Victory March.

Warnings: Some violence, references to abuse, disturbing imagery.

Summary: They have one thing in common; to win is to be selfish. A series of drabbles exploring the mind and motives of Panem's favourite Victors.

(A fish-hook in the lip.)

Mags finally understood the power of the notion as she watched the fish-hook made from a sharp stone slice through the soft, fleshy cheek of the girl from District One. She was meant to be an ally, but she'd been asleep and Mags' mind had nagged and nagged and nagged; go on, go on, go on. The girl falters in pain, and Mags ends it with a quick blow to the skull. She feels the break against her toes, and the warmth of the blood that finds its way through her laces and into her boot.

Later, as she washes her hooks in the river, a pool of blood floating downstream, she lets herself think of her girl. Red lips and black hair and a spine so beautifully crafted she seems to be constantly on the verge of tipping backwards.

There's strength in her own arms that Mags never really knew about until now. The muscle those years in the water helped to construct.

And two minutes later, when a twelve year old boy stumbles through the bush into a net she'd disguised, she doesn't feel guilt. She doesn't feel remorse. Just the thrill of knowing that she can go home. She can win this.

Joan Cresta; I'm coming home to you.

(Woof, woof. The dogs are loose.)

His name is Amark.

He wins, sitting astride the powerful mutation, with rope around its neck like reigns, controlling that which is wild and untameable. He rides to victory, over mountains, leaping over streams. And in the cool air, he finds a sort of madness that fills his stomach. He hears bones break under the mutt's feet, and knows that as soon as he gets out he has to kill his mother.

He has to kill her so she'll stop pounding her fists into his little sister's soft baby stomach.

There's an iconic shot atop the beast, arms thrown up in victory for the win, breeze caught in his tightly wound black hair.

Forevermore, they call him Woof.

(If you can cut the ties between your mind and your stomach, only your belly will shrink.)

Seeder receives a note: spice things up. It seems strange, to mention spice in a famine, but she understands. Hunger is a bore. Viewers derive no excitement from watching tributes die in the mud, unmoving and unfeeling.

And so she dances. She winds herself up at the back and lets her clockwork arms move, finding the weakest tributes and cutting bits off, playing a sick game of torture to keep the Gamemakers from sending something that will end her.

Just one more finger, one more eyelid, one more throat slit, and we can afford all the spice in the world; that's her only thought.

The ties that kept her mind hungry were cut a long time ago.

She starves her way to victory. The Hunger Games, indeed.

(Out of the frying pan, and-)

His glasses get swept away in the hurricane they send. He watches his own hands flail at them as they become another victim to the wind. Cold water batters his face, and Beetee allows himself to cry for the first time. He imagines that he is safe in his mother's arms, at home. Before she became ill; before the fever gave her that pale green hue.

If he loses, his mother dies, he realises. She dies, and so does his baby brother. Simple logic.

A parachute hits him on the arm, and he waits until the hurricane dies down, finds shelter in a hollowed out building, and opens it. He squints at the contents, and realises; the tiny little glass lenses they had made him wear for his interview. Glasses that fit into his eyes. There's a note, but he waits until his eyes have stopped streaming, and the compulsive blinking eases off, and the lenses are snug behind his eyelids.

The tiny black words slide into focus.

-Fry them, kid.

The wire in heavy in his pocket, and it's him, or them.

Keep breathing, mommy.

(Stay alive, sweetheart.)

There's no grace here; standing at the edge of everything, with only the sharp fall to embrace him. He could; he could throw himself off and make everyone watch the force field break his body in half. At this angle, his body could gather enough momentum to create a lethal throwback.

Haymitch's stomach clenches painfully at the thought of her; the girl he left at home.

Stay alive; she told him. Stay alive for me.

We're all just pieces on the chess board, he thinks. Pawns on the front line.

