A little hope is effective.

Haymitch's Tale.

I don't know what Haymitch is about to say, and as I sit in the padded chair I try and ready myself for whatever is to come because his story already is horrifying. As he sits perched on the arm, watching the screen he picks aimlessly at a thread on his pants.

'I was Victor twenty-four years ago...I was the last quarter-quell. Have you heard of it?' I shake my head. 'That was the year they asked for double, two boys and two girls; so when I faced out on the morning of the first day I faced not twenty-four tributes but forty-eight. The arena that year was an elixir of torture. Nothing was safe, the only food was that in the cornucopia everything else was poison. I thought I was going to die but somehow, I didn't. I was an academic, cleverer than what most were for some reason and I played it to my advantage. I teamed up with a girl from my district a pretty girl from the town side of Twelve. She was younger than me I was strong and at sixteen well built for a boy from the Seam. Together we spilt our spoils, she was clever had made herself a lethal weapon and together we killed but I wanted to go further into the greenery and find the end, we did and then...well we found the end and there was nothing I threw a rock and she got annoyed that we'd wasted time and we spilt; as she left and disappeared into the forest the rock appeared again and I knew I'd found something I wasn't supposed to...before I could do anything else I heard her scream. I didn't even think I just ran, I found her as these birds were finishing her off; putting their beaks through her neck...I held her as she died. I took her weapons and what little she had and somehow survived the following days, it was on the final day me and the girl fought; it was agony I'd managed to carve her eye out and she'd ripped my stomach apart as we fought through the forest. I was moments from death but with everything in me I kept going till I got to the edge; she with what was left of her strength threw something at me and it missed as I fell to the floor and went over the edge, she stood and watch as I began to convulse, unknown to her the force field bounced the weapon back and whatever it was lodged into her head and killed her... I was winner but they weren't happy because I'd found a weapon that was never meant to be yielded. If they could of blew me up and saved her, they would have but they couldn't...and I was Victor.' I look at Haymitch and see nothing but shape as inside my head I'm seeing it all; a broken Haymitch outsmarting the Capital, a young, handsome boy the enemy.

'I came out of the arena, and woke like you would have- I had no chance I was the same hard-faced boy who Caesar had interviewed except now I was an enemy, because I'd proved them stupid. With my time in the Capital up I got on the train and locked all the memories away; my mum and brother were going to be safe in a pretty house with money; my girl...on the ride home I was in the tv room with my mentor. The tv was silent and then when we were not even an hour from home, the tv flickered on and the capital seal came up and I noticed the building on the square before I saw the people down on their knees with their heads covered. A big voice was coming over the speakers, reminding the districts that crimes against the Capital wouldn't go unpunished, it wasn't till later I realised that was a direct threat to me. the firing squad were behind them all and the three people were small and little, the smallest was a boy. They shot them in the back of the head, they hit the floor and still I didn't know who they were but as if to provoke me they removed the hoods and there they lay my mum, my girl and my younger brother. My brother was disfigured, the bullet had come out destroyed his face but my mum and girl were perfect except for the bullet wound in their skull. I was destroyed but my mentor with difficulty showed me why, and in that moment, I knew I was alone- I would never trust myself to have a girl or a family and if anything, it turned me cold after the first few years of watching my tributes die. So, when I was given a chance to fight them, I didn't think twice because they took away my family and my future in one shot, a life of isolation makes everything sharpen into focus and the alcohol was to numb the pain for a while but now if anything it's fuelled the fire.'

'How?' I ask gently, confused as to how the alcohol has done anything but numb him.

'Because I've been numb for so very long that now sober and with the ability to feel; the pain of what has been done to me is even more powerful and now my need to destroy the Capital's hold is stronger than ever because I have denied myself everything so I never have to feel the pain of that magnitude again. They have taken forty-six tributes of mine, every one of them is dead and now I have a chance to get two home and the thing that is bothering me most is that me and her are so very alike and her dramatics have seen her to be an enemy of such and I hold with me the worry that they won't let her win because I still have the debt of making them a fool and she has showed herself in ill-favour and in all of that there is a boy; I fear that I will never get one home because the Capital never forget.'

I can see all that too, so very clear a freak point in the games which rids them of Twelve.

'You see Ayda, they don't forget when they have been outsmarted, or when the odds aren't in their favour.'