WARNING: Rated for language and innuendo. here will be violence, and there will be fighting. The rating might even change later in the story. I don't want people to get any unpleasant surprises.

PART ONE: INTO THE PAST

(POV - Glimmer)

I remember being told that the Quarter Quell happened before my resurrection.

As far as I knew at the time, I wasn't the only tribute from the 74th games to be brought back from the dead. There was also my district partner, the tributes from 2 ... only the Careers, I came to realize. And being revived was a terrible experience.

It wasn't like we tributes were bursting at the seams with things to tell each other, but we weren't given much time to socialize following our resurrections. Everything seemed hurried and panicked; there were doctors poking at me, forcing their faces in mine and bombarding me with questions I wasn't nearly capable of answering. A handful of my former stylists forced clothing over the tracker jacker scars, and they dismissed each of my questions with anxious kisses on my cheeks and squeezes of my wrists.

Taking us former Career tributes one-by-one on a trip behind the Capitol stage was Atala as stage lights shone blindingly on the wall's opposite side. Following the head trainer, I didn't fail to notice the nasty bruise tainting Atala's right cheek or the purple, tired stains that hung low under the trainer's eyes. Atala gave me a promise of home, a pledge I assumed had given to the others as we all milled onto the stage.

Then the trainer forced a script into my hands before shoving me to the first spot in our stony line of Careers, collecting us to the edge of the stage where I was hoping we couldn't be seen. I had been shaking, and my mind went through a steady flow of questions that the stylists and Atala hadn't answered. I touched the soft bumps of Tracker Jacker scars that covered my skin beneath brown sleeves.

Atala announced to us that we would be speaking before all of Panem. Well, her exact words had been, "What's left of it," and that did very little to calm my nerves, which were practically just doing stinking back-flips.

I had spoken in front of an audience before. I had lept before a crowd and stared down hundreds of would-be volunteers, daring them to try and steal my thunder. But this time, the experience felt very changed; stiff, almost. Different. The crowd was empty for all but a a handful of advisers sprinkled about the fronts rows of seats. Perched silently upon the chair closest to the stage was President Snow, just where Xamitz, my head stylist, had sat to watch me during the interviews.

Snow's hands were cold and wrinkled folded in his lap. His silver eyes gazed over us Careers with a serpentine likeness, and I wanted to snap at Clove for having the gall to look at him the way she did, like she was thoughtfully calculating out of curiosity how many knives she'd have to throw to have him killed.

Heavy lights shone above our faces, and the stage had been emptied of all but a single chair in the corner where Ceasar Flickerman sat, a solemn look on his face and his tanned hands in his lap. We had been told by Atala to way our lines in district order. First me, then Marvel, then Clove. There was no sign of the boy from District Two, and that irked me. I wonder what they'd done with him. I wondered where he'd gone.

The atmosphere was timid as we stood in line onstage. We were reluctant to comply with the Capitol, but it was hope that made us do as we were told. We had been promised our homes and families. Lives back in the districts. It wasn't the perfect bargain, but it was better than being dead. It had been the single thing whisking us from insanity.

The dot flashed red, and I could tell by the narrowing of Snow's eyes that I was being recorded. I raised my scrip to my waist with careful hands, amazing myself with the number of things that I could notice right when I wasn't supposed to. The anxious scrunch of Clove's freckled nose. I bit my tongue in a literal attempt to bite back the nervousness I felt pulsing in my stomach. No, it wasn't nervousness; scratch that. It was the load of pressure that grew into a ton atop my shoulders.

Marvel's fingertips felt cold. They were brushing against mine, and I registered his touch too slowly. Too distractedly. I couldn't pull my hand away in time, and his seaweed-green eyes displayed more control than I'd ever seen him have in his entire life.

But there was fear. Clove had a little fear in her eyes, too, and she kept glancing at me sharply, her eyebrows furrowed. The nest had fallen. That had been the only other time I'd seen fear caked so thick in Marvel's eyes. I had screamed his name and he looked back twice and saw me thrashing, my skin bubbling under the swarm. And with a squeeze of his eyes and a jerk of his head, he had charged away on the heels of the District 12 female.

It was inexplicably hard for me to forgive him. It wasn't only his betrayal; I'd also grown quite a hatred for his perverted sense of humor and narcissism in the Capitol. He'd play jokes on my beauty for the cameras, jokingly imply that I whore myself to others... and this was all just for his own giggles and shits, even.

But sure, yeah. We both had our faults.

There was an easy air about him. Even with his usual smart-ass remarks and that awful smirk-smile he liked to plaster onto his face, I could almost say that I felt calm around him. Never safe. I had tried that once, and he'd abandoned me in a clearing to die. I would have tried to stab him on the stage, but all of Panem was right in front of me. They hated me and all of the other Careers except for Marvel. They wanted us dead, and now we were here to bother them in their suffering.

I inhaled a breath of air, letting my eyes fall down to the page in my hands. We were being made to play the role of the victims, I knew; to stand as an example.

The words came little easier than sacrifice. I spoke Katniss' name with quivering breaths, spouted to the crowd my 'disbelief.' Katniss' 'rebellious and outrageous' wrongdoings rendered me 'speechless with anger.'

My fluttery glances at the paper didn't do me any good. I had told myself that with each syllable, the script would become as easy as plunging a swords into a dummy. What an awful, tragic lie. It was as difficult as shoving one through the flesh of any actual tribute. It left me just as breathless. I struggled to rush my eyes to the camera, and in the forefront of my mind simmered the fact that I was barely aware of anything at all. I didn't know what Katniss had accomplished. It would come to affect my life.

I looked to Caesar for acceptance once I finished speaking the final words of my lines. I couldn't tell you what exactly I observed in the eyes of Panem's television host. Probably something hollow and meaningless. I was used to the Capitol proudly presenting hollow and meaningless things.

At the end of my very last line, the microphone pinned to my collar stopped receiving noise, and I watched for the shift in Marvel's expression as he took a breath to speak his lines. Far past the fatigue and confusion, something like anger was present in his gaze, but it was suppressed. He may not have known it, but the stresses of his experiences were etched into his face, small bags under his eyes for every tribute he'd killed.

He avoided Snow's serpentine gaze. Before I knew it, everything was over. They injected us with a substance. Clove, of course, put up a fight when a man in hospital garb approached her behind the stage. She threatened and punched, squirming, kicking until they finally pinned her to the ground. Marvel was injected in the middle of a question. I didn't hear quite what it was. It was muffled, like the voice of someone overhead when your ears are underwater. I didn't know it when I was injected because my skin could hardly feel anymore. The pain was about to be over. The confusion was going to end. And then my surroundings went black.

I had never found a problem with following the rules the Capitol set out for me. I was only an object to them, and that was alright. I had volunteered as if I were better and stronger than everybody else, but I had known I wouldn't win. Around the start of the games, I had to accept that I was going to die.

I am back inside the Capitol as of now. Marvel, Clove, and I. Three of us. Cato might not have even made it - Marvel and I are still in the dark regarding that. And I haven't seen Clove ... haven't seen Clove in days.

Things have changed.

A/N: Hey, people. This is one of my earlier fanfictions that I never really got the chance to post. I'm sort of going around and re-writing things, but I have it pre-written all the way to the end. I hope to get it all posted eventually, because people seem to like it! Reviews are amazing, no matter how late.