Family Ties: The 35th Games

I sleep well, and I sleep long. Past mornings, I've woken myself up with nightmares at daybreak, so it comes as a bit of a shock to wake to the sound of banging on my door. It takes a moment of adjustment to realize what's going on, and then I hear Sean on the other side, calling, "Get your asses out of bed! We have things to do this morning! Just cuz your training is over doesn't mean you can loaf around all day!"

I groan and sit up, stretching and looking over to Nathan, who looks just as dazed as I am. "What could we be possibly doing today?" I groan, a little grumpy. "The interviews are tomorrow! I thought we'd have a day to recover..."

"Beats me," Nathan replies. "Maybe they want to do a dress rehearsal or something."

We both get dressed relatively quickly, opting for comfort over fashion-- I'm sure Nathan figured the same thing I did; if whatever we were doing required playing dress-up, our stylists would be all over it anyway. When we make it to the kitchen, our mentors are waiting patiently at the table. I grumble as I sit across from them. "There better be a good reason for waking me up," I complain. "That was the first real night of sleep I'd gotten all week."

"Sorry, Zania. Wouldn't have woken you if there wasn't something on the agenda," Olivia answers with an apologetic smile. 

"We have to prepare you for your interviews," Sean informs us between sips of coffee.

"Prepare us?" I repeat, nose scrunched in apprehension. "What do I need to prepare for? I know how to answer questions."

"The interviews are so much more than just interviews, Zania. It's your opportunity to get the crowd on your side. If you scored well, the sponsors will be curious about you, and it's your time to secure their support. And if you didn't, the interviews are your last ditch attempt to convince any sponsors to look your way," Sean explains to me. He's being rather patient, and I can tell it's taking a lot of self control for him to do so. He seems like he'd much rather just tell me to shut up, suck it up, and quit complaining, though I'm grateful he doesn't. 

Olivia continues for Sean, "You'll both spend four hours with Palana to work on your general presence, and then four with either Sean and I to work on the content of the interviews."

Nathan nods, though he doesn't look all too happy about having to spend four hours alone with our escort. I feel bad for him, of course, but nervous for myself too. Palana usually pretends I don't exist in favor of my brother-- I don't know if having her attention will be better than that, or exponentially worse. 

"Nathan, you'll start with Palana," Sean begins, pretending not to notice Nathan's expression souring. "Zania, you'll start with Olivia. We'll meet back here for lunch, and then trade off. Finish your breakfast quick-- faster we start, the faster it'll all be over with."

I do as I told, eating as fast as I can without being at risk of throwing it all back up. When I'm done, I look up to Olivia, and she gives me a small nod, beckoning me to follow her with her head. She leads me to her room. I don't know what I was expecting-- maybe a room more similar to mine. While it's similar in size and furnishing, though, there are a lot more personalized touches around the room-- clothes that look like they're hers (not provided), pictures, notebooks. I guess, since she's a mentor, it makes sense that she'd get to make her room feel a little more homey. She has to stay here every year, after all.

When we're both in the room, she closes the door behind us, and goes to sit cross-legged on her bed, patting an empty spot next to her. "Come, sit with me-- it'll be more comfortable," she offers with a smile. I return it, and comply, dropping onto the mattress beside her.

"Sean kinda gave you the general outline of what we're going to be doing this morning," she begins, opening the notebook I'd seen her with last night. If I had to guess, I'd bet it contained all of her planning for me and Nathan. She flips to a page, scanning it's contents before putting it aside and looking back at me. "I'm not sure if this is the way the interviews have always worked, but it's how they've worked as long as I've been paying attention-- all of the districts do things the same way. It's the most reliable way of nabbing sponsors," she explains. "To the Capitol, the Games are just a TV show, and the tributes are characters within that show. So for the interviews, all the tributes are assigned an archetype, basically. We give you all an angle to play up and lean into. Something that suits you, and is just an extension of who you really are, usually, but something that can be worked to it's extreme to make you seem interesting."

"So we're given a script?" I ask, confused.

"No," Olivia laughs. "You're not that much of a TV character. But I'm going to teach you how to play up your angle, so that when you sit down in front of Caesar tomorrow night, whatever question he asks you, you know how to apply it to what you've learned. Does that make sense?" I nod, and she smiles. "Cool. I talked with Sean about this a bit, but at the end of the day, I'm your mentor not him. I think you'd do the best job of playing a loveable angle."

I snort in spite of myself. "Are you sure about that? My sister says I'm obnoxious. I don't think those two things coexist."

"Sisters are usually biased," Olivia responds with a sly smile. "And I'm sure you have your moments. But no one is one-dimensional. I think you have a lot of very loveable qualities, and you have your age to work to your advantage." She pauses, considering her next words carefully before she continues. "I don't know whether you'll be too fond of the idea, but I think if you play up your age and your vulnerabilities, and really try to act cute and scared and vulnerable, the Capitol will be eating out of your hand. You don't have a big score to reel sponsors in with, but I think you can convince them to feel bad for you and help you that way."

