The 25th Hunger Games

The Victor

The room I was in was all white. There was a window over my head, though. I spent what little time I was awake watching the sun cast shadows on the blank wall. There didn't appear to be any doors, but I knew the doctors had to be getting in and out somehow.

This was how I spent the first three days out of the arena. Barely conscious, trying to hold on to the fact that I was free now, although it definitely didn't feel like it.

I also kept remembering being in the arena. Not so much the bad parts, killing all those people or watching my friends die. I remembered the last few moments most of the time.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victor of the Twenty-fifth Hunger Games, Noah Albedo!" It came from some mysterious voice in the sky, telling not me but the people of Panem the good news. I had won.

Winning felt different than I expected. There was no rush of relief, no dream of the future. Deep down I knew that this couldn't be what I truly wanted, because it if it was it wouldn't feel like this.

I told myself that maybe I didn't care if I was a victor, I cared about seeing everyone I loved again. That part was what I was expecting to feel.

But instead of giving me what I wanted as soon as the hovercraft got me, they made me wait three days, trapped in a blank room with nothing but tubes in my arms and machines by my sides. And that window.

I had only seen one or two doctors come in the short time I had been awake. None of them would tell me how I was doing or what was going on. I tried to remember what usually happened back home at this point, but nothing happened. We weren't given an update on the victor. Most of us didn't care about them, unless they came from Two. In the time between the end of the Games and the victor interviews, we simply returned to our usual lives, no questions asked.

Now I had a lot of questions.

The first and most prevalent was where was Sariel. There was no way he wouldn't be here if he could. Why were they keeping him out? Didn't they understand I needed to see him?

It didn't quite surprise me that they didn't understand, actually. I hadn't vocalized it to anyone. I was still afraid to, afraid they would see right through me.

And here I thought the fear ended when the Games did.

By the end of the day, I felt conscious enough to get up. If only that were my choice. They let me feed myself, at least. I didn't want to know how they had been feeding me before, but I had yet to wake up hungry.

Finally, a pair of doctors came in. They ignored any questions I asked, so naturally, I stopped asking them. They stuck lights in my eyes, tapped the screens of nearly monitors and, just before leaving, pulled a needle attached to a tube out of my arm.

And just like that, they were gone.

Without the tube, I could stay up a lot longer. Long enough to get another meal. While I was awake with nothing to do, I recounted my own physical condition. Just after fighting Ciruss, I had a broken rib, a ton of cuts and bruises, some sever burns, and at least three gashes on my lower body and one on my cheek that would've needed stitches. Now, it was like they turned back time to thirteen days ago. I was healthy enough to go back to training. No physical imperfections, including overgrown leg hairs and dirty finger nails. The only real difference was my lack of hair.

I guess it shouldn't have been a big deal, as I was still alive, but it looked like they had cut off nearly six inches of my once long blonde hair. They didn't exactly do a great job with it. If I had to take a guess, I'd say someone was told to simply cut off the burnt pieces. It was short, uneven and unnatural, at least for me.