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The Life of Haymitch Abernathy: Valiant Victor, Mediocre Mentor and Reluctant Revolutionary

Published: 76 ATT

Forward:  Okay, so let’s get one thing straight. This is not my idea. Personally, I doubt anyone will have any interest in reading about my life - either now or in the future. I’m doing this under protest and the only reason I’ve agreed to this frankly stupid idea is that Katniss and Peeta think it’s important to record all this for posterity and have told me that unless I write it myself my humble contribution to the downfall of Panem will be written for me, probably by Prim or some other bright young thing with more optimism than brain. So here it goes and, if you don't like, well, in the immortal words of Tom Lehrer - you should never have let me begin.

Haymitch Abernathy

The first time I met Katniss Everdeen she was a squawking eight-day old baby being adoringly ferried about by her ridiculously proud father. I didn’t even stick around long enough to learn her name, I just turned on my heel and walked away.

Henrik Everdeen and I had been friends since we were kids mucking about in the streets of the Seam pretending that we were knights errant off on a grand adventure. When I think back on those times I’m reminded that there was a time before the those games that I felt free and happy. It seems such a long time ago now, far longer than the measly eight years it’s been since I emerged out of that hell hole.

I was 16 when my number came up. Two more years and I would have been home free, I would have aged out of the reaping pool and I could look forward to a life of poverty, grime and slaving in the mines until my no doubt early death from starvation, cancer or one of the not infrequent mining accidents.

I was so close to freedom. So tantalisingly close. But not close enough.

‘Lucky you,’ my escort told me repeatedly during the trip to the Capitol, as if being reaped was something everyone should be grateful for.

Lucky me, that I got to gorge myself on Capitol food before being made to perform like a circus monkey for the empty-headed masses.

Lucky me that I was one of the tributes for the Second Quarter Quell. What an honour that instead of just facing off against 23 other kids I got to fight for survival against 47 instead.

There were four of us picked that year. The only positive I could see was that I hardly knew the other three tributes. It had been my greatest fear since I can remember that I would end up in that arena with someone I knew, someone I had grown up with, someone I loved. Some one I wouldn’t want to, or be able to kill.

It doesn’t matter how much I drink, I can still remember that day with crystal clarity. The feeling of being dragged forward and up the steps into the Justice building by the Peacekeeper. The frenzied goodbyes fitted into the 10 minute slot that the oh so generous Capitol had allotted for those doomed to die and then the feast that was grotesquely spread out in the train like we were pigs to be fattened for slaughter.  

I only had two people come say goodbye to me. My father, I knew, would already be trying to crawl inside the nearest bottle of Ripper’s finest. He was like that every reaping day and I couldn’t see any reason why he would break from the habit of a life-time to farewell his oldest son. My mother came though, came and hugged me and told me that she loved me and left crying into an already sodden handkerchief. It was a goodbye – we both knew it. Both knew the odds of me coming back from the games.

The only other person who came was Henrik, my best friend since I was a boy. He gripped my arm tightly as my escort tutted in the background. He didn’t offer useless platitudes or tell me I’d be okay. He just looked me right in the eyes and said, “stay alive – whatever happens, just stay alive.”

At the time it had made me laugh – the horrible gulping hysterical laugh of the condemned – it seemed so ridiculous at the time.

It turned out to be the best advice I’ve ever had.

Those words got me through training, through the ghastly experience that was the arena, through Mayseelie’s death and nearly being disembowelled. They got me through the Victor interview, which was somehow even worse than the one before the Games, they got me through the painfully quiet train ride home and the disaster that awaited me there.

I still see them sometimes in my nightmares. See their sightless eyes and bloodied bodies as they were laid out in the Justice building. What a fucking mockery that was. Ma, my little brother and my girlfriend were slaughtered on the order of the President. Where was the justice in any of this?

The head Peacekeeper gave me a note as I stood looking down at three of the four people I loved most in the world. I had survived the games, but I hadn’t won.

Lucy Gray Baird had told me that on the way home.  “No one wins those games,” my mentor said sadly, “you just have survivors.”

Lucy’s wisdom hadn’t made sense at the time. I had done it – beaten the odds – and now I could go home and get on with my life. I could help my family out now, make sure they had enough to eat and maybe even think about getting married to my childhood sweetheart.

It wasn’t to be.

Snow had made sure of that.

My trick with the forcefield had to be punished.

The lives of my family and future was the price of my survival.

I wished I had died in the arena.

I don’t remember much of the weeks following my homecoming. As soon as I was able, I took up my old man’s approach to life and lived inside the bottle – money was no object now (thanks to the generosity of the Capitol) and Ripper was always happy to help a Seam boy out with contraband booze.

Lucy gave me until the week before my Victory tour before she came over, confiscated my stash and chewed my arse out. She may have been older than sin but Lucy could still pack one hell of a punch when pushed and evidently I’d been annoying her for a while. Once I was sober enough to listen, my old mentor set to pounding a few home truths into what she called my mutton head. It wasn’t good news, either.

I can still remember that acrid taste in my mouth as Lucy explained in her usual acerbic way just what a precarious position I was now in and the importance of making myself as inconspicuous as possible to the Capitol or risk ending up lying alongside my family in the District 12 cemetery.   

Henrik arrived just after the old lady had finished dishing out her wisdom. He stayed with me that week, bunking off school to get me sober, shaved and ready to meet the Capitol reporters.

The tour was as dreadful as I thought, and I’ve never been more grateful than when I was finally allowed to return home to 12. The ball at the President’s mansion was by far and away the worst part though. Having to stand with Snow and smile at that snake like he hadn’t had my family murdered in cold blood was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I got through it, Henrik’s words looping round and round like a mantra in my head.  

I was good when I got back home. Cut down my drinking and actually started meeting up with olds friends again. Life seemed to be getting back to something approaching normal and before I knew it a year had passed and it was time for the 51^st Hunger Games.

It was a shit show.

The whole fucking thing was one glorified catastrophe from start to finish and shown in high definition on every fucking channel.

My first year as mentor and my tributes barely made it 20 minutes before dying. The girl was brutally hacked to pieces by the Careers, but it was the boy’s death that hammered home the point Lucy had been trying to make those months ago before that awful tour. A freak lightning strike got him.

The commentators oohed and talked about bad luck.

The arena was a controlled environment. The Game makers controlled everything from the hours of daylight to the temperature.  

Freak lightning strike, my arse. Only the vapid morons in the Capitol could believe that.

It was murder to convey a message.

Snow hadn’t forgotten my win the previous year and he certainly hadn’t forgiven me.

I’d liked the boy. Reed was smart and determined. He was also my friend’s little brother and shared Rhys’ quick silver smile and wry sense of humour. I had promised Rhys I would do my best for the boy.

It was a promise I shouldn’t have made.

I learnt two things from that first year of mentoring: there was nothing I can do to save my tributes and that caring for someone was the surest way of getting them killed.

The moment I got back to District 12 I dived straight back into the bottle. Lucy had smiled sadly at me, patted me on the shoulder and said eventually I’d get used to it before leaving me in my palatial Victor’s house that felt more like a mausoleum than a home.

My friends tried to see me after those first games. Henrik, Rhys and Glenn would take turns knocking on my door in the Victor’s village, shouting through the letter box that it wasn’t my fault and no one in 12 blamed me.

Rhys should have done, they all should have blamed me. Afterall, it was my fault – or rather the way he died was my fault.

Eventually though they gave up once it became clear that I wasn’t going to budge. It was the start of a cycle of drinking and isolation that would last years. Years that saw my friends and former neighbours move on, marry and have kids of their own while I stayed the same in the careful bubble I had carved out for myself. The time wasn’t wasted though, oh no, I used it to carefully cultivate the ultimate protection, a new image – one of a useless dipsomaniac, someone unthreatening who only won his games through a fluke.

It worked. The Capitol lost interest.

I couldn’t stop my tributes from dying, but I could at least make sure they weren’t picked on by the Game Makers.

So, yes, seven years later when I spotted my old mate Henrik showing off his new baby, I did the only mature, sensible thing I could think of… I ran away.  

The next time I met Katniss was several years later when I was out on one of my regular forays to get more booze from Ripper. There I was minding my own business as I staggered down one of the seedier streets in the Seam when something bowled into me and nearly took me out at the knees.

Taken out by a three-year-old cannon ball, oh if only the Capitol could have seen me. It really didn’t help that the laughing toddler just grinned up at me, completely unrepentant at the damage she’d just caused to both my knees and what’s left of my ego.

“I’m a cat, grrrr!” The little imp said with a grin, chubby hands pawing at my knees.

I blame the drink for the precious seconds it took me to realise that the sticky monster clinging to my legs was Henrik’s girl and my less than eloquent response of “errr.”

It would probably have got even more awkward if Henrik himself hadn’t appeared from around the corner at a run, only to stop and breath deeply with evident relief when he spotted his daughter.

I knew the exact moment he realised who her saviour was as my old friend’s eyes tightened momentarily before relaxing into a smile I knew I didn’t deserve.  

It should be so much harder than it was, but Henrik made it easy. Too easy. He smiled - not one of those polite, ‘I really don’t give shit but hey social convention says I need to do this smiles’ – a proper one, with teeth and crinkling around the eyes that shows it is genuine happiness, and it was directed at me, not his daughter. Me! Striding forwards, he clapped me on the arm as if it hadn’t been nearly a decade since we last saw each other, before bending down to pick up the little monster still trying to climb my legs.

He smiled again, bouncing the girl as he did and making her laugh. And that’s how I officially met Katniss Everdeen. It’s one of the few stories I relish telling, mostly because of how it still makes Kat squirm in embarrassment, but Peeta loves it as do the kids, who have only known her as the legendary Katniss Everdeen, saviour of Panem, and struggle reconcile that she could ever have been like them.

Things get a bit better after that meeting. A little bit brighter in an otherwise miserable world. The reaping that year is particularly horrid but this time Henrik, a laughing Katniss in tow, is there to greet me outside the station when I get back.

It helps.  

Whoever said we create our own hell was right. The period after the Games is always the worst, that’s what I’ve learnt over the years, as that’s when the screams and cries of the kids who died are loudest. The sad thing about this sort of trauma is that after a while you get sort of numb to it, numb to the damage it does to the psyche, numb to the darkness that makes a home in your head. Working in the mine six days a week means Henrik can’t be with me every day but he drops in when he can, usually with Katniss, to talk about meaningless stuff when the screams in my head get too loud or to sit in silent companionship on those days that feel like a living hell, and I’ll be forever grateful to my old friend for the hundred kindnesses he showed during that period.

Time is a funny thing. Those first few years when I was alone it seemed to drag by, day by endless fucking day. After meeting Henrik again the bloody thing sped up just as I wanted to slow down and savour each moment as it arrived. The Games were still an annual shit show but the burden seemed more bearable with Henrik’s steady presence and the little ray of sunshine that was his daughter, who had grown from a sticky toddler full of smiles and laughter into a bright little girl with endless curiosity about the world around her. At nearly six years old I was relieved to see that Katniss Everdeen was clearly taking after her father rather than her mother. Even at this young age she was independent, clever and resourceful, with the force of character typical of kids raised in the Seam - a place where you either thrive or you die and there’s no middle ground.

The years had brought another change though, Henrik now had a second child, a little girl called Primrose. He brought her a few times up to my house in the Victor’s village but unlike her older sister, Primrose cried every time she came so those visits quickly stopped. Maybe if they’d continued I’d have grown to care for her as much as I did for Katniss, but then again maybe not. Where Kat could have been a mirror image of Henrik, Prim was like a miniature version of her mother, Clarabel.

In the interests of historical accuracy I should probably admit that Clarabel and I did not – do not - get on. As a town girl, Clarabel moved in different social circles to us during school – in other words she, like most town kids, didn’t give Seam kids like me the time of day - and I was as surprised as anyone when she threw over the Mellark boy for Henrik. With her gentle blue eyes, golden hair and privileged upbringing she was about as far as you could get from life in the Seam and there’s a big part of me that’s always thought Henrik could have done better. It was a rocky start, and things might have eventually got better if not for that disastrous first meeting. After bumping into Henrik that day on the street he had invited me back to meet his wife. She was not impressed with her unexpected guest, or the fact that I might have thrown up in her backgarden, and made sure I knew it. The feeling was mutual and things sort of spiralled from there.

The eventual agreement, mediated by a resolutely calm and immovable Henrik, who refused to give up our friendship, was that he and Katniss would come and see me at my house. So that’s how things continued.

Things started to change just after Katniss’ seventh birthday when Henrik dropped into conversation that he was going to start teaching her to hunt. I knew things had been tight for years in the Everdeen household, things are always tight in the Seam, no matter how careful you are, but I had been helping out, buying a bit extra so I could send it home with Katniss when she dropped in sometimes after school. So I was a bit surprised with my friend’s announcement.

In his usual way, Henrik had patted my shoulder, dismissing my concerns with a smile. It was then I realised what the real reason was and it curdled my stomach with dread.

Katniss was seven. In less than five years she would be of an age to be reaped. Holy Shit Fucks.

Now, one thing that may surprise you good readers is that one of the rules around the annual slaughterfest that is the Hunger Games prohibits Districts from training their possible victims. If you’re thinking that this sounds fucking ridiculous considering what these children will be put through, then you’re right. It is. The problem is the Capitol – despite it being full of ninnyheaded, pompous, oblivious arses, there are just enough active braincells working for those running the show to realise the inherent danger in training entire generations to be killers. One killer (albeit often serial) a year is one thing. It’s manageable. That’s why we’re not allowed jobs, or really to do much at all. The whole point is to make the Victors seem as unthreatening and as powerless as possible.

One Victor a year is a contained problem. A population of trained potential killers, however, equals a huge potential problem. It’s an equation President Snow understands only too well – The Games are there to remind us of the might of the Capitol, to punish us in perpetuity for the sins of our forebears for daring to want a better a future. How long would the Districts remain cowed if they had a standing army of disaffected and angry residents?  

Not long, probably.

So the Capitol banned any and all official training. In reality this provides a nice little loophole. One that Districts 1 and 2 make use of every year, the smug bastards, which is why they win so often. I was invited there once as part of some Victor shindig, and we got a tour of their schools. They teach their students how to fight with swords and daggers and call it the ‘noble are of fencing’, javelin and axes get the fun name of ‘Field sports’, and so the list goes on. Don’t be fooled, the Capitol knows what 1 and 2 are doing and show their approval with their silence. 1 and 2 aren’t problem districts and so they don’t care. If 11 or 12 tried this the Peacekeepers would be here within hours to shut it down.

“I can’t protect her from the games,” Henrik had told me, “but I can do my best to prepare her.”

The words stuck with me, ringing in my head. There is nothing that can really prepare someone to enter the Games. There just isn’t. It’s an experience unlike any other. What my old friend was suggesting though was the best he could do with next to no resources. He hadn’t asked, and I knew he never would, but the question I went to sleep with that night was could I live with myself if I didn’t help.

Which is how less than a week later found me up at the crack of dawn, a time of day I have always detested, trudging through mud and rain to join Katniss’ first lesson in archery. Things sort of spiralled from there, and before I knew it I had become an integral part of Henrik’s bonkers plan. Sundays stopped being a drinking day and instead became about discussing survival strategies and teaching Kat about edible plants under the pretence of games to play while cooking.

Much to my amazement, Henrik’s plan seemed to be working and, even more bizarrely, I found myself actually enjoying life. Nothing could completely erase the Games from our thoughts, not when everything we were doing was about giving the girl the best odds we could, but somehow that place in the woods became a sanctuary from the morbid terror that followed me everywhere.  It became a breathing space, a place to just be.

I still go back there sometimes to look around it, find the old carving I made in honour of Katniss hitting her first bullseye, which has all our initials, and sit and listen to the mockingjays who still remember Henrik’s signature tune.

I didn’t exactly wake up one morning and decide I wanted to join a rebellion. Rather, I sort of stumbled into it – or rather a meeting and then because there was free booze I ended up staying. I really should have known that there’s no such thing as a free drink. Before I knew it, I was being asked for information about 12 and everything sort of snowballed from there.

