my name is Emilia Santos and I go by Em, I’m thirty-one years old, and the victor of the 84th annual hunger games from District One. That was the year with the Nightmare Arena. My preferred pronouns are she and her some people think I look like Alice Braga but I'm not convinced. I really shouldn’t be saying this but… I’m Pro-Rebllion (though she’d never really admit it). Just ‘cuz, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Sometimes, I take an Academy kid under my wing to train personally. Like they say, “May the odds be ever in your favor”.
Additional Facts
Birthday: April 12th, 67
Gender: Cis-Gender
Sexuality: Bisexual
Token: Her engagement ring
Preferred weapon: Small knives
Three Strengths
Head in the Games: Emilia is not easily distracted when it comes to the Hunger Games.
Observant: Emilia may be quiet, but she’s observant. There’s rarely a thing that goes on around her that she misses. It’s part of what helps her stay in control and on top of the next big thing.
Conscientiousness: There is not a thing that Emilia does that she does not put her 100% behind. She is hard-working and responsible, especially in terms of those she mentors. Everything she does, she does well.
Three Weaknesses
Hidden Secrets: Emilia has a daughter, a child born just before her victory tour that she told the President had died. In reality, she gave the baby up to a District One woman to keep her from becoming a pawn to use again Emilia. She thinks she got away with it.
Seemingly Unfriendly: Emilia is not the friendliest person, nor is she the most willing to work with others. This can sometimes come off as rude to others, but is really just a measure to protect herself.
Bullheadedness: Emilia is stubborn to a fault. Things are supposed to be a certain way and when they aren’t, she asserts the correct way to do them.
Important notes:
Emilia is an addict (cocaine usually) and struggles to remain sober.
She tends to favor alcohol when ‘sober’
Detailed Bio
The Vargas family was once one of the wealthier families in District One, and when you were on the wealthier side of District One, you were near the Capitol in terms of wealth. No one could for sure say where the family money came from, only that it came from before the creation of Panem. As one of the founding families in District One, the Vargas family stood firmly behind the Capitol during the Dark Days, fighting alongside their Capitol companions.
sixty-seven years came and went between the end of the Dark Days and the birth of one Emilia Vargas. And in those sixty-seven years, the family fortune grew smaller. Generations of family not working, and thinking they were better than the rest played into that. The marriage of Francisco Vargas and Victoria Troy was more business arrangement than it was for love. She was a stylist working her way up the ranks of the Hunger Games, and well he… he was a man from a dying family looking for a way to maintain his level of lifestyle. His name held influence in the Capitol and thus she might have been able to move up quicker than would be seen to be normal.
Somewhere along the line business turned to love and when it would seem that they couldn’t have children, along would come their miracle - Emilia Vargas. She was spoiled as an only child. She was only ever dressed in the best the Capitol and District One could offer. She was their shining star, who would only prove how much of a shining star she was only later in life.
Attending school, she was friendly and out going, making friends wherever she went. But it became abundantly clear to her, that her friends had other interests that she didn’t. And though she might be a Vargas, she wanted to be like her friends. So, when she realized they went to the Academy, it became the crying plea at the Vargas home - “Please can I?” “I want to go to the Academy!” “All my friends do!”
If she only knew then, what she does as an adult, she’d have kept her nose out of it.
Her parents finally relented and sent her on her way to the Academy. It only took a couple years before she decided it wasn’t serious, but lord have mercy on anyone who suggested to her parents that she didn’t need to attend. The tantrums that Emilia was known for as a girl were splendid and wide known.
Peer pressure is a hard thing to deal with when you’re a teenage girl, even for the daughter of a Hunger Games stylist.
At fourteen things shifted. Her father died at the end of the year and she was left reeling for nearly a year. Her grades slipped, she skipped training at the Academy, she didn’t talk to her friends. She was despondent to even those she was closest too, and her mother was even more so. Her mother had never been doting, the falling on her father, but now she was just absent. The only one able to get through to Emilia was Antonio Santos, a boy a year older than her from the Academy, and that was only because he was just as bullheaded as she.
He’d show up at her door and drag her out of bed to go train even if it just meant her backyard. He didn’t let her get away with her attitude for he had one to match. It was Antonio that eventually got her back to the Academy, and Antonio who got her to take training seriously, even if she still didn’t plan to volunteer because ‘Who knows when they’ll say no volunteers, who knows when you’ll be reaped and the volunteer will back out.’ He was from a much different family than hers, a more rebellious family than hers. He was training not for his own glory, but to keep his family safe.
