The Fourth Annual Writer Games: Canon

The Assassin | Dioria Rose

This is one of her last breaths.

Amidst the perfect poisons of the arena, Marbella Price is dying. She lies on a cliff top, surrounded by eerily green grass and far-too-fragrant flowers, and an axe lies buried in her head. Marbella wheezes and gasps, screams and cries, but nothing will change the fact that she is dying. A few feet away, Haymitch Abernathy kneels at the edge of the cliff, holding his guts inside his stomach. If she could just get to him, Marbella could finish him off, but she can't fucking move. Even trying to crawl fills her with agony and makes her head spin as she falls back down to the ground. However much she tries, there's nothing left to do. Her only hope is to outlast him, but she can already feel her brain slowing as its systems start to shut down. She always thought death would be instantaneous, but it isn't, and this is much worse and

And a cannon sounds overhead, and the fiftieth Hunger Games have their victor, and it isn't Marbella Price. It's Haymitch Abernathy.

In the Capitol, people gasp and clamour. How clever of him to notice the force field, how interesting of the Gamemakers to give tributes the opportunity to use the arena against each other! In the Gamemaker Suite, people curse and hurry to figure out how they're going to present this, how they're going to explain that a lanky teenager from Twelve of all places exploited their system. In Twelve, people celebrate in a quiet, subdued way, smiling to see that for once someone will be coming home. In One, people grunt and groan and hiss at the screen, muttering about the unfairness and the cheapness of Haymitch's trick.

In One, Dioria Rose stares at her screen, puzzled. Marbella Price is dead. Even stranger, Marbella Price lost. The young woman who pinned her in wrestling just weeks ago lost to someone with no training, no skill with weapons, no sponsors, and no odds at survival. It happens, of course, but this feels like a betrayal. If Marbella hadn't won wrestling, Dioria might've won the Reaping Tournament, and she would've gone into the Games instead, and she wouldn't have fallen for Haymitch's cheating. She would be a victor by now, and Haymitch Abernathy would be dead.

Only it's not that simple. It's never that simple. Dioria knows that now, knows that there are a million ways one can die in the Hunger Games and that only a few of them revolve around an actual tribute. There's a myriad of mistakes one can make that can turn out to be fatal, and she's made plenty of her own. So far, none of them have gotten back to her, but that's only a matter of time. This is the endgame, now. There are only two tributes left.

A canon rings to confirm that Moira Holiday is dead, and Dioria shuffles on her Victor's throne. The Games replay before her, now, and watching it from an outside perspective is exhilarating. They've done a goo job of editing her, made her seem deliberate rather than brash, strategic rather than chaotic, but Dioria knows the truth. However clever you are, however prepared, everything fades away in the moment. You're boiled down to your survival, to your instincts, and everything becomes a matter of life and death. There's no strategy in the moment, not unless it's internalized; you just cross your fingers and hope for the best. In her case, the best happened. She'd say she always knew it would, but did she really? When she stumbled in the end, she thought she was done for. She spent hours beating herself up after skipping out on the feast; she didn't know, then, that it would turn out for the best. But the Games are entertainment, and entertainment is performance, and performance is lying.

So if they ask, no, she was not afraid. Yes, she always knew she'd win. After all, she's Dioria fucking Rose. She's a winner through and through.

When Linwood appears onscreen, Dioria shakes for the first time. It's barely noticeable, little more than a thin tremor in her left hand as she grips her throne more tightly, but she feels it. There's no way the audience could tell, not with a million lights burning her eyes and their eyes on her long, slender legs. She's the picture of the victor the Capitol longs for; they've been waiting for two years now, dissatisfied by Haymitch's lack of poise, but finally she can feed them.