One thing I can say with certainty is that in a place like Panem it’s much easier to get involved with rebellion than it is to get out of it – well, without dying anyway.

If I had been a good little brainwashed citizen I’d have just toddled over to the nearest Peacekeeper and told them what I knew. The chances of me surviving that experience would be low, but at least I could console myself as I was being tortured that it was all for the good of Panem.  As I actually possess a brain, that wasn’t an option I had considered for more than the two seconds between finishing my first drink and being given a second. It was during drink number three that I started to get to know Chaff – a fellow self-medicating Victor – and apparently agreed to come to the next meeting. Not that I remembered that when four hours later I lurched my way back to the training centre; which made for a surprise when Chaff appeared three days later to collect me for the next get together and set the pattern for the next couple of years.

It’s not that I became a convert to the cause overnight. At first I thought it was stupid – these people were courting disaster. The deaths of my family had shown me the futility of trying to fight against the regime or even attempt to. If Snow had organised their deaths because I had accidentally survived the Games, then what would he do to someone who actively plotted and conspired against him and his precious Capitol? Still, it was just nice drinking with people who were as angry as I was and as Victors were expected to socialise with each other, no one really paid much attention to or thought anything of us getting together during the Games each year. It was a relief, really, to have friends to help take my mind off the clusterfuck that were the Games, especially once Lucy died at a grand old age (for District 12, at any rate) during the 66th games.  

My moment - as Plutarch, the smug bastard, likes to call it - when I fully committed to the cause came later that year when I saw first-hand a whole new level of Capitol depravity. See, the deal was that in return for 23 other kids dying, the Victor of each game would live a life of wealth, opulence and ease for the rest of their days which would be split between their home districts and the Capitol where they could be shown off at Snow’s pleasure. Apart from mandatory mentoring duties during the Game, we weren’t allowed to have jobs. The idea was that this way we would have plenty of time to cultivate a suitably vapid talent or hobby, like flower arranging or party planning, to wow the Capitol and help people forget that the Victors they so love pampering were all bar none killers and, in some cases, more than a bit nuts.

Being a habitual drunk had its advantages as I quickly became the ‘funny man’ of the Capitol, the Victor you could always guarantee would do something hilarious… like fall off a stage, so I never needed to waste precious drinking time on a hobby. It was good protection. The best. It was too good, it meant I was so insulated that I didn’t see when things started changing from pampered indulgence to something darker.

The Capitol had always been a place of excess and decadence. To someone like me who had grown up always hungry it was nauseating watching how much food the Capitolites waste every day. Their ignorance and naivete was infuriating. One of the previous stylists for 12 actually thought that the tributes were emaciated by choice, a ‘fashion statement’ she had called it. The idea that people were starving in the districts never even occurred to her.

Lucy saw though. She saw something during the 65^th Games that worried her. It worried the old girl enough that she said something about it and not just to me. Whatever she told Mags had her friend sticking like glue to Finnick during his Victory tour. It still makes me sick to stomach to think of what Finnick went through those year as the Capitol darling. Call it what you like, but at the end of the day it was a prostitution ring with President Snow as the pimp.

I don’t know when it started other than that it was after my Games. Cashmere might even have been the first, but the Capitol certainly gained a taste quickly and she definitely wasn’t the last. By the 70^th Games all the mentors knew what awaited any tribute who won if they were too pretty or, worse, too popular. I left the Capitol after the 66^th alone for the first time, furiously angry and with a whole new set of nightmares but now fully committed to bringing the whole shit show down.   

Apart from my new membership in a super-secret rebellion, code named ‘the Victors Club’ – imaginative, I know - life continued much the same for the next few years. Each year when the annual torment of the Games rolled around I’d grudgingly allow whatever useless stylist we had that year to magic away the bags under my eyes, primp my hair and generally make me look better than before, while I continued to drink my way through the alcohol stock in the Capitol and attempt to beat some survival advice into my luckless tributes.

It wasn’t like my attention would be needed for long. Once the infernal interview was done, usually accompanied by some truly atrocious outfits and the typical lack of attention and boredom with which the Capitol greeted and dealt with District 12, I’d only be needed for another few days – usually two at most – before both tributes were brought back to me in body bags. After that, I was off the clock, so to speak, and could instead hang around with the other mentors, providing support and companionship, or else a drinking buddy and commiseration, depending on the state of their own tributes.

The Games don’t have a set length of time, instead they last however long it takes for only one contestant to be left standing. Some years, the more bloody and brutal years, the Games are over quickly, like the 67^th which was over in under a day. Most last between one and two weeks. The 25^th Hunger Games holds the record, if you want to call it that, for the longest game at 27 days. 27 agonising days. I couldn’t imagine having to fight and survive in that place for so long. Mine was around a week, I think, and I was already considering trying to end it all. I think if I’d been in there for longer I probably would have done.

The 70^th Games were over in 8 days. As Games go, they weren’t terrible, although the Capitol disagreed. It was voted the most boring Game ever though I doubt the winner, Annie Cresta thought so. Most of the tributes were drowned by the Game Makers after they got bored of people hiding and not fighting. Bursting the dam was a shit thing to do, and didn’t really help their ratings in the end as instead of making it more interesting for those watching by forcing people to fight it accidentally killed everyone bar Annie.

Mags was delighted, as was Finnick. While 4 has more winners than 12, it’s still a rare achievement. To have two winners withing a few years was almost unheard of. Best of all, given the lacklustre reception of the Games, and the state Annie herself came back in, there was minimal risk of her being put on the circuit. Instead, Snow allowed Mags to take her quietly back off to 4 with minimal fuss and without even the usual after party.

Normally as soon as the Games end I hightail it out of the Capitol as fast as I can. This year I decided to stay behind. Plutarch had called a meeting post Games to discuss plans for next year and everyone was expected to be there, which annoyed me at the time and annoyed me more afterwards, especially as it had been Katniss’ first time experiencing a Reaping and I hadn’t been able to check on her afterwards. Still, like a good boy off I toddled with Chaff to hear more about Plutarch’s plan.  

See the thing about our little club was that we weren’t what you would call organised in those early years. Mostly we were a sort of survivors support group full of wishful thinking and whacky ideas with the presence and application of a lot of quality alcohol. Don’t get me wrong, we were all completely committed to overthrowing Snow and bringing an end to the Games, but how we were going to do it was a bit of a mystery. At this point there wasn’t really a structure or hierarchy in our merry band of misfits - not like it became once the Second Rebellion really got started – it was fluid, dynamic, a society of equals, and everyone had an equal voice. That changed over time. It’s hard to fight a war with a democracy, someone needs to be in charge if for no other reason than just to get things done. I think looking back things had already started to change, I just didn’t realise it until much later.

The ‘Official History’ of the Second Rebellion will tell you that the leadership was elected and formed during the 74^th Hunger Games. For those of us unlucky enough to have lived it, that’s not quite what happened. For one thing, us ‘leaders’ weren’t so much voted in as found ourselves with the role thrust upon us. In my case it was because of Katniss Everdeen. No one else could even come close to managing the firecracker that is my Kat. For others, like Plutarch, he sort of wafted into the role of General in Chief and by the time we realised he had already claimed the chair, plopped the hat on his head and made himself comfortable.

Plutarch is actually a good case in point. During the 70^th Games he had only been a Junior Game Maker for little over a year. By the time the 74^th Games rolled around he had been promoted to the lofty heights of Senior Game Maker, second only to the Head Game Maker, Senca Crane. It was a meteoric rise and one which raised more than a few plucked and colourful eyebrows around the Capitol. Plutarch Havensby gained a reputation for being cruel, ruthless and imaginative with a flare for organisation. All traits which appealed to President Snow… and the Rebellion.

Until Plutarch joined, us Victors had been bumbling along. Plutarch was a powerhouse. While he wasn’t our leader, he was definitely the motor driving the engine of the Rebellion. So when he called a meeting to tell us his new idea, everyone who could made sure to turn up. At the time I thought it was less than inspiring and about as likely to work as deposing Snow by writing him a sonnet. Shows what I know and why wars are won by people like him. What Plutarch wanted, and what we poor mentors were meant to find him, was a symbol. Someone who could be the figurehead and rallying point for the Rebellion.

I scoffed at the idea. He wanted a hero – where the fuck were we going to find one of those? It’s not like they grow on fucking trees, is it.

After that I decided to hang around in the Capitol for a bit. See what news or possible recruits I could find for our glorious revolution. To be totally honest, those ten days were easily the best I’ve ever spent in that cursed place and I had a blast getting to know Beetee and Wiress, literally as it turned out, but that’s a story for another time.

Two weeks is such a short period of time.   

Two weeks I will always bitterly regret

I thought it wouldn’t matter if I stayed away for a bit.

I was wrong.

Those two weeks nearly cost me everything.  

I got the news the day after I got back. I’d known something was wrong. I’d felt it in my bones as I walked back to my house. There was a sombreness in the air, a feeling of grief permeating everything around me.

It was Ripper, that faithful old gossip monger, who told me when I popped down to refresh my stash. There had been an explosion in one of the mines.

Mining is a fucking dangerous and terrible job. Take it from someone who knows. Explosions are common, as are loss of limbs, hair and eyesight. If, by some luck, you survive the mines you have lung cancer, known affectionately as black lung or miner’s lung round here, to look forward too which will help you along to an early grave. It’s no wonder 12 has the lowest life expectancy and highest mortality rate of all the Districts.

My old dad had been a miner. He was dead from it by 45. If not for the 50^th Hunger Games that would have been my fate as well. For those in the Seam there weren’t many other jobs available than working in the mines. Only town kids had the opportunity for apprenticeships, usually in their family trade. For us down here it was starve or mine coal. Those were the two choices our magnanimous Capitol gave us.

Henrik, like most of our pals, had joined the mine straight out of school at the age of 17. It’s one of those perverse little facts that although the Reaping pool went to your 18^th birthday, after your 17^th you were expected to work and start contributing to the glory of Panem. Just another way Snow liked to screw us over.

I don’t really remember much after Ripper told me but somehow I found myself outside the Everdeen home, fist raised to knock, before indecision gripped me. I must have stood there for a good 10 minutes before I finally scraped enough courage together to knock, only to be disappointed. There was no answer. My hammering must have disturbed one of their neighbours as a young woman with the typical dark hair of the Seam and a baby in her arms came out to see what the ruckus was about. That’s when I got the second part of the shit sandwich.

Henrik was dead. He had been dead since just after I left for the Games. Without the money from the mine, the remaining Everdeens had been forced to move to a cheaper house.

So here’s an interesting fact for those of you who either got to avoid growing up in 12 during this time or had the fortune to be born after the civil war, after which the Post Revolutionary Government decided to gentrify and prettify the whole area as befitting the birth place of the great Katniss Everdeen – the Seam was a shit hole, one which bares no resemblance to the twee cottages and bijou residences that now inhabit the space.  

Whatever you’re imagining now, it was worse. Way worse.

Having said that, some bits were better than others – some even had bathrooms with actual baths and indoor toilets. Most, however, were little better than hovels and venturing into those parts was like stepping back in time to an era before civilisation. There was no running water and water was rationed and had to be hand pumped from the well. The facilities were communal, which given the poor nutrition of many of the residents and the questionable things they were forced to eat made for interesting and revolting times. Seam belly was a well known and very real complaint and was contagious as shit, pun very much intended.

Where Henrik’s family had lived was in one of the nicer streets with two bedrooms, a separate bathroom and a neat little garden. He had always been a careful man and he had done well for himself at the mine and it showed. Where I found them was very different as was the girl who opened the door.  

Seam children are always a little on the lean and underweight side, even those in the better areas whose families have money for more food. The Katniss I had left the month before had been a bright and bouncy 12 year old who was growing like a weed. The Katniss I found now was gaunt and a horrid, unhealthy pasty white that spoke of stress and starvation. Her long hair was in its typical braid, but it was dull and greasy, her clothes muddy and with holes starting to form. As a child Katniss had never been particularly demonstrative, preferring to show her affection in a thousand small thoughtful ways rather than hug someone. But that day she threw herself into my arms, eyes glassy as the terrible reality she had been living in spilled out of her.

Henrik was dead and her mother might as well be. They had been evicted a week after the explosion and the stipend from the Capitol had run out. Clarabel was ill, and the medicine she needed had almost wiped out everything the Government had provided.  For the last three weeks, Katniss had been running herself ragged desperately trying to keep her fracturing family together and alive. Food had been scarce and had it not been for the kindness of the baker’s boy and Gale Hawthorne they would likely have starved. As it was most of the food my girl had been able to scavage, or hunt, had gone to keeping her mother and Prim well or to paying for the medicine the hack apothecary in the town said would sort Clarabel out.

It didn’t take a genius to know what was wrong with the woman or to see that all the medicine did was make Clarabel sleep. Depression is a horrible, terrible monster to fight – I know from long experience - but from the look of her Clarabel wasn’t even trying.  When Henrik died she just checked out, which I could understand, the problem was she hadn’t checked back in again since.

As if often the way of life things got worse before they got better. I’d like to say that my arrival waved a magic wand and fixed everything, but I try not to lie and that would be a honking one.

I could give money, food, get them back in their old house, but what I couldn’t fix was three broken hearts. The worse bit was Clarabel. You might have thought that having battled the black dog for most of my adult life that I’d be an expert, the perfect person to help the grieving window. In truth it just made me feel awkward, I’ve never good with tears and Henrik’s widow seemed to have an endless supply.

She found her way out of it, eventually, but it was too late. The damage for Katniss was done, she couldn’t forgive or trust her mother again. I saw over the years how Clarabel tried to reach out to Kat, to heal the breach, but my Kat was too badly hurt. Primrose had been the common thread that bound the Everdeen’s together back them, and to some extent she still is now.

Still, I did what I could to help, which wasn’t as much as I wanted. Too much attention from me, or if the wrong people saw it, could be deadly. I still have nightmares about my family, I had no desire to be the reason another person I cared about found their way into an early grave.

The most important thing, to my mind at least, was Katniss’ training. Henrik and I had talked about it often enough that I knew the general plan. Kat already had a better knowledge than me of poisonous and edible plants, so what I focused on were traps , hand to hand and tree climbing. The last had saved my life more than once in the arena. Things were a bit different though, and not just because of the obvious. Henrik had started training Primrose that year, but it was pretty clear early on that this would be a waste of time. She soaked up the plants, but hunting she was useless at. Kat said she was too gentle, too kind, too clever. I just thought she took after her mother.

Thankfully, for my blood pressure and sanity, Henrik had already given up most of the training with his second girl. Instead, he was teaching her how to hide. I don’t know what success he had but I tell you one thing that girl could be as stubborn as her bad tempered goat, so I was more than pleased when she decided she wanted to help Clarabel with her apothecary work and I could get back to focussing on Kat.

My 101 Games survival course didn’t stay at one for long though as a few weeks later an uncomfortable looking Katniss dragged the Hawthorne boy along. All I can say is that at least he had more aptitude that my last student although at least with Primrose I didn’t have to turn put up with  all the love sick soppy glances directed at an oblivious Katniss.

Life in 12 settled back down into its usual rhythm after a while,

During those times when I couldn’t be with her, I focussed on The Rebellion. It was still gathering pace and growing, but it would be years yet before we were strong enough to challenge Snow and stop the Games. Time. We needed time, but I had a horrible feeling it was something we were fast running out of.

After that first meeting it became a recurrent theme with our resident tame Game Maker. Plutarch was obsessed with finding a catalyst, a spark that would set the world alight. The idea hadn’t really caught on with the rest of us though not with how beaten down the Districts were. Us mentors looked at our Districts and thought it would be more of a whimper than a bang and we would be back to square one. Tributes, unless they lived to become Victors, were strictly a one-week-wonder. Even the popular ones were only remembered and talked about for a few days after their untimely and almost certainly gruesome ends and it wasn’t as if we could use the shock factor either – the whole population had to watch the games, those who cared were numb to the sights of seeing children, some as young as 12, being hacked to death, or hunted, or on one occasion strung from a tree and used as a bloody piñata. Even popular Victors, like Finnick, had limited social power and would do little to rouse the masses. Then there were Victors like Joanna Mason. A girl with a personality so terrifying that the first, and only, time Snow tried to pimp her out, the man was seen running away clutching his family jewels. She hadn’t even touched him.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back I should have paid more attention to what the Plutarch was rambling on about. If I had maybe I’d have recognised the part he had cast my Kat in and been able to stop him. Then again, given how everything’s worked out, maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t know. I hated it. Every single fucking minute, but I can’t deny Plutarch’s plan paid off, as shown by this memoire.