What started as an unlikely friendship turned into a teenage romance over the years leading up to his volunteering. When he went, she wished him well, and went home and prayed he’d make it out alive. She was glued to the screens that no longer hosted Games viewing parties, not since her father had died. Her mother would have to force her to sleep. Those eight days were the longest of her life, and when he came out victorious and she saw the effects it had on him, she decided she was done. She didn’t want that for herself. She could only deal with one of their minds hosting nightmares every night. If hers did too, then how would she help him? Who would be there in the middle of the night to gently wake him, and assure him he wasn’t in the pitch black, that he was safe if she too were to have nightmares every night?
They might have already been living together unofficially, when he proposed the night before his victory tour. It was a promise that he’d return. A promise that he’d be okay without her for a couple weeks. A promise they both needed. And he did return, he made good on his promise and the two talked idly of running away to live in the woods by themselves. It was a foolish desire, they both knew, but it was what they ultimately wanted - needed - only each other.
Five months passed and four weeks remained until he’d have to leave her again when she found out she was pregnant. At seventeen most kids would be terrified, but she was overjoyed. They’d spoken of starting their own family, of course their wedding had always come first in those late night conversations, but that didn’t matter anymore. She had thought about waiting until he came back from the 84th Hunger Games to tell him, but she just couldn’t keep it to herself and well - she hadn’t much spoken to her mother since Antonio had won and she had lost most of her friends when she’d dropped out of the Academy.
So she told him and he decided he’d stay home to be with her. She tried to convince him she’d be okay for a couple weeks while he was gone, but he wasn’t having it. One had no lack of victors, they could wait a year to see his face in the Capitol. The President didn’t agree though a letter came addressed to her with the presidential stamp on it. The message was vague, but she understood it loud and clear - volunteer or Antonio might just not come back home to her, for one reason or another.
‘And if you’ve never felt your soul being torn apart, you’ve never loved anyone with your whole heart.’
So, she volunteered, unwilling to even risk the possibility that he might be hurt because of her. And he, of course, followed her to the Capitol, just as President Snow had intended. He was after all the shiny new victor. He was attractive and desirable, Snow couldn’t just let him take a year off for personal reasons.
The arena felt as if it were meant to destroy her. Only the creatures of nightmares existed here and everything seemed more punishing… Not to mention a pregnancy she kept hidden from everyone else in the Capitol. Food was scarce, but she managed to find bugs and Tony sent small food items whenever he could. But her body was trying to grow another and just as quickly as she ate, it seemed the energy gained was gone. She spent six days exhausted, starving and on the verge of dehydration.
She awoke in a Capitol hospital, unaware that she had even won and from a terrible nightmare. Returning home was worse though. The nightmares followed and she found herself not sleeping well, nor eating well. It was everything in Antonio to get her to eat what she needed to stay alive. She refused to go outside after dark and refused to be inside without the lights on. One particularly hard night there was a storm that knocked the power out. Emilia doesn’t remember crying so much as she did that night, terrified and convinced she was back in the arena with the nightmares swarming around her when in reality it was only the rumble of thunder.
The stress of her arena and the subsequent PTSD sent her into labor far earlier than she should have, thirty weeks and though born in the District hospital, the infant’s chances were grim at best. Emilia didn’t sleep as she sat beside the incubator that struggled to keep her daughter alive - a little girl she’d named Amada meaning ‘beloved one.’
But after a particularly hard conversation with Antonio, they knew they wouldn’t be able to raise her - if she survived. Being the kid of one victor would put enough of a target on her back, being the daughter of two? Not to mention Emilia was in no shape of mind to raise a kid, nor was Antonio. She’d known this, she’d voiced these concerns to her doctor during her pregnancy. Amada may have been what they’d dreamed so heartily of, but two years could change that especially when two years saw two people go into the games and come out alive but scarred for life.
It was her doctor that brought another option to them. Dr. Benz (a docile rebel in her own right) offered them an out that would take the child off the radar of the Capitol (so they thought). Dr. Benz would forge a death certificate for Amada Santos and forge a birth certificate for Amanda Benz. Dr. Benz would adopt the little girl in the hopes of freeing her of any target on her back. She’d lead a normal life, going to the Academy if she wanted, but Emilia and Antonio had to keep their distance. They agreed.
And they kept their distance, or rather, he did. She did as well, but she made a habit of leaving gifts for the little girl on her birthday. Dr. Benz and Emilia spoke of the little girl often with the good doctor sending updates and pictures that Emilia kept securely hidden away in her own home in the Victor’s Village - not that she actually lived there.
It would be a couple more years before they finally married, both needing the time to heal emotionally and mentally. But when the finally did, the Capitol ensured it was a grand affair - the marriage of two victors? Of course.
