you know it's not a day for heroes {lyndis' victor AUs}

[Lyn𝛿is]

[googlefont="Lovers Quarrel:400"]

Joselle Brookwater

They laugh.

"Slow down, girl," one of the men hoots. "You're a victor now. If you keep eating like a starved tribute, you'll get fat."

"And who wants a fat, ugly victor?" the second man adds. "The -"

"I think I know how much I want to eat, thanks," I scowl back at him. It had been a long day already, stylists and speeches and autographs and - even the little children of the district would come up to me and tell me how 'bad-ass' I was for killing people, for lopping off people's limbs with a sword, for the blood on my hands. Compared to facing off against Asha Lumiere, a couple Capitol men were nothing to me.

"Aw, come on, wipe that frown off," the man chuckles, a tiny smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. "Besides, the best dish isn't even here yet. Rumor says, it was inspired by your Games."

"By which part?" I say coldly, glaring straight into the man's eyes. The same sort of glare I'd given Samira Hart before impaling her in revenge. "The poisonous muttations? The severed harpies' feet? Or maybe -"

"She's a fiesty one," the first man stage-whispered to the other. "No, no, of course not," he says. "I meant the fish that you caught from the rift valley."

I remember now. A crude fishing hook had yielded enough fish for each of us to eat several, and it had been the fullest meal my allies and I had had in days. So full, in fact, that we had been unprepared when the other alliance had swept down from the mountain and ambushed us.

I held Kimmie's hand while she died.

The fish in question were scaly, unappealing fish that resembled particularly rough chunks of ocean rock, one of the few types that District Four tended to keep instead of shipping to the Capitol. It wasn't worth the trouble when most Capitolites would rather have something easier to eat.

Until now.

The months before the Victory Tour the docks had been more packed than I had ever seen them, boxes and pallets and pallets of boxes being moved day and night to satisfy the increasing demand. There was no room for fishermen to save any of it for their families; what was once a staple of District Four was now too valuable for the citizens to eat. The bread and oil the Capitol sent in exchange for Parcel Day was far more affordable to trade for.

Eat your fish, little one, and you'll grow big and strong, my mother's words echo back to me.

Strong enough to kill five people? Strong enough to live with it afterwards?

"Oh my Ripred, take a look at this!"

A woman in a bright orange wig, holding a small tureen of sauce, interrupts my thoughts.

"Do you really eat this in Four? It smells like something died in here!" she said, wrinkling her nose and holding up the bowl to my face. "They should just serve some proper Capitol food for the tour."

"Smells perfectly fine to me," I blurt out, but that's not an answer the woman would accept, beause her grating voice continues,

"You people just have no taste! This would never be allowed in the Capitol. Now excuse me, I'm going to get myself far away from that vile stench."

She pushes the sauce bowl into my hands and rushes away to whisper to another woman wearing a wig just as brightly colored. The man from before comes back with a tiny portion of meat that he urges me to try. I bite into the flesh and it is so raw that blood oozes out, coppery and metallic against my tongue, and for a moment I remember drops of Samira's blood that I watched drip from my blade.

"What the -"

"And this is how you make a proper pork chop. I had to order them to, or the guy back there would never get it right."

"Well excuse me if we care more about not getting sick than for what the Capitol thinks tastes good -" I had had enough.

"You don't understand anything. Come on, you gotta learn to appreciate the finer parts of life. This is the way all the Capitolites do things -"

"And who says they're right?"

As soon as I'd said those words, the laughter dropped from the men's faces, and I realized that I'd made a huge mistake. Victor though I was, I would never be considered equal to a Capitol citizen, and for someone like me to question even such a meaningless opinion - well, that was like treason, wasn't it?

There's nothing in their eyes but pure conviction, conviction that the Capitol was right and being against the Capitol meant you were wrong and dangerous and 'uncultured'. They took and took and took until even thoughts as simple as how to cook meat or whether to enjoy fermented fish sauce were called into question, down to deeper ones like what emotions to feel or what dangerous opinions to stop holding.