She's right-- I don't really love it. I don't like being the weak link, even though I'm well aware that's what I am. But the way she's phrased it does give me something to think about; If I can convince sponsors to be interested in me, then I can provide for my group. I can pull my own weight. And I think even if I have to baby myself a bit to do it, that alone might just make it worth it.

So I give her a small nod. I pause a moment more, before I ask, "What's Nathan's angle?"

"Last I heard, Sean was going with charismatic, but I'm not completely sure," Olivia admits. "I'm not his mentor. But charismatic would be a good fit for him-- he's very charming, and he's attractive. It won't take much to get the audience on his side." I scrunch up my nose. Attractive is not a word I would use to describe my brother, nor is it one I think applies, but I'm not really the target demographic.

Olivia spends the next four hours teaching me the absolute basics. From how to hold my expression, to the best ways to answer questions, she gives me the entire run-down on it all. Olivia puts emphasis on how polite and sweet I need to be, and I try my hardest-- I think I'm pretty close to what she's lookin for as default, but I know I can have a sharp tongue sometimes, so it's just a matter of keeping that under control. Once I'm pretty sure I have it all down, Olivia guides me through a mock-interview, asking me all kinds of questions, and I try my best to answer in-character. By the end, she assures me that the Capitol audiences will eat it up.

"Don't be afraid to talk about your family," Olivia suggests, flipping through her notebook, trying to be sure she hasn't missed anything. I'd aced my third mock-interview, and we'd pretty much decided to call it a wrap, chatting during the time we had left. "Using truths to inform your answers is much easier than making things up, and it'll be much more believable. We both know you're not a scared little girl, but it won't hurt you if the Capitol thinks you are. What's happened to you and Nathan is a tragedy, Zania, but you can use it to your advantage. Really make everyone feel sad for you; make them want to send you back home to District Nine. You'll be setting the scene, and once you get in the Arena and show them all how resourceful you are on top of it, the sponsors will be lining up."

"I've been thinking about the sponsors," I admit, leaning against her headboard now that most of the practicing and pretending is done. "Do they all know that we have the alliance? Are they going to get to know? How does that all work in our favor? Or doesn't it?"

"They weren't in the training facility, so they don't know anything yet," Olivia says. "But they will. Just like Sean and I are working together this year, your friends' mentors will be working with us too. We'll be negotiating as a united front, so the sponsors will get the picture. It will be quite clear once the Games start that anyone sponsoring any one of you will actually be putting their money in for all seven."

I nod; it makes sense. The mentors probably don't want to advertise too much yet before the Games start, in fear it'll be heard by the wrong person and passed along to another tribute, too. "Olivia-- for your Games.. at your interview... what were you?" I'd been eight when Olivia had won, and I hadn't watched much, if any, of her victory.

"What was my archetype, you mean?" she laughs. "I was cocky and aloof. I was confident and answered questions as such, but I pretended like I was too good to reveal anything. Like it was all going to be so easy, that I didn't even care enough to think too hard about it. Like the Games were a footnote, or just another Saturday, and soon enough I'd be home and it'd be all over." She pauses, giving a little hum. "It was kind of fun. I didn't really have to answer anything. Not a ton of prep to do. I was a lot younger, and... a very different person," Olivia admits. "It wasn't too far off how I acted already. Palana was a pain in my ass, though-- her coaching didn't suit my archetype at all, but she wouldn't stop getting on me about how I needed to sit like a lady."

"Palana was your escort too?" I ask, awestruck.

Olivia laughs again. "It was only four years ago, Zania-- Palana's been the District Nine escort for almost a decade. She's a lot older than she looks."

I frown. "Someone should tell her that. If I have to watch her drool over my brother for much longer, I might take myself out before the games even start." That statement earns me another laugh from my mentor. Another question turns over and over in my mind, one I'm not sure is fully appropriate to ask. I like Olivia, and I don't want to upset her by prying. I don't want her to have to relive something she's trying to keep buried. But eventually, my curiosity wins out, and I ask, "How did you win your Games?"

If the question upsets her, she doesn't show it. Instead she leans back on her elbows, eyes a little dreamy as she recalls. "A long string of unfortunate events. And a lot of luck, since most of those events were perceived as power-plays," she admits. "There's a dude back in Nine-- Nathan knows him. We all went to school together. Well, he was never a big fan of me. Said the wrong thing in the moment I got Reaped, and I tried to jump him. Got caught on camera, and the Capitol started crafting storylines from there."

"You got in a fist-fight at your Reaping?" I gasp.

