The Black Widow | A Hunger Games Fanfiction

Secrets

I was eating lunch when they approached,
"Please can you come with me, Miss Gold," the man asked. I got cautiously to my feet, sliding my tray away from me.
"Why?"
"President Coin would like to see you." This couldn't be good.
I followed the man up several flights of stairs to the command room. The last time I had been here I had stormed out. I wondered if this time would end the same way.
When I arrived, Finnick, Haymitch and Beetee were already sitting around the table alongside Coin, Plutarch and that camera lady- Cressida. It seemed I was the last to arrive. Coin gave me a grim nod as I sat and cut straight to the chase,
"We have decided to send out a team to rescue the victors in the Capitol," she began, "it's a volunteer only team, of which we have already assembled. They are embarking as we speak." So why did she need us. I didn't need to speak it out loud for Coin to answer my question. Damn, that lady was creepy, "In order for the assault to be successful, we need to air a propo as distraction. However, we will need to film it live in order for it to last as long as we need it to. The propo that we need to air today needs to capture the attention of the Capitol in a way that will make it impossible for them to look away."
"In other words we need to shock them?" Finnick clarified. Coin nodded,
"Easy," I said, "All we need to do is cut up a pretty dress and there'll be public outrage. Cut up a hundred on live TV and they might just overthrow Snow themselves." Coin wasn't impressed.
"There isn't much that would truly shock the people of the Capitol," she said, "but there is one thing that could work. The one thing about the Hunger Games that the ordinary people never found out about."
"What happens after," Finnick said, going pale.
"No," I told her firmly, "I don't want the whole world knowing what they did to us. I don't want their pity. I won't be used like this."
"Rose is right," Haymitch agreed, "you can't ask them to do this. Not after everything the Capitol put them through. To make them talk about it would be to open wounds that should be allowed to stay shut."
"But if it's the only way to save them," Finnick whispered, his face still visibly blanched. I hated that he was right. I said nothing, but twenty minutes later I was stood next to him infront of a camera.

The room had begun to fill in by the time they were ready to start the broadcast. This just kept getting worse. I thought that was as bad as it could get, until Katniss walked in as well.
But I didn't have any time to pull out of it before the cameras started rolling and Finnick began to speak,
"President Snow used to sell me," he began, getting straight to the point, "or my body at least. If a victor is considered desirable, President Snow will give them as a gift, or allow people to buy them. I won my games at fourteen, so it was a few years before they could get their hands on me, but once they did... I wasn't the only one, but I was the most popular. You don't have a choice in the matter. If you refuse, Snow will kill someone that you love. And he will keep killing. Until you are alone." He paused. It was my turn now,
"Many of you may not recognise me anymore," I said, "My name is Rose Gold, though many of you may know me as the Black Widow, or the victor of the 69th Hunger Games. When I was chosen to volunteer for District 1, I was put through a form of genetic engineering, which was designed to make me appear more desirable to the Capitol in order to get more sponsors. It was primitive, done through a chip embedded in my neck, and when I was struck by lightning, the chip broke and fused to my spine. Any move to remove it now would leave me paralysed from the neck down. I now have to put up with being knocked out by jolts of electricity to my brain at random moments. Or killed.
When I arrived in the Capitol, all the outfits I was given were designed to make me more desirable. Sometimes they were see through, others I was basically nude. The night before my games began, I found out about what happens to desirable victors after the games and decided to make myself so repulsive to the Capitol that I would never meet that fate. Which is why I killed Mason and Morgan in the way I did. Suffice to say, it didn't work."
Now it was Finnick's turn. The rest was on him,
"In order to make themselves feel better, my 'clients' would give me gifts of money or gold or jewels. But I soon found a much better currency: secrets. And I have accumulated alot of them. And so many interesting ones about our dear President Snow." He began to reel of hundreds of secrets about all types of people in the Capitol. I knew many of them, those who had bought me, or the ones that I had been whispered to about over the pillow at night. Others I didn't. The capitolites seemed to though. Every so often, one of them would let out a noise or exclamation of surprise or disgust at the things they heard about their friends, or neighours, or even family members.
"And finally," Finnick concluded, "We move on to our esteemed President Coriolanus Snow: a young man to rise to power and a smart one to keep it. How did he do it? One word: poison. A poisoned cup of wine shared at a meeting. It was said he even sipped from the same cup as his victims to dispel suspicion. But even antidotes fail sometimes. He still wears a mutated rose in his lapel to cover up the smell of blood from the sores in his mouth." Finnick continued to list instances when Snow had poisoned someone. There were so many names. So many secrets. I had never realised how many times Finnick had been sold.
But as he was speaking, I began to feel the sparking in my neck. I stumbled out of view of the camera. Finnick turned in alarm, stopping his speech. In the brief silence before I passed out, I heard someone shout that they'd lost signal.
I knew that if someone died now, it would be my fault.