Lex Sterling

## History

The luxury District wasn’t always kind to those who weren’t among the richest of the rich. But who it did favour, was the hard workers.

Lex Sterling had always prided himself on having a knack for discipline. Following rules or bending rules in ways where breaking them could almost be considered following them in a creative way. Knowing what to bend and what to break was easy anyway, if there was a clear cut goal to be reached.

A dream, gleaming and glistening like the most brilliant diamond found in District One, materialised itself over the years. It was like taking his life to a sander and carving out clear cut paths that all lead to one place; winning the Hunger Games. Victors were a rare breed, both in nature and in the standing they assumed in the world after their victory. Lex hardly wanted anything more than to be amongst them. He’d make it all worth it, he told himself. All the countless hours working pointless job after pointless job to make money for the Academy tuition. The distressed conversations with his mother about how their savings were already tight, and if he truly wanted to spend it all on the potential of glory, not even the promise of it. Once the crown rested on his head and his victory mansion was ready to be moved into, every single little hardship would be gone and forgotten about.

And he did well, for all intents and purposes. He was skilled with weapons, combat, and strategizing. He was charming, too, even in his restlessness and his urge to never sit still in case an opportunity would present itself.

The 82nd Hunger Games were supposed to be it. His to volunteer for, and win. If all went according to plan, District One would have its Sterling victor in the 79th year of the Games’ existence.

If all went according to plan. Alas, it did not.

Despite his obvious talents, Lex was overlooked and pushed aside in the Academy’s selection for volunteers. That sinking feeling when he’d found out, that bitter pill to swallow would lay heavily in his stomach for all the years to come. It was embarrassing, humiliating, everything awful that made even him, a perfectly trained Career, want to curl up somewhere and escape the pitying looks of his, now former, classmates.

The restlessness and the drive to keep working at all times never left him, though. Not even after that goal he’d been working for was lost and flushed down the drain like the blood of the District One tributes that never saw the outside of that Arena again. His passions remained with the Hunger Games, but not so much the glory and glitz that came with participating in them, and more so the admiration that came from creating them. During his studies, most of which he’d spent holed up in the grand library of the Capitol’s university, he met a woman. Amaryllis Myron didn’t mind that their first meeting had been solely focused on fighting over the last copy of a book about coding structures and holograms, and neither did he. In the end, it resulted in his defeat and her cheeky invitation to make it up with a drink.

He fell in love. And for that time she was with him, she managed to even put the Hunger Games into her shadow. A proposal followed a whirlwind romance, then a wedding and the beginnings of married life. However strong and full of love their bond was, it wasn’t meant to last. Amaryllis died giving birth to their son, Victor Sterling.

Victor became Lex’s world, not only because he was his son and the last little piece that remained of his late wife, but also because there finally was someone he could share his long gone and distant dreams with. Victor was raised a Career’s son, a would-have-been-should-have-been victor’s son. Chunks of Lex’s Gamemaker salary went to the Academy tuition in One and many sorts of extracurricular education. This was an opportunity he wouldn’t waste, much like he hadn’t allowed himself to in the past. Victor was talented, too, but wherever there were some little missing links, Lex invested money to bridge them. Money, after all, spoke louder than any sort of talent ever could. That was the only thing the Academy’s leader saw, anyway. The only language they spoke. If money could make Victor the star over all the other students, Lex would pay it. If it could make him the favoured name on that volunteers list, no expense would be spared.

The 132nd Games would make him the proud father of a victor in more than just a lovingly picked first name.