``sunshine on my back }{ rade ]

she says
after today
then there's nothing you owe me

He offered her a sheepish grin at her own hasty introduction. "Yes," he said, a nervous chuckle breaking in his throat. "Pleasure's all mine. Welcome to the fold, Katelyn." And what a sorry lot to be welcomed to. What a sorry lot they were, the victors. Having seen life beyond the Arena, Arbor Halt could not understand the Career mentality. Even though his comrades had experienced varying degrees of success and varying degrees of loss, in his expert opinion, there should be no more than twenty-four people desiring the victor's crown at any given moment. Each tribute. No more.

He'd been doing this for so long he'd all but stopped reaching out to the new damaged souls as they were added to the ranks of the weak and the weary. Perhaps he shouldn't have. At this point, he'd spend more years beyond his snowy grave than before it. Much as he might like to deny it — and much as the higher-ups might like to forget about him — Arbor was a fixture at this point. Part of the gilded furniture.

He'd forgotten what new victors could be like, before the naïvety was beaten from them.

Caught off-guard, he winced when Katelyn offered amends on behalf of District Twelve's last best-bet for this year. He shook his head, refusing her apology. He hadn't come for that. He didn't want that. He'd spent the better part of the last two decades convincing himself that it wasn't the mentor's job. "Don't apologize. That isn't your burden. Isn't his, either — though I'm sure he'll carry it to his grave all the same." However near or far that may be.

Arbor Halt would be a hypocrite to hold a grudge against a tribute. They'd all done what they'd had to. Some took more pleasure in it than others; even seventeen years down the road, he was still ashamed to count himself in the former category. Even if they'd been hailed as his moments of glory, even though his life had been largely downhill from there, Arbor Halt was ever-reluctant to claim ownership of his actions during the 54th Hunger Games.

His Seam-grey eyes twitched at her reference to the last tribute that Arbor had brought home. She couldn't've been much bigger than a toddler when Heron had won, he realized, suddenly feeling his age. Some victory that had been, though; it was clear that the odds had been stacked against her — one of Gamemaker Copperview's Games again, as Ara's had been. Arbor Halt didn't mistake the stony woman for having some hidden sympathy for the lower districts. Over the years he'd come to learn each Gamemaker for their individual craft; hers reeked of precision, pride, and impassivity.

That wasn't to say that Heron hadn't seen more adversity than perhaps any victor — hell, any tribute — since. Surely having both of her legs melted into stumps within the first few days of the Games put her in the top percentile; as she was carried closer and closer toward victory by that District Five boy — Storm, he remembered. His name was Storm Wie, and she couldn't've done it without him. — they'd even taken a lightning strike, Copperview attempting to play god from above. If even the more impartial gamemakers weren't above smiting the tributes who should not win, the rest were in sore shape.

The corners of his lips twitched downward, drawing the worry lines on his forehead into a tighter crease. "I suppose that much is on Copperview and on Kin— King at this point..." he mused, although with so few tributes left, he did wonder if the Gamemakers would bother to interfere, or if they'd let the end of the 71st Games run their course. "I'm not sure I'd count it as a victory, though. For him or you."

Seventeen years down the road, and Arbor Halt had never felt anything that resembled victorious.

Try as he might though, he didn't seem capable of getting through to Katelyn Persimmon.

"Target? No, no — you misunderstand me." He shook his head once more, plucked one stubborn too-long hair from his chin. "Target doesn't begin to describe it. Don't expect it to end with careers like the Creel boy gunning for them. Plate malfunctions, packs of vicious muttations with impeccable aim... expect the very ground to give way beneath their feet, for branches and boulders to rain down from above, and for every hell imaginable to come for them between the two. You think the odds weren't in your favor? You've never seen odds as insurmountable as what's coming for your tributes. All of them."

Running a hand through his thinning hair, he dropped his gaze. A moment of silence for those who had died because Ara, because Heron had lived. Because Arbor had lived. He didn't think he could name them anymore. Not the twenty-three others that had stood around the same Cornucopia he had. Not the twenty-three others that were swallowed up by the storm that had seen Aranica to victory, not the twenty-three others that had died in the shadow of Heron's volcano. Not the thirty tributes who'd died on his watch since then.

Even if he'd inked their names onto the back of his eyelids, he couldn't know more than that. Maybe he remembered how Ocean Jones volunteered, remembered Charas Harp's astonishing 12, remembered the look of disappointment and anger in Almar Nichols' eyes when Arbor told him not to win, remembered the sickening crunch as Scout Watson broke open his nephew's skull (and truly, he could never forget the bloodcurdling scream of his older brother coming in from the telephone receiver) with her flail. But apart from Brendon, he hardly knew a damn thing about them. He'd never know what made Jim Deer laugh, or Eira Craft's biggest fear, or what Erik Strauss ever saw in him, or what Asunder Hayes wanted to be when if he grew up.

Beyond that, it was complicated. All of them, they were only one district. None of them deserved it. To say that he ought to have brought Anani Petros home was to say that his best friend ought to have been on the receiving end of the hellhound's rampage. To say he should've saved James Mocking was to say that Mace's kids ought to have stayed orphans. To say that Kolton or Gaia should've come home was to say that Katelyn Persimmon did not deserve to be standing in front of him. The Birdbrook sisters meant no Cricket, no Opal.

Even if Arbor Halt's responsibilities lay with the children placed in his charge, it was too much to ask him to decide who should live and who should die. Spending the time in the Capitol that he did, getting to know the other victors... it made it difficult to say for certain that District Twelve ought to be champions, even though that's where his loyalties ought to lie. It felt wrong for him to make that call.

"Twenty-three die," he put forth, a noncommittal shrug punctuating the sentiment. "Which ones shouldn't be up to me. I can't handle that responsibility. I don't deserve that power." He stared at his shoes, as he was wont to do when overwhelmed. "Don't see why—" he searched himself for the names "— why Jequirity or Keeni or Heather Tenley ought to die just because they don't have a mentor to get 'em through it. Or why the kids from District Three should die sooner just 'cause Klaus is too busy with whatever zoo he adopted. Or why Hannah had a target the size of her brother painted on her back."

He didn't even flinch at her jab. Nobody knew as well as Arbor Halt that his best effort had long since been exhausted. Ferrying the kids from a slow death in District Twelve to a quick one at the behest of the Capitol for two decades had thoroughly drained him.

"Maybe me trying means someone else standing in front of me," he suggested, a grim smile pulling his lips into a thin line. "It isn't as if they deserved to die any more."