Author's Note: Basically a prequel follow-up for To Describe a Gamemaker/"iridescent". Will be similarly eight chapters, one per character. Please review with your thoughts!

Trigger Warnings: Violence, Death, Mentions of Divorce, Nightmares

Before the Music Dies Legacy

Evanescent

(They all had something that broke them into little pieces. The Gamemakers, and their memories that they'd rather forget.)

Chapter One: Learn How to Live

Mistina Ann "Misty" Freeweather, Year 362, District Four

The motor-mouthed girl with the long golden curls, those striking sea-green eyes, framed by a tan face, laughing. Angel. Angelfish Korrall. The witty boy with the same eyes and darker tan, shorter, straighter hair. Neptune. Neptune James Korrall. The two cousins' faces and names were forever imprinted in Misty's memory.

She met them when she was sixteen, young once, at the beach of District Four, on one of her parents' business trips. She wandered carefully through the sand, waves lapping at the ground around her, curious blue eyes trained on the shell-dusted shore.

And, lost in her thoughts, mentally composing a poem about the froth of those waves, she ran straight into Neptune—although she didn't know his name then—and was startled into taking a few steps back, looking up at him. "Sorry," she said. "Are you all right?" He looked like it.

The boy offered a wry smile. "Well, it's not as if you hurt much."

Misty wasn't sure what to say to that. After a moment, she responded: "I'll take that as a yes." She gave a wry smile of her own.

"NEPTUNE JAMES KORRALL!" a girl screamed from across the beach. "Are you flirting with her?!" Suddenly she appeared right next to them. "Hi!" she said to Misty, and shook her hand enthusiastically. "I'm Angel. Or Angelfish. But mostly just Angel. Neptune here is my cousin. Nice to meet you."

"Good to meet you, too—" Misty got in, before Angel continued:

"—You're not from around here, are you? You don't really look like it. What's your name, anyway?"

"Misty," she supplied. "Yes; I am from the Capitol. My parents are here on a business trip for the family company."

"With a name like that, you could be from around here," said Neptune.

"How long are you here for?" Angel cut in again.

"Almost a week more."

"Great, then, you have time to have dinner with us. Come on." Angel started to drag her along by the hand, and Misty decided to go along with it, even as Neptune rolled his eyes at his cousin, going with them.

The Korrall family all had an extra dose of personality.

. . . . .

The days started to pass too quickly in a happy blur. Lazy swims, shell-hunting, sandcastles, sports, sunset-watching, ice cream cones, fishing, walks, talking, Angel's braided rope friendship bracelets.

"Have you ever just thrown your hands up and let yourself live before?" Neptune asked her once, the sea brushing up to their ankles in the sunset.

"No. I haven't. But it's nice."

Angel and Neptune were unlike anyone she'd ever met in her life. They didn't mind that she was from the Capitol. They didn't mind any of her quirks. And they were so simple in their own way—children, happy, loving. Misty had found two new best friends, no matter what the horribly short time span was.

The last day was saddening, but she promised to write letters, and see them whenever she came back.

And she went back to the old reality of the city.

. . . . .

They all wrote letters constantly for more than a year. She went back to District Four twice and saw them on every day.

Now she was seventeen, and so were they. Misty watched the Reapings at home—One, Two, Three—and could find at least Angel's face in the crowd of District Four.

"Neptune Korrall!"

"No!" Misty cried suddenly at the television, alert, now an inch from the screen. She tried to control her breathing, searching Neptune's face with odd franticness, his features enlarged on the screen, for some sign that it wasn't really him.

But it was.

And no one volunteered. Neptune and Angel weren't Careers. But the crowd wouldn't have known that.

"And now for the girls!"

Misty couldn't even listen, feeling shaky and sick to her stomach.

"I VOLUNTEER—!"

She would know that voice anywhere.

Oh, no. Not Angel. Please, not Angel, too. Please. This isn't happening, you can't do this, take me instead.

But Angel volunteered.

Misty shut off the Reapings after that, staring numbly into space from the floor in front of the television.

. . . . .

She never saw them live in the Capitol. But she watched everything. They were crowd-pleasers in the ceremonies, but didn't do well in training. She memorized their interviews just to be able to hear their voices….

"Of course, I had to volunteer. Neptune and I do everything together. Even the Games." Even death.

"No, we're not in the Career pack. Angel and I will be just fine on our own." No, you really won't be.

Misty didn't sleep that night. Neither did the Korrall family.

. . . . .

They got through the bloodbath. Somehow. Thank Panem, they were smart, and they grabbed good supplies and ran. Misty could almost breathe. But someone hit Angel in the arm with a knife, and she, of course, couldn't take that kind of pain.

Misty tried to learn everything she could of the arena. It was a blue-tinged sparse jungle, spindly trees and vines, a lot of water, more open plains on the edge with the Cornucopia. A circle of the sea closed it all in. The setting would have made a beautiful poem.

The Korrall cousins hid and tended to Angel's stab wound.

Misty thought that they were as safe as they could be, for now—but it was a small arena, and the trees were short. She sighed.

. . . . .

For days, other tributes fought, huge blue bird-mutts swooped down from the trees (terrifying Misty), a few of the lakes were poisoned, and the temperature skyrocketed.

Angel got worse—weak, feverish, a shell of the young, healthy, giggling girl Misty once knew. She tried to sponsor them, but the prices went up by the day, especially what Angel needed. The Capitol wanted to get rid of the "boring" Careers.

Misty wished they could see Angel and Neptune's potential. She'd never felt so helpless before. She never would again.

. . . . .

Angelfish Korrall died at 4:14 AM early on the fifth day of the three hundred sixty-third Hunger Games.

Misty was in too much shock to cry. And Neptune was driven out—the bird mutts chased him in a squawking, feathery flock.

He won't make it. He doesn't want to anymore.

Misty tried to continue with her life outside of watching. It was over for them, now. How much had she really seen them? No. It didn't matter.

(But she did watch when Neptune died, going down fighting against three Careers, knives sticking out of his lifeless, emaciated body everywhere. Misty cringed. She was an only child. Neptune was the closest thing to a brother that she'd ever have.)

. . . . .

Neptune and Angel had taught her to care, to live. She never forgot them. Not Neptune's wry smile or Angel's giggle. Not how Neptune let his ice cream melt halfway before he ate it or how Angel carefully wove and braided their three friendship bracelets.

She didn't make any more close friends in the districts.

But years and tragedies and years and divorces and years and children and years later, it was still them that she called out for at night.

END