the victors as complex characters will always be more interesting than making them amazing people.
like these are people who did absolutely everything in their power to survive something as traumatic as the games. most of them probably sleep with weapons in their hands. the thought on the forefront of most of their minds is survival. everything else—anyone else—can wait.
they sacrificed everything to crawl out of a killing game. their mental stability. their innocence. their childhood.
and after all of that, they realized that the games never really end. that they would sacrifice ever having a good night sleep without being plagued by nightmares. they would sacrifice their brains to help the capitol. they would sacrifice their bodies, something that should have always been their own, now snatched away from them. all for surviving a killing match that twenty-three children didn’t.
no victor is immune to this either. do you think cashmere doesn’t regret being so excited to go into the games after her brother after staying the night in a strange man’s bed that she doesn’t know? do you think gloss doesn’t regret not warning his sister about the horrors that await her after she wins? do you think brutus doesn’t sometimes wake up in a cold sweat after having yet another nightmare about being on the receiving end of his weapon, just as all of his victims were before everything faded to black? do you think enobaria doesn’t run her tongue over her sharpened teeth and wonder if it was worth it?
do you think beetee doesn’t flinch every time he sees lightning? do you think wiress doesn’t think of how if she hadn’t learned acrobatics that the 48th hunger games would have gone very differently? do you think finnick doesn’t see nets in the same way ever again, after he saw the girl from nine begging for her life tangled in a net he set up before he stabbed her with a trident? do you think annie doesn’t think about if she hadn’t spent all of that time on the beach growing up, playing in the water, that she wouldn’t have survived the dam breaking in her arena? do you think mags doesn’t think about how she left her district partner to die in the first ever traditional career pack? how if maybe, if she had been there to take the blow for him, there would be a different victor of the 11th hunger games?
do you think that blight doesn’t wonder what would have happened if the boy from two had looked up a little bit sooner, looked a little bit closer at the treetops above him, before the knife previously in blight’s hand found it’s way to the boy’s back? do you think that every time johanna picks up an axe, she doesn’t think about what it felt like to stab someone with it, what blood felt like when it splattered you? do you think she doesn’t wake up in a sweat, thinking the moisture on her skin is blood, that she’s back in the third quarter quell? do you think she doesn’t ever walk into her house in the victor’s village and think she sees a glimpse, a shadow, of her lost loved ones?
do you think that woof doesn’t use real knives anymore because every time he sees one, he remembers how it felt to stab blindly at the boy from seven? that even when he was seventy-five and the male tribute from eight for the third quarter quell, he couldn’t even look at the utensil and had to get cecelia to take it away from him? do you think cecelia can’t look at seashells anymore, that she could barely stand district four on her victory tour, because the girl from four was her last kill? that her necklace, a pretty one her sister made for her with a seashell strung through the string, was what cecelia used to choke the life out of her?
do you think that chaff doesn’t ever feel the phantom feeling of his hand? doesn’t ever touch the stump where it used to be and feel the phantom pain of it being sawed off like it was yesterday, even thirty years later? do you think that seeder doesn’t ever feel the hot sun of her arena on her body, doesn’t ever think she’s back, waiting for her death to come?
do you think that haymitch doesn’t start shaking every time a blowgun is provided at the cornucopia? do you think that he didn’t see the gold pin on katniss’ arena wear and have to sit down, remembering a very different girl with blonde hair and a quick witted humor with the same pin? do you think that peeta doesn’t hear foxface’s voice during her interview, over and over and over, until it’s so distorted he can’t even remember what she had actually said? that he doesn’t ever think of the girl from eight, a girl he might not have even known the name of?
do you think that, years down the line, katniss doesn’t realize the fate that waited for glimmer if she had won? do you think that she doesn’t wonder what would have happened if cato was a little quicker to get to the cornucopia to save clove? do you think she doesn’t wonder what the girl from four was like, what her name was, what her parents were like, what she was like? do you think that she doesn’t think about what would have happened if marvel was just a little bit quicker with his spear than her with her arrows, what would have happened if she was just a little bit slower to get to rue?
the what-ifs plague them. their games will never leave them. they will never escape their experiences. their lives will never be their own, if they ever were, ever again.
