Chapter Seventy-Nine: We're Still Here

After the 95th Annual Hunger Games

Godric Runestone, Victor of the 95th Annual Hunger Games

Not knowing what else to do, I accept the cake.

Then three thoughts hit me all at once. I've won the Hunger Games. I'm a legacy Victor. The girl I was fighting didn't make it. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel, so I shove my emotions down as best I can and try to figure out what I'm supposed to say next.

"Huh," I say. "I guess I am."

Crag's expression tells me that wasn't the right thing to say. Before I can make any other mistakes, I move to start eating, figuring I have an excuse not to talk if my mouth is full.

I take a bite of cake, the morsel so decadent it feels strange to eat. I manage three more before I set the plate aside; eating anything more in this condition threatens to make my stomach hurt.

"I'm guessing you'll need some time to process that," Crag says after I'm done. "No big deal, most do. I was half-dead after my Games, I'm guessing what you're going through can't be that much different."

That makes some sense: the anti-Career pack had been rather effective Crag's year, and his finale involved him taking on all three of their remaining members by himself. He'd only won for three reasons: one, his weapon and stature gave him a longer reach than any of his opponents, two, he had more training, and three, when the crumbling building they'd been fighting in started to collapse, he'd been closer to the window than his last opponent.

Whether attempting to remember what happened before I went under is a good idea remains to be seen, but I ask Crag anyway. "Was it close?"

"Close enough, but not really," Crag says. "That girl did a number on you, but trust me, you gave better than you got. You were well enough that the emergency medics could stabilize you before the hovercraft made it to the hospital. Staying alive the whole way through is more than some victors get to do."

No Victors have died immediately after their Games, but there have been some close calls. There's a reason an entire medical team is on the hovercraft that takes the Victor out of the Arena: with the Capitol's technology, anyone can cheat death, but only to a degree.

Now that I'm in a hospital bed and conscious, I shouldn't have to worry about that anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't want to figure out what my immediate future holds. "What's going to happen next?"

"You'll be on limited activity for a few days while the doctors look for anything else that needs fixing," Crag says. "You might wind up attending a couple of smaller events after that, and the Victor's Interview is in a week. After that, you get to go home to your new house in the Victor's Village, and from you're free to do as you please until the Victory Tour in six months."

I'm not sure what other events he's talking about, since the barrage of media coverage associated with most Victors usually doesn't begin until after said Victor returns home, but there's too much for me to think about right now, so I just nod.

"I'll let you rest for now," Crag says. "You've got some long days ahead of you, I might as well let you get ready."

Sure enough, he leaves me behind, and then everything starts sinking in for reall. I'm going home soon. Sooner than I could have ever thought possible. Home to Dorian, and Freya, and almost everyone I could ever care about.

Well, I still have the Victor's Interview to wait for. After that, though, I'll be back in District Two, where I belong.

I'm ready to go home, but somehow I'm still as nervous as can be.

I'm not sure how much later I get out of that hospital bed for the last time: maybe two days pass, maybe three. At least half of that is spent asleep, for rest or operations or both. Most of the rest is spent exercising, the activities nowhere near my former training but exhausting to pull off with my weakened body.

Crag and Cassidy were constant visitors the whole time, each of them taking their turn to congratulate me. District Two victors aren't rare by any stretch, but it's not like the other Districts don't have Victors to their names as well.

Once I'm out of the hospital, Crag and Cassidy take me back to the room where I stayed before the Games, the entire building now much emptier and quieter without the other tributes. I try not to think about Clara and Nascar as we pass by District One's rooms every day, and usually fail. I didn't spend long enough with any other tributes, save Galadia and Sienna, to have more than hazy memories of them, sometimes which I'm grateful for, and other times I hate myself for. Maybe I'll be able to pick one once I settle down a bit.

The room feels strange to sleep in now that I'm free of the Games. No Galadia across the hall, no training in the morning, no obligations, period. Galadia may have been a bitch and she would have tried to kill us had she lasted long enough, but she was still from home, and her absence makes our floor feel remarkably lifeless, just as much as anywhere else in the building even with Crag's snoring.

My first night in that bed, I lie awake for hours with nothing but my own thoughts, watching the moon peek in and out of the clouds until finally my brain goes still enough to slumber. Yet, even with the different setting, I return to the very place I thought I'd escaped for good.

My vision is swimming and my head is pounding. I'm lying on the ground in front of the Cornucopia, the girl from Six staring at me, just as I was last night and the night before. However, here there's no blood, no cannon shot, no serum, only pain. She and I just lie there, locked in place, forever staring at each other and waiting for an end that never comes.

