Work Text:
Gem really had no reason to train so hard anymore. She’d won her games, got her big moment, now it was just a matter of helping the year’s tribute getting through. The tradition in District 2 was to force the previous victor to mentor every year for 10 years after their victory, or until their mentee won, and well either way it was her last year forced to mentor anyone.
Gem had not volunteered for her games, but she hadn’t been upset she had been picked, and being reaped regularly had allowed her to pass off as naive and weak, a great asset until she revealed her incredible combat and physical skills.
But she did not enjoy it, some of her fellow Victors had talked about how they even missed the euphoria of the arena, but not her.
Knowing that later that day another kid, one who believed he was grown, which was the kind that died the worst deaths in the Games, would volunteer for slaughter made her sick to her stomach.
That’s why, with heavy metal blasting on her fancy Capitol speakers, she attacked the punching bag harder.
It couldn’t have been more than a few years old, but it was nearly destroyed, as hand to hand combat training was the only thing Gem could do after returning to her district, no one was gonna let her get close to a proper weapon.
She missed combat training, it was what she’d been raised for, orphaned young Gem had been taken in with a program that under the guise of raising orphans, trained the best of them to be sent off as volunteers in the Games.
While technically training kids for the arena was illegal, the Capitol didn’t care as long as it was a good show. And the kids from the program that returned victorious were expected to give generous standing donations to the program that had raised them. A flawless system that worked like clockwork.
Coercing kids to kill themselves for the Capitol pigs, it truly made Gem furious. There was no real glamour in the games, no true glory. Only violence, and then violence again. Year, after year, after year.
The already tense stitches of the punching bag popped, and the filling material went cascading all over the floor. It was time to change it out anyways. Gem considered cleaning up the mess now, or cleaning it up when she’d get back home from the games in a month or so. She decided that future Gem could deal with that.
She headed for the shower, and took her time getting ready for the Reaping that afternoon. Surrounded by her fellow District 2 Victors, she walked on to the central square, where the sitting area for them had been set up for them, and she waited for everyone but her and the few others who had trained him, to be surprised when the year’s tribute volunteered.