I have seen that kind of look on two people before. The last time was the conviction that Ansgar Todd held as flaming knives with embedded prayers whistled through the air, and even towards the end he had still seemed assured that Ripred existed to help him to victory. Someone so utterly convinced they held all truth within themselves - if you were not careful - would suck you in and make you doubt yourself until you began asking them how to think.

I made the mistake of trusting a man like that once. I don't plan on ever being so vulnerable again.

Twenty-three lives in my hands - and for what? What good was being a Victor? I look around.

I did not gain freedom - the Capitol dictates even more of my life now. I did not help District Four prosper - one look at the fishermen who worked longer hours, the children with swollen bellies from too much bread and not enough of anything else, told me all there was to know there. I did not even have a family that I would have spared from a year of tragedy. I had the will to survive and precious little else, and that was what got me through the Games, but what good is mere survival without meaning?

Rachel had a father that she wanted to make proud. Kimmie had her siblings to go home to. Even Pillar and Myara, who I'd considered mortal enemies my entire time in the arena, had their victor cousins working tirelessly at the control room to bring them home.

I had no one.

Was twenty-three lives a price worth paying for a selfish and lonely existence?

Snow calls me into his office when we get to the Capitol. I nod and smile and say the things I am expected to, and my slips of the tongue yesterday remain unmentioned. He smells like danger and like bloody roses - there are rumors of Victors who refused to fall in line and found their families dead of mysterious causes shortly afterwards.

I have no one.

I have nothing to lose.

Just that thought makes me steal a glance at the sword displayed in the room, fantasizing about slashing Snow's throat and leaving him to bleed out on the plush throne he's sitting on. His dangerous glinting eyes morph in front of my vision, becoming the icy blue of Asha Lumiere's as he stares in disbelief and crumples to the floor in a pool of blood in front of me.

I wouldn't get that far. The sword is behind a glass case, and surely Snow had precautions against such a method of assassination.

I imagine myself vilified, Snow a martyr, a second set of Hunger Games installed every year to punish such a rebellion. Another man identical to Snow rising up to take his place. Nothing changed.

Still - if I can barely stand the past few days of the Victory Tour, I'll never be able to live like this, year after year, property of the Capitol, bearing the isolation and the scorn and misplaced worship and never being allowed to admit that all I've gained is a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment my name came from the escort's lips.

Some victors turn to alcohol. We've all seen Arbor Halt, eyes glazed over, tumbling about, barely mentoring his tributes. But I find the little colorful drinks only make it harder for me to forget. It settles like syrup in my stomach and then all the frustration, all the anger, all the helplessness rises up and overflows from my lips and my body and my head until I want to smash the intricate glasses against the ballroom floor.

I want to throw the food on those banquet tables to the fishermen who deserve it, overturn the table, and bash them against the ground until they are piles of kindling. I want my old familiar sword back in my hand, where I can swing it with ease and decapitate every one of the vapid heads in the room. I want them to feel every slash of knife against skin, every broken bone in the arena, every pang of hunger as a child starves on the streets.

So it's not guilt. I've long since abandoned guilt. I can't afford to feel guilty over the lives I've taken if I want to survive. It's scorching fire, blistering hatred. And alcohol is no help against that at all.

There is a time and place for everything. To make alliances, or to swear revenge. To hold firm, or to placate. To stab, or to parry. But ultimately, if twenty-three others sacrificed their lives so I could stand here, then there is only one way to honor their memory.

By burning the Capitol down.

[Lyn𝛿is]

gentian hope

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They watch the sunset together, a red sky tinged with yellow filtering through bushes laden heavy with fragrant yellow blossoms tinged with red.

Is it just him, or are the colors so much more vivid, the world so much blurrier? He stands up, reaching for a rose, but his feet betray him and his limbs flail about awkwardly as he crashes into the dirt. Still, he snatches at the flower; his fingers pull it from its stem in a shower of yellow-red petals that melt like quicksilver into his hands. He holds up his arm, mesmerized, as the color of sunshine and the color of blood slowly ooze into his skin.

He thinks he should say something, but the sentences slide from his mind like petals from his hands. Everything is yellow and red and orange, and his words seem to dissolve into the swelling tide of color. There is no need to act. There is no need to speak. All that is left is to simply be.