Maysilee Donner dies with her throat sliding down her shirt, and he decides that to win, you need the strongest reason. Something that sets you apart. Because in here, at least some part of you nags to lose, because what world are we living in anyway? Death would be easy.

Two weeks later, he's asked on live television what made him carry on; what kept him going? He tells the world he made a promise to a girl back home. To the outside world, the promise was one of romance and love. Only her ears heard the truth that day in the Justice Building, his lips so close to her ear that it felt as though he was handing it straight to her soul, gift-wrapped:

I'll give them hell, I promise.

Two more weeks still, and the promise dies with her, in the bed they're sharing in his new Victor's house, with white rose petals stuffed in her mouth and nostrils, bright against her dark seam skin.

And he loses.

(A phantom limb.)

Chaff watches the bastard mutt snake slither away on a stomach full of poison, and ties a piece of rope tightly around his upper arm. The blood pushes painfully against the tie, and he tugs it tighter still. Perhaps this was always meant to happen, he thinks. Perhaps this is why the fates allowed me to grab a hacksaw at the cornucopia. This is the choice. This is fucking brilliant television. If he does this, he'll make damn sure he wins.

The snake bite oozes bright blue pus.

He doesn't expect bone to be so easy to cut through. He passes out next to his severed arm, cheek pillowed on a dead palm, in a pool of blood.

He's unconscious when he wins.

(This is what you were built for.)

It's textbook, really. Strength and ferocity wins. The weakest fall; they tremble.

This is all Lyme was created for, all she volunteered for. The glory, the riches, the strength. Still, when she comes out a Victor, they dub her Games to be the dullest since that time the tributes starved to death. Seeder, the District Eleven mentor thanks her jokingly for stealing away the title of the most boring win.

She vows never to please the Capitol again.

(If they can't love you, they can't hate you either.)

They call him the sweet killer. He comes two years after Lyme taught the mentors a thing or two about making sure their tributes show some personality. At eighteen – a healthy volunteer – he oozes some sweet sensuality as he kills; his arms full of muscle, a brush of his lips over an ear as he slits a throat.

He wins with one thought on his mind; the same though every mentor drilled into their tributes this year and last:

For Panem's sake, don't be boring.

(Time runs out, my love.)

She's the oldest tribute in the arena, and stands taller than most.

When the lethal tazer gun falls from the sky in a basket of silver and hits her on the head, she knows it won't be long. It won't be long until she wins, because they must have seen; they must have seen Beetee come to her room the night before the arena. He whispered to her that night over pillows damp with tears that they can't make him do anything; they can't make him play by the rules, because there's no one left to destroy. His mother died the year he won his Games. His little brother was taken away to be adopted into a Capitol family.

And now, Wiress thinks, there's me.

It would be so easy to turn the gun on herself, but she doesn't. She storms her way to victory, and it's the most selfish thing she'll ever do. Because she wants life; she wants to win.

The final tribute falls, eyeballs rolling into the back of his bloody head as the electricity passes through his body, arms rigid, mouth foaming.

Beetee becomes a slave to the Capitol, with Wiress as the ball at the end of his chain.

Time moves on, and words go unspoken, the most important trapped within her forever:

I don't love you.

(Three little reasons.)

It's a landslide that squashes them like bugs. Cecelia runs quick enough on fifteen-year old legs, but the bodies of her three tiny allies are crushed. A smooth pink hand peeking out from the rubble, a tiny boot, a strand of red hair. She sleeps next to the rubble, and the grass drinks up her tears.

And she wins for them.

(Blood.)

Spit, she thinks; if you're going to do this, then spit. They don't take kindly to cannibalism.

Enobaria spits a mouthful of human throat into the sparkling blue pond and lets the lifeless body follow. The blood trickles down the back of her throat and pools in her belly, and she thinks maybe there's a point in this. Maybe it makes her stronger. Blood is life. Flesh is life, and the mouth feeds her. So if she can feed on those she takes life from, she can be unstoppable.

