penance of the damned // mohamed + babe {victory tour, d9}

It's a twisted, twisted thing, being forced to stand in front of the entire lifeforce of a district and talking up the feats of those that died in your place.

You remember those from years past. Watched as Adder from Two, Babe from Nine, and yes, Samiyuq from Five all stood on the stage of Five, spoke of the bravery and honorable sacrifice of the five that had fallen in their place. For them, it had been a position of honor, the courageous warrior that had defied the odds, committed the right amount of murder and possessed the right amount of luck to survive.

Not so with you. Maybe it's your age, maybe it's the circumstances of your win, but this time something's different. Twelve stared up at you with unrest. Eleven barely disguised their anger. And Ten, the instigator's home - or Paloma, as you later learned her name was - bored through your soul with something akin to hatred.

And here you were, in Nine. The fourth of your twelve prepared speeches freshly over and done with, giant banners of the girl and boy - Vanya and Nocte - flanking you on either side, their families standing as representation for the two sent to die. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Nine's sole victor standing on the stage, back and to the left a ways. It is new, different, unlike the emptiness of the previous three districts. Somewhere in the back of your mind as you read from the script placed in front of you, you wonder how terrifying Adder of Two is in person. Whether Samiyuq will be a comfort back in Five or a stone wall.

Your speech finishes, the fourth time etching the patterns of routine into your conscious. And if there is unrest, anger, hatred in this crowd, you cannot find it. This crowd remains deathly silent, concealing its true intentions. You swallow audibly, fully aware of the stutter that had butchered every fourth word in your speech, fully aware of the quaver of your hands, so unlike a killer, so unlike a victor.

To your right, Nocte's banner flaps in the wind, the gigantic rendition of his face glaring at you as if with contempt, as if reminding of the words you'd shared in the last few seconds. As if reminding you of the promise broken on the bloody sands of the arena.

Together, you'd uttered. Until the end.

But the end came and went, and there was no together anymore. Only one scared little boy and twenty three corpses rotting in the sun.

The flashy escort whose name you haven't bothered to remember dismisses you from the stage, and you're only dimly aware of the silence that weighs the air in your absence, only dimly aware of the footsteps that follow you away from the scrutiny of ten thousand judgmental gazes.

How convenient it must be for those left behind in the arena. In death, the consequences of your actions are no longer your problem. But in life - oh, in life, they remain a specter that haunts over you forever.

Not for the first time, you envy them.

But, you're used to dealing with the burdens of the dead as the last one standing of the living. So in the brief privacy between the speech and the obligatory dinner that must follow, where Nine's delicacies and decadence will be laid out in a feast before you while the rest of the country starves, you swallow your fear, stop, and turn to face Nine's victor - Babe Adroxis, winner of the last Games, but a proper winner - killer of three, including his own district partner and a boy from your very own home. A proper victor, as the damned escort had reminded you more than once - one who had earned their title instead of having it granted to them on a golden platter.

In truth, this was not entirely spontaneous. Apologies were not a part of your speech. It was unbefitting of a victor, they'd said, to apologize for the glorious honor that they'd been granted, act as if the luck of winning was a burden instead of a privilege. To apologize was to squander your gift, to lower yourself to the level of those that didn't deserve it.

What a load of bullshit.

So maybe you couldn't apologize to each individual family of your fallen brethren for living while their children died. Maybe you couldn't apologize to the eleven districts who had engaged passively in resistance and had nothing to show for their efforts. But you could apologize here and now, to one person.

And one person was a hell of a lot better than zero.

"I'm sorry," you murmur, not trusting the waver in your voice to remain restrained should you raise your voice any higher, not trusting the tears in your eyes to not flood if you lift your gaze above his waist. "I'm sorry. I know Nocte was-I mean, I know he could have-"

Why apologize anyway, the escort had asked. You had lived, the others had died. Why should you apologize for the gift of life? Especially when you hadn't even had to work for it like the others had?

Because, you'd fumed silently. You hadn't done your best. You hadn't done what you could to keep the others alive. Names rattled around in your brain - Coal and Piper, Dustin and Nannette, Séui Ngàhn and Paloma, Nocte and Vanya,, your district partner, your protector - Sage - and so many others that you couldn't name but would no doubt permanently tattoo into your brain once you'd heard them. You'd formed a pact, the twenty four of you - resist the Capitol's tyranny or die trying - and instead of sticking to that binary, choosing one or the other, you'd meekly submitted like a coward. Like a traitor.

"He-" And the guilt, the fear, always lurking at the back, surges forth, wrapping twin hands around your throat that all but choke you. "He deserved to be here." More than me, the silent implication adds.

They all did. From Twelve to One and back again, they all did. They'd died heroes, while you had lived and became the traitor.

And that was a curse unforgiveable. To apologize - for your actions, for your inadequacies, for your life - was the least you could do as penance.