I can't forget the faces
I can't forget the sounds
I can't forget, can't get the fever down

Night tastes like warm chocolate as it settles over the rose garden. The stars shimmer in a million pinpricks of light, their twinkling seeming as brilliant as the saturated colors in the daytime.

District Eight had always been terribly lonely, terribly drab, ever since Lily had left and there were no more adventures, no more queens and princes and castles. Five years, and a boy could wish for color but it was a contradiction to want such childish games again but ponder them with the melancholy air of an adult.

Yet now that space was filling with balloon bikes and megaphones, with a bright vermilion dress and dark ringlets and a soft, gentle smile.

Next to him, Salome breathes, her chest rising and falling slowly, in time to the outer wall of the mansion rippling in and out. In and out. In and out.

"It was an honor," he whispers, "to experience all of this with you."

His words float away in the silence, eaten by the sound of her snores, and he drifts off as well among the rosebushes, dreaming in swirls of color.

When he wakes up, she's already gone.

I guess imagination
it makes it come around
whenever lightning strikes
and thunder sounds

Eva Hope, District Eight

Head still fuzzy from yesterday's tea, he blinks several times, staring at the sky above, but the image doesn't change.

She's dead.

He thinks back to the train ride, to Eva pushing away the bottle that their drunk district partner had offered them. Ever like an older sister (even if they were technically the same age). And - maybe it was futile to hope that he would see her ever truly happy since they killed Lily and Paige but - someone had robbed her of that chance. He'd expected to protect her, even if he never could have. He hadn't expected to outlive her.

He counts the faces in the sky. There are seven others remaining in the arena. Which one of those seven had killed Eva?

Was it Salome?

He dreams of Lily that night.

Standing in the training center, she looks just as she did five years ago, bright eyes and the joyous smile of Good Lily, before her vicious side took over in that arena.

"Lily?" he calls out to her cautiously, "What are you doing - how did you get here?"

She says nothing in response. Instead, she beckons, leading him to a slanted roof just like the one he had landed on at the start of the Games. Paige and Eva are standing there as well, but this time, there is no Cornucopia.

"Look at the stars," Lily says to him. "Do you think Molly is up there?"

"Yes," he tries to answer, but the stars - and his cousins - all disappear, giving way to a colorful sunrise.

We shared nothing
but storm, but wind
one rainswept moment
stuck within

There's eight days worth of wax and blood caked under his nails.

The glaive that melts in his hands adds another shimmering sparkling layer to the mix, sticky and suffocating against his skin.

He'd killed someone. Two someones. He watches Shelby stumble and collapse, this time without the pleasant peacefulness of the tea in his system, and his head spins. Maybe when he was twelve he'd cheered when Lily killed that boy from One, but this - watching her pained gasps, her hopes and dreams bleeding away - was nothing to celebrate.

His weapon softens, the deadly blade of a minute ago becoming useless wax and slowly oozing across his arms. Crayons were for children's games and drawings were supposed to be all pretend but the blood was real and the death was real and the pain was all real, too.

A cannon sounds. Just to be certain, he falls to his knees and reaches for the other tribute, touching still-warm skin and feeling the lack of a pulse against her neck.

Then he forces himself to stand up and walk away without looking back.

I can't forget the shaking
your hands over my own
both hot with fever
to our very bones

Can you do it? the voice pounds against his mind as he sketches his final weapon, a deep blue sword. By tomorrow, this sword, too, will fade away along with three more lives, but he nonetheless traces fine details against the pommel and hilt of the sword, picking up two more crayons to draw elongated green leaves and bright white petals against the weapon's surface.

It's painstaking work, enough to serve as distraction however slight until night falls. When he finishes, he stares at the weapon for a very long time, tracing a finger over and over across a single stem until the anthem sounds.

He covers his ears against the trumpets' assault as four names flash in the sky. First comes the cold-eyed Career and another face he doesn't recognize, then -

Shelby Leviane, District Eight

Her blood is still spattered across his items. He forces himself to think about the opponents he will face the next day because he can't let himself look back, not when there's a growing part of him clamoring for the first time that he might actually win -

And then what?