Her eyes meet mine, and she asks the same question she always does, night after night after night, no matter how much I will her to do anything else. "Why?"

By the time I'm dragged back into consciousness, I still don't know why, and I'm not sure I ever will. As always, it's a question for another day.

Two days before the Victor's Interview, at approximately five in the evening, I'm putting on a suit that I don't recognize from the closet before the Games.

For once, I'm grateful these formal clothes are so uncomfortable: it can't remind me of what I wore in the Arena at all, and for now, that's enough. There'll be plenty of time for the memories to settle in once I return to District Two, and I could use a bit of a break right now. All I want to be is done.

Unfortunately, there's still a few more things I have to do before I can truly consider myself free of these Games. Turns out, the Victor's Interview isn't the only celebratory event I'll be attending. According to Crag and Cassidy, for the past decade or so all the mentors have organized a dinner event after the Games to welcome the newest Victor into their ranks. Not a black-tie event by any means, but still semi-formal, and one that I'm expected to attend nonetheless. At least I'll have some time to decompress afterward.

Thankfully, it's just the mentors for this event, not all the living Victors. No Dad. I'll need to have that conversation when I get home, but I don't know what to say yet even though all I've been able to do is think.

Once all three of us are dressed, Crag, Cassidy and I take the elevator up to the rooftop garden where I first met Sienna. A table with approximately thirty chairs has been set up square in the middle, the plants moved aside for now. Even though the table is loaded with more than enough food for all of us to eat, Crag and Cassidy make it clear that those are just the appetizers and that more's to come, so I shouldn't stuff myself. I don't know how anyone who isn't recovering the way I am wouldn't: everything smells so incredible that even I want to try as much as I can.

Halfway to the table, Crag leans down to whisper in my ear. "You should at least stay for dinner, but if this makes you uncomfortable, tell me and we can leave early."

At least he's got my back. I should be fine, though based on the reactions that ripple through the mentors as we take our seats, this might be more difficult than I was expecting.

It's about what I expect, at least at first. Even before our dinners arrive, there isn't much talking, and almost all of what is said is directed at me. Most of what they say is congratulatory, though there are exceptions. Some are already too drunk or too high or too lost in their own worlds to say much of anything. Others seem afraid to even approach me, like String and Miller. A handful of mentors stick out in different ways. Citrus and Cordelia both glare, their words sharp and faintly bitter. Sirena barely moves an inch but regards me almost with fascination. Luna never says a word but her glassy-eyed gaze doesn't leave me. I don't want to imagine how they feel right now, so I force the thoughts to the back of my mind for now. Before long, dinner arrives and I can focus on that instead.

The meal progresses in relative silence. The food is delicious, but I don't touch the alcohol: there's too many bad memories around it already, I see no need to make more. The mentors who've fallen to the bottle take more than enough for everyone, so soon it isn't an option, for which I'm silently grateful.

People begin to trickle away after the meal is done: a handful don't even stay for dessert. Once that too has completed, the flow increases until the roof is near silent. After what feels like far too long, Luna finally takes her eyes off me and rises, staggering to the elevator with her remaining arm feeling for hazards in front of her, leaving only Sirena, my mentors, and I.

With the roof devoid of anyone else, Sirena takes the opportunity to speak for the first time all night, fixing her gaze on Crag and Cassidy. "Do you two mind if I have a few minutes alone with Godric?"

Crag and Cassidy don't quite look convinced. Giving Sirena more than her fair share of side-eye, Cassidy speaks first. "Are you okay with that, Godric?"

"I'll be fine. Thanks for asking, though," I say. Sirena's got her head screwed on straight, she's not going to try and kill me or do anything of the sort. If she's anything like her sister, nothing bad's happening while we're alone.

With my approval, Crag and Cassidy both head for the elevator, leaving Sirena and I as the last two people on the roof. We're both silent once more for far too long, but Sirena's the one to finally break it.

"Sienna came up here with me the night before training started," I say, struggling to keep my voice from cracking. "Something about how she was just as nervous as I was about this."

"She told me," Sirena said, her voice equally wobbly. "I knew she was having second thoughts as soon as she stepped onto that train. Opening up to someone else was just confirmation."

I look away. "I'm sorry. I understand that you'd have preferred Sienna to be standing here instead of me."

"I would have appreciated that very much, yes," Sirena said. "That doesn't mean I'm going to hold it against you. You stuck with her when no one else did, and apart from psychic intuition, nothing was stopping that knife. At least you killed the girl that did it."

