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Midori had never really wanted to be a victor. Or more accurately, Midori had never thought much about being in the Games at all. Not really, not in any way that actually mattered. She watched them every year, as was required, and when the Reaping came, she stood in line as tense and anxious as everyone else, but in the end being chosen was always something that happened to other people.
No, what Midori wanted was to be a hero.
Her father told her stories about heroes all her life. About brave men and women who stood up for what was right and fought for justice and freedom, even when it was hard, even when it was scary. His great-aunt and uncle had been heroes, he told her, back before the Hunger Games even existed, but that was a secret. She kept it carefully, even though there wasn’t anyone she could really have told in the first place. By then the boys were already getting tired of having her tag along with their games, and the girls hadn’t been interested in the first place.
He died so suddenly, but she wouldn’t let his stories die with him. She wrote them all down, memorized the details over and over, and told herself that she’d be part of them too, one day. And she didn’t think about the Games. They were just violent and sad - not a place where heroes were made.
Not until she saw Amane Kuzuryu.
Career Tributes in particular never really interested Midori. They all seemed pretty similar - they were loud and flashy and confident. They became the victors almost every year, but of course just that didn’t make them heroes. Careers trained for the Games. They were prepared and volunteered. Going around laughing and jeering as they killed other kids wasn’t heroic at all. Just remembering the blonde from the year before, the one who got blown up, made Midori shudder.
But Amane was different. In her interview, she was quiet and commanding. She spoke seriously, saying Careers had a duty towards the other districts to treat the Hunger Games with gravity. But she still smiled sometimes, and still looked sad, especially when she talked about her father’s legacy as a previous victor, and how she hoped to live up to it.
Midori didn’t pay much attention to the other interviews. She was too busy writing down what she remembered of Amane’s.
That year, Midori spent every minute she could watching the Games. No matter how brutal it got, she didn’t dare to look away. Not when Amane was struggling right from the start, with the other Careers hunting her down and killing whoever was unlucky enough to cross their path. So she also saw the boy from District 3 rallying the other tributes, all joining forces and fighting against the Careers together. It wasn’t anything like the other years, which had been all small alliances or one-on-one fights, or that really strange year a while back where one kid had killed almost all the other tributes by himself.
It looked like a battle.
It looked like a revolution.
In the end, that boy (Kazuya, Midori remembered as the cannon went off, his name was Kazuya) died, nothing of him left, and both of the groups were in tatters.
But Amane was not.
Midori was practically in tears when Amane fired her last arrow and the last cannon sounded. Maybe that was heartless of her - a boy and girl of her own district had gone into that arena too, after all - but thinking that didn’t make her relief disappear. And when Amane came to her district as part of the victory tour, Midori made sure she was as close to the stage as she could get, in spite of her mom’s concerns.
In person, she had even more presence. She was small, shorter than Midori, but when she walked up to the podium she commanded every set of eyes onto her. And when she spoke, there wasn’t a single sound to interrupt her, like the whole world decided to be quiet and listen just for her.
It started off the same as most speeches. About the importance of sacrifice, of bringing unity to Panem. Of her victory and the cost it came with.
But, Amane said, the victory was not her’s alone. She could not claim it for herself when she would have lost without the intervention of the boy from District 3 and everyone who followed him. Her victory belonged to all who had answered the call for action, who had stood together in spite of the odds and the rules that stated only one would be allowed to win.
At that, the Peacekeepers behind her moved to draw her offstage. But she already bowed her head towards the families of the tributes and gave them her thanks and condolences, and turned to walk off on her own. The air had changed in the crowd, and her mom started to pull her away, but Midori already understood. Amane was telling everyone to try and be heroes too.
That night, Midori wrote every detail she could remember about the speech and that year’s Games right alongside her father’s stories. And when she went back and re-read the older ones, it was Amane she thought of in place of the heroines, and Kazuya in place of the heroes.
Six months later, her own name was called. It was silent except for a choked sob - her mother’s. No friends or other family were there to call out to her, like you sometimes saw on the videos.
As she walked up to the podium, she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it. She tried to imagine winning, being an actual victor, and couldn’t. She hadn’t even touched a weapon before in her life - using one against another person? Could she really do that? Tears started to spring up, and her legs shook as she climbed the steps.
But even so, when she turned to look out at the crowd, she stood straight and made herself smile. Heroes could be made in the Games, she knew that now. And becoming a hero didn’t have anything to do with being a victor.