The people clap, rather a lot. The announcer clears his throat, waits to say yet more pompous-sounding, adulatory things. He supposes he's earned the right not to be embarrassed.
"And So, for the Brilliant and Courageous Leadership that has Finally brought Us Victory, today, Ladies and Gentlemen, we the People would like to Honour-"

Applause rattles the asbestos roof of the massive stadium, hastily nailed on because the Victory Day Celebrations couldn't be held the way Victory was won in the first place- open-air.

He hadn't ordered the tribute, merely known it was inevitable. He accepted it, to an extent. The announcer reiterated for effect, and the words of unaccustomed formality penetrated to him through the roar of applause and beginning rain- 'Valour that has brought Honour to the Nation...'

In the meanwhile, he is being scathing in his head about the elite lot who are suddenly clapping their hands as loud as eliteness allows, who'd been virulently opposed to the Cause not too long ago, who by economics and education were no different from The Oppressor, whose exclusion of him had been part of the reason, he was free to admit, that he'd done what he had.

He was faintly irritated, though, at the repetition of the bravery theme, wished the announcer would stop. He wondered whether, if he raised his hands in addition to the standing up and smiling winningly-yet-humbly, the announcer would stop talking. On the other hand, that might've entail his having to talk instead.

Why this growing irritation? Shouldn't it have been lightheaded joy at the victory and recognition that he had earned in sweat and blood ? And it had come duly second to the acknowledgement of Those Who Fell, all ceremonial and correct.
Well, talking of their bravery was true enough. The torture in jails and police stations, the nightmare wounds they ignored in order to fight to the death... he shuddered, and wondered.

Wonders a thing he has prevented himself from unproductively wondering before, replacing it with immediate concerns, but there's nothing to stop him thinking it now.
He does have a talent for strategy, a brilliance maybe. The brilliance that led him to predict the enemy's moves, to mastermind unstoppable operations, to protect the core of the Organisation from brute force and infiltration. It was his brain that had kept him alive and virtually unharmed, and he was grateful to or for it. He'd never had any need for valour, really. The fight and chase scenes he'd been in had always gone according to plan.
And he'd wondered, of course, what would have happened if they hadn't. If the highly improbable had taken place, if he'd been caught and tortured, like Number Three, or made a Public Spectacle, like Number Six, or... or any of those things- an arm or a leg or an eye lost, brain damage or napalm burns... he shudders, suppresses it. Would this courage, this thing that every common soldier had, would it have come to him ?

A silence in his mind. His hands accept an enormous bouquet being handed to him, his smile hasn't moved. In front of these people, he is suddenly afraid of being found out- fraud, un-hero. He longs for his foot-soldiers, for those who are too close to the fighting to idealise war, to prate about valour. He clutches the flowers close. Those men sing only of victory and he is glad of it, desperately grateful as he crushes the stalks in his trained fingers- it doesn't matter how we got it, it doesn't matter, it doesn't make a difference. What do these bastards know of War ? Its historical significance, its moral dilemmas, its socio-economic something.
But how you win it ? How easily it's lost- how it isn't won by uniforms on white horses with silver swords- How difficult-?