Chapter 36 : Victor's Life
Six weeks blurred into something almost resembling routine.
Victor's Village was a strange place to live—twelve identical mansions built for victors who'd never come, maintained by Capitol funds that flowed regardless of occupation. Only three houses held residents: Haymitch's alcohol-haunted disaster, Katniss's slowly warming home, and mine.
I filled my house with supplies I no longer needed to store in my ability.
Pantry stocked with preserved food. Closets holding emergency clothing. Basement organized with equipment for every scenario I could imagine. Old habits died hard, especially habits that had kept me alive.
But the storage space wasn't empty. I kept extras there anyway—backup weapons, medical supplies, the nightlock berries I'd never actually swallowed. Insurance against futures I hoped wouldn't come.
Mornings belonged to hunting.
Katniss and I left before dawn, crossing into the forests beyond District 12's official boundaries. Peacekeepers looked the other way for victors—one of the few genuine privileges our status provided. We moved through woods that had been her territory long before the Games, tracking game with skills I was still learning.
She taught me to read signs in broken branches and disturbed leaves. I taught her the edge cases of my Blind Spot sense, how observation felt different from attention felt different from danger. Together, we killed rabbits and deer and wild turkeys, bringing back more meat than two people could eat.
The excess went to the Hob. District 12's black market had been Katniss's second home before the arena. Now we were its most reliable suppliers—and its most protected customers.
"Never seen victors trade before," Greasy Sae observed one afternoon, ladling stew into bowls while we counted our earnings. "Usually they just... disappear into those big houses."
"We're not usual victors," Katniss said.
"That you ain't." The old woman studied me with shrewd eyes. "You're the one who jumped in front of that spear. For the little girl from 11."
"Rue."
"Rue." She nodded slowly. "District's talking about that. About what it means."
"What does it mean?"
"Different things to different folks." She handed over our stew, accepted payment in the form of fresh game. "Some say you're a fool. Some say you're a hero. Me? I say you're someone worth watching."
The words stayed with me longer than they should have.
Nightmares came with the darkness.
I woke reaching for weapons that weren't there, heart pounding from dreams of fire and mutts and the sound of cannons counting the dead. The faces changed—sometimes Careers, sometimes tributes I'd barely known, sometimes people from my first life that my sleeping mind couldn't quite release.
Katniss had her own collection.
She screamed names in her sleep—Rue most often, but also tributes she'd watched die, people she couldn't save. Her voice carried through Victor's Village's empty streets, and I learned to listen for it.
We developed a system.
If one heard the other struggling, they came. No questions, no explanations, just presence. Some nights we talked about the arena, dissecting memories that festered in isolation. Some nights we sat in silence, sharing space until the darkness felt less absolute.
Most nights ended with both of us in one house.
Not romantic—not exactly—but something beyond friendship. We'd been forged together in the arena, and the world outside felt wrong without the other nearby. Trauma bonding, probably. Neither of us cared to name it more precisely.
"Is this what victors are?" I asked one night, watching dawn lighten the windows. "Broken people in fancy houses?"
"Haymitch would say yes." Katniss was curled in the chair opposite mine, blanket wrapped around her shoulders. "But he's been alone for twenty-four years."
"And we won't be?"
"We won't be." She met my eyes. "Whatever we are, we're it together. That counts for something."
Gale Hawthorne was a problem I hadn't anticipated.
Katniss's hunting partner from before the Games—tall, dark-haired, angry in ways that felt familiar. He'd expected her to return as the Katniss he remembered. Instead, she'd come back with a partner he hadn't approved and secrets he couldn't share.
"You took her into that arena." His accusation came during a chance encounter at the Hob, weeks after our return. "You volunteered, and she ended up fighting for her life."
"She was going anyway." I kept my voice level, conscious of the audience pretending not to listen. "I chose to go with her. That's different."
"How? How is that different?"
"Because alone, she might have died. Together, we survived." I met his glare without flinching. "I'm not your enemy, Gale. I'm just someone who made a choice."
He didn't accept it. Couldn't, maybe. The friendship between him and Katniss was strained in ways that predated me but had been sharpened by my presence. She didn't belong only to District 12 anymore. She belonged to whatever the three of us had become.
I stayed out of their conversations when I could. Some wounds needed time to heal.
Haymitch invited us for dinner the night before the Victory Tour.
"Dinner" meant him drinking while we ate—standard practice by now. His house was a disaster of empty bottles and forgotten meals, but he kept a clear space at the kitchen table for mentor conferences.
"The Tour is politics," he explained, words only slightly slurred. "Every district, every stop—they'll be watching for dangerous behavior. Anything that looks like rebellion."
"We weren't rebelling." Katniss pushed food around her plate. "We just couldn't kill each other."
"Doesn't matter what you intended. Matters what people saw." He leaned forward, suddenly sharp despite the alcohol. "Some of those districts lost tributes to the alliance you built. Thresh's family is in District 11. Clove's family is in District 2. They watched their children die while you lived."
"We didn't kill Thresh or Clove."
"Doesn't matter." He said it again, harder this time. "Their children died and you lived. Be careful. Be charming. Don't give Snow ammunition."
"Snow." The name tasted like poison. "He's watching?"
"He never stops watching." Haymitch met my eyes with something like sympathy. "Whatever you are, whatever you did to survive that arena—he knows more than he's saying. And he's waiting for you to slip."
The lamb stew on my plate had gone cold. Same dish from the train, from my interview joke, from every Capitol meal that had punctuated this strange journey. I pushed it aside.
"Then we won't slip."
"That simple?"
"Has to be." I looked at Katniss, at Haymitch, at the world we'd built in Victor's Village. "We survived the Games. We'll survive this too."
The train arrived at dawn, carrying us toward District 11 and whatever waited beyond.
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