Salome Izar, District Eleven

He'd thought it bound to happen, but his heart still plummets.

A selfish part of him had wished to see her again even if it meant they would be forced to fight each other. Even if maybe now that they'd made it this far, she'd be willing to kill him to return home. Even if it was giving the Capitol the power to make their friendship meaningless.

But they couldn't - and everything hurt - and he'd never thought to the point of returning to Eight before now - and Lily's gone, Paige's gone, Molly is gone, Eva is gone, Salome is gone - and he wasn't meant to protect, only to create drawings and destroy people and -

Tears roll down his cheeks, and he doesn't try to stop them. One more night and it will be over, he tells himself, but even that lie is of little comfort against the long and dark hours remaining.

He tosses and turns until the sky is no longer the deep blue color of his sword, before passing out from sheer exhaustion.

I do regret the feeling
that we will never know
what might have happened
had we not let go

The victory cacophony unravels the arena.

Flat on his back, staring up at the sky, he sees it break open in a swirling storm as a hovercraft sails through the gap and reaches its claw out to him. A needle enters his skin, and he welcomes the darkness it allows him to slip away to.

Salome is standing in that darkness, calling out to him. He recognizes her by the sound of her voice, even if her face is hidden in shadow. There is something heavy in his pockets, and when he reaches into them he pulls out a single crayon, golden and radiant.

"We can be king and queen together," he whispers as the darkness lifts and a tall gleaming harp behind thm begins playing a soft melody. He traces the crayon through the air and it becomes a delicate yet sturdy crown, a mesh lattice of wires enclosing tiny jewels that sparkle in the light. "We can draw our own castle to defend us against the dragons -"

" - and if any come we'll make their claws disappear," says Paige, brandishing another crayon like a wand.

He reaches out to set the golden crown on top of Salome's curls, but fog begins rolling in from the hills, so thick that he can barely see his own hand, and -

CRASH!

The mesh basket on the bedside table falls to the ground, and his eyes fly open. There's no hills, no harp, no Salome, no Paige. Only a wet pillow and the harsh antiseptic smell of the Training Center.

He holds on to the basket. Takes it with him, spinning it in his hands as he steps outside of his room and takes the elevator up to the roof of the building.

There's someone else already there, lounging in one of the colorful lawn chairs. They catch each other's gaze, and he suddenly feels rather silly standing in front of a victor in his nightgown.

"Couldn't sleep?" his fellow victor asks him. The answer is obvious - why else would he be wandering the Training Center at four in the morning - but he nods nonetheless.

"Nightmares?"

No, not nightmares. Perhaps nightmares would have been easier to deal with. But his dreams were peaceful and it was waking life that was the nightmare; whenever he stepped towards the figures in those dreams, they faded away and returned him to consciousness with a sinking in his heart. They weren't real, and he wanted them to be, but the hum of electricity through the walls of his room would replace the sound of their voices, and he could never get them to return.

Now he understands why victors turn to morphling. Far better to live in a pleasant dream than a hopeless reality.

Day by day
I walk the distance alone
walk the distance alone

Day by day
I fight the fever alone
fight the fever alone

The stage lights beat down like a row of ten blinding, hot suns. It's so bright it makes his eyes water, and as he takes his seat on the ornate chair directly in the center of it, he feels more vulnerable here, surrounded by emptiness, than in the danger of the arena.

He can't bear to stare at the screen like they demanded. Instead he looks downward, his idle fingers picking at a waxy red velvet cushion the precise color Salome's flamenco dress had been.

Somewhere, President Snow is glaring.

The one saving grace is that, with so many tributes, there are long stretches of time where he barely recognizes the faces in the video. The camera switches from swarm to stampede, then to Capitol speculation on Lethe and her daughter, skull crushed within minutes of the starting gong.

His own kills are displayed in excruciating detail, and he is not surprised to learn that the same cold-eyed Career who had struck down Molly had also been the one to kill his cousin Eva. Not that the precise identity of her killer mattered now that they were all gone. Then it switches to Salome and the boy from Two, and when he sees her dancing in the face of death, his heart breaks all over again.

