Coping

Being a victor isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Nearly every tribute to survive the Games (not win, survive, because that's all you can do) has thought that, in one time, one form, one age or another.

What happened to the fame?

The glory, the pride, the victory?

Yeah, being a victor isn't so great.

You're famous;

For killing (outlasting) a bunch of kids.

There's glory, a lot of it;

From people who you would kill yourself, if you had the chance.

And that just sickens you even more.

Oh, the pride;

But your family can't recognise you. Not with that dead look in your eyes and those vicious words (or none at all) on the tip of your tongue, just waiting for the second you open your mouth.

And the victory;

Not all it's cracked up to be. Not when the faces of dead children float in your dreams (nightmares) every night, and when it just won't stop when you wake up.

But you cope. In your own sick, messed-up ways, you try to piece back together your crumbling lives and pretend to be the person you used to be.

It never really works.

And no one understands. Sure, they pretend that they do, but sometimes you can tell they want to hit you (it makes you flinch away, like a wounded animal. You are one), or shake you (you want to shake them back until they realise that nothing will ever help) or yell and scream and cry until that coldness leaves your soul.

Because the Hunger Games always has 24 victims, no matter what the Capitol says.

You never really made it out of that godforsaken arena, and it kills them to see it.

So you cope.

And maybe it is sick and messed-up and twisted beyond belief, but it's better than being dead.

Right?

Sometimes you wish you'd come home in a coffin, not in a train where ghosts roam the hallways.

Some of you drink till the fog consumes you and the pain is numbed (not for long).

Then there's the morphling addicts, who don't want to live but aren't allowed to die (the Capitol controls you all).

Others try to bury the memories under the weight of wealthy Capitolites, who pay for their services with money they don't need and secrets they do (but it's not always by choice).

A few lock their emotions in a box in the deepest, darkest pits of their minds. And when they try to find them again they've withered and died, leaving you cold and icy and unfeeling.

Dead man walking.

Some try and find love.

Sometimes it works.

(Mostly it doesn't)

Not when they wake up in the middle of the night to see you screaming and thrashing, held tight in the grasp of your own personal demons. They can't stand the haunted stare that appears too often, and the trips to the Capitol where you come back covered in bruises and lipstick.

It hurts them to see you so broken, torn beyond repair.

So you probably won't get your fairy-tale ending. You know you don't deserve it.

Just another piece in their games.

That's all you are.

The only people who can understand are the victors. So they try to hold onto each other, to get on with their lives and escape the grasp of the ghosts and the games. They're not tributes anymore, and district feuds don't really matter, not when you all killed and fought and died (inside). You don't really think you're any better than animals, bred for slaughter and used as entertainment. You're a little less than human, but still too human to be completely indifferent. So you move on, and keep going.

And maybe, someday, after a girl who was on fire, death (maybe yours), destruction (they deserved it) and a rebellion, the nightmares will begin to fade and you can truly live.

Maybe then you can forgive yourself.

(But maybe not.)

Fin.