What-ifs swirl through my brain. I could have killed her before. I could have taken the knife. I could have done anything other than what I ended up doing, which wasn't enough to matter. At least I'm here instead of Clara or someone else who played a part in her demise; if this is her reaction to someone she had some trust in being here in Sienna's place, Clara being here might have killed her.

Sirena takes a deep breath. "In all honesty, though, I called you up here for me; I need to get something off my chest, and I feel you would be the most likely to appreciate it."

Well, this swerved into unexpected territory in a hurry. "Okay?"

She continues without pause. "I roped Gear in on this, so the cameras and microphones in the area are going to be on the fritz for a few minutes. What I'm about to tell you is strictly for your ears only, okay?"

I nod. If Sirena's trusting me with anything after what happened to her sister, it must be really important.

One more long exhale, then Sirena begins her story. "After the tribute interviews, I found her in the bathroom on our floor, not in the best shape: it was obvious the stress was starting to get to her even if she set it aside for her interview. We started talking. I doubted the Capitol would put any cameras or bugs in the bathrooms because even they have laws about that, so I had an idea. As soon as I was sure we weren't going to be overheard, I asked her if she wanted me to switch places with her."

The mere thought almost makes me want to gasp, but knowing the walls have ears, I keep it internal and ask the obvious question. "Wait, really? You thought you two could pull that off?"

"Mako would have turned a blind eye even if he found out. Turquoise wouldn't have noticed a thing. And would anyone else even matter until we left the Capitol?"

I shake my head. "Probably not."

Identical twins aren't common by any stretch, and identical twins who both go into the Hunger Games are even rarer. If Sirena had gone through with that plan and won the Games, and Sienna had kept up her end of the con just long enough, they could have switched places again after the Games without anyone the wiser, at least not early enough to matter. There'd always be pointing fingers, but with how the Arenas get treated after their Games are consigned to history, no one would be able to prove anything.

"Did you mean it?"

"After everything I'd heard, I would have without a second thought," Sirena says. "She turned me down. She told me that she was the one who volunteered, I'd already done my Games. Not to mention, if the Capitol ever found out what we did…"

She doesn't need to finish her sentence for me to understand the implications there. Outright killing one of their Victors might be in bad taste, but they had plenty of experience staging unfortunate accidents when necessary. She wouldn't have lived to see the next Games.

"I'm not going to judge her for making that decision, and I'm sure you're not either," Sirena adds. "If I'd gone into that Arena instead of her there was no guarantee of victory, especially with how fractured the Career pack ended up being. Whether or not it would or wouldn't have worked is something I'll never know, but I have the feeling they're going to eat at me for the rest of my life."

You can't predict the future. You can't change the past. You'll never know if you don't try. I'm sure there are other statements that apply here, but those feel like the most fitting. I don't say anything, though: whatever comes out of my mouth right now feels guaranteed to be wrong.

"This is going to be hard," Sirena says, picking up where she left off. "I loved her. She meant the world to me. I did everything I could to help her win, and it just wasn't enough."

"I didn't love her quite like that, I've got someone waiting back home," I say. "That didn't mean we weren't going to stick together until the end: she saved me just as much as I saved her. If it were just the two of us in the finale, then so be it."

Sirena nods. "You had every opportunity to ditch her and didn't, and she could have done the same to you and didn't. That says everything I could ever need to know."

I'm out of words as Sirena begins the march toward the elevator, so much between us yet so little at the same time.

"Thank you for trying," Sirena says. "I'll see you again back in District Four."

With nothing more to be said, I join her in waiting for the elevator, waiting for the doors to open so we can return to our rooms stare at the ceiling or bury ourselves in our thoughts or do whatever it is we need to cope with the Games. There'll be a day when we can both move on, but that day isn't now. For now, all we can do is try to heal, and something tells me that isn't happening for a long time.

I'll be quick here, especially since I have to be up for work in six hours (one of the many joys of gainful employment).

I apologize that this chapter took so long: I was creatively sterile for a few months and barely wrote at all, and moving halfway across the country for my first real job didn't help much. Fortunately, I finally managed to pull something off these past few days, so here's the latest chapter, and I hope it's a decent one. (It was supposed to be much shorter, but then Sirena started talking and everything exploded on me.)

The next chapter's going to be Godric's Victor's Interview, I know that, and in theory it should be a little shorter. From there, I only have a few more left to go, then I can finally put this story on ice. The progression may change depending on my inspiration or lack thereof, though.

Thanks for sticking with me for all this time, and I'll see you next chapter.