Quinten Aramdale, 17

Victor of the 400th Hunger Games

Aramdale Manor

June 1, 402 AEDD

It had been three weeks since he arrived back home. The mayor had handed him the keys to a sprawling house in Victor's Village while they prepared his mansion estate, which had apparently been unoccupied since Six's last Quarter Quell Victor died almost two centuries ago. From what Quinten had been told, there were a lot of cobwebs. He lived alone in the Victor's Village house. The reunion with his parents had been brief, awkward, and unpleasant. He was glad they were in recovery, but they still didn't understand that he had been a tribute in the Hunger Games, let alone that he had won. It was too upsetting to spend more than a few minutes in their presence, and Quinten couldn't stand the idea of living with ghosts of the people who neglected him in their own grief-induced morphling haze.

He had nicer clothes now. His stylist had assembled a new wardrobe for him, mostly cozy sweaters and long pants, even in the heart of summer. He'd always felt exposed if even a sliver of skin peeked out from under an ill-fitting shirt or torn pair of trousers, mostly because Julian Wallstone and his gang had always pounced on it as a reason to abuse him. Because he lived in the Wallstones' employ, he could never afford to defend himself even if he had been able to.

Now Mr. and Mrs. Wallstone were nowhere to be found. The Capitol had taken them to a labor camp in some section of undistricted land, where they would live out their days paying Panem back for their crimes through hard labor. The Capitol had already taken custody of Julian before Quinten came back, and Quinten had heard nothing about his fate until the Head Peacekeeper of District Six had announced that Julian was sentenced to be whipped in the district square. It had been a long time since the last such spectacle had occurred. Attendance wasn't mandatory the time when Quinten was eight or nine and some sort of drug lord was being punished.

It was mandatory this time. Quinten had seen the trains of Peacekeepers flocking to the district and he sensed that the Wallstones were only the beginning. The Capitol was cracking down on the districts. As a Victor, Quinten was exempt from most of the rules governing district life. However, he wasn't about to push his luck. He certainly had no desire to see his friend-turned-tormentor undergo such torture, but he didn't want to know what would happen if he stayed home. He was driven to the square by Shiloh Samvel, one of Six's two other Victors. During the Quell, she and Maeve had mentored the Nines, including Quinten's boyfriend. When Quinten saw the casket on his Victory Tour, it was all sharp again. He didn't think the nightmares would ever stop.

Shiloh didn't have to find parking, because the car of Victors was the only non-Peacekeeping vehicle in the vicinity. She just pulled the black convertible over to the side of the square. She and Maeve flanked Quinten as they joined the ranks of clustered people, who let them pass to the front of the crowd to be seated in an ornate raised viewing area with the mayor and a few other high-ranking Peacekeepers. Shiloh squeezed his hand under the counter. He laced his fingers into hers. Despite not interacting much with his own parents, he had quickly grown to like Shiloh and Maeve. They were both vaguely maternal, in their forties, and soft with him. "He's so thin," Quinten whispered. Julian Wallstone, chained to a stout post in the center of the square, was looking pale and terrified as a helmeted Peacekeeper cut his shirt off him with a switchblade.

"Julian Wallstone now appears before his district to be punished for his crimes," announced the Head Peacekeeper. "Mayor Swindon and I hope that the administration of this penance will discourage such actions in the future," he droned. "Hopefully, no young man after him will be tempted to indulge in such beastly behavior. At the very least, a good thrashing should dissuade Mister Wallstone from trying this again in the future." Satisfied with his lecture, the Head Peacekeeper picked up the whip and stalked towards his immobile victim. The chains clinked together as Julian tried to cower away from him, but he post was moored securely to its platform in the plaza. He wasn't going anywhere. The Head Peacekeeper flicked the whip a few times, testing its flexibility. Then he stepped towards Julian.

Quinten shut his eyes. He heard the snap of the whip, then the scream that followed. He took a peek through his eyelashes. A wet, bloody weal had appeared on Julian's back. His head was bowed.

Shiloh looked at Quinten apologetically. "Open your eyes," she whispered. He obeyed. He didn't want to attract the Peacekeepers' attention, so he watched as each subsequent lash blurred together. The marks began to lose definition as Julian's back faded into a dripping mass of red. When he passed out, Quinten was grateful. If he was unconscious, it wouldn't be as painful, right? Then the Peacekeepers brought out smelling salts and Quinten realized District Six was in it for the long haul. They revived Julian, gave him a sip of water, and started up again. Quinten was praying for it to end. Julian was eighteen, barely at the cusp of adulthood. Surely they wouldn't kill him, right?

They didn't, but they brought him to the edge. They whipped him until the marble dais ran slick with his blood. They whipped him until he passed out thrice more, and then woke him, and then started up again. They whipped him to the brink of death. Then, finally, finally, they stopped for good the fifth time Julian passed out. The Head Peacekeeper coiled the whip with his white-gloved hands and placed it neatly in a ceremonial box. He unchained his prisoner, the squadron saluted the bench, and departed when the mayor waved his hand in dismissal. None of the civilians dared approach Julian to help. Instead, they melted away, filling the streets as they returned to their domiciles, grateful to escape the Capitol's ire for another day.

Julian bled alone in the square. "Quinten," someone was saying. "Quinten, c'mere." A hand touched his shoulder.

Quinten jumped awake. Shiloh was standing over him concernedly. "Quinten, sweetheart, you're fine. Nightmares again?" He nodded. She swept the covers back and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He sat up.

"Thanks," he rasped.

