Anastasia wakes in a lavish hospital room with bleary eyes and a sore throat. She blinks up at the warm lights, groaning softly. Everything hurts. Evidently, they haven't given her nearly enough morphling, because fucking everything hurts. She rolls her head to the side – which hurts – and sees a figure asleep in the plush chair beside her bed.
She blinks, vision clearing and revealing Canyon, fast asleep with his head hanging forward and a half empty case of cigarettes open in his lap. Anastasia scoffs a short laugh and she doesn't know why. The small sound seems to be enough to wake the sleeping man. His head snaps up and his eyes are frenzied for a moment before he realises where he is and who he's looking at, and he relaxes, sinking back into the soft cushions of the chair.
"Nice of you to join us," he says, closing his cigarette case and shoving it into his pocket.
Anastasia scoffs, trying to sit up but finding it too painful. Canyon must notice how she tenses in pain because he stands up and goes over to her bedside, adjusting the IV bag connected to Anastasia's wrist.
Anastasia just watches him, quiet as the last week's events flash through her mind like blurry photographs. Half of them feel like they were taken with her finger on the lens.
"You never sent me anything," she says after a long while.
Canyon glances at her as he sits back down, shrugging.
"You didn't need it."
She supposes not.
"You could've gotten me anything you wanted," she tells him. "Anything. I'm from here."
"So I've heard," says Canyon with a dry chuckle. "I could've asked them to give you a damn assault rifle and they'd have done it. But you didn't need my help, Anya."
Anastasia doesn't correct him, she supposes it'll take him a period to adjust.
"Your friend from Nine took good care of you."
"Did you send anything to Dimitri?" She asks.
She wants to know if he made a choice. Of who to save. Saving both your tributes isn't a luxury afforded to Districts without an abundance of mentors.
"No," Canyon says. "I didn't. I didn't try. I knew they'd never send a thing to him."
"So you just sat around and watched," she concludes.
"Sure did. Not shit else to do when you're given a rebel's kid and a filler."
"I wasn't filler."
"Obviously not. But in any other circumstance, you would have been. It's hard to get sponsors for a kid who got a 6."
Anastasia doesn't want to talk to him anymore. She looks back up at the ceiling and closes her eyes. Canyon doesn't press her any further.
They dress her in gold for her exit interview. Nimrod tells her that she's one of them, that she belongs in the finest of gold, not those shades of green. She thinks the dress is bulky and uncomfortable, and it's made of what feels like a heavy tapestry, but she's past complaining.
So she smiles, agrees with Nimrod, and catches a glance of her face in the mirror as he leads her out. The claw marks from the kangaroo are gone. There's a small mark on her arm, where the arrow had landed and Dimitri had shoved it in, but she assumes that will clear up too with the Capitol's medicines. It's like she was never in that arena at all, apart from how thin she's gotten.
Rook will always have that cut on his cheek, always have those broken ribs, always have that arrow in his eye. Opalette's neck will always be broken, Dimitri's hand always half off, his chest still full of holes from Anastasia's knife. Anastasia is the only one who's allowed to heal.
And as she's risen up onto the stage to the thunderous applause of the audience, as she watches the games replay on the big screen, she knows that she never will.
To watch the story they've spun hurts worse than anything she felt in the arena. Dimitri is their villain, Anastasia their fated hero. The Capitol's lost daughter, come for revenge on the boy who stole her life from her.
She's thankful at least that they couldn't find the footage to portray Rook anything but what he was. Joyful, and triumphant, and so very alive. To watch him die from another angle makes her less thankful.
She'd thought, while she laid in that hospital bed, that seeing herself kill Herminia might feel good. Like vindication. But it doesn't, really. Because it's not Herminia's fault that she killed Rook.
It also occurs to her that not one time since she's remembered who she was, has she longed to return to the Capitol. The place that was once her home.
When she forces herself to watch her fight with Dimitri, her thoughts are elsewhere. And when President Gomez crowns her the Victor of the 111th Hunger Games, her mind is made up.
And when she's taken back to a fancy office and told the president has requested her, she's suddenly very afraid of the choice her mind has made.
