The Black Widow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

71st Games

I honestly wasn't expecting much from this year's tribute. She was confident like Sapphire but she didn't have the talent to back it up despite being five years older than last year's tribute. Unsurprisingly, she died in the first week of the games. The surprising thing was how.

When we hit the final eight, a girl called Johanna Mason had attacked our tribute, who had an axe. The fight was short and it ended with Johanna- the girl with the lowest training score in history- walking away with blood on her axeblade. No-one had expected her to survive the bloodbath, let alone what came after. For the rest of the games, Johanna went on one of the most vicious killing sprees in the history of the Hunger Games. After all that, it was no surprise that she was crowned Victor 3 days after that.

But that just began one of the worst nights of my life. Apparently, President Snow had wanted to reward his Head Gamemaker for an entertaining game with the gift of a night with a victor. Me.
All of the other awful experiences I'd had in the past paled in comparison with that night. If it wasn't bad enough having to express love to the man who had designed the games that had given me so much trauma, Seneca Crane also had a certain inclination for punishing those at his mercy. I don't know why that surprised me as much as it did considering what his job was.

At the end of the night, I left his room with cuts and bruises all over my body. I made it back to the tribute living quarters without encountering any mirrors but as soon as I was in the room and had washed off the blood, I knew that at least a few of these were going to scar.
I wrapped a white dressing robe around me, knowing the blood would stain it but far beyond caring, and set off to find someone to help me.
The first person I found was Cinna. His eyes widened in surprise as he saw my robe, soaked with blood.
"I need your help," I said, showing him the cuts,
"Those are going to need stitches," he said, "We should go to a doctor."
"NO!" I exclaimed, then turned my volume down, "Sorry, no. I don't want to go to a doctor. Do you think you could do it?" He nodded grimly,
"I guess." I was so grateful- I didn't want anyone touching me, let alone a Capitol doctor. But I knew Cinna, I trusted him. And I knew he would keep this a secret from the other victors. Something about this just made me want to hide this from them.
Cinna left for a few minutes and returned with a first aid kit. He began to stitch up the cuts and apply a salve. I barely felt the pain of the needle as it wove in and out through my skin. When he was done, I thanked him and headed back to my room. I didn't tell anyone about that night for years. I hid my scars well. Both physical and psychological.

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72nd Games

My tribute had just died, the screen going dark before my eyes. She hadn't even lasted the first day.
"Tough job huh," Johanna Mason said walking up to stand behind my chair.
"Don't you have a tribute to being looking after," I told her leaning forward to put my head in my hands. I didn't want to talk to her right now. Not when she had somehow got out of the thing that continued to be the bane of my existence. It wasn't fair that she got to stay home and wallow in self pity while I was stuck in the games.
"Died in the bloodbath," she said without remorse, "Do you want to get a drink."
"Why not," I said, "I was planning on being drunk by noon anyway."

Johanna and I walked over to the bar to get drinks then sat down in the lounge area,
"So I've been wanting to talk to you about something," she said, showing some human emotion, "It's about what Snow does to the victors."
"Oh."
"On the... on the last night of my victory tour, he asked me if I would... if I would do it and I said no, of course not." I knew where this was going. "But when I got home, my dad was dead. Now Snow says he'll kill my mum too if I don't agree."
"And what do you want me to say?" I asked, sipping at my wine,
"Should I say yes?"
"Only if you love your Dad more than you love your will to live."
"Did you say yes?" she asked,
"Obviously," I told her, not in the mood to talk about this, "I still have two siblings, don't I." She fell quiet,
"I don't think I can do it."
"But you will," I said, "Eventually. Because if you don't, he will keep killing until there is nobody left that you love." She didn't reply for a very long time,
"Did he ever kill anyone of yours?"
"My parents. The first time he sent me to... to an appointment, I wanted to run, but the man wouldn't let me and he forced me down. Let's just say I forgot how sharp my nails were." She laughed,
"I'd almost forgotten how you won your games. I guess they call you the Black Widow for a reason." I grimaced,
"I guess they do. It started as a way to avoid this life, now it seems it's become my life."

Over the next couple years, Johanna, Finnick and I became very close. We were the closest in age as far as victors went and it felt almost normal to be around people around our age. It was also the bond of shared experiences that held us together.
Johanna ended up declining Snow's offer in the most dramatic way possible: she said yes and then she took an axe into her first appointment. She claimed she wouldn't have been able to live like we did and knew she would slip up and lose her mum eventually. She might as well not prolong the suffering and if it meant taking out a capitol citizen in the process, all the better.

I thought it would all be okay. But sometimes things don't work out like that.