Work Text:
XB didn’t want to leave the house, he was never ready to leave his home to partake in the brutality of the Games. But it was his job to do, and better he do it, since he believed that the games are horrific and needed to stop, that the kids are victims, unlike the brainwashed Capitol lovers with no respect for anyone they consider to be below them.
Walking around his home, trying to find anything to do to delay the moment he had to leave, XB looked at his library.
A collection like his was rare, thousands of volumes, many pre-dating Panem, because unlike most others, his family had not burned them during the war a century and a half prior. XB believed there wasn’t any like it in the whole country, books about fictional stories with fantastical elements, history books with accounts of nations and wars long forgotten, showing the cycle of control and rebellion, extremely outdated science manuals and ethics essays illustrating concepts alien to the society of Panem.
Those books had taught him young that a free world was possible, that it was right. He had learned to form his own opinions, a talent that was rare in the Capitol and dangerous in the districts. All his life he had worked to make the world a better place, and eventually that had turned into him getting into contact with the rebellion, the People of the Hog.
Jevin, who was the contact for the rebellion in the Capitol had recruited him to the cause early in his career as an escort, when at a dinner XB had told him how he was collecting documentation about every game and tribute, for posterity, so that if one day the world change they would remember history and not repeat it.
He hadn’t said that outright but Jev had realized why he did it and had given him the chance to help in a more tangible way.
He still gathered and kept information about every game, so they could remember how it went, not only how the Capitol showed it.
As he pondered, pacing up and down, it got to the time when he couldn’t procrastinate anymore. He said bye to his pet octopus, a joke gift from one of his previous victors, whom he’d told he loved octopus. Martyn was always the kind to do such practical jokes, so the live octopus had become his pet, even if XB had meant that he loved to eat octopus. He got his shoes on and went off, ready for the train ride to District 4.