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When the alarm went off, he hadn’t slept at all. He watched the light coming into the window getting brighter as the minutes passed and the possibility of rest eluded him.
The ache in his right leg deceived him, the pain coming from a limb that was no longer there, that hadn’t been there in thirty years. He looked down and started the tedious process of putting on his prosthetic, it never fit quite right, the peak of quality the Capitol had to offer, maybe even better since Doc had worked his genius District 3 magic on it, but it still did not feel right.
He got up, walked to the bathroom and stared at his reflection, his body a collection of scars that he had not earned and not deserved. He still felt the shadow of the pump that had stayed on his chest the first nineteen years of his life, keeping him sedated, numb and under control. The sterile white of the Capitol labs, the scientists in pristine outfits that had raised him, they were his torturers and his only human contact for so long.
He did not know why that had been his life, why he couldn’t have grown up with a family, he didn’t even know if he had a family.
After forty-nine years he still wondered who he would have been, would he have been from the Capitol or from a district? Which one? When he had come to District 11 the first time, was he actually returning home. That was unlikely, he didn’t look much like the people there.
Someone that looked a lot like him had lived in District 11, otherwise he wouldn’t be there, living the life he had won and never got to enjoy.
He grew up in the labs, knowing that his life was meant to serve the scientific progress of the Capitol, knowing that one day, sooner or later, he would end up on a metal gurney under a white cloth to disappear forever like so many had before him. He had believed that all there would have been in his life would have been that.
Until one day, when he had just turned nineteen, he was taken into an operation room like many times before, he went to sleep without question because that’s what he’d been taught to do. When he woke up, his right leg was gone below the knee, his body was riddled with burns and scar from injuries he had never suffered , and for the first time in his life he saw the light come in from a window.
Doctors in lab coats, not unlike the scientists he had grown up around, explained to him that he had a new purpose in life. The Victor from that year's game had succumbed to his injuries after he was retrieved from the arena. He looked much like him, so he had been chosen to replace him, because the people of Panem couldn’t be shown how the Capitol had failed.
With only minor cosmetic alterations, and the amputated leg that the original had lost during the games, he became a perfect sosia to the deceased Victor.
They taught him how to behave, what he should know and who he had to be.
So he had become the District 11 Victor of the 119th Life Games without ever setting foot in the arena, and he had been him for the past 30 years.
He looked into his own eyes, if they could be called his.
“Xisuma.”
It wasn’t his given name, for he had never been given one, but he had inherited it, so it was his to wear.