PREDATOR | THE HUNGER GAMES

NO ONE EVER REALLY WINS

They never really tell the citizens of Panem what goes on after the victor is announced.

The cameras shut off, so why would they?

No one knows the suspicion and paranoia that explodes in your chest when the invisible aircraft comes to extract them. No one knows the isolation you're put into immediately after-being put into one's own separate part of the aircraft because she was crazed and unclean.

No one knows that all of this happens in mere minutes, and that the change from survival to praise is almost too immediate to handle.

Lara remembered being lifted into the jet. She remembered being tossed into a metal cell. In a blink, she was back at the training center.

She remembers being led to the remake center where a crew of stylists and a couple guards had to wrangle her into the bath. Lara thought she was being attacked and drowned, so it took more effort to calm her down. She didn't recall when she punched the guards, but she remembered the racing heart she had. They stuck a large needle in her arm and that was the end of it.

Clouds wafted through her pupils. This was a foggier memory: the blood turning the bath water red, the grime and ash making it darken. The pain in her wounds had alighted once more at the scalding water.

She remembered being wheeled into a separate room on a stretcher. Another needle pumped medicine through her veins to help her sleep, and she woke up with no more wounds. They'd healed any resemblance of imperfection she'd gained from her experience in the arena. It was as if none of it ever happened.

And in another blink, she was taken to the room she sat in now. Facing out the window, looking down at the city, but not really seeing anything at all. Warren was hiding behind the garden statue over there. Della was facedown in the fountain. She found herself hanging from a tree branch with the very rope she'd used to kill the others. Nothing seemed real. Part of her believed she'd wake up from her dream and be thrown back into the arena-it wasn't possible she had won. It defeated the odds.

She stared until the door behind her creaked, breaking the silence. Her head whipped around immediately, going into defense mode.

An unfamiliar woman peered in, followed by a man and two younger children-one boy and one girl. They couldn't have been from the Capitol because their attire was way too simple and dirty.

The woman met her wary eyes. It seemed as if she was already crying, but when she saw Lara her tears burst again. The man clutched what she assumed was his wife and held her up, holding his cries back as well. The children stood silently, unwilling to weep for the sake of their mother.

The women sniffled and attempted to pull herself together, "I-I'm sorry. I just can't believe..."

Her eyes looked Lara over, not with hate but with love and admiration. When Lara met her gaze entirely, she knew exactly who the woman was. How could she not when her son resembled her so similarly?

The father attempted to speak but his voice cracked, "Our son..."

No. They shouldn't be here. I can't see them. It's too much.

Lara's eyes watered but she tried to stay strong. Weakness wasn't allowed in or out of the arena. She rubbed at the bracelet on her wrist, the one thing the Capitol stylists did not confiscate.

Her voice came out hushed and cracked, "You're Atlas' family?"

The parents nodded and broke down again.

Atlas got his father's looks and his mother's kind eyes. His siblings, who were barely young enough to be reaped, had similar features to his own-the features she had to recall beneath the mauled mass of flesh she'd last seen of him.