Despite all the shit during those years they remain some of the happiest of my life. Which if that doesn’t show you pampered future generations what a god-awful time it was, I give up, there’s no hope for you. All I can say is god bless alcohol. My old mentor was spot on the money – she usually was – when she told me the way you get through hard times is to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Those words, like Henrik’s, stuck to me and helped me get through more shit than I care too, or can, remember. Although the booze probably helped with the latter. I don’t know what Ripper puts in her moonshine, and to be frank I’ve never been tempted to ask lest it put me off it, but whatever it is it can pickle a brain at thirty paces and takes a decade of devoted study to withstand. Needless to say my body is well trained after all the practice it’s had over the years.

The 72^nd and 73^rd Games passed in relative peace and quiet. My tributes died early, as expected. The Careers continued to do well, as expected, and the Rebellion continued to gain the occasional member.  

My Kat was turning into an exceptional girl, one I thought Henrik would have been proud of. Her skills with a bow were almost an urban legend in 12 and she, and that Hawthorn boy, practically fed half the Seam with her expeditions beyond the fence. She was also growing into a beauty. Not the delicate, doll like, beauty that her sister and mother had. No, Kat was like looking at a tiger or a storm, mesmerising to watch from a safe distance but not something you’d want to stand next to or try to touch, not if you valued your continued existence at any rate.

It had amused me at first, how oblivious Katniss is to male attention. To be honest, it made me laugh the way the boys at her school would watch her, some more obviously than others. What kept her little fan club away was her acerbic temperament. Katniss has all the refinement and emotional subtlety of one of Joanna’s axes. She hadn’t always been like this. Once she had been more like her younger sister, although never quite so prim and proper. She changed after Henrik died. I don’t know whether it was her father’s death - she was certainly a lot closer to him than to her mother - or whether it was the impact of Clarabel shutting down afterwards. Whatever it was, it changed my little girl. Those three weeks she was on her own for changed her. She became distrustful of people, dismissive of anything that didn’t revolve around survival or her sister. Boys were irritants and the only reason the Hawthorne lad was able to strike up a friendship with her was because he taught her how to make traps.

It nearly broke my heart when Kat confided in me that she never wanted to fall in love. That she would not be like her mother. Clarabel and I had by this point reached a tenuous understanding: she does what she can for the girls and I make up anything that’s missing. It’s an arrangement that works, we sort of co-exist around the other with minimal interaction. Necessity, as they say, makes for strange bed fellows. I’m under no illusion that she likes me anymore than she ever did, but for the sake of keeping Katniss happy she keeps her silence.

Katniss was growing up fast, too quickly I felt at times and yet not fast enough. The quicker she reached the relative safety of 18 the better. You see I had a whole new set of nightmares. Before, the worst thing I thought could happen would be Katniss being killed in the Games. Now, knowing what I did, I knew there a worse fate for her – winning and being put on the circuit. Proud, defiant, independent Katniss who feared intimacy and needing someone the way others fear the loneliness. It would destroy my girl and probably make it all the sweeter for someone like Snow, the sick bastard. He liked destroying his Victors, one piece at a time, chipping away at remained of our souls until there was nothing less. How do you take power from a Victor? By showing them just how powerless they are.

I swear the dashing grey streaks you see in my hair now are a direct fucking result of this shit show. At the time I told Chaff it was like a balancing act on a tightrope with a fiery pit on one side and a heard of man eating hippos on the other. Chaff just laughed and told me ‘welcome to parenthood.’

The thing was I couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out. Katniss had made it through three reaping days already and I had a horrible suspicion that our luck wouldn’t hold forever.

So I stepped up the training, spending more time with Katniss out in the woods, practicing hand to hand combat, sometime she would always struggle with, and discussing tactics and strategies. I started telling her stories about my friends and co-victors in the Capitol. Those I liked, those I didn’t, and how they won their games. Katniss soaked up the stories like a dry sponge, desperately keen to hear about life in the other districts. The stories weren’t just a way to make her laugh, however. Hidden in them were secret codes and important information about who could be trusted that I desperately hoped she would never need to remember or call on.

Through it all, I felt it, the ticking of the clock.  

Katniss turned 16 the spring before the 74^th Games. I remember my Ma telling me once that 16 used to be a special birthday. Here in 12 the important birthday is 18 as it symbolised that you’d made it through the reaping and were safe from the Games forever, or at least until your children hit 12 and then you get the joy of experiencing it from the other side. Still, I always try to do something, even if it’s just bringing her fresh baked bread or some other treat. With Katniss, the way to her heart is definitely through her stomach, and whoever hopes to win it probably should learn to cook. Last year I brought her one of the pies Mrs Multon makes at the butchers. This year I stopped by Mellarks and bought a selection of their finest cakes. Mrs Mellark scowled at me as usual, the horrid old harpy, but she had no choice but to hand them over. Even she, as bitter as she is, wouldn’t say no to the one and only Victor in 12.

It was a good day, one of the best I can remember really. That evening as I lay in bed in a semi-drunken haze, staring at the full moon rising in front of me, I couldn’t help the stray thought that my house in the victor’s village would feel more like a refuge, that life would be better, that mentoring would be so much more bearable if Katniss lived here and was able to come to the Capitol with me.

It’s a wish I would come to bitterly regret a few months later.

Chapter Text

The day of the 74^th Reaping dawned too bright and too soon for me. I had a truly stonking hangover that morning which didn’t help matters either. Stumbling down to the kitchen in a morose mood I was relieved to see that Katniss had already been by to drop off her usual reaping day gift of one of her mother’s over indulgence elixirs. I swallowed the bitter tasting liquid in one go before leaning on the only clear counter in my kitchen.

Only two more reaping days to go and then we would be home and clear; two more years and Katniss would be beyond the reach of Snow’s sadistic games.  Two years…just two years and I could breathe freely; two years and it wouldn’t matter who knew about our unusual friendship, two years and my current nightmare could be laid to rest.

Two years. It was pretty much the only thought that kept me going at this point in time.

Katniss would be off in the woods right about now, celebrating the day off school with the Hawthorne boy by hunting, before returning home at midday in order to prepare for the circus the Capitol organised for their ritual sacrifice. I would see her with her age group, no doubt, standing solemnly in the square while the names were called. If their luck held then that would be my last glimpse of her for the next six weeks, at which point I would return with two more coffins to greet two sets of bereaved parents, who would rant and rail at me about how I had failed their offspring.

No one expected District 12 to win, not even the parents; but that didn’t stop the majority of them from blaming the mentor for their child’s death – as if there was anything I could actually do to save them. District 12 tributes were too spiritless, too meek and often too malnourished to provide much in the way of competition. The most the viewers could hope for from such a poor district was an entertaining death or for one of the tributes to go mad (as happened in the 68^th games where Garet murdered Ada, his district partner, by systematically removing each of her organs and then eating them).

Low viewer expectations meant low sponsorship and very often a bottle of water or a meal would wipe out the sponsorship account for the whole game. The rubbish outfits the design team came up with didn’t help much either; honestly, who thought dressing the tributes as lumps of coal or, on one memorable occasion, naked but for strategically placed coal dust was in anyway, shape or form going to help grab the attention of the well-moneyed sponsors? At least there was a new design team this year. Cinna was quite the coup. The up-and-coming fashionista darling of the Capitol, he could have picked any of the districts and yet for reasons only known to himself he had wanted 12, go figure. Oh well, Cinna’s insanity was 12’s gain, and who knew – maybe I’d get an actual contender this year who (with the right sponsors) might be able to survive the games and actually come home.

Stupid son of a bitch. I would later drunkenly complain to an annoyed Effie Trinket that after twenty-four years of shit I really should have known to be careful what I wished for.

It was all going so well. Due to a minor hiccup with the train Effie arrived too late to shove the sobriety pills down my throat as she had for the past god knows how many years. As a consequence I turned up at the appointed hour for the reaping reeking of white spirit, hazy and as blissfully oblivious as it was possible to be and still be functional. Like a good boy, I stood in my usual spot on the specially erected platform outside the Justice building mildly hypnotised by the colour of Effie’s latest wig and wondering whether I could get it off the escort’s head to finally find out what colour hair she really had. The static burst of the microphone jolted me sharply out of my stupor as my now alert gaze roved the crowd to find my young friend, eventually locating her near to the back of the square clad for once in an actual dress and wearing a surly and unimpressed expression.

As the annual speech detailing the history of our illustrious country and the reason for the perverse taste in blood sport came to a close I found myself getting more and more tense. It was the same every year and would, no doubt, be the same until Katniss had aged out of the reaping pool. Hands clenched into tight fists by my side, I waited for Effie to finally read out this years female sacrifice.  

P, it started with a P! My little girl was safe for another year. I was so overcome with relief that I completely missed the name of the tribute. Oh well, I thought, she’d almost certainly die during the first day like the last four had and Effie would do all the introductions on the train so I could always learn the name then.

But just as I was about to tune out again and go back to ignoring this shitfest as I usually did, I heard it, the one thing I feared above everything

“I volunteer!”

My last memory is of the world tilting and a terrific bang as I became intimately acquainted with the concrete beneath the stage.

Falling over is never fun. Falling off an 8ft high stage though hurts like fucking hell. I woke up to the world moving around me. Rolling over, most of my liquid breakfast made a reappearance in the bucket someone had carefully positioned next to my bed. It was only after that, that my hazy brain finally cottoned on to the important fact that it wasn’t just my head injury that it feel like the earth was spinning, we really were moving. We were on the train to the Capitol.

Katniss. Primrose. Reaping day. It all came rushing back.

Shit! Fuck! And Wankers!

With a surprising amount of speed, I pushed myself up and staggered over to the door, determined to find Effie and discover how much precious time I’d wasted being useless. As if summoned by thought alone she appeared, tottering slightly on those death traps she likes to wear. In all the years we’re worked together, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so visibly displeased and angry with me before.

“Really, Haymitch!” She tutted at me, actually tutted. “this is not the sort of behaviour becoming of a former Victor and the current mentor for my District. What must the viewers be thinking? Not to mention our tributes.”

“How…how’re they?” the question came out more as a croak but Effie took pity and answered anyway.

“Much as you’d expect. I’ve installed them in the buffet carriage. The boy is ever so polite, a real little charmer. The girl on the other hand…” she trailed off.

“Yes?!” I snapped, the combination of wooziness and my usual irritation with Effie’s unparalleled ability to waffle making me even more cranky than usual.

Effie huffed and folded her arms. “Well… I’ve never seen the like. A firecracker that one. I feel for the prep team assigned to her. Wouldn’t even change into one of the lovely outfits in her wardrobe”

Ahh, that’s my Kat, she probably took one look at the monstrosities the Capitol called fashion and balked.

With Effie faffing about and one of the Capitol’s miracle pills I was ready in ten minutes to at last go ‘formally’ greet this years tributes. I hate most things about the Capitol, but I have to say their headache pills really are second to none and I was grateful for how well stocked the train was. The situation was bad enough without feeling like my grey matter was trying to make a bid for freedom – for one thing, I’d be needing it, and soon, if I was going to get my Kat out of this alive.

It shames me now, having got to know Peeta, that back then I scarcely gave him a thought. In my mind he was already dead. All my focus, all my care was on - had to be on - Katniss and making sure she survived. That was all that mattered to me at that point.

Our first post Reaping meeting went about as well as could be expected. Katniss was sitting at the table in all her surly glory, frowning and glaring at the table cloth as if it had personally offended her. Given the gluttony of food on the table it was entirely possible it had. It sometimes took Seam kids that way: either they’d be in heaven, diving in head first, or they’d be furious at the injustice shoved in their faces.

The boy, Peeta he introduced himself, was a typical town boy – all gold hair, blue eyes and classic good looks. He was well muscled at least, but I could tell within seconds of meeting him that for all his bulk he lacked the killer instinct needed in the arena. The following days only reinforced my thinking. Peeta was, is, a nice guy. The nicest guy you could want to meet. Nice guys don’t do well in the Games.

I’d barely even sat down and started buttering a roll when Peeta launched a whole load of questions at me about survival tactics, hiding, where to find water. It was the most intelligence I’d seen in a good few years from a tribute – normally they know what their fate is but don’t want to acknowledge it, so they try not to talk about the Games. Through it all Katniss sat silent, eyes fixed on a gently wobbling jelly as if it held the answers to the universe.

If I’d thought Peeta’s endless questions made for a change then they were nothing compared to when he started talking Katniss up and her skills as if he was trying to position her as the favourite tribute, the one I should be concentrating on.

She was and I would be, but he didn’t know that. It was curious – and odd, very odd. Normally tributes, if they engaged at all, would be at pains to sell themselves, promote themselves, in a bid to get my favour. They wouldn’t promote their rival – that’s suicide. It got my attention though, especially when Peeta’s behaviour jolted Kat out of whatever place her mind had gone too and she joined in, praising the boy’s wrestling skills, strength and stamina.

If nothing else, this train journey was full of firsts. I could see why Effie had taken an immediate shine to Peeta. With a good design team he would go down well with the viewers. He wouldn’t make it to the end, but he might get enough sponsors that I might be able to help him out a bit.

Katniss though was not in the mood for making friends. That Effie annoyed her was clear, although whether it was Effie herself or just that she was a visible representation of the Capitol that had put her in this position, I couldn’t say. It might even have been both. Fuck knows, Effie gets on my nerves at the best of times.

It takes about 8 hours to get to the Capitol from 12 on this type of high speed train and I was horribly aware that more than half that time had gone and I still hadn’t had a moment to talk to Katniss. Once in the training centre we would have to be careful as there could be bugs anywhere, so this was our best bet to be able to talk – and I needed to talk to her, needed to make sure she was okay.

It took a bit of engineering, but eventually I got Effie to take Peeta on a tour of the train. The door had barely slid shut before Katniss spoke, her voice and body language hostile. “This so you can shout at me?” she asked with a nod to the now empty room.

“I ought too,” I growled back, my temper igniting at her tone. I hadn’t been angry before, hadn’t had time to be, but now I thought about it I was. Furiously angry.  “No one volunteers for the Games. No one! It’s a fucking death sentence!” Even as I said it my conscience prickled. It wasn’t technically true. Tributes often volunteer from Districts 1 and 2, it’s why they’re known as the Careers. No other District has volunteers though because it’s as I said – madness. Even the Careers know that they odds aren’t in their favour and that for at least three of them it’s a suicide mission.  

“I had too!” she spat back at me, crossing her arms in front of her, blazing grey eyes meeting mine. “It was me or Prim. I couldn’t let them take her, not Prim, she wouldn’t have stood a chance!!”

It struck me in that moment, as it did sometimes, how very little of Clarabel there is in Katniss. Apart from the shape of her nose Katniss looked more and more like Henrik everyday. She had his eyes, his hair, his smile and his voice. That drive of hers to always look after weak, that was down to him too.

Her temperament though, that was all me, only without my natural charm. Stubborn, pragmatic, courageous, focussed and more intelligent than she gave herself credit for. My Katniss was a survivor, a grifter and a bloody good hunter. Of course she volunteered. Just because Primrose’s life was a price I’d pay if it meant keeping her older sister safe didn’t change the fact that Kat would never allow it. She wouldn’t have been my Kat if she had.

Kat hugged herself tighter, her crossed arms looking less aggressive and more like a scared child desperately trying to keep herself under control.

It softened me, soothing my irascible temper. She could do this. We could do this. For all her maturity, for all her strength, Katniss was still so very young. She was still a child – my child – and somehow I had to get her through this. There wasn’t any other option.

