the choice we didn't make. python

She had stopped paying attention to it all. A decade, she mused, as she brushed past the sliding doors of the career training centre. It had been a decade since she had last really paid attention to the Games and the Capitol had noticed. She’d devoted the last ten years to her son, to Ky. It could be argued that her choice was selfish, rude, murderous even, but there had been victors before her there would be victors after her. They all had to make do with what they had. She could see the looks of disgust from posh career parents when she walked down the street. She’d grown up with those same looks and she would be, and would always be thankful that her son would never suffer in that same way. He was sixteen now, Ripred when had he become so old?

Every day he looked a little bit more like his father. It was hard to deny that his personality was closer to hers than Potato’s, but the kindness, oh that sweet heart-melting kindness that had filled Potato’s eyes was there. She saw it every time he spoke with the baker's mother, when he tended to their garden or when he made her laugh.

Ky was almost the same age as the kid she was meeting today. Ky had been cooking with her when the man had knocked on the door. A man in a tight, expensive suit who had politely, but sternly asked her to do her job. There had been a thinly veiled threat behind the request, so she had taken the paper he had handed her, flicking through and plucking out a name. Ajax Coldwell. A seventeen-year-old only child with a rich family. Strange, she’d thought, there were not many families with this level of prestige who chose to have but only one child. She’d read through the biography she’d been supplied with, outlining the goals his parents wanted to achieve and the money they were willing to pay to achieve it. Of course, that money would never reach Opal’s pocket, it was funnelled directly into the Capitol’s bank.

Opal glanced at the page one more time before crumpling it up and tossing it into a bin as she walked into the empty training room. She’d have the next three hours with him, running through all sorts of drills, hoping to engage with a kid she didn’t even know would like her. She glanced around the room, beautiful weapons lining the walls. She could see the dao, the weapon she’d used to kill Yaa and win the games, she walked closer grazing the weapon with a finger and right beside it…

A sword.

A stupid, simple sword.

She hadn’t touched a sword in sixteen years.

Her finger twitched as she reached for the blade, she hesitated, she could feel the coolness of the steel, feel the power and the strength radiating off it. It had looked just like this one, the one that had been thrust into Potato’s leg, the one that had allowed the life to drain from him and spill across the sand as she had watched. She hated this place, she hated this building. It was the circle of life -no the path of a victor. She would always end up back here.