"It's always worse before the Games. Goodness knows you've had a rough couple years." He had. The district square held nothing but awful memories. Ever since the whipping of Julian Wallstone, he didn't have the guts to return until he was forced to, for the 401st Hunger Games was beginning. He remembered the high-backed chairs from the Quarter Quell when he had seen them close up from his position on the stage after he Volunteered. There had only been two then, one for Mayor Swindon and one for the escort, since the Victors had already traveled to the Capitol. All the other times, there had been two more, for Shiloh and Maeve. But after Quinten's Victory, Maeve didn't spend Reaping Day in Six anymore. There was a need for substitute mentors in District Seven, which had no living Victors, and Maeve had offered, so Quinten took possession of her chair when he presided over the Reaping ceremony for the 401st Games. He had thought the maroon leather and comfortable oak armrests would steady his nerves. Instead, he'd found them grotesque, trappings of the Capitol's death pageant. Both tributes were only twelve, and were killed immediately during the Bloodbath. Quinten had looked away and buried his face in his arms, but he'd never been able to get his tribute's final scream out of his brain. As the newest Victor, he was supposed to stay nearby to pick up the phone in case it rang, but he wound up panicking so badly that the other mentors unanimously decided to cover for him while he spent the rest of the day hiding from the world in his room.

He wasn't ready to do it all over again. He couldn't undergo the same tragedy, year after year. The 401st had been blessedly short. The phone only rang a few times, and once the finale commenced, Quinten was relieved of his duties. He did not watch the finale, so he didn't have to witness Hyperion Font being burned alive. He congratulated Ria Sounder when she stepped off the hovercraft and was grateful that there was a whole year before he needed to come back and mentor another tribute.

The year was up. There were less than two weeks until Reaping Day. He was having such a hard time that Shiloh was staying at the mansion for emotional support. She had also decided that he had to drink water (ick) and eat food (double ick) and was harassing him about it constantly. The depression blob part of him was annoyed by it, but the rest of him was really grateful. He'd called her Mom once, completely accidentally, and felt intensely guilty about it for days. His own parents resided in the house at Victor's Village. The treatment had worked, but not for long. Their will to care about him had been sapped by years of prolonged morphling use, and they disliked being vague shells of their former selves so much that they'd immediately gone back to using again. They were going to die soon. Quinten had meals delivered to them each day. He had a cleaning service tidy their living space. But they were chasing the high, and the pre-treatment fix no longer sufficed. They were going to overdose soon, and Quinten was mourning so much in advance that he didn't know how he would feel when it actually happened.

They hadn't acted like his parents for a long, long time, and he still felt ashamed calling someone else Mom by mistake, like he was cheating on his real mother. She and his father were still alive, but he already felt like they were dead. Shiloh, on the other hand, doted on him, out of pure love and concern. He slumped into her arms and waited for affection, feeling embarrassingly small and vulnerable. He was supposed to be an adult now, after his Victory and his eighteenth birthday. He was supposed to be self-sufficient. Instead, he was whining like a child with a skinned knee, demanding that someone kiss it better. "I hate this," he whispered.

Shiloh petted his hair. "It's perfectly normal," she said. "I was such a mess after my Victory. I wouldn't have made it without Maeve, even though I had very loving, supportive parents."

"But it's so humiliating. I shouldn't need this. I'm a grown man."

"You've been an adult for a few months, honey. You don't need to be good at it yet."

"I heard Ria's doing fine. And they made robot clones of her family shoot her in the arena. And her girlfriend died in front of her. And she's better at this than me."

"Your boyfriend died in front of you. She's a Career. I'm sure she's feeling it too in some ways, but it's different for kids who went into the Games on purpose."

"I Volunteered."

"Because you were afraid Jullian's gang would murder you if you didn't take his place."

"Yeah, but—"

"This isn't your fault. Sometimes bad stuff happens, and maybe you have to do and see some of it, and it takes some time to recover. There are going to be nightmares. There are going to be setbacks. You'll learn. The first year mentoring is always the worst one because it's new, and you're remembering being on the other side of it, but you have some experience now. Ria's taking care of the phone this time, so if it gets too intense, you can just go. Tag me in, I'll stay in the mentoring suite and mind the tributes, and you go take care of yourself."

"I hate that phone." He meant it completely, but it came out sad and desperate. Shiloh hugged him.

"It's going to be okay. I promise."

Quinten hoped she couldn't feel him crying into her shirt.

Hey y'all,

It's me again, with a new prologue! I had a lovely time writing about Quinten, the Prudence and Gumption Victor, and I can't wait to share the amazing Ria Sounder from my 2023 VE project, Interval, with you in the next chapter. All the worldbuilding info is up on the blog for your convenience. I've had a great time reading the tribute forms that have come in so far, and as I continue to work on Reprisal, I'll be keeping up with any questions you PM me about tribute submissions.

I'm also going to be sharing my trigger warning system with you. The Hunger Games as set in my first share many traits of the canon, featuring feature sensitive and adult topics. This fic is rated as M in the Fiction Ratings system. The policy states that M-rated material "contains content suitable for mature teens and older only. Not suitable for children below 16 years. May contain non-explicit adult themes, references to (sexual) violence, frequent or strong coarse language or drug use."

I am putting a blanket trigger warning on this fic for material involving drug/alcohol consumption, mentions of physical, emotional, and verbal abuse, profanity, moderately graphic violence, psychological manipulation including gaslighting, mild canon-typical suicidality, occasional off-color mentions, occasional sexual implications, and the general oversexualization of children in accordance with the Capitol's treatment of tributes.

I will always tag for any intense graphic violence, gore, sexual harassment, and depictions of physical, emotional, and verbal abuse.

I may discretionarily tag content that I feel hovers on the line between the two categories or is encompassed in the blanket trigger warning but heavily featured. You are always welcome to PM me to request a specific tag.

– LC :)