She licks the blood from her fingers.

And just for a second, she wants to win just so she can do this again, and again, and again.

(Weakness as strength.)

She thinks the moment when she shows her true strength must be the greatest moment in the history of the Games. Like a kitten growing rapidly into a lion. And Johanna decides that she wants to win so that she can see this moment played in glorious technicolor before her eyes, over and over.

Reality disappoints. She watches herself sink an axe into the back of her ally; the boy from Twelve that had wanted to help her, because she was just so sweet and weak and helpless that he couldn't help himself. His blood splatters across her face, and she thinks that she looks so, so weak, arms trembling from the weight of the axe. The crowd goes wild, but she doesn't hear. Her Victor's dress is too tight, too hot. It might as well be soaked with blood.

The Games are a mirror. You don't always like what you see.

(That's the face of a Victor, kid. You'll see.)

Attached to Finnick's new trident with a fine piece of string is a picture of Annie, black hair tied up in ribbons. His best friend, his everything. Perhaps Mags knows more about love than anyone gives her credit for, because this is just what he needs. Just the push. Her face; sweet and innocent and waiting for him back home. He doesn't love her yet. But he can feel it there like a dormant bomb, waiting to go off. And when it does, it will be his downfall.

And so he lets it out, just a little. Let's himself love her until the Games end. Until he wins.

With every stomach that the spear slides through, he thanks Annie, and imagines that the blood spilled gives his love for her a sort of vibrancy that wasn't there before.

(My baby has sea legs.)

Annie sings as she swims amongst the floating dead. My baby has sea legs, she's the finest girl in town, take my heart and take my love, in you I'll gladly drown. She ducks under, and imagines that Finnick is there, doing that ridiculous dance that he does when he sings her that song. Posing and bending his legs up and down, bopping to the stupid beat. My baby has-

She can't remember the words.

Air is running out, and she thinks maybe she'll just stay down here and die. It's a win that she doesn't deserve. A win to get to Finnick, because her mind is swimming out there without her, and she knows it will upset him.

My baby has sea legs-

Someone's hair gets caught in her toes, and she shrieks and kicks them away. A little boy floats off, eyes blank and dead, mouth open in a final cry that no one heard. Millions of people watching, and no one heard. No one ever hears, really, do they?

She's pulled from the water.

"Finnick!" she laughs, rolling on the white tiled floor while his face swims in front of her, tears staining his pale face. "Sing me that song, Finn! Sing! Sing, sing, sing!"

(Here to finish me off, sweetheart?)

Peeta thinks this can't be the only time someone has fallen in love. All of those souls reaped, all thrown together in the mix. Surely someone, somewhere in the history of the Hunger Games, has fallen in love just as he has. The mud is cold, and he shivers. His leg stings and he thinks that maybe he's not bleeding any more. He wonders how much dirt his blood drank up. How much poison is running through his veins? How long is left?

In his blissful, half-dream, he imagines that she finds him. Her hair would be wild, her dark skin muddy. Ever the painter, he makes things a little more vivid in his mind. Paints the sky a brighter shade of blue, makes Katniss' lips a little redder.

His thoughts; something they don't own. His love is untouchable. And so he loves, harder than he's ever let himself before. He wills her to feel that he tried his best. His very best.

Somewhere far away, Claudius Templesmith announces that there can be two Victors from the same District.

Oh, this is a wonderful dream. He'd never known his imagination could be so vivid. And then all his dreams lose that vivid colour, and things are really happening. Impossible things, and for days and days, he thinks that he'd happily die for her.

But then, with a mouthful of berries, he pauses. His body betrays him, and he thinks – just for a second – that maybe he won't swallow them. That voice at the back of his head that says; live, live, live.

It's that doubt; that moment of complete and utter betrayal that lets them both emerge from the arena as Victors.

And in the rush of guilt and confusion that follows in the days hence, he vows to love her more than ever before.

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