𝐆𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐘 & 𝐆𝐎𝐑𝐄. ᵀᴴᴳ[1]

21

       IT WAS HARD TO IMAGINE THAT ANYTHING ELSE COULD GO WRONG FOR SAGE. As if being reaped for the sixty-eighth Hunger Games weren't enough, he ended up being signed up for a life of being a part of the games in some way. He had to live in a house that he was told he one after surviving the arena. He couldn't manage to sleep without a few drinks or morphling– and now this.

      The explosion had blanketed a majority of the district in black smoke. It had shook the district, and if anyone had been sleeping still, there was no way that they weren't awake now. By the time Sage and Katniss crossed the fence back into the, and made their way deeper into the district, people were already hurrying towards the mines.

Except Sage.

      Despite Katniss refusing to go back to Victors' Village, Sage still refused to go to the mines. He couldn't bring himself to go there. He couldn't face it, because even though it was probably nothing more than a freak accident he couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't. After all his name being drawn in the reaping hadn't been a coincidence like he had thought. In fact it had all be a part of the plan. Just some sick consequence for hunting outside the fences– while kids in career districts are opening trained for the games, he was practically punished for doing the same thing. What if this was part of it? What if the mine explosion had been part of his punishment too? Had a peacekeeper seen him and Katniss that morning and reported them? Then was the explosion in the mines just the consequence he had to face for not keeping his promise to keep his family inside the fences? Or had they known all along that his father had been the one to teach them how to hunt?

          There was a good chance that Sage would never know the truth about the explosion that day. Eventually, it wouldn't matter either. Over the years, it would just be another part of his tragic story that would be revisited every year during the games. Sage Everdeen, the Victor who lost his father less than a month after his Victory. Every year Caesar Flickerman would drag it up, leaving as a victor just to experience something like the explosion at the mine. And every year Sage would say that was why he won, because his family wouldn't have made it through that without him. If he had lost and died in the arena and then his father a few weeks later, his family would have fallen apart beyond repair.

         But if you had asked Katniss, their family fell apart the moment Sage's name was drawn. When he gave Prim the stupid cat after his mother took Katniss and Prim out of Victors' Village, it was nothing more than a weak attempt to bend a burned down bridge. The supplies he gave them, showed just a selfish he was. In Katniss' eyes', Sage played along. Sage never quit playing the games, he never quite gave up on holding together the persona that he had to play after he won. To Katniss, Sage had been dead since the moment he stepped his feet onto the stage on the reaping day for the sixty-eighth Hunger Games. 

       And in a way, Sage wouldn't disagree. She was right, he did play along. He played along every step of them way. He put on a face of enjoyment every time he was in front of a camera, he found himself a part of a world that he wished he never had to experience. But all so hopefully, both Katniss and Prim would be able to see their eighteenth birthdays without ever experiencing the world he was forced to live in. They could remain themselves and never have to change.

It took Sage a few years to accept it. 

But he had died. Time and time again, every time he faked a laugh for the cameras, or every moment in the arena. The Sage that was there now, that lived in Victors' Village was far different than the Sage who had left for the Hunger Games.