"Hey, it didn't get that far-- the Peacekeepers broke it up. I certainly wanted to, though," she tells me, wicked gleam in her eye. Olivia has always seemed so mild-tempered and sweet to me; I couldn't even imagine the woman in front of him today pulling that. "I got a high training score, and got a lot of sponsors. Some of the Careers took notice, and I got recruited to join them."

I gasp again, eyes wide with disbelief. "You were a Career?" No wonder Jason had said that thing the other night, about Olivia being dodgy-- she wasn't technically a Career, but if he was someone who hated Careers, and was monitoring a streak of Career Games victories, I could absolutely see how he might count Olivia among them.

"Theoretically. Didn't last very long, though," she answers. "The leader liked me well enough, but the others didn't. It all fell apart, but doesn't it always?" She was right-- it was the nature of the Games. No matter how united the Career Pack was in the beginning, by the end, it was every tribute for themselves. "Woke up to one of them trying to kill me, but I got him instead. Took one more out while he slept, and then ran away. Played the rest of the Games on my own, though it was a lot easier, there was only a handful of us left by that point. Most of who was left took care of each other, and then when it was just me and one other tribute, I ended it on my terms. Hunted him down, and finished it there."

I was quiet, thinking about what she'd shared. I'd partially asked because I didn't remember her Games and was curious, but there was a part of me that wanted to see if she'd done anything I could emulate. The Olivia I knew was kind and sensitive, and that reminded me of me. I thought maybe she'd done something I could do too. But I was no Career, and I was certainly not capable of hunting other tributes down. If anything, I'd be the one being hunted. 

While I ponder, I remember Sean and Palana's conversation the day prior about her Head Gamemaker, and it distracts me, dragging up new questions for me to ask. "What was your Arena like? Did it really get repeated the very next year?" Maybe I should know that, I would have been old enough to see it, but I really hadn't been paying much attention.

"Yeah, it was a carbon copy," she scoffs, shaking her head. "Don't know what the idiot was thinking.... My Arena was a real weird one, too, not a ton of plausible deniability there. If it had been a forest or something, he probably could have explained his way out of it but... well... It was a mine shaft, I guess? Or an underground cave system. I don't know, I just know that there were a bunch of tunnels that interconnected, and everything was made of rock. No above ground, or tunnel leading outside. That turned out to be real dangerous-- the gamemakers killed a few tributes off by trapping them with a cave in and releasing gas into that corridor. I heard it was because one of their parent's was causing trouble back home, and they got killed as punishment, but that might just be a rumor..." she trails off thoughtfully. "The Cornucopia was just a big giant cave chamber in the middle of it all. The whole thing felt like a maze-- it was so easy to get lost. Real easy to lose track of time, too, since we couldn't see any sunlight or anything; there were heavy duty industrial lights every few yards, built into the wall. It made it hard to sleep, since it never got dark. Really messed with my sleep schedule, though, and my perception of time. I'd thought we'd been in there for, like, a month, but when I got out, it was only a week and a half."

I frown, thinking about my training. "Were there any plants? How did anyone survive if they didn't get lucky and grab something at the Bloodbath? What about, like, mutts or something? What lives in a cave like that?"

"Some of the tunnels had freshwater ponds. Like, underground spring type things, so people got water from there. Those springs had little... meadow-type things around them a lot of the time, too. Mosses and algae, and water plants. Fish, somehow. Mice and rabbits scurrying around, too. Felt weird. Kind of unnatural. But those who knew how to hunt kept fed off of that." I could tell she was pulling on memories she hadn't accessed in a long time-- I wonder if I'm the first tribute she's had to mentor who hadn't seen her Games. Or, remembered them, I guess. I'd seen pieces of them. I just couldn't recall it for the life of me.

"Every mile or so had a stack of wood, like someone had gone through before we'd been released and set up a firewood stock. I remember thinking that was kind of stupid. There were tunnels that went straight up, too, that I guess were used as vents so the smoke wouldn't kill us, but I'd bet they could close those whenever they wanted. You know, given what happened to the guy and his buddies who suffocated in the gas."

"I don't remember all of the mutts-- I only saw one of them. It was this evil looking little mole thing. Their teeth and claws were gnarly. One of the Careers got torn apart by them, right in front of the rest of us. I...." she breaks off, seeming to struggle with her retelling for the first time. "That's stuck with me. When I have nightmares, a lot of the time that's in them. I've seen a lot of people die, and been the reason for some of them dying, but that was brutal."

She sighs, looking over to me, and upon registering the shock on my face, she smiles ruefully. "Sorry. Went a bit too far there," she admits. "Haven't talked about any of that for a long time, to be honest." I wave her off, and she closes her notebook, standing and holding out her hand. "Come on, it's time for lunch. You've got your character down pat-- you'll do great at the interviews. Let's go save your brother from Palana."

And after swallowing down any lingering emotions that built up listening to her talk about her Games, I nod, taking her hand and following her back to the kitchen.