright in the dark waters, thrown back to shore by the waves. Nori kicked her shoes off and stepped in the ocean to stop it from hitting the sand. Her hands tightened harder on the wood as the heat reached her skin.
Shots tore through the air. Suicide. Snow had sent hovercrafts on a suicide mission. He'd be lucky if more than two of the dozen came back. And for what ?
Nori forced herself to tear her eyes away and chance a glance at Annie. She didn't want her last memory to be- A sob of relief escaped her throat when she saw the kid had been sedated and not shot.
They were taking her away. Hostage. That meant Finn was alive.
Fight them kid. Fight and live ! Annie had always been tougher than she looked.
Nori stood as tall as her back allowed as the faceless men in the hovercraft turned their weapons towards her. They hesitated, maybe because she was an old woman alone, draped in the light from the funeral fire; maybe because she looked like a Capitolite, smooth like a statue and altered to fit her fancy.
She'd never understood why the others treasured 'naturalness' so much. Nature was a lottery at birth and slow decay after adulthood. Alterations were a woman's way of reclaiming power.
Unfortunately, the alterations were sorely lacking in the bullet proof department. Pain exploded in her leg and chest.
Nori hoped she'd get her own monument in the New Capitol. Something big, garish and beautiful.
Chelsea D4, Games 35.
Chelsea had forgotten her arena. Her brain had known what to do, sweeping it all away. FLASH had taught her she'd be a hero, and she'd lapped it up. She hadn't been the cleverest girl. For years afterwards, Chelsea had told stories about heroes to children who would never kill. She remembered Mags telling her stories, slowly making the urge to take the knife to her skin fade away. The stories had brought back comfort, fairness, colour.
Chelsea watched a rivulet of thick blood drip into the sink. She sighed as the pressure choking her let, go, flushed away deep underground. She'd never been messy, not like Gilly, but now her house was chaos, books ripped apart, the stories inside them dull and voiceless. They'd died. All her stories had died, killed by the poison green fog and the cannon shot.
Chelsea had let go of FLASH, she'd left the Village for a school in Lycorias. She'd left Gilly, Finnick, Nori and Annie for seven year olds with too many emotions and too few words. She'd not been able to let go of Mags.
She remembered. She'd not been a hero. Unlike Mags, she hadn't found the courage to die in the arena.
She remembered. She'd become the villain.
Crouching in the bath, Chelsea brought the knife to the artery of her ankles.
Moire D8, Games 72.
After the Reapings, Moire sat alone in the Village, staring unseeing ahead, going over those two minutes again and again. She didn't open when Charles called from behind the window. Not the first time, not the fourth.
She did nothing. She'd done nothing. She'd watched Cecelia and Woof be escorted away and done nothing at all.
There was no fifth time. Moire found herself walking out of the house. The Village was silent. Empty. Charles, Camlet and Victoria were gone. They'd been taken to the Capitol.
During the interviews, Moire cut and dyed her hair. She said her name was Lacie and finally killed people who deserved it. She even shook Paylor's hand once.
'I volunteer !' How hard could it have been to say ?
Nobody knew who the young girl torn apart by bullets was until they found a picture of Woof, Cecelia, her children and Moire in her jacket. Scribbled behind it was a desperate plea for forgiveness : 'I volunteer!'
Bale D10, Games 73.
« Help us find the rebels, or we kill you. »
« Fine. » Bale said. He didn't bother saying he didn't know anyone. He was glad for a chance to leave the Village and finally do something, even if it meant cracking some skulls. « But you give me a uniform and you don't treat me like a dog. »
The Capitol had wrapped his story in cute lies, and then the truth had come out –were people really fucking surprised he'd lied to win ? He'd not raped or tortured anyone !- and they'd spat all over him. It was disgusting. Bale wasn't a Career, playing clean and honest would have just gotten him dead.
And of course people were filth enough to judge him for it.
They threw him a uniform. He made sure not to put the helmet on. He wanted people to see him. Those bastards had locked him away in the Village for two years, stuffing themselves with the food he'd won for them. Now he was back, and he bloody well enjoyed the fear in their eyes.
When rebels took a squad hostage, the Captain didn't hesitate to trade Bale for them.
They executed Bale with a cleaver the day Katniss Everdeen's first propo made it on air.
Victoria D5, Games 13. Taurine D10, Games 20.
