✷ train car, en
route to the capitol

The other three tributes were asleep, but Haymitch wasn't sure how they'd managed it. He'd had this pit in his stomach since they'd pulled out of District 12. It was cavernous like the mine shafts his father used to bring him through as a child, showing him where he'd worked. It terrified him—so badly that he was still scared of the dark at age sixteen. He wouldn't be a miner, that was for sure.

But now that he was reaped, his path was laid out for him. He probably wouldn't have a chance to be anything.

     His mentor was awake too, smoking some Capitol brand cigarette. It was an addiction, most likely. She had one between her teeth when they'd met that morning.

     Victoria was very 'Capitol' for someone who wasn't born there. She kept up with the latest trends, preferring black, fitted bodysuits and chunky-soled boots. Her eyebrows were dyed cerulean, and one of her eyes was purple. Haymitch figured she used a colored lens or got some procedure done. She was young too, and lacked the drained aura of most Victors he'd seen.

     She was lounging in the dining car, near the window, feet up and taking long drags of her cigarette. The world outside sped by, each minute meaning a mile closer to the Capitol—not that Victoria seemed perturbed. She never did.

     "Victoria?" Haymitch dared, coming over to the window, catching a whiff of smoke. He crinkled his nose. A lot of miners back home smoked to cope with the stress of laboring in the shafts, but he'd never gotten used to the smell. "Maysilee went to bed. Same with the others—their car looks dark."

Victoria didn't say anything for a while, using her foot to drag another chair over to the window. "That girl's toast. Sit."

Haymitch sat. "What? Why?"

"Because it's weird to stand on a moving train." She turned to look at him, gaze unwavering.

"No, why'd you say that about Maysilee?"

Maysilee seemed like a nice girl, a little shy, but that was to be expected—no one liked being reaped. She was Victoria's other mentee. That year, there were four tributes from each district and two mentors. It was the Capitol's way of not letting the Games' 50th anniversary pass without some twisted recognition.

Victoria put out her cigarette against the wood grain of a side table, twisting it for good measure. "She doesn't have it in her. Most of 'em can't handle it, no matter what advice I throw their way. It won't matter when they're out there in the arena with Career kids. When they go to sleep the first night...that's how I know." She said all this with a cool sense of honesty, someone who'd watched years of kids from 12 get cut down. "You wanna win?"

"Of course I do," he insisted, trailing the smoke as it rose up from the smashed cigarette. He couldn't imagine anyone wouldn't want to win. The stakes were pretty damn high.

Victoria snapped back, hard. "No. I don't mean survive, I mean win. There's a difference, and if I'm gonna spend my time with you, I need to know you want it." She gave him a once over. "The odds are stacked against you already, y'know, with this forty-eight tributes shit."

     "What about you?" Haymitch challenged her. "Did you survive, or did you win?" He knew next to nothing about Victoria, only that she'd won the 43rd Games at age eighteen.

     Her lips curled into a thin smile, but everything on her face was vacant. "I won."

     Won what? Haymitch wondered. A chance to live in a virtually empty Victor's Village? To tote around kids from a backwater district who were doomed to die the second their name was pulled? Or maybe it was more than that, comfortability with the Capitol, a chance to look and act and dress a step above her humble beginnings. Come to think of it, Haymitch had never seen her around back in 12...ever.

     It was like Victoria could read his mind. "I can give you all the tools. They know me in the Capitol. I work in public rep, mostly for the Victory Tours."

     Ah. That was it. It would have been easy to call her a Capitol shill, but if Victoria was from The Seam like he was, it wasn't unreasonable to wish for more, to smoke machine-rolled cigarettes and die that way, rather than huffing coal dust and working your fingers to the bone for no reward other than a sad sense of personal satisfaction. Haymitch had watched too many people give themselves to something they'd never see to ever pass judgment. At least she was honest about what she wanted.

     "So, you can make me look good?" He piped up, his mind having gotten away from him, chasing what he'd left at home.

     "Honestly, that's half of it. You dazzle 'em hard enough during your interview, say the right things at sponsor events...you'll be going into the arena with an advantage even the Career kids don't have." She rubbed at her face, just underneath her purple eye. Maybe it hurt or something.

     "How do I do that?" He wanted to know, desperately. Maybe it was fear, or not wanting his mother and sister to have to bury him, but Victoria was his best chance at making it. "What you said...winning, not surviving. I wanna do that."

     The wheels were already turning in Victoria's head. "I'll get stuff cooking, don't you worry. After a haircut and some teeth whitener, you're gonna be the talk of the town." She laughed, almost giddy. "I'm excited. They usually give me total duds."

     Suddenly, a part of Haymitch wished he'd just gone to bed like Maysilee Donner.

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