Day Eight: In another time
In another time...
Pennsylvania Harren was the kind of tribute everyone wanted. She was determined, she made that very clear to Axel and he was glad to test just how determined she could be when the riches and Victory and everything she'd ever want were being dangled in front of her like a carrot before a rabbit.
So she entered the Games with the hope to win her sickly District partner didn't have. She didn't fight like a Victor, like the kind of pretty polished One, Two, Four that the Capitol so adored. Instead, she fought like a girl with nothing to lose. Because she was a girl with nothing to lose. And the Capitol lapped that up like a dog before a bowl, because who wouldn't. She wasn't pretty, but she killed because she was in need of the Victory she demanded. With rope, with sharpened branch, finally clawing at the face of the massive boy from Two until she'd gouged his eyes, used a rock to beat his head in. Everyone questioned exactly how it had happened, how a Six girl had snatched money from the bettors, but they couldn't well take a Victory back.
They replayed her Games. The fight with the wolf that scratched at her flesh, forcing her to bleed and cry and choke until she managed to drive her branch through it and limp away like a car from a crash. It was not beautiful, wasn't honourable, to see her whimper and look down at the leg shredded to the bone, limping forwards. The rock that fell down, pinned a finger and let it shatter like a glass dropped to the floor. It was the kind of violence, bad luck that horrified the viewers, from the before times.
Maybe that was why she got addicted. Why she began to inject the painkiller, the morphling. At first, it was Capitol assigned, because painkillers were a good thing and in moderation that's all Morphling was. A painkiller. But then she needed more, more to the extent she injected twice a day. Twice, three times, four. Enough times that she was addicted soon enough, far from the tribute she was just three years ago. Far from the person she was just three years ago.
In another time, she'd been a Victor. Not just a survivor, a Victor. The little girl from slumland Six, the girl everyone could be proud of because she'd come back and wasn't that fabulous. New house, new rules, new everything. She was the boss, she'd gotten her parents to give up jobs, even her little brother didn't have to work any more and wasn't that just fabulous. Pennsylvania Harren, Victor. The trophy of Six, the prize, the pride of the District.
Now she's a survivor, all alone in a big empty house. Nobody to share it with, no Victory. It's true, she's just a tribute. Always has been and very much always will be. Oh, the Capitol adores her, but they adore all the children thrown in to die. They doll her up, a new battery of clothes every year, but they did the same for the Tributes because of course they did. What is Penny, really, if not a Tribute? It's a new kind of Games, a much worse kind of Games because she isn't just fighting for her own lives. She's fighting for the lives of others, and a morphling addled woman is never the best at fighting for Victory.
In the other time, she was a Tribute. A girl of seventeen, and if not devastatingly beautiful then pretty, at the least. She looked good enough for Axel to give that leering smile and promise he'd find her all the sponsors she needed. She hadn't known, at the time, what her Mentor and the Capitol were capable of. What they would do to pretty girls who came back. She wishes she still doesn't know.
In the now times, she was no longer pretty. Her hair was hacked short, Audie had helped with that. After all, it was not fair to force her to maintain such long hair, he said. It was matted, grimy, the kind of hair that happened when she hadn't wanted to wash it and hadn't had the time. She'd slept, enough. She was thin, thin not from lack of food like during the Games but thin from just not needing to eat. The eating didn't do much, so she ate when Audie or the maids told her to but otherwise was largely left to her own devices on food.
In the other time, Penny had been the darling of the Capitol. She wasn't graced with beauty of One, but she was pretty enough for the Capitol and when all made up, why, you could hardly tell she was District. That, squealed by her prep team, was the rallying cry behind which she was told sponsors rallied. It must have been good, because silver parachutes descended near-daily for the first two weeks, and then never again. Still, she was grateful for what she did get, because the rope meant she could wrap it around Five's neck and tug back until the boy had a blue face and bulging eyes and was clawing at his throat. Then until the boy was lying dead on the floor.
In the now times, she was a joke. When she was off the morphling, she knew she was a joke. There was enough television shown on the screen she'd left on 24/7 that it was obvious. The occasional mention of how morphling corrupts even those nearest and dearest to you, with before and after pictures of Penny playing up on the screen. Because the Capitol doesn't just find it enough to treat them like trophies, not when they can be humiliated and used for television entertainment. Used to be brought back every year and tell a child how to kill and how to win. Even in spite of the 'rewards' Victory brought, the cost it extracted.
In another time, she was Pennsylvania Harren. Now, she's just a Morphling to the world.