Chapter Text
When Beetee Latier wins the 36th Hunger Games in a treetop with a motherboard in his hands, he realizes two things very quickly: that the hard part for him is just beginning, and that he can never, ever tell anyone that.
He first sees it in the way his father hugs him and seems surprised when he doesn’t break. His father, a factory owner, used to power and prestige, unable to look at him.
Later, he sees it in the empty spare room. His mother hasn't brought anything from his old house for him to tinker with. Apparently, she figured it was poisoned for him now, being his weapon and all.
And he sees it in the way the lights are on all the time as if night itself is supposed to be a reminder of what he did up there in an oak tree.
He hates the new house, mostly because he misses the old apartment. He’s always had something against change, always hated how just when he gets used to something (like secondary school, like the fact that his emotional development was starting to catch up to his mental development, starting to leave him less off-balance) it has to go and transform.
But he’s mostly, truly alright. And this is what his parents, especially, can’t live with.
Beetee gets the feeling they’re waiting for an explosion he knows won’t happen.
The truth is that it’s not winning the Games that is knocking him off balance. It’s that soon he’ll have to become a Victor.
And Beetee doesn’t know how he can do that when he’s someone who never knows what to say, and when he’s someone who won by somehow evading the cameras and building a motherboard offscreen while the Careers fought it out below him. (He actually didn’t realize that that was why no mutts were sent after him until he’d been home for three days, and he is acutely aware how lucky he is that the Capitol believes him).
He’s afraid of his Victory Tour, of all that public speaking and handshaking and looking people in the eye. He’s afraid that, because secondary school never really ends, that his weight and his glasses and the lack of blood on his hands will make him an outcast among elite, glittering Careers and hardened, jaded non-Careers alike. He’s afraid of Caesar Flickerman, the new anchor, even though he had been so nice to him when he got a five in training. He’s afraid of being made to wear ridiculous Capitol outfits. He’s afraid of mentoring, of having to face everyone, of having to live his whole life in public. He’s afraid of everything.
The Capitol helps with some things. The outfits, for starters, and the image as much as they can. They dress him in button-downs and dark suits and let him keep his glasses. Not being poor makes him worthy of respect but being from the Districts makes him relatable. Political science isn’t his science, but he understands his role, then: to appeal to the intellectual class. The Capitol scientists, the officials who came from nothing, and most importantly the brilliant children who would fancy themselves rebels if they didn't have hope in the face of someone like him.
And soon his fear of a Victor's life reveals itself to be the same one he's had since he was eight years old and first watched the Games at school– the fear that there is something deeply wrong with him, something cold and metallic.
He remembers that day just as clearly as he remembers launch. He remembers how he never flinched when the boy died in the bloodbath, how he didn't catch the somber mood, how he instead tried to chat up the girl next to him about the force field and how impressive it was. He remembers how quiet it got, how bright the overhead lights looked when he rushed guilt-stricken to the bathroom, how he tapped the pad of each finger to his thumb, trying to convince himself he was still human.
These days he’s not so sure. These days he thinks he’s made of silicone and plastic and metal in the shape of a sixteen-year-old boy.
Before Beetee leaves for his Victory Tour, he reminds himself of their names. He knows his escort, a slim brunette with a penchant for jumpsuits, will remind him when they get to One, Two, and Six. But he thinks he should remember forever and feels terrible that he doesn’t, so he vows that he will. He sets quiet alarms to go off in the middle of the night so he can wake up and let his escort see him feigning insomnia. He’s not a Career and he can’t afford to act like one, and he feels like he’s twelve years old again, sitting with his father the night before starting secondary school being coached on what to say when he meets someone.
Playing the part of a normal teenager had been hard enough, had left him wrung out on the couch after school exhausted from the effort. He’s patently aware that he doesn’t think he can manage Victor.
On the train he develops a fixation on the number six, begins seeing the world in base three instead of base ten: his home is District Three, three times two children from each District is six, he killed six people and Saffron, the only non-Career among them was from District Six, six times two months he hid up there is twelve, twelve months in a year, twelve numbers on a clock face, twelve Districts in Panem.
He also finds it deeply ironic how much of the next few weeks, and probably his life, he will spend on trains.
The people who surround him at all times–his prep team, his escort, camera crews, even catering– begin asking him to fix things. He likes feeling useful and having something to do, so he gladly accepts.
But he still looks for sixes everywhere, in the number of wheels on the train car, the number of rings his escort wears, E6 resistor values.
In a strange way, developing a fixation like this makes Beetee feel better. Reminds him that no matter what they have him do going forwards (and the sheer amount of things he’s been asked to fix lately has given him an idea of what that might be) he’ll still carry the 34th Games with him in some small way.
They let you meet Victors if you’re willing to pay. In One through Five this had mostly meant shaking a lot of hands, but in Six, a boy his age leans in and asks in a whisper, venom in his voice, how it smelled when Saffron and the rest of them died.
Truth is, he was so far away, so high up, that he didn’t smell anything at all.