"Congratulations to Gentian Hope, Victor of the 75th Hunger Games -"

The trumpets blare their harsh exultation from the screen, and he averts his gaze. There is dislodged velvet fuzz under his nails and staining his fingertips, a hole in the chair where his fingers had worn away at the cloth for the past three hours. He tries to brush it away, and the little fibers fall onto his dark pants in a cloud of red.

He can still spot flecks of vermilion among his belongings when he returns to District Eight.

I can't forget the faces
I can't forget the sounds

[Lyn𝛿is]

[Googlefont="Great Vibes:400"]

mila breukelen

Twelve seems frozen in time when I step off the train. The dusty storefronts, bare dirt roads, warm smell of bread from the bakery all so different from the shine of the Capitol and the darkness of the Arena.

I shiver in the early winter air, and pull the cloak tighter around my body. They'd cleaned up the banshee's pelt for me after the Games, had the Capitol fashion designers turn it into luxury fabric with glistening black buttons at the cuffs and collars and golden scalloped hems like wings wrapping around my shoulders and across my chest.

Dark hair and cloak layered on a green dress, I bear the form of a banshee like in fairy-stories, heralding death even in victorious return. It's iconic, the stylists had said. Black shawls are in fashion now, because of you. But I can't help but feel as though it has allowed the arena to follow me home.

In the faces of the crowd I see a district divided. "Aren't you ashamed?" a leering boy hissed. "He could have come home. We could have had the victor our district really deserved. Not some uppity Merchant slut." And I mumble a polite 'sorry' at him, my existence constantly warranting apology, justification even as I'd shouted at Ansel, at Alfie as I struck them down that I would not apologize for their demise. In the face of home, in the face of old familiar threats I feel myself slowly morphing back into the hesitant pushover that had stood on the reaping stage trying desperately not to cry.

You were right, brother. I needed to see that only strength matters. Without the will to impose them on others, ideals are only foolish thoughts that stand in the way of victory.

But I still wasn't strong enough, yet. Why else would I need to hold back tears when a former classmate had spit at me and said I should have let Sirrah or Alfie finish me off instead?

As the fear that I was not worthy, that I had only survived by sheer dumb luck, comes crawling into my stomach, I cling desperately to the maelstrom of anger and power I have become to shield myself. All too quickly it is fading, all too quickly I am losing my lifeline.

"Mommy!"

A familiar head of red-brown hair wiggles through the crowd, and before I can react, her little fingers tug at my dress as she tries to shimmy up my leg.

Love hadn't been enough. Clinging to the thought of seeing my children again as a reason to survive - that had lasted less than a day in the Games. Less than a single night, until eight monsters descended on us from the darkness, until dead illusions sprang from deceptive treasure boxes, until mutated toddlers holding knives charged from the shadows.

How quickly I had cast all caring thoughts aside, knowing they would not help me survive and replacing them with indignation and hatred and spite. Ansel had wished me dead, and so I had held on in defiance, determined to see the light leave his eyes if it was the last thing I did in that arena.

If I had left too much room in my heart for love, it would only have made me weak.

Now, looking down, I see only how fragile little Almira is, how easily broken, and unwelcome images lay claim to my attention - how smoothly a spear might pierce her, how her head could be crushed like a ripe peach in one's fingers -

"Mommy! Mommy!"

I don't trust my own hands.

Cloudy red in the back of my mind, all I see is the blood on them, the pale pink of Ansel's brain matter staining my skin. Three lives underneath those spikes, by the fifth day I no longer mourned my allies as friends but as reasons for hatred. The heady feeling of righteous indignation had carried me through, had dragged me up from the cold earth day after day to fight new battles.

Servant of death, dark-haired reaper with bloodstained stake and empty eyes, I'd always known he would be the last opponent to defeat.

We circle each other, mirrored eyes analyzing each other's form for any crack in their defenses. The boy with a frozen heart, the girl who has sealed hers away with anger; through the crimson light that strikes us and casts shadows across the rippling pond it seems that we are not so different after all.

