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As the other tributes finish up with their training for the afternoon and make their way into the dining hall, he sees the way most of their eyes turn to the buffet, the way their faces change. It’s only the other careers that remain neutral in the presence of the food. They take their places at the tables and wait for their turns while the others clamor for their serving.
Carson sits at a table alone and watches them from afar. He watches as greedy hands grab for bread, ravenous fingers reach for slices of turkey.
Before this, Carson has never seen people from any district other than 1. He’s seen them on television, sure, but that’s so much different than seeing them up close, watching them maneuver and shift.
Carson is the youngest of this year’s tributes, he’s the smallest, but there’s something small about those from the poorer district that is different from his breed of small. He isn’t all bones like them, all hollow cheekbones and bony wrists. He’s small because he’s twelve, they’re small because of their lifestyle, not because of their age. Small because they’ve never had the spare calories to put towards growing.
He watches still as the poorer tributes sit down at their tables as he gets up to get his own plate. Carson watches as they eat the food from their plates, the way they almost inhale the food, shoving it so fast into their mouths there is no way they’re tasting any of the flavors.
It makes sense, really, and Carson can’t blame them for it. It’s clear with the way their training clothes swamp them and their hollow bones that this is a real treat for them, something they’ve never gotten to experience in their lives.
And it’s truly the first time Carson is seeing hunger like this, hunger as a driving force and not just as an afterthought.
It’s a different world Carson came from in district 1 than these kids. Sure, poverty does very much exist in district 1 no matter what they pretend, but it is not quite so stark. What hunger there is in 1 is tamped down, pushed behind curtains and undercover. District 1 is the example, the display of what will happen if you just obey, if you follow as the Capitol says. If you never rebel, if you live only to serve the needs of the Capitol, then your district will be rewarded, you won’t have to live starving and dying.
Whatever hunger Carson has seen in the world before, though, these kids here are a different kind of hunger.
It’s the first time he is seeing hunger as it is, a weapon. There’s a reason the Games are called the Hunger Games, after all. But this hunger, the craving they feel so deep in their flat stomachs, is used to drive them like a herd, to push them along like cattle. They’re hungry, they’re desperate, and the promise of just crumbs of bread is enough to push them into the work machine, to get them to lay down their lives for it all. Anything for another meal, whatever it takes for just another bite of meat. Do they not realize their starvation is being weaponized?
Carson eats his lunch. His turkey, his bread, his punch, and as he does he watches the others go back to the buffet, get second, thirds, forths. They understand just as well as he does that this will most likely be all of their last meals, so they should stuff themselves as much as they can.
After all, when will they be treated to this kind of luxury again? You can’t eat when you’re dead.
When the Victors of the years following 60 arrive to take their place in the tower, the first thing Carson always notices about them is the way they look at the food in the kitchen. They gasp at the marble halls, the immaculate rooms. They run their fingers hesitantly over the golden decor, but it is when dinner is served that Carson sees the most shock in them.
It’s the slight flinch, at the clink of the porcelain plate set on the counter in front of them, the serving of whatever they’re eating that night.
It’s mostly the look in their eyes though, the way something brews there, something almost animalistic.
Hunger back home, his old home, was quiet. Their hunger here is so loud. It drives their actions, every choice they make is to ensure they will see another meal. Every year, when a new Victor comes, Carson can always see it in their faces at mealtimes, the way they sour at the wasted leftovers, how they look on marveled at the giant meals. They've never seen so much food before in their lives and it takes them ages to realize that food like this is now their new normal, there's no hunger in Victor's tower.
It’s saddening really.
In the year he was alone, Carson has forgotten about this, forgotten how desperate and deep hunger is carved in people. He sees it in Noah though, in Copper, in Ted, in Charlie and Travis. They forget to even try and mask it because they’re still so astonished by this particular aspect of the Capitol lifestyle.
It’s the way their eyes light up when food is laid there before them, their mouths slightly agape. It’s seen so clearly in how they each angrily clear their plates. For how long have they had to live fearing each meal they ate was their last?
Eventually, in the months after they arrive, their faces fill out, their cheekbones less hollow. They learn to eat less greedily, to enjoy the taste and the flavor rather than the thought of having a full belly for the first time in their lives. Still, no matter how many weeks or months or years they live up in that tower, Carson never sees the spark of a new meal leave their eyes, the remembrance of starvation and the miracle of what's laid out before them. Hunger is a scar that never really fades.
He comes to the understanding that no matter how hard he tries, Carson is never going to understand that aspect of their lives. The years of hunger, the way it drove them, it will forever and always remain foreign to him.
But if he learns anything at all from them, anything for each year's Tributes that are reaped and handed the luxuries of the Capitol cuisine each year, it is that only in hunger lies true powerlessness. It isn’t just a symbol, a way to simplify the idea, but that hunger is powerlessness, and for that Carson is grateful he never had to struggle.