i was a king under your control :: arbor {oneshot}

sunshine on my back is the only kind i like
sunshine in my brain is the lonely kind of pain
it's the sunshine of a lonely mind

The victor was no longer in the eyes of the Capitol and it's leader, a dictator of invisible evil to his ever adoring fans. But he was always there, lingering, behind, seeing ever more children that he was meant to bring home collapse and a cannon their final sound. Every cannon was directed direct at Arbor's heart, and each and every shot was nothing but slowly peppering it with holes. Drink used to only patch it up, but blood still pumped, and through it sunk. 

That blood'll seep through, and it'll leave a pool, dripping slowly onto the ground. Arbor, well, he gained eighteen years of hell instead of it happening in an arena, where his district was meant to finish. Cold, dead last. All the while, those who were lucky, they all from eighteen years ago, well, they were sleeping, not in a grave. But inside his mind.

Yet he didn't know their faces from anywhere apart from the pixels on a screen that he never saw until moments after they were fixed.

Muttering, the 30-odd year old victor sat down, knowing that in but a few months, he'd be back in hell, the hopeful look on his face, yet hopeless inside, no matter how hard he ignores it. Ignorance, he found, never works, no matter how hard he believed in that it never happens. It never not happens. It's not like he has moments when each of their too young faces flashes past his sight. Constant. 

He always stops panicking when Aranica or Heron's faces go past, but after that, it's just their faces over, over, over again. You saved 2, but everyone else fucking died before your helpless fingers, grasping nothing but air, or Aranica's hand, or the bottle next to you.

He only ever bought two home with him in anything other than a sealed wooden box, never to see the light again, and 32 wrecked canvas of children, of teens yet to start even living. And, for the first time in what seemed months, he turned to his too clean and empty sideboard, and opened the top of his long term friend.

His whiskey.

Long since this bottle was full, but it lasted him at least 8 tributes, which isn't bad considering the former averages. He scoffed as he remembers the 55th, and it's Gamemaker and her addiction to averages, and ranges, the identical one who now runs away from the leader that can never be fled from. If it were so easy, Arbor would have done so mere minutes after he got back to Twelve, as a bloody hero who bought everyone food, and that is all they cared about.

That no one else would die that winter, because some blind boy tripped his way into victory. And the next year, the same happened, and Arbor walked out of the train with a young girl shattered, with victory in both their eyes, in equal quantities with fear and weariness. 

That young girl isn't so young any more, and she's been forgotten like Arbor has. 

"Hello, my old friend. It's been a while since last time we met. Too long. I've been to hell and all the way back since then. Nothing changes in that respect." The bottle tipped, and the golden heaven trickled out, into the glass next to it.

He sits down next to an unlit fire, drink in hand. Not like the fire needed to be lit, despite being cold outside. These houses were made to make sure that a Victor couldn't freeze to death. No matter how hard they tried. The phone's shrill call wakes Arbor's feet up, and he steps over to pick it up.

"Yes? Yes, President Snow. I'll be there right away."

The glass was drained quickly after, muttering about the President and his habits of ringing up 30-odd year old men to do his business for him. It is slightly different for his victors, obviously. Painting lies is something that only victors do with regularity, and Arbor is a victor of the greatest experience.