But there is no time to dwell on that sentiment, no time as we charge towards each other in a flurry of mace swings and spear thrusts, and Ansel grunts when my weapon smashes into his ribs just like it did on the first day.

What a change a week brings, I think to myself. I suppose I almost ought to thank him for shattering any illusions I'd still harbored when I entered the arena.

For all I'd thought Ansel was despicable, cutting down his district partner that night, hadn't I just done the same? Alfie's blood still painted fresh spatters across my clothes, but in the face of vengeance, a few more crimson sprays had ceased to matter.

Because of him, I had spent the past four days alone, save for the two boys I had encountered and killed. Because of him, I had spent the days before that nearly getting cut to pieces by unnatural creations of the Capitol - horrific though they were, I would have fought them a dozen times over if it meant steering away from his alliance.

Because of him, I have suffered. And from that suffering, I have become strong -

The spikes smash into his skull, and all I feel is the surge of power and triumph through my veins as Ansel's head caved in and the trumpets sounded.

Wasn't this what I'd striven for? Haven't I spent eight days and seven nights imagining how good it would feel to dash their brains against the tombstones, to foil their smug indifference, to make myself deserve to continue living?

"Mommy?"

I want to scrub it all away. There had been no room for regret or guilt in the arena, but in such familiar surroundings the weight of lives I have taken threatens to suffocate me. Ansel and Sirrah and Alfie hide at the edge of my vision, taunting that I have become the monster I saw them as; the daylight of district Twelve pierces through the justifications I try and cloak myself with.

"Mommy, can we watch TV later?"

My nightmares are filled with Almira and Cedric's tiny bodies lying broken at my feet, my hands spattered with red and still clenching the mace in a death grip. Their skulls split open, like Ansel's was, and all around me only the darkness and a haze of red.

How can I guide them through life when the dark recesses of my mind conjure up images of me taking it away from them?

"No, honey. There isn't anything on TV to watch, anyways."

There isn't anything, at least, that aren't endless reruns of the Games, of interviews, iconic moments and memorable scenes. The one on the train had flashed at least twenty close-up pics of my victory pose, mace raised high, black cloak billowing, staring straight ahead at the hovercraft. I'd ended up pulling the plug on the damn thing entirely, not that wallowing in silence had been much better.

"Awwww!" Her bottom lip quivers in a pout. "Mommy never says no!"

I blink. "Well we're not watching TV today."

"You can't shield them forever, Mila," Drake emerges behind them, shaking his head. There's no tearful hug, no emotional reunion - he'd never have held with such a sentimental display - only a single understanding gaze that seemed to communicate all at once everything and nothing.

Was he proud of me for becoming something I never wanted to be?

"You let them watch, didn't you?" And I don't say it as an accusation, but as a question, even if I already know the answer.

"They need to know how the world is, before they get broken by it."

And there's something in me that explodes, like a weapon lashing out -

"You think I don't know that, Drake?" I scream, letting the worry inside bubble over into rage like I had with Ezen. "You think I don't realize how - there must be thousands of people in the Capitol just hoping one or both of them get reaped -" I think of the other victors, of Kieran Emberstatt and Eden Turner and Brooke Destin and all those Lowes "- so they can have their stupid family drama, so they can wail on and on about how exciting it is, to see my children die!"

What if they're less safe now that I've won than if Ansel had killed me in there?

Almira starts crying, and my anger deflates, as quickly as it had come. "I'm sorry, darling," I coo, because she deserves so much more - more than these hands of a killer trying to pretend they are still the hands of a nurturer.

"Mila." Drake clapped his hands down, hard, over my shoulders. "You are not going to turn into an emo wreck like all those other victors. You're stronger than that."

Too strong to be kind, too vicious to be gentle, too - ?

"You don't understand," I hiss at him. "You'll never understand."

"I know," he says, and for a second I see a brief flash of us as children, not much older than Cedric and Almira, sitting in the meadow and having such grand plans for the world. "But we can try."

We can't be children again; there's a lot I've left behind in that arena that I'll never regain. So with a heavy heart, I lift the twins onto my shoulders, and we head for home.

I know our antebellum innocence
was never meant to see the light of our armistice day