With a harsh sigh I stood and pulled her into a hug, smiling into her hair as after a moment she melted against me, hands fisting in the ridiculous Capitol clothes Effie had insisted I wear.

Time, the inconsiderate bastard, just sped up from there and before I knew it the train had pulled into the Capitol and Katniss was being whisked off by some lackies sent by her prep team.

For those who may not know, each lucky tribute got assigned a prep team paid for by our beneficent Game Makers. The purpose of the aforementioned prep team was to make the tribute Capitol ready. For those of you who are cynically minded you will already likely have an idea of what that entailed.

In truth while it sounds, on paper at least, like a nice idea, the truth was it had a far more sinister two fold purpose: firstly to further torture the luckless tribute by putting through what can only be described as water torture in the name of ‘sanitising them’, and secondly, to hide from the Capitol just how dire life really was in the outer Districts. The latter is why when you look at old footage of the Districts played in the Capitol you’d be forgiven for thinking we were a bunch of never smiling rustics who really liked grey plaid and wearing coal dust. The fact that all these shots were carefully stage managed with peacekeepers stationed just out of sight of the camera was neither here nor there.

As much as a I hate to admit it, there was a good reason why the prep teams assigned to ‘12 for years thought emaciation was an aesthetic fashion choice and not a result of systemic starvation.  

The job of the prep team was to get the tribute ready for their television debut with the renowned and terminally vacuous Caesar Flickerman, the main commentator for the Games.  These interviews, apart from being the final indignity heaped on those about to go and die in the arena, had another important function – sponsorship.

As much as training and general skill level was important in the games, sponsorship was probably more so. Sponsors were often the difference between life and dying from starvation, infection, poison, dehydration or even just the fucking cold. The general rule with sponsorship was the better the candidate – i.e. the prettier, more flashy, and skilful – the more the people in the Capitol (and Districts, but given the wealth disparity it was only the Capitol that really mattered) would want to sponsor that person.

Sponsors equalled money. Money equalled purchasing power from the pre-approved items list available to each mentor. Items equalled higher chance of survival for the tribute.

It should come as no surprise then why Districts 1 and 2 usually did so well in the Games. Or why the outer Districts were lucky if our kids made it past day one.

For us in the outer, less popular Districts, the interviews were usually just the filling in a shit sandwich, especially for us in ’12 who had a history of some truly disastrous design teams. This year, however, we had a new design team headed by the up and coming Capitol darling, Cinna. He had been quite the coup when he announced he was '12 as his District. 

As it turned out though, providence was smiling on us that day because Cinna proved to be a life saver and instrumental to what came next.

I’ve often wondered over the years when it was Cinna joined the Rebellion. By the 75^th Games he was a fully signed up member but I truly have no idea when he got on the rebellion bus. The history books like to paint him as a convert before the 74^th Games who had picked ’12 to create the symbol needed to unite Panem against tyranny.

Truthfully? I think that’s a sack of horse shit. Cinna was a clever man, and one – unusually for the Capitol – with a moral compass, but I think they got it round the wrong way. He told me once, after a lot of booze, that he’d picked ’12 that year because he wanted to make his mark and it would have been much harder with a District that had had a good designer before. If you ask me,  he didn’t come to ’12 to ignite the revolution, it was in ’12 that he was bitten by the rebellion bug. My Kat has a way of getting under your skin, of making you fond of her, and I think she’s what pushed Cinna over the line from dissatisfaction into joining our ragtag group.

So where was I? Oh, yes, prep teams. So given our history, Cinna was like an answer to a prayer. In truth I’d been dreading Katniss meeting her prep team. I imagined fireworks, temper tantrums, truculence and the prep team leaving in tears. My Kat is many things, but a girly girl who likes being touched and ‘perfected’ isn’t one them. Being the outdoorsy sort, Kat has always had a closer relationship with dirt than those born and raised in the Capitol were used too, she also has a short fuse when it comes to criticism and her idea of being pampered is having a twenty minute bath. So, yes… with what awaited her I felt certain the best thing would be to retreat to a safe distance and await the nuclear fallout from there.

As it turned out I couldn’t have been more wrong. Whatever Cinna said to her in that first meeting forged a bond between them that I don’t mind admitting I was a bit jealous of. To use Primrose’ favourite term ‘they just clicked’, and that was very much that. All the problems, all the tears and ruffled feathers I’d thought I’d have to sort out, just disappeared like smoke.

I couldn’t believe it when I heard – and neither could Effie. It amused me no end that Effie kept trying to delicately ask the prep team if they were okay, only to be told that Katniss was a sweetheart and as a meek as a lamb through each of the ‘necessary’ procedures.

That was probably the start of everything that followed though. I hadn’t been allowed to see either Kat or the boy since we got off the train, so I was as shocked and surprised as any with what happened next.

When the opening ceremony started I was tense and jittery, enough so that it drew the notice of Chaff, Seeder and a couple of other mentors, who raised an eyebrow at my uncharacteristic nerves. So much hinged on that moment and I was bitterly regretting not bringing a second hip flask along to the fucking show to help me get through it.

My god though, what a change. I knew Cinna was good, but putting my kids in flame retardant suits and then setting them on fire? Genius!

It grabbed everyone’s attention and definitely stole the show. It was all the nattering nincompoops in the Capitol could talk about in the two weeks before the Games began, and even after.

Spectacular was the only word for it.

Cinna’s stage direction was perfect as well. Instead of the usual waving and blatantly false smiles tributes gave the audience, Kat and Peeta stared straight ahead, completely ignoring the explosion of sound and the desperate calls of the watching idiots. The joined hands was a nice touch as well, one which nearly deafened me in both ears due to the screams of excitement around me.

Snow’s usual speech about how the Capitol thanked the tributes for their sacrifice sat like acid in my stomach. The poignant irony of his words had always annoyed me, but this year it sickened me, as did his exclamation of “’happy’ Hunger Games”. Happy? Who the fuck thought this event was a happy one. Within the month 23 young kids were going to be dead, probably from horrific causes. No one should find that a ‘happy’ fucking occasion. Sick bastard!

Next to me Chaff cringed and gripped his seat hard enough to make his knuckles bleach white. On my other side Seeder lent round to pat his arm, her eyes wet. It didn’t take a genius to work out what they were feeling, or why. While no mentor wants their kids to die, it can be really hard to watch someone as young as 12 go into the Games. Rue was the youngest tribute this year. The youngest tribute ’11 had had for over 15 years. It was rare for someone to be Reaped in their first year, really rare. The odds were about as in your favour as you could get in that first year, and they certainly only got worse from there. The comparison to Primrose had me shifting uncomfortably in my seat, shame pricking at me.  

The after party of the Opening Ceremony was one of the few things I actually looked forward to with the Games as it meant catch up time for us mentors and a chance to get absolutely rat-arsed on Snow’s money. Chaff and I did our standard thing and made straight for the bar, downing two large glasses of whiskey in short order to numb the memories the Reaping and fucking Opening celebrations always brought out.

Dipsomania was a common sin amongst us mentors. You don’t get through your own Games, let alone all the subsequent ones, without a robust coping mechanism and I’ve yet to find one better than alcohol. Self-medication is the norm in the Capitol where for every problem there’s a chemical magical wand to make life that much better. Normally I’d have been looking to get as drunk as possible in the shortest amount of time and over the years Chaff and I’d compete to see who could reach oblivion the quickest.

This time I slowed down after my second glass, nursing my third drink with a frown as I stared listlessly at the thronging masses. Tonight had gone well, much better than I’d expected or ever hoped for, but it didn’t lessen the challenge. Katniss needed sponsors, she needed to win people over, make them want her to win and that would likely be down to me to drum up. God knew Kat wasn’t what you’d call a people person back then, particularly the pampered peacocks in the Capitol, she barely tolerates them now and that’s only after years of exposure to Effie.

Back then Kat was an explosion waiting to happen. All it would have taken was the wrong person saying the wrong thing and she’d have gone off like a Katherine Wheel, undoing all of Cinna’s good work in starting to build her a profile and platform.

It was a sobering thought.

That night I smiled and charmed as I hadn’t done in years, simpering and schmoozing with the best of them. It didn’t make much difference. ’12 was the underdog of the underdogs and people just weren’t that interested.

I went to bed that night rattled, pissed and despondent.

Training started properly the next morning, which came far too soon and annoyingly bright for my hungover state. Effie’s appearance and constant nattering at the breakfast table only made my already dark mood worse.

The thing about Effie is that snapping at her is like stepping on a field mouse, it might make you feel better for a moment but then you just feel like an arse. She’s annoying, vapid, has truly atrocious taste in clothes and never shuts up, yet for all that she always tried to be kind, even if back then when she still bought in to the whole Capitol propaganda crap around the Games.

The sobriety pill helped a bit, but as it efficiently washed the toxins out of my system all the stomach curdling anxiety rushed back to takes its place. Peeta was the first to arrive and immediately settled in for what promised to be a long conversation about snares, fires and all things survival. I was so engrossed trying to field those questions that I missed Katniss slinking into the room and settling herself at the table. The following half an hour was one of the oddest of my life as Peeta darted longing looks at Kat when he thought I wasn’t watching and Kat was her typical oblivious self and ignored it all in favour of dissecting a bread roll.

The ‘sparkage’ – is that the right term? – between them was enough that even Effie commented on it, once I’d sent them off to get ready for their first day in the training rooms, and I retired to the minibar on the balcony to think things through. The plan for the day was a simple one, they were to trot along to the thoughtfully provided training room which was there for the tributes to practice a number of skills before their adventure into the arena. How the Game Makers thought this would help matters at this late stage was a mystery to me but I remember Plutarch saying to me once,  “dear boy, we aren’t total bastards, you know. We like to give people a fighting chance.” I hoped at the time, and I still do, that that was an ironic observation.

My advice before I’d shoved them both in the lift was to practice their weaknesses and conceal their strengths. There would be time enough later to show the Game Makers in their individual assessment session what they could do, it would be folly now to show their fellow would-be-killers what they were good at.

It seemed to go well enough, by all accounts. Kat told me later that she had focussed on snares, refreshing her knowledge on local flora and fauna and watching the other tributes. By the end of the first day she had a pretty comprehensive rundown of the careers.

“Glimmer’s shit with a bow,” she told me that night, “and Cato's a bully. He’s big and strong and he likes to brute force his way through things. Clove’s sadistic, but deadly with knives. Marvel has a good eye for long distance aiming, but his timing sucks.”

The second and third days followed a similar pattern, albeit with less drinking on my part. That Katniss is terrified was clear to me. To everyone else she might appear calm and collected, but I could see her fear in how tense she was, how she moved, the seats she chose so she always has eyeline on the door.  With Peeta and Effie around during the day, the only time we had to talk, properly talk, was at night so each evening found me sneaking into her room like a thief so we could catch-up and plan.

It really should have occurred to me earlier that someone would spot the way I was acting around Katniss and my, lets be honest, unusual level of interest and commitment to mentoring that year. As it was, I was happily oblivious until I found myself being shoved up against the wall by an irate blonde after one of my late night visits, being accused of paedophile, molestation and a number of other horrendous crimes.   

At another time, Peeta’s anger and impassioned defence of my Kat’s virtue would have amused me. As it was, however, I was in rather too much pain with what turned out to be a broken nose to find much amusement in anything. I can tell you this, for all his softness and charm, Peeta has a mean right hook and can really land a punch when he wants too – the benefit of growing up the youngest of three brothers, I presume.

It took three hand towels and half an hour to sort the mess out, and that was just my nose. Calming Peeta took considerably longer and I had to explain that Kat and I were friends. Here in the Capitol, that was as much as I would admit too, and I could see that the boy was sceptical, but he did - at last and rather grudgingly – accept what I was saying, although I think that had more to do with Kat’s irritable intervention, having been summoned by the ruckus going on outside her door, than anything I actually said.  

Whatever Kat whispered to the boy though had the desired effect and I was soon the recipient of a grumbling and rather shamed faced apology. If I thought the surprises would end there, however, I was wrong because the next day Peeta let himself into my room, just as I was about to down a large glass of something expensive and orange, with what he called a ‘bargain’.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this unexpected visit was about making sure he was my priority, I certainly did. It wouldn’t work, but he didn’t know that, and desperate times called for desperate measures. It wouldn’t be the first time one of my tributes tried to throw the other under the bus in order to improve their chances.

In another first for me, he came not to plead for his life but for Kat’s. I’ll never forget the earnest, genuine desperation on his face as he begged me to do what I had already planned on doing and putting my all behind getting Katniss out alive. It takes an uncommon sort of courage to willingly lay your life down for another, to knowingly sacrifice yourself, and I have to admit it impressed me.

The deal was struck in the long standing tradition of a manly handshake and then we got down to the business of trying to workout the logistics of saving my pig-headed daughter.

One thing people always underestimate with Katniss is her temper. Over the years it’s got her into more trouble than I care to, or even can, remember. Henrik used to call her his spitting tiger-cat for good reason. Katniss when riled was a force to reckon with. It also makes her impulsive, confrontational and unpredictable.

As the Game Makers found out.

She shot the apple out of the pig’s mouth.

Mentors aren’t allowed to watch the individual assessments – some horseshit about bias – so the first I heard about the events on the observation deck was when I got a coded message from Plutarch almost singing my female tribute’s praises. It appeared that Katniss, fed up with the casual and flagrant disrespect shown by the panel meant to be assessing her, decided to get their attention by shooting an arrow with shocking accuracy into the apple Senaca Crane had just been reaching for.

A magical moment. I wished I seen it. The shock, the horror, the fear on the faces of their weasel faces, all of it oh so deserved.

My euphoria lasted through Effie’s high pitched scolding, through dinner and even through the interminable recap Caesar insisted on. It died an abrupt death though as the man (in a blue wig this time) started reading the scores, and dread took its place. Would the panel punish or reward her, that was the question? A low score now would likely spell disaster in the arena. Scores mattered when it came to sponsorship.

Peeta received a more than acceptable 8. While the Careers were getting 9s and 10s, very few tributes from other Districts ever received those sorts of scores. As Effie said, “8 is something we can work with”. It was certainly one of the best scores we’d had in my tenure as mentor.

Then came Katniss’. I could tell something was going to be different about it from the dramatic pause and the way Caesar’s eyes tightened in what would have been real shock if not for the Botox preventing his face from moving.  

11!

Fuck me! It was virtually unheard of for the panel to award 11. Only three other tributes in the last 24 years were awarded that score. Three.

The relief burst out of me and I couldn’t help joining in the relieved laughing in our viewing room. Effie was effervescent as she darted over to the bar to pour champagne, Cinna was twirling Katniss around, while Peeta smiled in the background. When I looked over, he caught my eye and nodded, his face losing its affable smile for an instant before it was pasted back on and he took his turn at congratulating a stunned Katniss.

It might seem funny, but the thing I was most dreading in the run up to the actual start of the Games was the interview. These were the last chance to scrum up support for the tributes, the last chance for them to shine and win the hearts of the soulless masses. The Careers are specially trained for this – ‘public speaking 101’, I believe it’s labelled as in their school curriculum – in order to up their appeal and increase sponsorship donations.

’12 doesn’t do ‘public speaking’. It occasionally does a good line in semi-drunken ranting, but when you live under the close eye of the Peacekeepers you quickly learn as a child not to voice opinions, or have a voice at all.

Peeta was always going to do well in the interview. He has a natural charm and easiness which the audiences lap up. Katniss on the other hand…

The Hawthorne boy once said Kat had all the natural charm of a skunk. Apart from my instinctive parental displeasure at the comparison even I have to admit he has a point. That’s not to say she can’t do it. Katniss can be charming, if she chooses to be. But that’s the problem – it’s a choice, and one which an annoyed Kat is unlikely to make. Even Peeta, calf eyed that he is about Katniss, clearly understood the issue and shared my concern.

The night before the interviews, Peeta and I were up far later than we should have been planning for the oncoming catastrophe heading straight for us. Somehow we had to ‘sell’ Katniss to the viewers and, just to add to the fun, we had to do it without her knowing that’s what we were doing.

