Dark Horses – Switchfoot
No one expected many victors from Districts Ten through Twelve. Not at first. So it was a surprise to them all when Ten produced seven and Eleven five. (And Twelve four, eventually.) Those districts, that had never been content to just make the Capitol happy, they weren't supposed to survive.
And yet they did.
Ella called them the "Dark-Horse Districts" the three of them. She said it meant that they came out of nowhere and surprised everyone, surviving more Games than Districts Three, Five, and Six.
Many years later, after a war, Haymitch stood in front of the monument raised for the Victors who had died before or in the rebellion and traced the last names carved into the rose granite.
District Ten – Rufus Boyne, Ella Schafer, Faris Gobind, Jessie Palmer, Todd Graham, Rosabel Birley
District Eleven – Will Trey, Seeder Bell, Chaff Peters, Barley Grano, Honey Granger
District Twelve – Quillar Root
Dark Horses. That's us. We showed them.
I Was Here - Beyoncé
Johanna dropped the prop axe to the ground as the door to Seven's apartments closed behind her. Blight and Tollak were at the table, passed out, probably drunk.
She headed straight for her room and locked the door behind her.
She stood for a moment, leaning with her forehead against the wall, panting. The scream built and built and eventually broke free and she smashed her fist into the wall.
She didn't want this!
She didn't want to be alone. Unloved and unloving. She wanted someone to remember her! Remember little Hanna, not Johanna the clever killer, the murderer. Just Elias and Jutta's daughter.
She had tried so hard to be worth remembering.
You'll Never Walk Alone – Celtic Woman
After his games, Galen had just wanted to swim out to sea and sink, just so that he wouldn't have to live with this.
Mags hadn't let him. The day after they'd gotten back to Four she'd come over to his house and dragged him out with her, told him she wanted him to teach her how to make fishing nets.
Every day, she came back and bullied him into living and she'd done the same with every other Victor.
Even the Victors from other Districts all knew Mags and most owed her so much, but to the Fours, she was special. She was Galen's best friend, and Liam's. She was a shoulder for Marina to lean on and a confidant for John-Luc. She gently maneuvered Nora and Lagan in each other's direction so they could heal, and now she had adopted the babies as if they were her own grandchildren. First Finnick and now Annie.
She never let a Victor try and make it alone. She was there whether you liked it or not.
Demons – Imagine Dragons
They never talked about it in the Districts. It was something that was left in the Capitol. That didn't mean the scars didn't come home with them.
The Games, the aftermath, and what came after that…No matter how hard they tried, it stuck around. The Capitol didn't let them forget.
And they kept going back, year after year, because if they didn't…First their families, then their friends, then their Districts would feel the repercussions. And none of them could allow that.
They did it for them.
Johanna took the slurs cast at her to protect her home, Finnick smiled and laughed and made pretty eyes at capitolites so that his brother's family would be safe.
Cashmere and Gloss never told who they were protecting, but Sheen had once mentioned a little sister, a child with a bright smile and a mind that wasn't all there.
Haymitch…No one had ever asked, but they could guess.
And then they would go home, and shoulder again the burden that came from being thought of as no longer trustworthy. No longer belonging to the District. (At least Two didn't have that. Victors were honored there.) For so many of them, even their families didn't acknowledge them anymore.
They did it for them anyway.
Bullpen – Dessa
Cashmere glared at the gown she was supposed to wear to the gala tonight.
Did they so easily forget the way she had snapped the neck of a boy twice her size that they now dressed her up like some fashion doll?
How could they forget?
She drew a deep breath and slipped into the gown. Her prep team would be coming back in a moment to finish her hair, they'd been called away by her stylist to come see some new idea he'd had.
The Capitol had done this. They had made her a killer, they had made her everything after.
She would play the part. But she was no fainting flower.
Kingdom Come – The Civil Wars
Cecilia knew every hiding spot in the Games Center. She knew about the roof, where you could enjoy the illusion of freedom for a few moments.
She knew of that one closet that had no surveillance, where you could curl up among the linens and breathe in the scent of fabric and just have a few minutes of peace.
That was how she'd won. She'd hidden, and waited until there were only three of them left. They she'd emerged from the destroyed city-scape and struck from nowhere.
But she doesn't know how to hide now. How to hide from what Snow is saying on the screen. How to hide from the look on Erasmus' face, or the scared questions of their children.
She can't hide from this. She can't run.
Arms – Christina Perri
When Finnick Odair was still just a child, he used to dream someday about having a family. A real family, to begin to fill up the nearly deserted Odair longhouse the way it should be. A family that was made up of more than ghosts and the shadows of what had been. To bring the smile back to his father's face and bring his brother home from the water-ways that trailed across Four like the strands of a net.
And then the Games happened.
And suddenly he wasn't a child anymore and he was living on the opposite coast from his family's longhouse.
And he knew there wouldn't be anyone who would want to make a family with him.
And then Andromache Cresta, Annie, happened.
She ignored him at first, and he barely noticed her. But he came home one day and found her in the kitchen with Mags, crying in her arms.
And she kept coming back, and they talked, and she knew and she didn't care.
(Well, that's not true, but she didn't care that way. She didn't despise him.)
She loved him. And he loved her.
And just maybe, they could save each other.
Reviews? For my full request please see A/N on previous page.
Bob and I wish you happy holidays, since we are not quite within that point where I feel "Merry Christmas" to be appropriate. (If you don't celebrate Christmas, I am very much not adverse to you wishing me "Happy Hanukkah/Kwanza/Whatever you do celebrate" back.)
