Ashe Illyrian, 15

Victor of the One-Hundredth, Fifty-Third Hunger Games

A cloud of gloom hangs over Eleven's Victors Village in the days following Ashe's tour. Brice is laid to rest on the second day and Ashe is pretty sure she's supposed to be feeling something for him. But all she can think is that the President of Panem tried to kill her—what sort of retribution will follow the fact that it failed?

The Capitol is calling it a rebel assassination. Ashe isn't surprised. She isn't surprised by much anymore.

Her mother is worried about her. Her father is worried about her. Melody is worried about her. Davis is worried about her. Hell, Stevie is worried about her.

At least Julia isn't around enough to worry about her. Is it funny? Ashe doesn't really know anymore—she thought that once she won, maybe Julia would come around more. And she does but she also doesn't—she visits once or twice a month but it's not right. Because there's too much strain on everything. Julia is the daughter-in-law of the mayor, and Ashe is a Victor of the Hunger Games. They're not what they used to be.

The house is eerily silent when Ashe slides out of bed, and she wishes that she could turn back time. She wishes she was waking up in the room she shared with Melody, back in their little house by the river, where it was never quiet. The house in the Victors Village is too large—the empty hallways and unused room swallow up all of the noise that used to grace their home.

It is not home. The walls in Ashe's room are gray. The comforter on the bed is gray. The curtains on the window are gray. The shag carpet beside the bed is gray. Her mother keeps asking her if she wants to paint it, get some new furniture, change the drapes—because they have money for that now. Her mother thinks it would help her to be in a more colorful environment. Ashe doesn't really care—everything seems gray nowadays.

She pads down the hallway toward the stairs. She stands at the top, looking down into the living room. The lights are off downstairs, which strikes Ashe as odd. She figured everyone would be in the kitchen having breakfast.

It's a Saturday. Neither of her parents have work, and none of her siblings have school. They should have be home.

Ashe heads downstairs, hoping that perhaps they are having breakfast in the backyard. It would be a weird choice for January, but it's not impossible.

The backyard is empty. The kitchen is empty. The parlor is empty. "Mom?" Ashe calls through the house. "Dad?"

Not even an echo answers her. She hates this house.

"Davis? Melody?" Ashe heads back upstairs, ducking her head into each room as she goes down the hallway. "Stevie?"

Upstairs is empty too. There's not a soul in the house.

The doorbell rings. Ashe jumps like she's been electrocuted.

When she answers the door, there's no one there. No, no, there's just a vase of flowers—a vase of sunflowers.

The bottom drops out of Ashe's world. It's as if the whole world tunnels to this one moment—this one vase of flowers, sitting on Ashe's doorstep, so fucking innocuous it hurts. She kicks the vase over, but it's made of plastic so doesn't even shatter. The sunflowers spill out with some soil, but it's far from satisfying.

Ashe stamps down on the plastic vase, accomplishing nothing but losing her balance, and then it clicks.

It all clicks.

And Ashe runs. She tears out of the Victors Village and into town, ignoring the burning in her lungs and the pain in her side. It doesn't matter. It's all inconsequential.

There's a gunshot ringing through the air when Ashe arrives to the square, shoving her way through the crowds already gathered there. Another gunshot assaults Ashe's ears, and a body thumps against the stage in front of the Justice Building.

There's no way it's them. Ashe is making all of this up, she's just being paranoid—they just caught some rebels, or some thieves, or it's a routine execution of death row inmates or—

Ashe stops cold when she reaches the front of the crowd. There's six figures kneeling on the wooden execution platform, and Ashe would recognize them with or without the bags on their heads. Two of the figures are already slumped over, blood pooling around their bodies, and Ashe thinks she's going to start screaming.

She doesn't. She stays silent, watching in horror as a bullet is put in the heads of her family.

Shouldn't she be doing something? She should be doing something.

Ashe takes a step forward, but one of the Peacekeepers standing in front of the platform shoves her backward with their gun.

A gunshot. A thump. The last body hits the platform and the crowd begins to disperse.

Ashe, however, does not leave. She stands in front of the platform even after the Peacekeepers have starting cleaning up the corpses. After a little while, she notices a tan skinned man standing beside her. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye and says, "You're Julia's husband."

She doesn't remember his first name. His last name is Kohlmann.

There's a beat. Silence. "What did they do?" he says.

"Nothing," Ashe says. "They didn't do anything."

He looks at Ashe, as if he is having a realization. "Did you—?"

Ashe nods. She doesn't know what he was going say, but whatever it was, she assumes he was going to be right.

She assumes he's going to be mad. Maybe it's because that how she would react.

"Why would they do that?" he says.

"They can't execute me," Ashe says. She bites back the they already tried and failed. "So they did the next best thing."

"I…I…" He looks down at his hands like he's seeing them for the first time.

"What's your name again?" Ashe asks.

"Jesper," he says. "Jesper Kohlmann."

"Hm," Ashe says. "I'm sorry about Julia."

He doesn't answer. All he does is nod and walk away.

Ashe heads home. This time, she walks slowly. There is nothing waiting for her at home. She left behind her home in the square.

The house is empty and gray. Ashe sits in the study with an empty journal and tries to write. After everything, this has to be the thing to break the dam. She has to have something to write now, after everything.

No words come. Ashe stares at the accusing paper on the desk, and her veins fill with white hot rage. She grabs the edge of the desk and turns it over in one swift movement. She grabs a ceramic vase and throws at the wall as hard as she can. She tears the curtains off of the windows. She stabs holes in the paintings lining the hallway.

Tears are blurring her vision and all she feels is anger. How dare the Capitol do this to her? How dare the Capitol do this to her family?

In the last six months, Ashe has lot everything. Her home. Her family. Her hobbies. Her happiness. And Ashe is fucking sick of it. The couch is gray when she cuts the cushions open with kitchen shears. The apples in the fridge are gray when she crushes them under her feet. The chairs in the dining room are gray when Ashe kicks them down the stairs.

The world is gray and the world is red, and on the porch there are still sunflowers. Ashe steps onto the porch and stamps the sunflowers into the dirt until they lose their vibrancy.

The fire is back, creeping into the edges of Ashe's vision, and there is only one way to put it out.

She picks her way through the minefield of destruction in the house and grabs the phone. She grabs the phone with ferocity and punches in a number.

Lanai picks up. "Ashe?" she says. "What are you doing calling me on your house phone? You know these lines aren't secure—"

"Lanai. Shut up," Ashe says. "I'm in. Just tell me what I have to do."

"What?"

"I'm in."

The Capitol thinks they have scared Ashe into submission. But all they have done is give her a cause.


A/N: We love making Ashe worse.

Don't forget submissions close on March Nineteenth!

-Amanda