Katniss is a strong believer in fair play. A very strong believer. Usually this is characteristic I admire, but I have to say at that moment in time it was quickly becoming my least favourite trait and I damned Henrik at least thirty times for passing it on to her. If she'd thought for even a moment that Peeta and I were colluding in order to her to give her an advantage which came at someone else’s expense she would torpedo the idea in seconds. That Peeta was apparently happy to lay down his life for her would make no odds – she would refuse. Hence the need for absolute secrecy.

It took awhile but finally we had a solid working plan and Peeta had shown previously undiscovered depths of media savviness. His strategy was a good one. That it would probably make Kat spit like an affronted tabby was an unfortunate side effect, but on the plus side she was unlikely to work out the real reason behind what she would see as the humiliation of having her love life discussed on TV.

Kat’s interview started as badly as a I feared. She was clearly overwhelmed with stage fright, her eyes flicking across the audience were full of fear. Then she started to come alive and when she spun and the flames wrapped around her I started to breath again. It wasn’t a sparkling interview, or even a particularly memorable one but all we needed was to get through the interview with minimal damage done, that was all.

Caesar leaning over and pointing at something hidden amongst the sparkles just as he was about to dismiss her was not in the plan. The camera zooming in to magnify what had caught Caesar’s eye for the audience to see was even worse.

The Mockingjay pin.

I hadn’t seen that pin in more years than I care to remember. It had belonged to Henrik’s mother, passed down through the family from better, more prosperous times. The Everdeen family symbol of the bird so beloved by them and which loved them in turn. The ones in the wood just outside the Seam still remember Henrik’s melody. They sing it to me whenever I go to visit our clearing.

Slowly, haltingly, Katniss told the story of her father and the mockingjays. I know what it must cost her to be so open, to share one of her preciously hoarded stories of her father, but something of the guidance I'd tried to tell her that morning must have sunk in, as share it she did. It was at times like these when I almost agreed that Caesar deserved his grossly inflated salary. He was patient with Kat and slowly she opened up, showing more and more of herself to the silent audience. By the time she’s finished talking about Primrose and Buttercup there isn’t a dry eye in the audience.

She might have hated the attention, deplored the necessity of it, and loathed the people demanding it of her, but my Kat had risen to the occasion magnificently. Her interview had made her vulnerable and ‘real’ to the viewers. Now Peeta’s was about to make her desirable.  

Peeta’s declaration went down pretty much as I expected it too – that is to say, the viewers loved it and Kat was as mad as hell. I felt for the boy, there he was trying to do a good thing and Kat ripped a strip off him for it. The Games Commentators had already given the kids the unfortunate moniker of ‘The Star Crossed Lovers of District 12’, which was not only a mouthful but tacitly assumed Katniss’ participation in the romance.

Knowing Kat as I do, I rather suspect part of her anger was driven by the latter bit, my Katniss is nothing if not ornery and she hates being boxed into a corner. Even at that time it was clear she liked her fellow tribute, but more than that was a mystery, probably to herself as much as anyone. If it weren’t for the dire circumstances surrounding the evening, I’d have rather enjoyed watching the pair flounder about, as it was whatever amusement I felt was short lived as my attention kept getting drawn back to the cursed countdown clock on the wall. Only 12 hours left to go before the shuttlecraft would take the tributes to the arena which meant 16 hours until the Games were due to start. 

With the clock very much on my mind I packed both kids off to their respective bedrooms to get what sleep they could manage. 

Effie, suddenly over come with the spirit of a prudish aunt, decided that she would sit outside Katniss’ door all night in case Peeta decided to try anything. What she thought this was likely to accomplish given they shared a balcony was anyone’s guess, but there we go. The minds of women are a mysterious place and I gave up trying to understand them years ago. Some mysteries are best left alone for greater minds, or at least more sober ones, that I have, and with that thought I toddled off for my bed and one of the Capitol sleepy pills. Tomorrow would be a difficult day, for all of us, and something told me that these Games would be more of a marathon than a sprint. 

Chapter Text

Everyone was subdued that morning. Even Effie was lacking her usual sparkle. Peeta was pale and quiet, but it’s Kat I remember. The fierce look on her face and the way she was almost quivering with tension was rather memorable.

Mentors weren’t allowed to escort their tributes on the hovercraft, that was their stylist’s responsibility - because, of course, when you’re about to face certain death you’d much rather have your hair done than get any last titbits from someone who knows how to survive, wouldn’t you. We said goodbye at the door to our suite. Peeta’s was easiest, a firm handshake and a whispered “you remember your promise?” And that was it. Off he went with Portia.

Kat was so much harder, but then she was always going to be. This is why mentors rarely, if ever, have children. The pain of knowing you’re sending your child off to almost certain death is horrendous. There aren’t words for it, and I hope to any deity watching that you lot reading this will never have to experience it.

I don’t know who moved first, but suddenly we were hugging, tight and fierce, her head buried in my neck. “Stay alive!” I whispered to her hair, “whatever you do, just stay the fuck alive!” Henrik’s advice was the best I could offer at that moment and I felt Kat nod as I said it. That last moment was over too soon as with an apologetic cough, Cinna reminded us of the time. A minute later and she was gone and I slumped to plush floor of our suite, giving Effie a shock until she realised I was crying not having some sort of alcohol induced fit.

The next time I saw my girl was on the view screen in the mentor’s lounge. It was compulsory for us to spend at least 12 hours a day in the lounge with our fellow Victors. The Game Makers said it was so us mentors “had support during this difficult time.” Support? Ha! it was just another stick to beat us with. You try trapping 23 adults with various stages of PTSD in one room together to watch the very thing that gave them their nightmares in the first place and see what happens. It’s only through luck and the liberal application of both alcohol and drugs that no one’s yet been killed.

Even with the self-medication things could get pretty heated in there - especially if we’d had the misfortune to bond with our tributes. During the 70th Games, Finnick actually had to be restrained and tranquilised when one of the other mentors made a snide comment about Annie Cresta.

In previous years I’ve just headed straight for the mini bar with the intention of spending the next however long in an alcohol fuelled daze. Sadly, that wasn’t an option this time, so that morning I settled myself down with a fortifying glass of mineral water and pretended it was neat gin.

The games always start the same way, next to the cornucopia, with the tributes placed in a sort of horse shoe shape around it. It’s a dirty little trap, the first of many in the Games. It’s there to lure you in, make you vulnerable trying to get supplies and is usually a bloodbath.

I’d told both kids to run like hell in the opposite direction. Don’t even think of trying to grab something, I’d said. So what does Katniss do when the beeper finished its count down? She heads straight into the kill zone. Peeta’s face said it all during those precious few seconds as he tried, and failed, to talk her out of her suicidal plan.

I have to hand it to her, I might have been on the verge of a nervous breakdown the whole time, I won’t lie, but she managed it. Swiped a bag and somehow managed to not only avoid getting stabbed but also ended up with two large and dangerous looking knives, courtesy of Marvel and Clove. Having grabbed her goodies, Katniss finally followed my instruction and melted in to the safety of the forest.

Others weren’t so lucky. 10 died at the cornucopia, trying what my girl had pulled off. They were bloody awful deaths - and I mean that literally. Clove was still taking her frustrations at Kat’s escape on one of the corpses when the hovercraft arrived to bring it home. There wasn’t much of a body left, as I understand it, and the capitol doctors had a hell of a time trying to fix it enough to send back to its District.

By the end of the first three minutes ‘6, ‘7, and ‘9 had lost both of their tributes. The Morphling siblings were off their fucking heads, like usual, and probably hadn’t even noticed that their tributes had just been hacked to pieces. Johana Mason though was furious, as she made sure we all realised, when she picked up the nearest object and hurled it at the back of Brutus’ head. It was fortunate for the great hulking moron who was one of this year’s mentors for District 2 that it was only a cushion and not one of Johana’s favourite axes.

With a screen of frustration, Johana stormed out of the lounge, pushing past the Peacekeepers stationed just outside, Blight trailing along behind her.

With the distraction of the drama in the mentor’s lounge finished for the moment, all that was left for me to do now was sit and watch. I fucking hated it!

Things sort of settled down for a while after that. Kat had finally done the sensible thing and got as far away from everyone else as she could. After a few hours hiking, she settled herself in an uncomfortable looking tree to examine her goody bag. It wasn’t a bad haul all things considered. Rope, water bottle, purification tablets, protein bars and an insulated blanket, plus the two wicked looking knives courtesy of the other tributes.

With Katniss safely up a tree and away from the other tributes, I could finally relax for a moment. It didn’t last. Not 20 minutes after my head had hit the plump back support of my chair a hand shook me out of my doze and pointed at another screen.

Mags was a dear old girl and the oldest surviving mentor left at that time. She’d also been close friends with my old mentor, Lucy Grey Bird, and I’d sort of inherited that friendship when Lucy passed on, so I tried not to scowl at her like I would have done anyone else, and instead turned to look at whatever it was she wanted me to see.

It was Peeta.

Up until that point I’d pretty much forgotten my other tribute. All my attention had been fixed on Katniss, so it came as a bit of a shock not only to remember that I had another but to then see what he had been up too.

I could see why Mags was worried. Against everything we’d discussed before the games Peeta had joined up with the Careers pack and they were hot on the trail of one of the tributes, and judging by the comments it was my Kat they were looking for. It was pretty much the last thing I’d wanted to see at that moment and it filled me with furious dread that Peeta had double crossed our bargain. At the time I had no way of knowing his frankly bonkers plan, a plan so crazy and audacious it could have been one of Henriks, and I spent quite a lot of the next two days alternatively spitting mad and desperately try to gauge where the pack was in relation to my kid.

In the meantime Kat was in her element out in the woods. By the end of the first day she’d set up multiple traps, identified several springs and started mapping her environment, none of which was terribly interesting for those watching and I was back to fretting about sponsorship. The account was okay, but not great, and it was positively paltry when compared to some of the others. Her high score from the panel had helped, as had the interview’s, but the reality was that sponsors tended to overlook tributes from the outer districts. Sponsors wanted to back a winner and the last winner ’12 had seen was me, 24 years before. The odds were not in Katniss’ favour, something Caesar Flickerman made sure to mention with horrifying regularity during those days. Without something happening to draw the attention of sponsors, my ability to help my girl would be severely hindered.

You know, I really should have learned by this point to be careful what I wish for as things got interesting the next day. This will come as a surprise to no one who’s actually met Kat, but patience isn’t actually one of her talents. She’s great when it involves hunting or little kids, but other than those two aberrations she can’t sit still for more than half an hour at a time, and that’s on a good day. Wired with adrenalin, as she would be in that environment, I wasn’t surprised when mid-morning of the second day in hell, she set off to explore. This, by itself, wasn’t a problem. The problem came when she found the edge of the arena and the Game Makers decided she needed to stop with her exploring and start being ‘sociable’ with the other tributes. For those of you who have had the fortune not to see that moment, I’ll explain, they launched a huge fire ball at her.

It was a heart stopping moment - and I mean that literally. Kat got out of the way, but not quite quick enough and the bloody thing got her leg, burning a hole through her body suit and leaving her with a third degree burn. How she made it back to and up her tree, I don’t know, as I only woke up in time to see her crying against the bark as she tried to clean it.

Fainting is not a move that’s usually in my repertoire, especially not during the games, so I wasn’t surprised when Effie insisted I see one of the medical team. The duty doctor tutted over my head before reading me the riot act over not eating. It honestly hasn’t occurred to me that I’d forgotten to eat anything since the night before Kat went in to the arena. Nerves and alcohol had kept going for the last day, but I did concede my body probably needed more nutrition and rest that I’d been giving it. A full meal later and I was less wobbly but far more worried. Kat was in serious trouble with that burn, not only could it get infected, but it would also seriously hamper her ability to move, which in turn increased the risk of her being caught and killed.

I’d like to say that it was my idea to go hit up some sponsors, but it wasn’t. At this point I was not far off being a nervous, jabbering wreck and panic is not known for helping clarity of thought. It was Mags who pointed out the obvious to me and sent me off to schmooze and use whatever was left of my manly charm to wile donations out of the Capitol’s octogenarian wealth bucket. It took an hour to get the money we needed, but I left the senior citizens lounge with a bruised backside, a trampled ego and enough money to buy the burn cream Kat needed.

It was delivered only an hour after that. Mentor’s weren’t technically allowed to coach, or indeed contact, their tributes once they were in the arena. In reality, this rule had long been ignored, there was just a price associated with flouting it. So long as the Mentor in question had the money and the desire to spend it, the Game Makers were quite happy to allow us to send discreet messages to the kids in the arena. Most years I lacked both the financial ability too – and usually the time, seeing as my lot generally were killed by the end of the first day – in order to take advantage of this loop hole.

This time around I had more than enough to give a ‘donation’ to the Game Makers while ordering the burn cream. The message was a simple one: “remember the story”. To anyone else it would seem like a nonsense, but I was hoping Katniss would understand what I was trying to tell her – that she needed to make the viewers like her.

Whether Kat understood or not, her next actions were exactly what we needed. Her leg had barely had time to heal before the Careers found her. High up in the tree, she was difficult for the murderous bastards to get at. Glimmer was indeed as shite with a bow as Kat had thought and missed four times before throwing it down with huff. Cato tried to climb it, as did Marvel, with little success. Their heavier weights and more bulky forms couldn’t navigate the branches Katniss had used to scale the tree like a monkey.

Through the cat-calling and threats, Peeta remained silent, just stalking around the base of the tree until he suggested they wait my girl out. The others jeered but eventually decided to call it quits for the night and instead settled themselves down to talk about the three tributes they’d hunted and killed in the last day.  

As far as psychological torture goes, the attempt was pretty amateur. I could tell it was working though as Katniss looked increasing pale and fidgety on her perch and I was just wondering if I should risk using more of the funds to send Katniss another message when movement on the edge of the screen caught my eye. Through the dense foliage Rue’s face poked out as she started gesticulating at something higher up.

I know I wasn’t the only person to be confused as Kat spotted whatever it was the little girl had seen, before nodding at her fellow tribute and starting to climb. The mystery was soon solved as Caesar started babbling about Tracker Jackers.  

There are moments in life that make you stop and wonder. Well, this one didn’t make me stop, but it sure as hell made me wonder. Specifically, it made me wonder about whether my girl had any sense of self-preservation. Getting as close to the nest as she did was little short of madness, cutting the branch and disturbing the swarm was verging on suicidal. For those of you lucky enough to not know what Tracker Jackers are they are one of the fine examples of the Capitols sadistic genetic engineering programme. It was a huge relief when the post revolutionary government ordered all Capitol mutations destroyed, other than the Mockingjays which they left alone because of their symbolism. Like most of the mutations the crazy scientists in the Capitol came up with, Tracker Jackers were nasty, vicious and very dangerous. As if wasps weren’t nasty enough already, the maker of these little horrors decided to give their stings a little pepping up so that their venom was poisonous, painful and hallucinogenic and, if that wasn’t enough, if stung enough times they could even be fatal. Needless to say my heart was in mouth the whole time as I watched the girls’ plan unfold and waited for the inevitable screams.

It worked, though not without consequence.

Glimmer died. I wish I could feel sorry for that, but I don’t. She was a Capitol made psychopath. There wasn’t a drop of compassion in her. She was the worst sort of tribute – the type who actually enjoyed the killing – as we had ample proof during the last few days.

Kat had been stung, not as badly, but as she scrambled down the tree I could see her movements were jerky and increasingly uncoordinated. It was a miracle that she was still able to move and think as clearly as she did given the number of times the mutts must have got her. In pain, and probably hallucinating, she still had enough wherewithal to grab the bow and quiver from where Glimmer had dropped it in her panic at having a nest of angry insects dropped on her head.  

My girl had survived but talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. Tracker Jacker stings are horrible things that can take days to recover from. Kat would be all but defenceless once the poison really got a hold. The only saving grace I could hold on to at that moment was that the rest of the Career’s pack would be in a similar situation. All of them had been stung to varying degrees, so they were unlikely to be back up to hunting for a couple of days, unless their mentor’s stepped in and sent them the anti-venom.

