Angus Tanner (Former District 10 Mentor & Victor of the 43rd Hunger Games)

I used to love watching the first sunrise of spring as a kid. It was a strange and almost magical time of year when everything lined up just right to let me peek behind the veil that separates our world from the mystical world. It was the most fun and magical day of my year and the one I looked forward to the most.

I would get up early, wrap both of my little sisters up in as many warm blankets as I could find, and then carry them up to the roof of the barn so we could be the first people in our district to greet the new season.

We would sit there and watch excitedly as the sun slowly peeked over the horizon — the first rays of light knifing effortlessly through the icy morning mist, refracting through the icicles hanging from the branches of the cherry trees surrounding our home and creating a spectacular little light show for us to ooh and aah at — before peaking fully and wrapping us in its warm embrace. Then I would carry them back to the house, we'd split a cupcake, and then I'd drop them off at school before going to work.

Those are some of the best memories of my childhood, and I always assumed they would stay that way forever. I never thought that anything could ruin that day for me. Then I won the Hunger Games, and everything changed.

In the blink of an eye, the little things I used to love about that day — the beauty, the magic, the innocence — became a constant reminder of how stupid and naive I had been to see such amazing things in a world full of pain and suffering. Both of which I was now responsible for helping to spread.

So I did the only thing I could, I forced myself to bury all of the happy memories from my childhood so they wouldn't get crushed by the mountain of awful memories I was creating as a mentor.

And, to spare the people I loved from being destroyed by my newfound bitterness — and the terrible things I had done as a tribute and would have to continue to do as a mentor — I started to cut myself off from them so I could get myself into mentor mode without hurting them.

And, as my rotten luck would have it, the first thaw of spring — the day I used to look forward to more than any other — became the day I had to start doing it.

And so I started a new and much less enjoyable ritual. On the first day of spring, as the snow was beginning to melt, the streams started to flow, the flowers started to bloom, the cherry trees started to blossom, and the livestock started giving birth to their young, I would begin the process of preparing myself mentally, emotionally, and physically for yet another soul-crushing journey to the Capitol.

It was easy enough at first — my family understood why I was doing it, and I only had about three friends who would still talk to me — but it became more difficult as the years rolled by and my family started to grow.

I got married, and I had to withdraw from my wife. And even though part of her understood why I had to do it, that didn't stop her from resenting me.

Then we had kids, and all hell broke loose. The twins never understood why daddy was the way he was, and I didn't have the heart to explain it. So my wife had to do it, and that caused the kids to fear me and her to resent me even more.

And then my babies had babies. Ten years ago, my son and his wife had a baby. Five years later, my daughter had triplets. And all of them happened within a few weeks of the start of the Games.

What should have been two of the happiest moments of my life were ruined because I was trying to get myself into mentor mode for the Games. And I've never forgiven myself for that.

But I did it anyway. Because it was the only way I knew how to prepare myself to deal with the hell I was about to go through.

And things only got worse once I got on the train because I had a limited amount of time to do the impossible and find a way to convince an understandably terrified teenager — who, in most cases, was still trying to process what was happening — to set aside their fears and work with me to save their life.

But I couldn't do it. I was never able to mentor a victor. I had fifty-six years and the help of my mentor Mazie to figure out how to do it, but I never did. I never even really got close.

And all three of the victors who came after me — Dusk, Fern, and Hunter — were mentored by Mazie.

She was an absolutely remarkable woman with an unbreakable spirit and a knack for getting her tributes to dig deeper and try harder than they thought they could. And her death during Dusk's Victory Tour shattered our fragile little victor family and forced me into a leadership position I couldn't fill.

But I didn't have a choice. Dusk was still a rookie. Hunter was an emotional wreck. And Fern had three kids and a paraplegic husband to look after.

I had no choice but to step up and lead even though I didn't know what I was doing, and none of the others could cover for me the way Mazie had. And my lack of ability — combined with our lack of cohesion — showed in our tributes.

In nineteen years as the head mentor, I only managed to get four tributes past the bloodbath. Of those four, only two managed to get past the first day, and only one finished in the top half.

