The 72nd Games are the first year Johanna Mason is brought in as a mentor for District 7 — no rest for the wicked, the Capitol had said. It did not matter that she’d won only the year prior, that she was just 19 and so bone tired.

Oakly, the District 7 female Victor before her, the one who’d been her mentor, had jumped ship and left the position to Johanna as soon as she could. She’d sent her a letter in the mail of Johanna’s shiny new Victor’s Village home— it’d just said the word ‘sorry’. She’d received news of her mentor status the next day.

Johanna couldn’t blame her.

Especially not on today, as she watches the next pair of kids from 7 get reaped for the Games. Especially not when she sees them and knows that they won’t last past the Cornucopia. Too small, too soft-hearted— they weren’t logger kids like she’d at least been; these were the little ones who foraged and helped make paper.

Her and Blight, her co-mentor, had just carted the two tributes into the damned train. The little ones couldn’t stop crying and Johanna was already losing her marbles— this was worse than being reaped herself already. She had nothing she could do to help, nothing she could say to calm them down. They all knew their fate.

Blight sends the kids to bed as soon as one of them gets ill and then fucks off himself. Johanna follows him to the traincar with the bar— only alcohol could make this tolerable. Clearly, every mentor on the train has the same thought. She’s hoping, maybe, that Blight will sit with her and speak. She remembers him being friendly with Oakly the year prior… District 7 sticks together or whatever.

Blight does not stick with her. He’s gone in seconds.

So, Johanna sits at the bar— silent, uncomfortable. Victors who mentored are usually older, older or dead. 7 doesn’t have many of the prior. She can’t blame those who choose death over this.

She is overstimulated, gripping the pint of frankly disgusting Capitol beer too harshly for the flimsy glass it is in. It shatters.

Oh great.