The day wasn’t done with lobbing surprises though; first with Peeta appearing out of nowhere to tell Kat to run and hide, and then with Rue pulling Katniss’ semi-comatose form into a hollow under a tree root, where she proceeded to dress her wounds and look after her for two days.

Memory is a funny thing. Ask anyone now and they’ll tell you that it was watching the romance grow between Kat and Peeta that sparked the rebellion. They’re wrong. It was the friendship between Katniss and Rue which was the catalyst. Two girls, from different districts, who didn’t know each other - caring for each other, looking after each other - not because they had too, but because that was who they were and they weren’t going to let the Capitol take it from them… well it blew all our minds. The thing was, it was completely genuine and the complete opposite of what we had seen before. Watchers were used to alliances forming, just look at the Career pack. Hell, I’d formed one with Mayseelie during my Games. It was common for people in the same Districts to form a temporary alliance – and they were always temporary – or for ‘1 and ‘2 to band together. What wasn’t normal, what hadn’t been seen before was a friendship between two tributes from different Districts to grow inside the arena.

I knew the moment I saw the other tributes that my girl would never be able to go after Rue. The best I had hoped for was that Chaff’s tribute would be offed by someone else, most likely one of the careers, so it would spare my Kat the horror of it coming down to one of them.  Watching them together, seeing the way Katniss so easily adopted the other girl as a surrogate sister, filled me with a potent mix of awe and dread. Next to me, Chaff had his head buried between shaking hands. He knew, like I did, that these heartrending scenes had no chance at a happy ending.  

I’ve always wondered what would have happened if Rue hadn’t died when she did. Would Kat still have gone to find Peeta? What would she have done if it had come down to the three of them at the end? History likes to talk about the grand romance between my kids, but the truth is at that point in time Kat would probably have fought tooth and nail to save anyone from our home District, no matter what she thought of, or felt for, them. But all that was still to come. At this point in time, Katniss was still endearing herself to the viewers and Rue was very much alive.

I hadn’t understood at the time why Kat had hidden one of her precious protein bars under a bush. It had seemed like a foolish move, especially as sometime after the little girl from ’11 snuck over and pinched it. It wasn’t until after the tracker jacker incident, when Rue thanked her for leaving her food that I understood Kat had deliberately been trying to help her fellow tribute out. It was the start of a habit.

By day 6 of the Games, Katniss was become positively maternal in her care towards the younger girl. Something Casear commented on frequently. She tucked her in to the blanket at night, and often gave her more than her share of the food Kat caught and cooked. Together they roamed around the arena looking for all the world like they were enjoying an enforced camping trip rather than being trapped in an arena full of people wanting to kill them.

It was … different. The whole vibes of the Games had changed and instead of moaning (as I had expected) the viewers were lapping it up, especially once the girls hit on their great plan.

In true Career style, the pack had decided to create a trap for the other contestants by digging up the mines, thoughtfully placed around each of their starting platforms, and hiding them around the treasure trove of goodies they’d piled up near to their camp. There were a number of reasons this was a stupid move, but probably the biggest was ably demonstrated by my girl and her compatriot in crime as they planned how to use it against them. The Careers weren’t used to hunting or foraging. Their plan had been, as it usually was, to take control of the supplies provided and use that to keep them alive while they hunt down the other tributes. It was a common sight and pretty textbook for the Games by this point. The problem with this years lot getting creative was that while they had set a boobitrap to get any tribute trying to steal their food, it also left them vulnerable. A vulnerability Rue and Kat were quick to spot after they’d done a recce of the situation.

That night the girls sat and plotted. The plan was simple, Rue would go to strategic points and light fires in order to lure some of the pack away from their camp site. Meanwhile, Kat would sneak round the back and using her bow trigger the mines to explode and take out the stockpile. This would both hinder the Careers and make the Games a more level playing field for the surviving tributes.

As with most plans it went well until it fell apart in spectacular fashion. Kat succeeded in her aim of blowing it up, but she had misjudged the force of the explosion and I could only watch in helpless terror as she was thrown 30 feet back into some dense bushes. It was those bushes which saved her as the pack came storming back to find with horror that their campsite and supplies had been completely decimated. It was the boy from ‘3 who paid the price of girls’ plan, as Cato snapped his neck in one of his temper tantrums. I saw Kat wince, her face sad and pinched with pain, as she watched from her hiding place. The only good thing was at least it was a clean death, at least compared to some.

Things were about to get much worse though. Kat was on her way back to rendezvous point when we heard the scream. Chaff was sleeping off the nightshift, so it was just Seeder with me that day. I’d been friends with them a long time, but since out kids had teamed up, we’d taken to sitting together in solidarity. It made a nice change from the usual isolation I felt as the only District 12 Mentor. The Games are hard on Mentors not just the psychological toll of watching this shite but also our friendships as it can be difficult to completely divorce yourself from what your tributes are doing. A few years ago there had been a spectacular row between Cashmere from ‘1 and Lyme from ‘2 after a fight between their tributes, it took all of the other Mentors and two Peacekeepers to pull them apart and they refused to talk to each other for the result of the Games following it.

By this point both Chaff and Seeder knew that Kat meant more to me than a normal tribute and had started to take an active interest in her for more than just her kindness to Rue. That scream though will haunt me until the day I die. A little girl’s cry for Katniss that was picked up by the Mockingjays and echoed around the forest in a cruel mockery.

The next few minutes passed in a blur as Katniss ran but I remember the way Seeder paled, gripping my hand with bruising force. We both knew what that sort of scream meant.

Kat got there just in time to shoot the boy from ‘1 but she was too late to save Rue, the little shit had already thrown his javelin with deadly aim just, as she crashed into the clearing. Chaff said afterwards it was too good a death for him and I can’t help but agree. Like most tributes from ‘1 Marvel had volunteered. He had been jubilant when he was chosen, shouting and excited at the prospect of murdering his peers. He had mocked Rue even as he killed her. She was 12 years old. 12! And he had been delighted at the opportunity to kill her. She wasn’t even carrying a weapon.  

What happened next is seared into my mind and is a sight I will never forget: Kat cradling Rue to her, singing to her, as she died in her arms. It didn’t stop there. Seeder was in tears next to me, and I wasn’t far off, as we watched my girl lift Rue and place her in the centre of the clearing before covering her with white blossom flowers, creating an angelic effect around her fallen friend.

The Mentor’s lounge was silent - which if you’d ever been in there you’d know just how unusual that was – as we all sat transfixed by the way Kat paid homage to Rue, sitting in silent vigil next to her for hours.

It was the calm before the storm that was broken with the hovercraft’s arrival. As Rue’s body was lifted away, Katniss broke. Her scream of pain and anger echoed through the wood as she grabbed a heavy stick and proceeded to beat seven hells out of the nearest tree.  She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. Everyone understood, even the Capitolites.

After 74 years of this fucking shit we’d become numb to these losses, to the brutality of the Games. Somehow Katniss’ grief broke through the dissociative haze that had normalised the horror. It spoke to people. Her grief became ours.

I think this was the moment that Plutarch’s plan focussed on Katniss. Before she might have been the lauded ‘Girl on Fire’, but like so many others she’d probably have been a one hit wonder. This though, this would resonate, and it did. Later that night ’11 rebelled, overturning wagons of food destined for the Capitol and overpowering the Peacekeepers to take control of the Justice Building. ’10 followed soon after, as did ‘4 and even in ’12, the most repressed of the Districts, there were rumblings.

Back in the arena, Katniss had finally worn herself out and had fallen asleep in a tree some distance away from the clearing where it had all gone wrong.

The tenth day dawned misty and cold. I’d never had a tribute get this far before, let alone two of them, so it was something of a novel experience to be ‘invited’ to one of the second week interviews. With only six tributes left tension was mounting both with the bookies and in the Mentor’s lounge.  

Caesar had a lot to say, most of which I tuned out at the time and can’t remember now, but one point did stick: that the odds still weren’t in Kat’s favour. It was expected that Cato would win, or failing that, Clove. To most of the wealthier donors, the other four tributes were already dead – they just didn’t know it yet.

I got back to the training centre that afternoon angry, frustrated and full of fatalistic despair in the face of overwhelming odds. It took a strong drink and a strongly worded conversation from the combined forces of Chaff, Seeder, Mags and Effie to get my head back in the game. It was just in time as well as it turned out.

The announcement when it was made was like a bolt of the blue. Two Victors could be crowned, if they were from the same District. Now I had something – potentially – to work with that could push Kat up the list and corral potential donors into supporting us. Peeta had set the scene beautifully, first with his interview and then what had turned out to be his daring attempt at protecting Kat through working with the Careers. Now I just had to get Katniss to go along with the story he’d already started. It was not a task I was looking forward too, I knew my girl too well to think she’d like this plan, but it was the best one I had.

The Game Maker’s announcement was unprecedented and for the first time I actually let myself hope that maybe, just maybe, I could get both of them back safe and sound.

Stupid. Stupid, Haymitch. Hope is the bitterest emotion of all.

So where was Peeta you might be asking yourself. The answer was mostly keeping himself out of trouble. He had managed to avoid running afoul of the pack in the aftermath of the Tracker Jackers and getting Kat to safety, but as the hours stretched into days tempers started to fray. It all went wrong the night before Katniss blew up the supplies, which in hindsight was probably a good thing, as if he had been there he could have well been killed in that explosion, or the aftermath of it like the boy from ‘10.

It started, as so many things do, with an argument that escalated between lord of the grumps, Cato, and the boy from ’2 who clearly didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. The resulting disagreement quickly spiralled into outright aggression and hostility. Peeta, true to form, could see the way the wind was blowing and tried to mediate and calm things down. All he succeeded in doing though was to bring Cato’s trigger-happy temper to focus on him instead. The resulting fight was quite impressive – especially given that Cato had a sword and all Peeta had were his bare fists – and it continued for a lot longer than I think anyone, including Cato, expected.

I can attest - from personal experience - that Peeta for all his mild-mannered nature can pack one hell of a punch when he wants to, and it was this that saved him. The fight ended with Cato on his knees, shaking his head, obviously dizzy and disorientated, and Peeta limping for the tree line at top speed. By the time the rest of the pack had recovered from their shock the light had dwindled too far for them to track Peeta and instead they settled down to plot his murder.

It was only later when Peeta stopped to check his leg that I realised the damage Cato had managed to do. It was a nasty injury, sword wounds usually are, but at least it looked like it had missed the artery, which was pretty much the only positive Peeta had going for him at that point. Having checked and bandaged his leg in a pretty ineffectual way, Peeta continued limping along until he found a good hiding spot where he then hunkered down.

He might have absolutely shite first aid skills - as Katniss pointed out to him at length - but his camouflage abilities were top rate, and it was this that probably kept him alive long enough for our heroine to find him.

Katniss found him early the next morning after displaying some truly impressive tracking skills. I’d sent her an encouraging note the night before, along with some food, and I was pleased to see her looking more like her usual composed self. Her eyes were still red rimmed from her tears, but the fight was back in them, which was all that mattered.

The boy was in a bad way when she uncovered his hiding place, and the next few minutes were not for the faint hearted as she set about cleaning and rebandaging the gory injury. Their reunion might not have been the fireworks I’d hoped for, but it clearly passed muster with the viewers as their popularity ratcheted up and the odds started changing in their favour.

Katniss’ careful nursing and evident care for her fellow tribute was a stark contrast to the combative and arrogant posturing from the only other District that had two tributes left. Cato and Clove were never going to win awards for their personalities and witty conversation. So far most of their interaction had been around plotting various murders and then celebrating afterwards. Not exactly the most endearing behaviour.  

The Game Maker’s decision certainly upped the ante though, and if I thought I’d been doing well before I was quickly proved wrong. The amount of donations tripled in two hours. I now had more money in my Game account that I’d ever had, even added together, over the last 23 years. It was enough I could send a large quantity of food and more water purifying tablets to Katniss and Peeta, along with another helpful message prodding my girl along.

What Katniss had done so far was brilliant, but she needed to up the romance and really sell it to the viewers, which wasn’t something she would be at all comfortable with. What surprised me though was when along with my delivery, Kat got one from ‘11 as well. It was only a container of bread, but it must have cost them a lot to do it and was another Games first. District’s occasionally donated supplies to other than their tributes, but never when they still had a tribute left. To have done so now was a message… a very visible message of support to my girl.

The surprises didn’t stop there. Finnick came over an joined me. His tributes were already in body bags in the Capitol mortuary, so it didn’t strike me as odd for him to come over and chat – that was quite normal for us mentors, to go and give support to our friends once we no longer had our tributes to worry about. What did surprise me was his offer to transfer what was left in his Games account to mine.  

Looking back I wonder if that was part of what fucked Snow off so much. The Games were meant to keep the Districts downtrodden and apart and yet somehow this year it had achieved the opposite. The Districts were overcoming the Games and coming together.

Over the next two days, the budding romance between Katniss and Peeta kept us all enthralled. Money and support were flowing in, Katniss and Peeta, the Star-Crossed Lovers of District 12, were the darlings of the Capitol and the undisputed favourites. Katniss hairstyles had sprung up overnight as had a sudden, and rather unexpected, interest in archery among the Capitolites. You know, I’d often thought of the those in the Capitol as being rather childlike – gullible, easily led, and even more easily distracted, but this just proved it to me. I mean – what the fucking, fuck? There was Caesar Flickerman moaning on about how much he loved the romance and how awful it had been when they’d thought that one, or both, of them was going to have to die, when it was the Capitol who had put them in that fucking position in the first place and was always completely within their control.

Like most things it seemed, the irony of this was lost on those in the Capitol.

It wasn’t lost on the outer Districts.

Anger was spreading like wildfire. There was a rebellion in 11 after Rue was killed, her family caught on camera mimicking 12’s salute in what could only have been a sign of support before the film crew cut abruptly away. 10 wasn’t far behind, or 9.

On one thing Caesar was right – this was certainly shaping up to be a Game like no other.

The food helped but Peeta was growing weaker. He needed more specialised medical help, and I was furious when I discovered that the Game Makers had taken it off the list of items us mentors could buy. There I was with money enough to buy everything twice over on the godforsaken list and the one thing I actually needed had been removed. It was infuriating and I remember hitting the table with enough force to break the shiny glass top, making Effie jump, as I struggled with the familiar feeling of impotent rage. There I was, yet again, about to lose one of my tributes because I couldn’t act.

I should have known it was part of a bigger strategy. The Game Makers must have been fearing for their ratings what with everyone holed up in their hideouts. In previous years they’d used natural disasters to drive tributes out of hiding. I think they learnt their lesson with Annie Cresta though and this year the stakes were too high to risk a repeat of the must lamented and soon forgotten 70^th Games. Instead, after a restless night for me, I woke to the announcement that there was going to be a feast at the Cornucopia.

I’d almost forgotten about this little trick of theirs. It must be 10 years at least since the last ‘feast’. Each tribute needs something desperately. With a sinking feeling I knew that for us it would be the medical aid Peeta needs and that Katniss would go come hell or high water.

I watched the feed intently as my pair discussed this very fact. Peeta’s determination to keep Kat away was heart-warming even as I knew it would be futile in the end. He knew, like I did, that this was a trap. It made me selfishly glad that he was willing to risk his life, his chance to win, to ensure Kat survived and stayed away from trouble. He’d held up his end of the deal up to this point, but each reaffirmation made the guilt curdle a little more inside me that I had so willingly and quickly agreed to that devil’s bargain. I stand by my decision and I defy any parent to do differently. I’d always choose Kat first, save Kat first, but it doesn’t make it easier to live with the guilt.

Much to my surprise, Katniss agreed not to go and I breathed out a relieved sigh, even as Effie’s face fell. Our chances had looked good for a while of bringing them both home, but now with their decision it’s looking more and more like it’ll be one, if we’re lucky, and she knows it. It’s unlike my Kat to give up on something she had put her mind too, but at the time I put it down to how drained and exhausted she must be after two weeks in the arena.

