Cw: more swearing and mentions of PTSD and the games
January 28, 75 ADD
The Journal of Cato Gunnerson
I feel so stupid doing this. But when you're a talentless moron like our Escort and the Capitol seems to think I am, journalling is considered the last reserve. Even us District kids know how to read and write. Also, apparently the journals of Victors are considered hot commodities. Carmine, our escort, even promised they'd wait until I was dead to pick through it.
So, here's my journal. Although, I don't know if it even counts as a journal if I'm writing it specifically expecting other people to read it some day. Carmine said I need to be extra sensitive in my writing, so as not to upset my future readers.
Well, fuck that, and fuck her too.
To all the assholes and dipshits picking over my corpse, hello.
My name is Cato Gunnerson. I'm eighteen years old, and I'm the Victor of the Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games. I killed seven people in the name of Glory and Honor for my district. I've spent my whole life training how to do it, and now I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do now.
Brutus, Eno, and Jack train the next batch of tributes each year. Lyme carves sculptures out of scrap stone and metal. Min, who won two years ahead of me, has taken up acting of all things.
I can't do anything.
I can't sculpt, or pain, or any of that crap. I can't train or fight without destroying something or hurting someone. I can't give speeches or teach without falling apart. I have this journal thing, but I can't do that all day.
I can't sleep through the night. I can't see my little sisters without scaring them.
Before the games, I didn't spend much time thinking about what I would do after, but I always thought I'd be sharing my victory with Julia and Octavia.
Instead, I'm stuck alone in my house, getting stuffed into ugly glitter tuxes while my escort bitches about my inability to carry a tune. Brutus, who's supposed to be my mentor, even after the Games, is currently drinking his ass off and mocking her cheek implants instead of actually being helpful.
Look at the honor I have brought to my District.
January 30, 75 ADD
I'm leaving District 2 today. Time for the Victory Tour.
Brutus and Lyme are coming with me, at least. Min's been away at the Capitol rehearsing for a hot new musical. It's called Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five and it's about the First Quarter Quell, because Snow forbid the Capitol to have entertainment not centered on the Games.
(Actually, for all I know, he has forbidden it.)
Min's playing the eventual Victor. She doesn't look a thing like Esperanza Valdez, but apparently that doesn't matter in theater. Min called the other day and tried to explain how it all works, but it went over my head, as usual.
Of course, she wasn't actually calling to tell me about the difference between tenors and mezzi-sopranos, or whatever they're called. She was checking up on me, the same way Jack keeps dropping by and telling me about how training is going and inviting me to come along and watch. The way that even the older Victors like Marble and Cass keep bringing over food.
Not subtle at all. I've been telling them how annoying it is, that I'm not going to fall apart if I go a day without seeing them.
But being stuffed on a train with Brutus drinking and inviting me to "be a man" and join him while Lyme snipes at him and awkwardly tries to get me to talk about my feelings makes me miss them already. And I haven't even left.
January 31 75 ADD
We're approaching District 12. I can't sit still. Maybe it's being stuck in a cramped train, or maybe it's having to go over the same speech again and again. Or maybe it's Brutus and Lyme.
Brutus thinks I should say something about the girl from District 12. He's big on honor and bravery, and something about the Twelve Girl volunteering stuck with him. He keeps saying her sacrifice should be honored, and that it would be disrespectful not to.
Lyme doesn't think that. She says the Districts don't want to hear that from Career districts (which is apparently something they call us in the lower districts?). What they want is to get the ceremony over with as quickly as possible and stop pretending that any of this is meant to honor the tributes instead of pouring salt in the wound.
Then Brutus calls her disrespectful, and she calls him ignorant, and the voices just get harsher and faster and louder and I just couldn't take it anymore. Snow, ven just writing about it…
Finally, they agreed to take the argument elsewhere. I broke two glasses before things calmed down.
Finally, Lyme came back and said I should use my own judgment, but I don't even know what that is. The only interaction I had with the Twelve Girl was killing her, and now I have to memorialize her in front of her family and friends, and the whole District.
Just…what the fuck am I supposed to do?
February 2, 75 ADD
One District down.
I didn't end up saying anything about her. I didn't know her, all I did was kill her. Why would District 12 care what I thought?
I met her sister. It's weird. I knew she had a sister, we discussed it all through the Pre-Games. But it was always about the angle. About how it made her look brave, or would get people to sympathize with her. How she needed to go before the top 8 because interviewing "the sister" would be certain to get her sponsors. She didn't feel like a person before.
Her name is Primrose Everdeen. She had her hair in twin braids, and looked much taller in person than she did at the Reaping. And she stood there alone, and just watched me the whole time as I stumbled over the Capitol's nonsense about how her sister's death ensured peace or some shit like that.
The thing that stuck with me was how she didn't even look mad.
Brutus told me to expect the people from the Districts to be mad, that they were always mad even though they did nothing to protect their children like we do. And some of them were mad. The crowd was mad. Loverboy's family was mad. The dark-haired boy who came to pick Primrose up after the ceremony looked like he wanted to murder me right there in front of the whole country. Haymitch, the District's only living Victor, outright refused to see us.
But the girl-Primrose wasn't mad. She just looked heartbroken and lost, all alone on stage. I asked afterwards, and they said the stress of the games caused her mother to eat the wrong thing by accident, and she died, leaving Primrose all alone. She at least has a place to stay, but losing her sister and her mom so close together… She's only a year or two older than the twins.
I wonder what it would be like for them if Katniss or Peeta were the one who won, and they had to greet them in the Victory Tour. Would they hate her? Would they be sad? We barely got to see each other the last few years while I was training…
Afterwards, we had dinner with the Mayor. Brutus got drunk. Lyme went off somewhere by herself. A guy played the fiddle.
I just wanted it to be over.
Now I'm back on the train, and I have to do this eleven more times. Half the time I feel too numb to move, and half the time I want to smash things. Sometimes I barely recognize the person on screen, and sometimes I feel like I never left the arena. At any moment, I feel like I'm going to explode, or break into pieces, or just fall over and die. Even if I died, they'd probably still cart my body around and make it complete the Victory Tour.
I just can't escape or get out. I want to break things and peel my own skin off. I want to never have gotten on this train, this arena, the Snowdamned country. I just want-
I want…
I don't even know.
A/N And with that, we've finished the last prologue, although we haven't seen the last of Cato and his Journal. Next chapter starts the introductions. I'm planning on having six introduction chapters, each featuring four tributes. Almost all the tributes are complete, and I want to thank everyone who submitted! I'm so excited to share the tributes with you all!