Ledger Gomez is a handsome man, and he sits back behind a desk with his feet kicked up on the table with an easy smile on his face when Anastasia enters.
"Anastasia!" He greets, like she's an old friend. His hair is combed back but still looks carefully dishevelled, the streaks of silver at his temples only making him seem more charming. "You look stunning."
"Thank you," she says, voice even.
"No, thank you," he says, standing up and moving around the desk toward her. "Really. You saved us a lot of trouble by not dying. Now, you're almost free to go roll in your riches, but I just have a simple question."
Anastasia raises an eyebrow, failing to hide how that strikes cold fear into her blood. She remembers how her parents had feared this charming man, how brutal and ruthless he can be.
"Oh!" Gomez seems to notice her fear, clapping a hand on her shoulder. "It's alright, it's nothing bad!"
He meets her with another charming smile before he continues.
"There's just the question of where you'll go. Now, your parents were dear to us all, and we'd be honoured to have you stay here in the Capitol, where you belong… however, if you return to District Seven, you'll give them such hope. They haven't had a victor in such a long time, and having you choose to live amongst them will really keep them going through the winter. So, the choice is entirely yours, Anastasia. Will you stay here and be a star in the Capitol, or will you return to District Seven a saint?"
Anastasia looks down, thoughts swirling.
Canyon lives across the way from Anastasia in the Victor's Village. He still calls her Anya, but she doesn't mind. She's trying to make him quit smoking, but it's proving more difficult than anticipated.
She tries her best to visit Clavell from time to time, and the woman is grateful for it each time. She brings what she can for the orphanage– extra food, blankets, and lots and lots of books. She reads a lot, like she did before, and she ends up with more books than she knows what to do with. The kids are still afraid of her, but in a different way now. It's a fear born more out of admiration than wariness. Anastasia doesn't mind either way.
Dimitri has a grandfather. At first, he's resistant to Anastasia's attempts to visit him, but eventually he begins to accept her offerings. He's a grumpy old man by nature, but he tells her such loving stories about Dimitri.
It feels like such a privilege to know about who Dimitri was before the Arvensons were killed. His grandfather says he was a sweet boy, but so stubborn. Dimitri has his eyes, and every time his grandfather smiles, Anastasia sees the same fire, burning warm and restful where Dimitri's was wild and angry. She hates that Dimitri was never given the chance to move past the anger.
Anastasia thinks about Rook every single day and every single night. It occurs to her on a cool October night that she hadn't even known Rook for more than two weeks. She had known him for just under a fortnight, but she'll think of him every day for the rest of her life.
She starts keeping journals, on the advice of a fellow victor, who won some 50 years ago. She assumes that with fifty years experience, advice like that is sound. She starts by listing the name of every single person who died in that arena. She memorises the list. And she memorises all that Rook had remembered about them.
The journals are full of several recounts of that very last night in the arena, where she had fallen asleep beside her best friend, with Bear in her lap. She thinks back on that moment often. It's one of the few memories she has that isn't tinted an ugly shade of scarlett.
Oh, yes, and perhaps most importantly, her family name pulled some strings, and Bear lives with her now. Apparently, he's something called a quokka. He likes District Seven, and all the new leaves he gets to chew on. He's impossible to potty train and he has no concept of personal space, but Anastasia loves him with all her heart.
Anastasia remembers a lot, though sometimes she wishes she didn't. She's not happy, or at peace, but she's a whole person now. Sometimes she misses when she didn't remember, when she was only a wisp of a girl searching for who she was.
But she tells herself that if she didn't remember who she was, she would forget everyone else too. And she won't let herself do that, not as long as she lives.
Wow. What a privilege it was to write this wonderful girl. Thank you so much to Human Wiki for unknowingly trusting me with her. She was something so different for me, so challenging and so rewarding. I hope I captured her as you imagined her, bc she's actually become a part of my heart now. I think we're gonna have to split custody, honestly. And thank you to everyone in SYOT verses for consistently motivating me to finish Anya's story. Couldn't have done it without ya.