Twenty Four Shades of Blood [A Hunger Games Fanfic]

Starlight - Epilogue

Except it isn’t. Ask any mentor; the Games don’t end when the last cannon goes. They always find some way to keep reminding you.

 

“Byron!” Brae shuffles up the paddock, leading an old mare by the nose. A neat little piebald, she clops along placidly, occasionally nosing him in the back and making him laugh. He still laughs like a child, throwing his head right back into the air so that the silver threads of hair threaten to tumble off, showing all that remains of his teeth.

Byron nods in acknowledgement, holding up a wrinkled hand to welcome his nephew. The sturdy frame is long gone, along with most of his hair. He walks with a slight limp, not bad enough to lean on a stick even though Brae - always the joker - got him one for his last birthday. Or was it the birthday before? It doesn’t matter, he’s never used the damn thing. A bit of a shame, because one of the multitude of small children in the family put a lot of effort into it, but it’s just not needed.

“I thought you’d be here,” Brae murmurs. The mare whinnies slightly in agreement and peers over his shoulder at the stone in the ground. The surface has been worn smooth, the words dug into the surface fading away, but both of the men know what they say anyway.

“That was a day and a half, wasn’t it?”

Byron nods again. Time passes, memories fade, but those never will. The whole of the arena is as vivid as the day he rose into it. The Capitol blurs behind it, endless parades and parties and meetings with the President, all the trappings of someone who has played the Hunger Games and won.

Except it wasn’t quite like that.

He still remembers, even now, Eldora’s reaction under the stage. Dressed entirely in red, sickening blood red, she’d yelped out apologies. Too startled to even think of calming her, he’d stood and waited for her to make some kind of sense. There’d been a decided coolness up on the stage that he couldn’t fail to notice because he was trying so hard not to think about the day before. It was impossible not to think that they’d have preferred Carmen to be there instead of him.

“I thought I was going to lose both of you.” Brae is turned to the ground, scuffing one foot against the dust. This end of the paddock has never flourished. Byron waters it every week but nothing ever grows.

The silence is almost uncomfortable, neither of them sure of what to say next. Byron clears his throat and tilts his head back to watch the stars. One hand wanders to his stomach for a moment, tracing down the ropey scar that trails across his skin. It still hurts sometimes. He should have died with a cut like that. How he’d managed to throw the axe as she’d come at him, he doesn’t know. That was the thing that haunted him most, her last moments. His dreams are full of her, mouth open in a gaping scream, side of her face all torn away, her shirt sodden with blood and rain.

Then he’d shifted his hands and the axe had sailed away into the rain. And she’d screamed once and that’s when the quiet had hit him.

It’s quiet now. Apart from Brae’s soft breathing, there’s nothing. Not even the noise of the wind. As a boy this was peaceful; you could lie back on the ground and breathe in the silence. Now it’s just filled with her, and too many memories, even when he closes his eyes. Especially when he closes his eyes.

“Are you coming back in?”

“No. I’ve got a lamp.” With a trembling hand, he gestures to the tiny little candle-lamp perched up against the stone. He could afford much better, but he won’t. None of the money, none of the riches has ever felt like his. It feels like blood money, a reward for playing along, and every time he uses it he feels queasy.

Brae rests a hand on his arm. That’s some comfort, at least. Brae will never know the arena. He won’t know how it feels to watch somebody’s life drain away because of you, or how it feels to watch yourself on screen. They show replays sometimes; records were broken in his Games. Or maybe they’re still making a point. He might have won, but after collapsing in the recap they seem to have taken every chance they can get to make him watch again and again. He knows the final fight off by heart by now. It plays continually in his sleep. Brae will never know that kind of torture, either.

Eldora told him. Her last visit to District Ten before she disappeared, she told him all about her instructions at the reaping. His uncle the rebel, a life he’d never even imagined and yet was still punished for. And he’d felt...relieved, really, that that was the truth and he knew it now, at least. And they’d got their own way. He survived, yes, but broken, a pale shadow of the boy with so much promise. Heads I win, tails you lose.

“Byron...?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Brae shuffles away again, the mare still clopping behind him. Soon he can hardly hear them at all.

He turns to look at the sky. That hasn’t changed either. The stars are the same as they were when he was a boy, still glittering somewhere far away. Still beautiful. The stars in the arena were different, where you could see the through the trees. District Ten stretches endlessly around him, all wide open spaces and specks of light, villages on the hills. But it still feels like the trees are closing in around his head, tighter and tighter until he’s the only one left and he’s drenched in blood.

The memories all crowd in, red and wet and ghastly.

In the morning, the light is still burning and Byron is gone.