Victoria shared a room with Taurine, a beautiful room where their memories popped like bubbles one after the other, never to return. Victoria had returned to Five with blood on her hands and a key to the grandest house she'd ever seen. There had been a boy who'd tried to be there for her. She'd grabbed his neck and shaken him to death, thinking he was someone else. In the nightmares, she always knew who he'd been, what he'd mean to her, but when she woke up, she only had tears and helpless questions.
In Victor's Village, she'd had nothing to do, nothing at all. She had all the money, no responsibilities, no people of her own. So she'd left, and walked, and walked. She'd never managed to die in the wilderness, always coming back to Five for the Games, for the one time a year she would be with people, and see smiles directed at her. What was that woman's name, the pretty one who'd hugged her ? Margary ? No, it had been something short. She'd been from the sea District.
The memories of the wilderness were the clearest, those empty cities big beyond belief. She'd found music there, in dusty piles hidden in boxes, and she'd learned to play, finally filling the days that never ended with something that felt like a friend.
She played for Taurine who showed her the dances of her youth. Taurine had never found the days long, animals didn't care about Victors and Villages. Taurine forgot what she'd eaten the day before, but she remembered each of their names, and told so many stories that some days Victoria believed they'd taken care of the dogs and horses together in Ten's wind-swept plains.
When the nurse gave her a needle shot that wasn't part of the schedule, Victoria noticed the odd shake to the woman's hand, the tears in her blue eyes.
« It's alright, » Victoria whispered.
She thought she heard a cannon shot when the chemicals spread to her heart.
It was a footnote in the obituaries, on page 24 of the Capitol's daily paper. 'Victors Taurine and Victoria, long time residents of Eden Village, passed away peacefully in their sleep.'
Keith D7, Games 21.
The large bearded man stood up suspiciously when he heard noise. He frowned. Kids.
They knocked, polite-like. Keith let them in. He had nothing to lose.
They were filthy and hungry, the oldest fifteen, and Keith had food aplenty. One of the lads called him 'Gramps' his eyes shining like fireworks as he asked for more food. How could Keith say no to a cute little face like that ?
Keith good mood vanished as he stepped into Johanna's house to access the pantry. He'd not set a foot back in an arena. There was no way they'd make him. Blight had blamed him, and he was right to, but Keith couldn't do it. He just couldn't.
Jo, she was a fighter. Surely, she was still alive.
By the time he glanced out the window again, twenty peacekeepers were around his house. His heart stopped. The kids were inside. They'd barricaded the door.
Keith knew the Capitol. He'd mentored enough to be able to predict the stories they'd weave in their sleep. The Capitol papers had a District section full of crime and heroic peacekeepers to keep everyone believing they were all scum. The kids were cute and innocent, and they'd not hesitate to stamp their faces on Capitol papers and call them martyrs while using the money collected to shoot those kids' parents.
Jo kept loaded weapons under a plank. Girl was mad, but she could afford to be. She'd paid the price in her loved one's blood.
She was alive. She had to be. The arena exploding, that couldn't be the Capitol's game.
Keith was old. His loved ones, the living ones, were far far away.
He opened fire before the peacekeepers realized what was happening.
He got at least ten of the bastards before they put one through his gut. His vision got blurry, but he could see the shots had called people. More of theirs than the Capitol's.
There would always be more of theirs than the Capitol's.
Finnick D4, Games 65.
What –
A mutt, mashed human and lizard with the intent to kill, jumped out of the shadows.
Powered by instinct Finnick slammed his useless gun on the lizard-mutt's snout, slamming the snarling creature against the tunnel wall.
There were too many of them.
Crushing despair filled his chest.
It had been so damn obvious !
He'd been blinded by the fact that Boggs had come with them. It hadn't crossed his mind that Coin would endanger her right-hand man needlessly.
And now Boggs was dead. The man had suspected too, in the end, but it had been much too late.
Squad 451 had never been meant to succeed. Katniss, Peeta, Boggs, him. Jo –that bitch had wanted to kill Jo too !- Cressida and her crew. Every obstacle to Alma Coin's unchallenged rule.
Finnick was trapped in a tunnel, under the Capitol. He'd never hold his baby. Annie -
A scream of rage burst from his lungs and he rolled on the floor as another mutt dived for him.
Not like this. Not betrayed by rebels. Not like this ! Annie -
Above him, Katniss' flashlight flickered to his face. Finnick straightened in horror as he saw the girl's expression. She was going to jump back in and rescue him.
No, Katniss, run !
Heavy scaled paws fell on his shoulders. He barely had enough time to register the huge jaw snapping over his head.
Annie -
Okay, I'm annoyed at canon all over again now.
Please review^^.