𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 [𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐤 - 𝐇𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬]

2 | 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐡

Content warning at the end notes: please skip down and check if you feel like you should!

N E O

— IT IS A GREAT MISFORTUNE, when I catch the stumbling Victor of the 66th Hunger Games just before she plummets off the stage. Not necessarily because I want her to break her leg on live television, mid-way through her speech, but because it draws unwanted attention to the lines of Crocas Khatri's boys bordering the edge of the stage in descending age, as is customary every year. We are meant to be seen, briefly, as we are the future Victors and Vanquished. But there has never once been a situation as disastrous as this in District 1, and later, when I have my arms locked around the Victor's chest, with the boys flanking me clutching my shirt to keep us both from falling off the stage, I wonder how brutally I would've been punished had I not caught her.

I try to ignore the cameras as I help the Victor stand upright. She seems flustered and somehow maternal, which is jarring when I best recall her for setting up a variety of traps around the arena — one of which pierced Lyle straight through the eyes. She turns to me, looking up at nothing, then blinking rapidly and looking down to meet my eyes. She hadn't expected me to be so short, and it forces a smile to tug at my face. She laughs and blushes and whispers to me, "How embarrassing!" Before collecting herself and stepping over to the microphone to comfort the worried crowds. At the end of her speech, she turns to me and thanks me where all of Panem can hear, and I think that she believes she is being kind, so I grin and wave her off. Something cold seeps into my bones, though. I wonder what this will change.

It changes a great deal, apparently. The 67th Hunger Games pass next with the victory of another District 1 Career I'd never seen in Martius Mansion — a blond, adonis-like man that looks the epitome of classic beauty, with a tall, broad body swollen with so much muscle his head almost looks too small on his thick neck. Augustus Braun is faultless, quintessential; patriotic and adored by the Capitol, so much so that when the 68th Reaping Day comes around, they are demanding for another tribute that is just as gentlemanly and cheerful as their "Cavalier Career."

Or, more accurately, they are calling for me.

I do not know how it comes to pass, but my hair becomes some kind of fashion statement amongst the Capitolites. At the time of the 66th Victory Tour Fiasco, I am sporting a fluffed undercut style, dyed with honey ends and black roots that contrasts nicely with my wheatish skin. It is the first and only time I do something so ostentatious with my appearance, and it comes back to bite me. At the time, I'd only been after something reminiscent of home. Now, however, the people of the Capitol have weaponised it so that I can never leave their memories. They remember me as the young Career that caught a well-loved Victor — although, by the end of their gossip, they now seem to believe that she would've fallen to her death had I not been there. It all morphs into something fantastical and taxing on my being.