Platinum hair color. Icy blue eyes. Lightened skin. The golden train whistled once, then groaned to a halt on the broken tracks of District 12. It had been two weeks since Haymitch Abernathy—just sixteen—won the 50th Hunger Games.

He hadn't emerged as a hero. He’d emerged defiant. He’d mocked the Capitol openly: scored a single “1” in training to spit in their face, hurled weapons at the Gamemakers like a challenge, and worst of all, used the arena against them—throwing an axe at the forcefield and letting it rebound, killing the final tribute in a flash of lightning. It was brilliant. It was unforgivable. He should have died. But instead, they kept him alive to make an example out of him. In the Capitol, Haymitch wasn’t treated like a victor. He was paraded like a possession, a warning. They placed him in a literal gilded cage at parties, suspended like some twisted art piece under chandeliers. Dressed in shimmering suits and sheer silks, he couldn’t move in. Guests would coo, point, and feed him rich Capitol food through the bars like he was some exotic pet. He smiled when they told him to. Or else the shocks would come.

Behind closed doors, they broke him. Electrodes to his temples. Needles in his spine. Whippings until his back was more blood than skin. Sleep deprivation. Hallucinogens. And that humming, burning Capitol device implanted in the base of his skull—a cruel little thing that flared and pulsed whenever he disobeyed, whenever he hesitated, whenever they wanted him silent. They called it conditioning. President Snow had spoken to him personally and said it softly, like it was mercy. And then came the surgeries. They bleached the boy from District 12 out of him. Gone was his sun-browned skin. Gone were his dark curls. His hair was now platinum, unnaturally pale, like frost over bone. Once warm brown, his eyes had been chemically altered into something sharp and glacial. His face reshaped, ever so slightly, to be more symmetrical, more palatable for Capitol eyes. They destroyed the boy. And left behind a doll. When he stepped off the train, wheeled down the ramp by a Peacekeeper, he didn’t speak. Metal braces ran up the sides of his legs, cold and mechanical, necessary just to keep him upright for brief moments. The Capitol had ruined his nerves—burned them out, they said. "A small price to pay for victory," they whispered. The crowd in District 12 stood still, silent. Staring. Haymitch didn’t wave. Didn’t look at them. He kept his eyes fixed on the smoldering horizon. He never made it home. Smoke was already rising. His mother’s house—his house—was on fire. A roaring inferno, too fast, too hot. He heard screaming. His mother. His little brother. He ran—or tried to. Fell. Crawled. His hands blistered as he clawed at the flaming door. He screamed until his throat bled. He kept screaming even after the Peacekeepers dragged him back, even as flames consumed everything.

Snow’s final gift. A message in ash: Disobedience will cost you everything. Now he lived in Victor’s Village, in a marble palace with velvet curtains and no one left to fill the rooms. He boarded the windows. Slept with a knife clutched to his chest. The nights were quiet, too quiet, until the memories came crawling back in—memories the Capitol hadn’t quite managed to burn out of him. He vomited up most of his meals. His hands shook constantly. He didn’t dare to leave the house. He didn’t dare see her. Lenore Dove. Because if Snow had burned his family alive to make a point, what would he do to the girl Haymitch loved? So he stayed away. It had been days. Weeks. And not a single sign of him. That night, beneath a sky, in the color of old bruises and with wind keening like a mourning song, she walked to Victor’s Village. No one else dared.

Her fist trembled as she knocked on the heavy door, heart pounding. No answer. She knocked again—harder this time. “Haymitch?” Her voice cracked. “It’s me.”

So she called out, "I know you're in there. I know you're hurting. Please, just open the door."