Still, it wasn’t a total shock when as it got dark and Peeta fell asleep she snuck out to trek down to the Cornucopia.

The feast was a fucking blood bath and just as terrible as I feared it would be with more near misses then I thought my poor old heart could take.  

Thresh saving Katniss was a surprise and I saw Chaff’s pleased smile as his tribute did it, even as we both knew there would be a price to pay. I can’t say I mourned Clove’s death, but I did spare a thought and grimace at the painful way she died. Sadistic she might have been, but no one deserves to die like that.

Still, Kat wasn’t out of the woods yet and I wouldn’t be able to breathe easier until she was back in the cave, as safe as she could be in that godforsaken place. She made good time and even checked some of her traps, collecting a healthy number of small birds to take back. By the time she made it back to Peeta his temperature had risen further and he was now verging on delirious.

Applying to salve to his leg was quick work, but getting the boy to drink the other part of the medicine proved to be much harder and I could see how frustrated Katniss was getting about it. Also how embarrassed she was. Peeta was having some… interesting… dreams, it seemed, and in his fevered state he had been talking. The blush on my girl’s face was almost amusing and I knew it would go down well with the viewers who would take it as a sign of maidenly virtue. That it was likely more due to mortification needed to stay our little secret, although I made a mental note that if, in the unlikely event, we got both of them back alive and well, that Peeta and I needed a little chat about the art of wooing.

Henrik had often said that unlike most dads he was looking forward to his little girls growing up as he couldn’t wait to have ‘The Talk’ with any prospective boys, possibly with his bow within easy reach. At the time I couldn’t understand – why on earth would he want Kat to grow up? Now I did. And I looked forward to that conversation with a certain amount of glee.

As was often the way with Capitol medicine, there were quickly signs that it was working. Within half an hour the angry flush on the boy’s face had lessened as had his pained thrashing. After four hours, his colour was almost normal and when Katniss checked on his leg it looked like an injury that was several weeks old, not one that only a few hours before was almost fatal.

It had been a long time since I’d heard Kat sing. Like Henrik she had a beautiful voice, soft, melodic, soothing. Hearing her sing was like a warm bath driving the chill from your bones. Effie sighed beside me, “oh, how beautiful,” she whispered, “I had no idea our Katniss could sing like that.”

I just shrugged. Unwilling to talk and interrupt the magical moment. It was over too soon as it was. As Peeta stirred, Kat froze, blushed a fiery red and practically leapt away from where she had been stroking the boy’s hair. She hung around long enough to get help the boy sip some water and then she hightailed it out of the cave as fast as she could, to poke the birds she was smoking on the fire, leaving a bemused but awake Peeta to stare wistfully after her.  

The cannon sounded signally Thresh’s death just before dusk that evening. Kneeling on the dirt, Kat had done her by now typical salute to the image plastered across the inside of the atmospheric dome. Peeta mirroring her respect to the fallen tribute. Chaff was a ghastly white when he came to see me that evening. Furious with the Capitol. Angry with the savage butchery of Cato and the dismissive, uncaring world we lived in. We sat in silence for hours, nursing glasses of the strongest alcohol I could find.

The next two days were peaceful, quiet, and probably the most tranquil I’d ever known the Games to be. So of course the Game Makers had to do something.

The last day of the Games – not that we knew it at the time – dawned bright and far too quiet. My Kat knew something was wrong the moment she woke up. With how attuned she was to nature, how could she not? You could see it in the alert way she cocked her head, straining to hear something, in the way her muscles were tense and the sharpness of her gaze as it scanned the forest.

The first thing us viewers knew about it though was when Peeta went to wash in the brook and found it bone dry. Unnaturally dry. With a horrible dropping sensation in the pit of my stomach I knew this was deliberate.

It got worse from there. All the animals were gone. With the exception of the tributes there was not a single living thing in the arena. In the mentors viewing area the general feeling was one of horrified panic. They wanted to starve the remaining four tributes out, force them out of hiding and into a confrontation.  

It was a feeling apparently shared with Peeta and the girl from 5. On the screen, Katniss didn’t panic. She was cool, calm and collected as she explained to Peeta that she’d filled the water bottles the night before, concerned something might happen to the water supply. Food wasn’t a concern either as she’d spent a large amount of the time he had been unconscious smoking the birds she’d collected from the trap. With careful rationing both meat and water would last them several days and if they could find berries and plants as well, they could stretch it further. Days which the other two tributes didn’t have.

The idea to look for berries was a good one and I was proud of how resourceful my Kat was showing herself to be. Then it came back to bite me.

Peeta found Nightlock berries. Hundreds – thousands? – of miles away and I nearly screamed myself hoarse when he started picking them, collecting large handfuls before placing them carefully on his laid out jacket. The cannon took us all by surprise and I watched as Katniss, obviously fearing for the boy, fled towards where she had left him. Her relief at finding him alive and well though was quickly transformed into panic driven fury as she smacked the deadly berries out of his cupped hands shouting, “That’s Nightlock, Peeta! It’s poisonous. What were you thinking!!”

If anymore explanation was required for the viewers at home then the Game Makers thoughtfully provided one, as the cameras cut to the mottled corpse of the girl from 5 which was lying next to the berries, Peeta had so meticulously collected.

My poor girl’s face was starch white as she stared at the dead body. Her thoughts clear – and mirrored my own - that could so easily have been Peeta.

Still, every cloud and all that. 10 minutes before there had been 4 of them left, now they were down to 3. The odds were improving.

I thought we would have a breather after that, a chance to regroup, but apparently the Game Makers had something else in mind. This was the end game now and they wanted their final show down.

You know, I’d wondered what Crane was going to do for the grand finale. The Game Makers love a finale, the bigger the better, in their books. It had been what the other mentors had spent most of the last hour speculating on – and I had spent fretting about.  

I’ll give Crane this. What he came up was so much worse than anything we’d thought of.

Monstrous hounds.

Mutations.

Mutations using bits and pieces of the fallen tributes.

What the fucking hell?

Even Enobaria looked sickened by the sight, and this is the woman who won her Games by literally ripping the throat out of her fellow tributes.

Fuck me!

The train was well and truly off the tracks with this Game.

My poor heart was pounding so hard it was making me dizzy as Kat spotted them and ran, pulling a confused Peeta along in her wake, as she headed out of the woods. It took me longer than it should have to understand her reasoning. Peeta’s leg was pretty much healed after the magical miracle juice the Game Makers had sent, but it wouldn’t be up for a tree climb, and given the Game Maker’s love of pyrotechnics, getting out of a tinder dry wood was probably a sensible thing to do.  

Instead the pair raced for the Cornucopia. I was so focussed on my kids that I missed Cato making like a bat out of hell from the opposite direction. Clearly he’d had the same idea as Kat as he too was headed straight for the horn.

I think everyone’s hearts were in their mouth during that final, awful, flight. The hounds were a terrifying and grotesque touch and more than one mentor vomited when they realised what the Game Makers had done. Chaff was white and shaking next to me, his eyes locked on to those of Rue as the beast set off after Kat with a horrifying determination. I’d known all the way along that the Snow wouldn’t want my Kat to win. She was too strong, too popular, and she had a power we’d never seen before – for some inexplicable reason she was reaching people. Maybe it started with her act of sacrifice and love, it certainly got the attention of the Capitol, but it was fast becoming something else as people got to know her, saw her courage, her refusal to become what the Game Makers kept trying to make her be.

Mags was gripping my hand iron tight as we watched Peeta boost Kat up the side of the structure before she turned and helped pull him up to the relative safety of the top. She wasn’t fast enough. Just as a desperately struggling Peeta tried to pull himself over the ledge one of the mutts jumped, sinking razor sharp claws into his leg. With a bellow that would have done a warrior princess proud, Kat had an arrow knocked and flying in the blink of an eye. With an otherworldly cry the beast fell and Peeta was able to scrabble the remaining feet to safety. Even in the dark though it was clear the wound was deep and bleeding freely.

The irony that the Cornucopia was the only safe place for the kids to go was not lost on me, even as I knew it could well spell their deaths. Katniss didn’t have enough arrows for all the hounds and the sloped sides which prevented the murderous creatures from getting to them were treacherously smooth and easy to slip on. We were so close. So very close. For the first time in donkey’s years I prayed to a higher power, a god I had long since stopped believing in. Just let them make it through this. Just get them through. It was the only thought I had in my head.

Back on the screen, Katniss pulled something out of her pocket, using what looked like a piece of thin cloth to create a makeshift tourniquet around Peeta’s damaged leg. It was good thinking and likely saved the Peeta’s life. I had been so absorbed in their desperate escape that I’d completely forgotten about the other boy. It was a foolish mistake. A stupid, rookie, error.

Like something out of a ghost story, Cato emerged from the darkness, blood running down his face and across his teeth, creating a ghoulish look.

Watching the fight between Katniss, Peeta and Cato was a fucking nightmare, I can tell you. Although the cool detached non-parent part of my brain that was still functioning amid the stomach churning terror was quite impressed that it appeared that she’d finally seen the light after years of trying unsuccessfully to get Katniss to understand how to fight dirty in a fist fight. She was almost holding her own against the much larger and better trained boy, not something I was sure she’d be able to do. Seeing her kick him in the knee before spinning to punch him in the face was a thing of beauty.  

How Peeta, who was a bloody good wrestler, allowed himself to be pinned, I don’t know, but it takes balls of steel and a helluva lotta trust to ask someone to shoot the guy who’s got you in a headlock. I don’t think I breathed at all during those few seconds it took for Peeta to tap Cato’s hand and for Katniss to understand what he was thinking. Then in flash it was done and the Career was screaming as he flailed back, releasing Peeta in shock at the arrow protruding from his hand. One false step was all it took and over he went. His cries were nightmare inducing as the hounds started ripping into him. It was a terrible reminder of the human cost and I know I wasn’t the only one who was relieved when Katniss put an arrow through his eye and stopped the caterwauling.  

You might think I’m callous, but this is what the Games do to you: they make you stop thinking of the tributes as just kids – sometimes obnoxious as hell, like Cato – but still kids, most of whom would never get the chance to grow up, to change, to become adults. Instead, they’re like characters in a story with no more emotional depth or resonance or reality than that. The kids who went into these Games weren’t ‘real’ anymore, something it seemed Cato realised too late. Perhaps that’s the greatest tragedy of all.

They’d done it. Cato was dead and my kids were both alive. There was cheering in the mentor’s lounge, corks popped as Finnick opened bottles of fizz to celebrate. Through it all my eyes stayed fixed on the screen, terrified that even now something could go wrong.

The first thing I realised was the ominous silence. There was no familiar sound of a hovercraft coming to take the Victor home. My Kat must have had the same thought because her posture changed from exhausted relief to something far more lethal, her fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on her bow.

Then came the announcement. Oops. Turns out the Game Makers hadn’t wanted this ending and only one Victor could come home after all.

Shit! Bloody. Fucking. Hell. On. A. Fucking. Pogo. Stick!

The sick fucks.

I should have known better. We all should have done. This was nothing more than a trick, a way to up the ante on the 74^th Games. They were never going to let Kat and Peeta come home. It was just a new terrible torture method, a new way to twist the knife that little bit deeper.

I remember watching that final scene play out. Those bastards! As if the Game Makers hadn’t put my Kat through enough, now they wanted her to kill the boy I’d been prodding her into falling in love with for the entirety of this miserable experience. There was never any doubt in my mind who the winner would be in that final showdown – she might have hated it, might have kicked and screamed against it, but Katniss was a survivor. It simply wasn’t in her blood to lie down and die and Peeta it seemed wouldn’t let her either.

I don’t think I’d ever been as angry or as wretched as I was in that moment. I’d have got what I set out for – but the Katniss who came back wouldn’t be my Kat anymore, not if – when – she took this final step.

This would destroy my girl.

I knew it.

Those fuckers in charge knew it.

Snow knew it.

It was why they were doing it.  

There wasn’t a dry eye in the viewing room as we watched Peeta call out “It’s okay, sweetheart. It was – this was always how it was going to end. Let me do this for you.”

The Game Makers would love this. Peeta pleading for his love to kill him so she could go home. I could practically hear the money rolling in from here.  The star-crossed lover’s story would make Capitol history.

It was Cinna gripping my arm with a startled “fuck!” that got my attention back on the screen and stopped my moment of existential angst. Kat looked furious, all trace of heartbreak and pain gone, as she mutinously declared she wouldn’t play by those rules. That she wouldn’t kill Peeta.

I would like to say that I knew what she was planning when those berries came out. But that would be honking great lie. My sleep deprived brain was still caught up in the horror of this final twist to be firing on all cylinders, but hey-ho, it wasn’t like I was left in the dark for long. Something of what I’d been trying to get through to Katniss about story telling had evidently struck home because she helpfully explained exactly what she was thinking.

Joint suicide. Peeta couldn’t kill her and she wouldn’t kill him, so that left this…

And the Game Makers over a fucking barrel.

I didn’t know then whether to laugh or cry and I still don’t. It was a reckless, brave, stupid, brilliant, moronic move and miracle of all miracles, it worked.

The Game Makers backed down and the 74^th Hunger Games ended with two Victors from District 12.

And if that didn’t deserve a stiff drink, I don’t know what would.

Chapter Text

My elation lasted exactly as long as it took for the hovercraft to land at the hospital.

No one wins the Hunger Games. I should have remembered that.

The Capitol was enraptured and celebrating but once the surprise started to wear off the mood among the mentors grew sombre: we all knew there would be a price to pay for this, the only question is what that price would be.

Katniss had set us on a path I had never ever dreamed was possible and I’m ashamed to admit, even now, that I was left scrambling in my attempt to regroup.

There was a bitter taste in my mouth as I desperately tried to plan, to predict what the Capitol would do now. What Snow would do. What I could do to protect my girl from the inevitable fallout.  

It was Finnick who pointed out that with this love story Katniss should be safe from the circuit… not even Snow would dare try to whore out one (or both) of the star-crossed lovers, but this was a cold comfort. A thwarted Snow was vindictive. A cornered Snow would likely be lethal.

And Katniss had cornered him. In the space of three minutes, she had neatly put the old snake into a check mate he couldn’t easily wriggle out of – and that would make him more dangerous than ever.

In some ways it would have been better – or at least easier – if the circuit was all we had to worry about, but it wasn’t. With the Everdeen’s, especially Primrose, being the darlings of the Capitol it was unlikely Snow would strike there, but that left the question of what punishment he would use, what retribution he would seek. There would be a punishment for this, of that, at least, I was certain.

It was two days before I was allowed to see Katniss. My fellow mentors assured me that this was usual for the Victor of the Games. I couldn’t really remember my Games that well, not the immediate aftermath, loosing half your blood volume and nearly being gutted will do that to you though and as this was my first time with a Victor as a mentor, the delay worried me. I can’t explain the relief I felt when I finally laid eyes on my girl.

She was still pale and thinner than she had been, but she was sitting up in the hospital bed alert, whole and healed, physically at least. It would take time for the emotional damage from this to become clear, but she wouldn’t be alone as I was and I was determined she wouldn’t fall in to the same trap as I had done.

“How’s Peeta?” Were the first words out of her mouth, “I haven’t been allowed to see him and they won’t tell me anything.”

Her distress was clear, but here I couldn’t help and it left a bitter taste in my mouth. “Orders from Snow himself,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage. Kat knew my views on Snow, and I hoped she would understand the warning I was trying to convey. The Games weren’t over, not yet, not by a long shot.

“They want to do your reunion live on the Post Games Victors’ interview.” Kat nodded, eyes thoughtful.

“Of course,” her nod reassured me and I felt my breathing get easier as anxiety loosened its tight band around my chest. She understood, but I needed to make sure she understood all of it.

“First Victors love story, and all that,” I say with deliberate nonchalance.

My girl’s eyes widened for a second and a flush spread over her cheeks, but she nodded again even as she looked slightly nauseous. I’m not sure whether, or how much, of the story Kat wove in the Games was real, but it had to be real now. We couldn’t afford for Snow to suspect anything different or for him to start thinking that this was an act of sedition.