Not all of the failures were my fault. Over the years, I've had more than my fair share of tributes who had no interest in doing anything that might have helped me help them.

Some gave up on life the second the escort called their name — which is what I would have done if Mazie hadn't been there to pull me back from the brink — while others got discouraged after they saw just how much more talented the other tributes were than them during training and just stopped trying.

Some volunteered for the games to escape their own horrors at home and had no intention of winning and being forced to go back to them. Some volunteered because they knew they could live like a king or queen for a week before committing suicide by career. And some just flat-out refused to waste their last few precious days on Earth training to be a monster.

And then there are the ones who genuinely tried. The ones who, for one reason or another, actually wanted to win. The ones who did everything they could to help me help them do the impossible.

They all met the same fate. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Being a mentor has been a living hell. And as a result, I have been a disaster in that role and a total trainwreck as a husband, father, and grandfather.

But it doesn't have to be that way anymore. I can finally be Angus, the man, and start trying to be the husband, father, and friend my family deserves.

Because a President I have yet to meet — and will, God willing, only have to meet once — gave me the best gift a man like him could ever give me.

The gift of mercy.

I may not entirely trust his reasons for doing it. And I obviously don't trust his motives — but I would have to be an absolute moron not to take it.

I'm not going to live forever. And after spending most of my life helping spread pain and suffering to the four corners of Panem, it would be nice to spend what little time I have left spreading magic and happiness to the people I love.

It won't make up for all the terrible things I did as a tribute — or the failures I presided over as a mentor — but it would be a start.

So, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to share the first sunrise of spring with my grandchildren. And maybe, if I'm lucky, it'll still be half as magical as it was when I was a kid.

Athena Stone (Former District 2 Tribute and Victor of the 99th Hunger Games)

This isn't how it was supposed to be. Winning the Hunger Games was supposed to be the first of many steps on my quest for immortality. Not the last one on a much shorter quest for irrelevance.

But that's what it is now that President Ashwood has forcibly retired me.

In one thirty-second blip in a five-plus minute speech, that brain-dead asshole destroyed everything I spent my entire life working for. He turned twelve years of blood, sweat, and tears into a joke and deprived me of the reward I earned by winning the Hunger Games.

And the worst part is, I'm the only one who sees it that way. Everyone else — including my so-called friends — thinks I'm the luckiest person alive.

One of them even had the nerve to tell me I should be grateful that I get all the benefits of being a victor without the drawbacks. And she's not the only one who feels that way.

My own parents — who raised me from birth to be a Hunger Games victor — said this was a win-win for me. They don't understand why I'm so upset about what he did. And what's worse is they don't want to understand.

And why would they? They've done their part. They raised me to win the Hunger Games, and I did. Now they get to enjoy the perks of being the parents of a Hunger Games victor.

They'll never have to deal with the soul-crushing reality of being swept aside and forgotten by the people who used to worship the ground you walked on like I have to. I'll spend the rest of my life dealing with the fact that I did everything I was supposed to — that I gave Panem the blood-soaked spectacle it craved — and still got screwed.

I was the darling of the Capitol — the Titaness of District Two — and the victor of the Ninety-Ninth Hunger Games. Before that, I was the smartest kid in District Two and the best career trainee in the academy.

And now, I'm nothing. And it's all President Ashwood's fault.

He did this to me, and I'll never forgive him for it. And if that makes me selfish, childish, ungrateful, or any of the other pathetic insults that have been hurled my way by people who are too stupid to understand why I'm upset, then so be it.

I'd rather be called names by people who are too stupid to insult me properly than keep my mouth shut and pretend I'm ok with what's happening when I'm not — even if that's what a proper victor is supposed to do.

A/N: Hello everyone. I hope you're all doing well today, and I hope you all enjoyed this little sneak peek inside the minds of our oldest and youngest living victors. It was fun to sit down and rewrite these and doing so gave me a few ideas about how I might want to go about doing the tribute introductions. And I'm also curious about what everyone else thinks about these kinds of chapters going forward.

Do you enjoy these little looks inside the minds of the people surrounding the games, or would you rather they be kept to a story-necessary minimum with a greater focus on the tributes?