Silver ↠ Catching Fire

two ━ ode to the underdogs

CHAPTER TWO;
ode to the underdogs

▬▬▬▬▬▬

( content warning: hints of the capitol being icky )

     The trick is not to get attached. Vesper has learned this the hard way, after five years of watching boys and girls from District Six die in the arena under her watch. Of course, she can't forget their names or their faces completely, no matter how hard she tries to sterilise them in her memory.

    Her first year as mentor, the Sixty-Ninth Hunger Games — Delta and Ferdinand. The girl was a scrawny teenager living next to the dockyards, and the boy a muscular baggage handler at the train station. No one gives you a rule book for how to navigate your first year. Even with the kind-spirited Irma at her side, it was something Vesper had to battle through on her own terms. Part of her naively assumed it would be easier this way. She didn't know these kids; they weren't Kirk or Cheyenne or anyone from back home, so surely there was a degree of separation, right?

     But that was the thing. Vesper did get to know them. She remembered that Delta was allergic to the make-up the stylists lathered on her in the chariot parade, making a note to steer clear of it for the interviews. She took notice when Ferdinand managed to catch the eyes of the Career tributes after he impressed them with his sword-fighting. The very nature of her role as mentor, Vesper realised, demanded her utmost attention towards her tributes. It was Irma's job and hers to advise them and prepare them for the arena...

     Although who could prepare you for that?

     From her side, no one prepared Vesper for the crushing feeling when she saw Delta killed in the Bloodbath, after a measly couple weeks of knowing her. Ferdinand, however, went quite far...

It is a phenomenon known to happen occasionally. Whether due to more investment from sponsors or motivation on the tribute's part, it has sometimes been the case that a tribute from the district of that year's incumbent victor could progress quite far into the Hunger Games. However, the chances of winning on that momentum are much scarcer. Only the Career districts tend to have that luxury, with the odd exceptions you could count on one hand.

     The exception certainly didn't happen that year. Ferdinand flickered out in fourth place in the headlock of a boy from One.

     Vesper tries not to think too hard about the rest.

     Year Two. The Seventieth Hunger Games. The boy and girl escaped the Bloodbath, only to be obliterated in the giant earthquake-induced flood, which swept the traumatised Annie Cresta into victory.

     Year Three. She watched Johanna Mason hurl an axe into the chest of one of her very own tributes, only to now be mentoring alongside that fierce girl from Seven who indeed became victor. It opened up to Vesper the strange dichotomy between her perceptions of tributes when you're in the arena, and the way they shift once you are out of it and you're all in the same, scarred boat.

     And the fourth year... the fourth year.

     Vesper should have known that it would come one day. Eventually, the odds would fall on someone as young — no, younger than Icarus was — as a twelve year-old boy named Polo stepped up to the stage. She will never forget the way her heart plummeted into her boots when she saw him, dirt on his nose and wobbling little knees. And she cannot bring herself to think too long about the shyness with which Polo asked her questions and depended on her in his final days.