“Yes.” She said, her voice trembled slightly, and I longed to reach over a comfort her as I would in ‘12, but I didn’t know whether this room was bugged, and I couldn’t take the risk.

The last 10 minutes of our allotted time together was spent telling Kat about her schedule for the next three days until she had her Victor’s interview with Caesar. I could tell she found the prospect as appealing as I did.

The Victor’s interview was the final twist of the knife from the Game Makers. As if it wasn’t enough to put 24 kids through the slaughter and prolonged torture of the Games, having won it they then got the joy of being made to re-watch all the deaths in gory ultra-high definition – just in case they had forgotten any. Only the nut jobs and the Careers ever enjoyed Caesar Flickerman’s obsequious fawning and even they usually started looking a bit drawn by the end of that ghastly interview.

I’d done what I’d needed too though – Kat was warned and knew not to let her guard done. With more Capitol bugs in the Capitol than actual insects, this was all I could do. Maybe her hospital room was clean, maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t really matter to me – having got this far I was paranoid about putting a foot wrong and bringing this house of cards down.

At 13:15 precisely, the dour faced nurse who had let me into Kat’s room reappeared to usher me out. It hurt to leave, but the nurse insisted, so after a distant goodbye I allow myself to be directed out of the room and across the hospital to see Peeta.

Snow was clearly determined to make sure that the two Victors had no prior interaction (or news of the other) before their big reunion live on Capitol TV. Peeta wasn’t just in a different room to Katniss – he was in a different ward, on a different wing, with completely different staff. The room I was shown into was identical in everyway to Katniss’ except that where Kat looked well – if thinner – Peeta looked dreadful, and it was easy to see the Capitol had arranged a longer than usual period between the end of the Games and the interview.

The boy in the bed was pale and sweaty, cheeks red with the bright flush of fever. The Doctor who had shown me to the room had assured me that Peeta was healing well but had contracted an infection – probably from the claws of those monsters that had ripped into his leg.

On the leg front, there was good news and some not so good news. The Doctors had managed to save the leg but there was considerable damage to the muscle, which would take time to repair. So Peeta would need a walking stick for several months, once he was allowed out of his wheelchair. Even Capitol medicine has its limits, and apparently those limits had been reached with the damage done by those fucking mutts.

Peeta had smiled as I entered the room, joking in a hoarse voice that he wouldn’t get up. The banter brought a relieved smile to my face, despite the leg and the ordeal of the Games, Peeta was okay – he was still the charming boy who smooth talked and charmed the nation. It didn’t take long to realise that Peeta was oblivious to the wider ramifications of his escape from death. I’d thought before the Games that the boy lacked the cynical bent that both Kat and I had in spades. It was the worst time to be proved right. For all Peeta’s innate gift with storytelling and perceptiveness, he was an optimist. Worst than that, he was an oblivious optimist. A dangerous combination at the best of times, let alone now when what you needed was scepticism and perspicacity.

Given the risks attached to saying too much in a place where the walls literally had ears, I had to settle for innocuous small talk – the kind that bored me into wishing for a drink… or a coma. In quick order I’d updated him on his schedule, explained I couldn’t tell him anything about Kat, as that was being saved for their grand reunion, and then promptly run out of Capitol safe topics to canvas. I needn’t have worried though, the moment Peeta heard about his upcoming live action reunion he got this vacant, lovestruck, look on his face and I knew he’d tuned out.

That the boy was completely besotted with my Kat had been blatantly obvious in the arena and the googly eyes just confirmed that it was the real meal deal and not something faked in the arena as part of a longer strategy. This was both a relief and a renewed cause for concern. Peeta’s feelings were obvious and apparent. Katniss’ on the other hand were anything but, and knowing her as I did, I had my doubts.

That Kat was fond of Peeta was clear. She wouldn’t have risked Capitol displeasure by trying to save Rikon Thatcher, for example, even if he was head of ’12 School football team. She liked Peeta, sure – but was she in love with him? That I wasn’t so sure about. If left to things in her own time, I thought they would make a good pair – they balanced each other – but the Capitol wouldn’t let things happen at the snail pace my Kat would need. They’d want flash, bang, wallop and in double time. Knowing the Capitol, they’d have Kat and Peeta up the aisle in the space of a year, if they were allowed their way, with a house full of little ones following shortly after. That Kat and Peeta were little more than kids themselves wouldn’t occur to the Capitol appetite for sensation and celebrity news.

So yes, I was worried. Kat was forewarned about what would be expected of her in the interview, and I had no doubt that she would ham it up wonderfully during that short period. The problem was once we were back in ’12 – would Kat be able to keep up the star-crossed lover’s story or would she drop it once she thought they were safe. Only time would tell on that front, but the risk of something going wrong was increased with Peeta’s obliviousness.

As I walked back long the sterile white hallways of the hospital, I turned the problem over and over in my mind – worrying at it like a dog with a bone. That I would need to talk to Peeta once out of the Capitol was clear. He couldn’t be left in the dark on this, and if left to Kat I had horrifying thoughts of her undoing all the good of the interview by reverting to the surliness that denotes when she’s most uncomfortable and lashing out at Peeta, driving a wedge between them, as she explains that it was a strategy to get him home.

Peeta would likely not see, or understand, the undertones of that admission – that Katniss prized his life enough to poke the hornets nest that is the Capitol and risk all those she loves in order to save him and that what he needs to do it take things slow with her and ease her into the path they have to walk. As for Kat? Well… emotions have never been her forte, especially after Henrick’s death and her mother’s total emotional collapse. If Peeta wants Kat, he’ll need to woo, cajole and soothe her down the path to love. It’s not a job I envy.

The interview took place on an otherwise miserable Wednesday. It had been pissing down with rain for the last 24 hours, which had the extra fun of making Katniss’ mane of hair frizz – personally I couldn’t see the issue as Kat normally just plaits it, but for Cinna it was a disaster at least on a par with, if not actually worse, than the destruction of Pompeii. Kat herself was uncharacteristically jittery and unsettled. Even in the Games she had been calm and composed, but not she was restless and agitated, needing to pace about the preparation space she had been given.

I had thought, given Cinna’s sartorial choices pre Games, that we would be looking at another black outfit and fire combo. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The Katniss who emerged from the changing room was totally different, dressed in a white dress with a high neckline and puffed sleeves, that screamed sweet and innocent. The look was completed with her hair down and carefully arranged to emphasise her youth. Cinna must have caught my confused look as he raised one sardonic eyebrow, and I understood. Genius that Cinna is, he’d had the same thoughts I’d – and most likely all those with a brain watching – had had. Before, he’d dressed Katniss to look like a warrior – impressive, fearsome, aloof – someone to bet on as a contender for the position as Victor of the Games. Now he was trying to rework the image to show Katniss as someone unthreatening and innocent.

I hoped it would work. I feared it wouldn’t. Snow’s eyes as he talked to Caesar earlier had been flat and cold with a malevolent edge that made shivers race down my spine.  

The interview itself went surprisingly well. Kat’s reaction to seeing Peeta was everything the Capitol could have wished for, and they did well supporting each other during the ‘highlights’ of the Games we were all forced to watch. Still, I breathed much easier once the damned thing was over and I had both kids back in our sweet at the tributes tower. One event down, only one more to go and then we would be on the train home.

I was under no illusion that however much I worried about the interview, it was the crowning and afterparty which was the biggest hurdle. Up until now Snow hadn’t been in direct contact with either of my kids, but at that event it was tradition for him to have a five-minute chat with the Victor – alone and in private. It was a prospect that filled me with dread.  

It was at the afterparty that I had the first inkling that something bigger was afoot. The tone of the party was off. There was the usual excess of drinking and eating that always made me feel sick at the unforgivable waste when there were people starving in the Districts. There were the usual gaudy entertainments and ridiculous clothes. The usual people were in attendance. Yet something was off, an undercurrent that set my nerves on edge.

I hate being at the Presidential Palace at the best of times – too many bad memories associated with my own experience as Victor – to ever really enjoy the afterparty, and usually my plan was to find Chaff and see who could get drunk quickest. It’s a game we were both incredibly good at, and as a coping strategy it has worked without fail for much of the last decade.

This time, with my kids vulnerable and centre stage, getting rat arsed wasn’t an option, no matter how dry my mouth was or how much I longed for something to dull the noise and chaos of the celebration. Sobriety had been an unfamiliar friend through the last few weeks, and I was looking forward to getting back to ’12 so I could once more enjoy some of Ripper’s finest, but first I had to get through the afterparty.

Despite the uneasy feeling I had, it seemed to be going okay - at first anyway. Katniss and Peeta were crowned in front of the goggling masses, the silver Victor’s crown shining against Kat’s dark hair in a twisted parody of a halo.  Once the crowns were in place, and the medals awarded, Snow then did his standard speech about the glory of the Games, the troubled history of our great nation, and the valour of the Victor. The only deviation was his acknowledgement of there being two Victors, other than that it could have been a script from another of the 73 Games and no one would have been any the wiser.

Once the ritual toast to the glory of Panem had been completed, the band struck up and the party got underway in earnest. Cinna was still going for the sweet, innocent look, which meant a demure dress with a high neckline and floor length skirt. It was a small consolation to my already sky high blood pressure, and clear evidence that the stylist and I were on the same page, as the party of full of lecherous individuals who were known not to take no for an answer. I could only thank the stars that so far Kat hadn’t noticed the leering looks or blatant appreciation being directed at her by men and women as she passed. We just needed to get through the night with as little drama or excitement as possible, and Kat realising that half the guests were undressing her with their eyes would guarantee the opposite.

At some point, Peeta whisked Kat onto the dance floor, which made the audience swoon at the living romance they were watching play out live in front of them like one of those horrid Capitol soap operas the inane masses loved here in the Capitol.  Seeing the kids were safe and occupied for the time being, I finally let my guard down and went to get some food. It was a mistake. While I was by the buffet table, distracted by one of the doners who wanted to talk about the possibility of a private dinner with both Victors, Snow struck.

It was Plutarch who alerted me in his usual cryptic way that something was going on. Concerned I had looked towards the dance floor and then my heart sank. Peeta was now twirling some nameless socialite round to the applauding crowd, but there was no sign of Katniss. The Palace is large, but the function area doesn’t take long to canvas, especially when you’re looking for one dark head amongst a sea of unnatural pinks, greens and blues.

Katniss reappeared 15 heart stopping minutes later with a thunderous expression that made my stomach churn in worry.  It didn’t take long for me to weave my way over to her and corral her into a convenient alcove for a quick chat in relative privacy. Much as expected, it wasn’t good news. Snow was suspicious. He had also informed Katniss as to the reason behind the Head Gamemaker’s absence from the party. I’d noticed that Seneca Crane wasn’t holding court – like he usually did at the afterparty – but my attention had been focussed on my kids, so I hadn’t thought much of it. Now I understood. I have to say, as deaths go, this one was strangely poetic, but it was also a message to Katniss and Peeta. There would be a price to pay for outwitting the Capitol. Crane had paid for his part in it. Now the question was, what would be the cost for my kids?

Kat was in no mood to stay after her powwow with our illustrious President, but mindful of Snow’s suspicions, I cajoled her into dancing with me. Snow usually trotted off to bed close to midnight, which was the usual time I left, so no-one would think it odd if I took the kids home with me then. One dance turned into two and then I gratefully handed her over to Cinna to have a turn, while I sloped off for a glass of the regrettably alcohol-free punch. When I came back, it was to the sight of Snow watching her and Peeta dancing, his snake like eyes icy.

It was a relief when Snow went to bed right on schedule, which meant I could hustle the kids out of the party and into the relative safety of our suite at the Tribute Tower. Cinna and Portia accompanied us on our trip back, both stylists were unusually quiet and sombre as we bid the kids goodnight before heading up to the bug free rooftop.

Like me they were worried and, like me, they had no idea how to keep Kat and Peeta safe from the dangerous waters they’d steered us into, especially once I told them about Snow’s chat with Katniss. The news got worse from there. Cinna had heard from Plutarch, there were rumblings in the Districts. ’11 was on the verge of revolt with ‘8, 9’ and ‘4 not far behind. We’d be going home tomorrow, which normally meant a good 5 months of quiet before the Victory tour, but it looked like my part of the revolution was about to get busy. Plutarch thought our moment was about to come and we all had to be ready.

Looking back, it’s easy to see what he meant by that, but at the time I was too happy at the thought of not going home with only coffins for company that I wasn’t thinking much about the revolutionary opportunities Katniss’ victory afforded us.   

Our last day in the Capitol dawned overcast and muggy. Kat and Peeta were both up on time and far more chipper than I was when Effie finally succeeded in dragging me out of my bed. All those late nights and sleep deprivation had caught up with me and I was feeling unusually sluggish and out of sorts, as I stumbled into my usual chair at the table, glaring at the offending mountain of food one of the avox had brought for me.

Gauging my mood accurately, Effie and the kids kept quiet while I slowly munched my way through the mountain and downed a gallon of the super strong coffee the Capitol love so much. By the time we were due to leave for the train home I was feeling more human and less like an IED waiting to go off in someone’s face.

The station was packed when we got there, which was unusual to say the least. Each District had its own dedicated station. ‘12’s was usually like a ghost station, empty and eerily quiet. Not this time though. That day it was heaving, and Peacekeepers had to push our way through the thronging masses so we could get to the actual train. Once safely inside, I got a better view of the station. It was full to bursting with the usual vibrant colours the Capitolites love, but unusually many of them were sporting Kat’s signature plait or bleached blonde hair cut like Peeta’s. It was unnerving to say the least and I could see Kat looking shocked as she spotted the new hairstyles.

People were calling out to Katniss and Peeta, begging them for autographs or even just to touch their hands. I’ve never been so thankful for a Peacekeeper then at that moment. Crowds are dangerous, volatile entities, and they can easily turn into mobs, and watching the crowd banging on the one-way glass on the train, desperate to see my kids, it was a very real fear that they might try to storm the train or something equally stupid and dangerous.  

The driver clearly had the same concerns, as over the Tannoy system the announcement came for people to stand back away from the train, as it would be departing early. There were annoyed shouts from the crowd but, with the help of the Peacekeepers, they did step back and let us finally leave, which meant it was time for my first drink in days.

Across from me, on the plush curved seats along the panoramic window at the back of the train, Kat dozed, her head pillowed on Peeta’s shoulder. It was a sight made me smile and Effie sigh in that giddy way she has when she’s really happy.

We’d done it.

We’d done the impossible.

We’d brought both kids home.

District ’12 now had three Victors to boast of, two from one of the most memorable Games in living memory. Plutarch was right, it was a win to be proud of and sitting in that train, glass in hand, I was proud. Proud of my girl who had defied the odds, proud that she and Peeta had been able to come out of the Games healthy and whole, proud that they had shown the Capitol the true spirit of ’12.

The celebration that awaited us when we got off the train was less gaudy and much less grand than the Capitol, but all the more genuine and welcome because of it. The film crews were there to capture the moment Kat was reunited with Prim and her mother, which I’m sure the Capitolites were delighted by. Peeta’s reunion was more subdued than Kat’s, and I noted the telling absence of his sour-faced mother, but his father and brothers made up for it with banter and back slapping.

The Mayor said a speech, thanking the Capitol for the extra food and medical supplies. The school choir put in a performance which was politely applauded by the Capitol film crews, and then it was time for the Mayor to show the Victors to their new houses. By the look of it Prim and Clarabel had already moved into their house, which was next to mine, and that was that. Seven weeks of more stress, anxiety and fear then I can remember since my own Games, and it was now officially done. The nightmare that had started on Reaping day was finally over. As Kat settled into her new home, I finally relaxed. For the first time in two months, I could breathe easily in the knowledge that Katniss was safe and sound and that I had done Henrick proud.  

Back when all this started, I thought the biggest challenge would be getting Kat home safe and – hopefully – in one piece. Lucy would have been ashamed of me. No one wins the Games, I should have remembered that. Getting home wasn’t the end, it was the start. We had won the battle, but not the war – and war it would be. Snow was never going to let us get away with this win. He would be coming for us; maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one day he would, and we had to be ready.