59th Hunger Games Victor Presentation Ceremony

for what it's worth, I have a slow disease that sucked me dry... I always aim to please
but I nearly died

It was cold. Or it had been cold, or it was cold, or he felt cold, or had. Sorting time and temperature had become a full time job in his head. The morphling, which was still coursing through his veins, made everything soft, gentle, welcoming. It was so unlike the mushroom-induced diamond world, and for that, he was grateful. But it also put a very distant part of him on edge - the part that had fought so hard for survival was now buried, burned away from his core by the cloying drugs. He wondered, abstractly and without any of the shattering regret he had felt in the snow, if Aesop had felt that way, at least for awhile. It would have made things different, but he wasn't sure if it would have been easier.

Certainly not the withdrawal. He thought about that too, as though looking down at it through a long scope. He sold enough of the red plants in District Ten to know, logically, what happened when one took away a reason for living. Life would become violent and harsh again. He might even see the world in fragments. It was so blessedly strange to be able to think about that future, to know it would be horrible, and not to worry at all about it.

That was the true gift of morphling. It allowed him to eat when his stomach only wanted to revolt. It allowed him to think forwards and backwards, from the Arena to Ten, without sinking a blade into his chest. The only think it didn't help was the shivering, despite the fact that the doctors assured him he'd been cured of his pneumonia. He hadn't even realized he'd been sick. But the racking that overtook him two or three times a day - that even the promise of more drugs could not stop. He endured those moments, clenched his jaw tightly, hugged his fists to his chest. More and more he found, though, that he wanted them to stop, wanted to fight the helplessness.

As it turned out, though he did not shake as he rose to the stage, he was just as powerless. It was similar to the rise from the coffin chamber to the arena, and he wondered if maybe it had been designed that way. Another rise from the earth, from ashes and snow and blood. Mace shook out his arms, the loose tan fabric billowing with the movement. He looked like an absolute mockery of a herder - more cowboy than anything, and a cowboy with some serious flare. The fabric bulked around his shoulders, came in too tightly around his waist. The pants were lose at the bottom and hugged at the top. The boots, though, they were the worst - crimson and clunky, and they pressed down on his new, frostbite-recovered nails.

He hated it, but he couldn't hate it too much, not with the morphling. An echo of indignation, and that was it. He came up into the world, hollow eyes fixed on the crowd before he slowly dragged them over to President Snow, as he'd been directed. He held out his hand mechanically, made no attempt whatsoever to smile back. He simply held the snake-eyed gaze for two seconds and then relaxed his palm until President Snow released him, turning him towards the crowd.

The roar of it - of them - was deafening after a week with the blanketing quiet. Mace grimaced, looked back for his stylist who he was used to ordering about. But she was in the recesses of the stage now, along with the others who had "helped" him through the Games. He wanted to be mad at them, to indulge in that fire. Instead he found himself with one hand in a fist, beating against the other palm to the rhythm the crowd had said. EM-BER-STATT, they cried, and his heartbeat joined them. It was only a reaction, not agreement, but it felt good to have something smacking into him, even if it was just himself.