𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐬 | 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟕𝟔𝐭𝐡 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐬 ✔️

Afterword by Griff Cohen

The story you just read is one that is beginning to fade into the history of the Games. Nobody bothers to remember the Games from twenty or thirty years ago. Even I'm starting to forget details with age. Maybe it's for the best; I never wanted to remember any of it anyway.

As the years pass, those who died get left behind. It feels like nowadays, I'm the only one who cares enough to remember those who died. Aurora, Axel, Selina and Rory, Phoebe... even Phoenix. Even the mentors who attended that very first Games are all gone now with the exception of Irma, whose memory is even worse than mine.

I sure had a fiery spirit when I was a young man. You may have expected me to start a revolution, betray the Capitol and marry a woman, or most obviously, just kill myself. But here I am, nearly fifty years later, and I've done none of that. To be fair, the reason I am still alive to tell this story is the fact that I have never done these things.

It may seem cruel to some of you that I'm stuck under the restrictive gaze of the Capitol. I would just marry a girl in secret, I hear you saying. Maybe you think I'm weak for bowing to Snow. I had to do what needed to be done for my own survival, though. I've matured enough to realize that surviving the Games is a gift, and I owe it to those who died to not waste my life for unworthy causes. When you're being watched for fifty years, you grow accustomed to it, as awful as that sounds.

After I returned from the Victory Tour, I planted the bouquet Snow gave me in the garden outside my front porch. I put up the decorations in my living room and I painted the walls purple, Aurora's favorite color. In the 77th Hunger Games, both of my tributes died, and I gave both of their families bellflowers of their own. The next year, I did the same, and eventually, I gave them out to the masses. Now, everyone in the District gets two bellflowers for both tributes, but if we're lucky, we'll only get one.

The decades have passed painfully. I've watched hundreds of children die, many under my supervision. The Capitol has made me do unspeakable things over the years, knowing I can't say no. The pain of my own experiences made it hard to help those I was supposed to take care of. I got over the pain of Aurora's death very, very slowly.

The Victors' Village has many full houses now; I'm no longer alone. Some of us have families. Others, like me, stay alone in our too-large homes. We have each other, though. As I sit on the rocking chair out on my porch every evening to watch the sunset, I experience the beauty of everything I've built. I hear children laughing and screaming from Seamus' house next door. I see a pie in Georgina's window, freshly baked; I should go ask for a slice, but I know she'll bring one out for me. I look out over the purple bellflower bushes, so huge now that they produce hundreds of flowers each year. And after so many years of pain, of confusion, of rage... I'm finally at peace.