Disclaimer: I do not own the TVD/quote copyright.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, made this story a favorite, or alerted it.

To clarify, Bonnie was 10 and 11 when Damon went to get his tesserae in the last chapter (the prologue) and Damon is 11 and then 12. This chapter is a fast-forward and Bonnie is 17, Damon is 18.


When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

~Edmund Burke~


(6 years later. . .)

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Part l

Before The End

Bonnie Bennett


Today is the beginning of an endless siege of horror.

Today is March 25th.

Reaping Day.

I sigh and pull myself into a sitting position, an action that causes a spasm of pain to run up the back of my neck. Great. On top of the pre-ordained hell I have to go through today, my entire body feels stiff. Damn bed! It's clearly not suitable for sleeping and it's not as if I actually got anywhere near Dreamland last night, the anticipation was simply to much for me to bear. During the hours leading up to the moment where everyone has to meet in the town square, it feels like I'm waiting for a black-hooded man to release the guillotine that's been hanging over my head.

Once Upon A Time, I thought that the worst thing imaginable was Damon's jackass attitude, next came my mother's death, then I had turned eleven and my father got hurt in an explosion while working in the Mines. They were all reasonable bad things, and they all rallied for the number one spot on my Bad Life Moments scale, but then the starvation set in.

At eleven, I had been too young to sign up for tesserae—I was only a year off, the legal age for both the tesserae and the reaping is twelve—and I vividly recall staring angrily at Damon as he left the Justice Building with his very first grain ration.

He didn't need it, not in the way I did, his father had a steady job as Supervisor in the Coal Mines and Dad could barely walk—he still couldn't earn income six long years later.

The Hunger Games seem far worse than starvation, and yet, it still doesn't seem to register with me. I mean, the Games only occur once a year and the threat of turning into a skin and bones girl is constant. And I have my father to worry about, I have to keep his medicine on hand and I can't worry about eating. Dad must always come first.

He hates that, more rations mean a bigger chance of a televised death.

My death.

"Bonnie," he calls out weakly. "Could you get my medicine?"

"Sure!" I say warily, because he is all I have left.

I make my way downstairs, looking out at the bleak expanse of gray sky. It even looks like Hell, who would have thought?

My father's pills are locked in a single cabinet where he can't get anywhere near them. I haven't let him touch them since May 5th of 2030. It was the one year anniversary of Mommy's death, a week since he almost got his leg cut off. I had let him keep the bottle at his bedside—I know, I was a dumb ass—and he was so depressed, it sickens me to even have to think about it, and. . .

"How bad does it hurt?" I ask, waiting for his standard response.

He thinks it over for a second or two or three or too damn long for me to stand it. "Nine." he says with finality.

Yup, it is just as I expected.

He always claimed he was in more pain during Reaping Week, on a normal day, he might say 'five' or even 'four'. Reaping Week was an endless moan of 'nine', 'ten', or 'eleven', even. Our scale only reached ten, but my dad is a drama queen.

I take the pills from the cabinet, open the jar, and hand him a single capsule.

"Sorry, Mrs. Everdeen only has so much on stock and we are almost out of grain."

"Oh, okay." he is upset.

"I'll sign up for more tesserae next year, I'll buy more tablets instead—promise." I look at him bitterly.

He has mocha-colored skin riddled with lines of sorrow and deep brown eyes that conjure up endless amounts of pity. His leg is always wrapped in expensive bandages (they cost me twelve dollars) that are puss-soaked.

"No!" He chokes out before I can offer to change the gauze—though I don't think we have any left. "Damn it, Bonnie! Don't say that!"

I'm taken aback, he never blows up like this. Just like he never cried. . . . "O-okay."

"Do you think I like seeing you go to the Justice Building? Do you think I like seeing you come home with lousy rations instead of something you could use? Do you think I like knowing that you are signing your death warrant?"

I can't answer him.

Nonononono, the ten-year-old Bonnie yells in my head.

"Take you medicine, Dad." I instruct, going to the sink to get him a glass of water.

I feel empty, like he has just destroyed my reason for existence, like he has ripped my free will right out of my body.

I grab the cup nearest to me and fill it with water. The faucet makes weird sounds that probably mean that it is breaking.

Great! Yet another thing I can't afford to fix, just what I needed!

He yanks the water from my hand, I scowl and he just shoves the tiny blue-and-white capsule into his mouth.

He doesn't say anything for a minute, then he looks at me with tired eyes. "Time to get ready for the reaping." He says it like someone might say: lets go get ready to have our heads ripped off.

Which is exactly what we are doing.

I'm screaming inside.

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I stare at myself in the mirror.

My father often says—on days that he has taken too many pills—that I am my mother. He smiles like a goon and calls me by her name. Lelia. . .

I do resemble her, I guess.

I have her eyes, they're green. Although, I never saw the darkness I see in my eyes in hers. She was always so happy, her entire face shone like the sun I rarely catch a glimpse of nowadays. I've since come to the conclusion that the woman wore rose-colored glasses all the time. Why else would she always smile?

I frown, taking the white dress my dad got out of the closet and pulling it over my head. The fabric is soft against my skin, unlike the heavy material of my shirt.

I blink.

Maybe Dad is more right than I thought. I look exactly like the worn picture he keeps under his pillow (the one he believes I don't know about) and I try to smile, because she still has that light I can never seem to copy.

It doesn't work.

Sighing, I put a white headband in my hair and make my way down the steps.

I don't even spare a glance at my reflection.


Part ll

Getting Closer

Damon Salvatore


"What are you doing?"

I don't turn to look at my brother, I already know that his arms are crossed and that his broody forehead just gained another line.

"Nothing." I mumble, watching as my father left the house. He told me that he was going to Mellark's Bakery to go purchase a loaf of overly-expensive raisin bread, but I know that he is really headed to the Hob, District 12's black market. He enjoys feeding his children Greasy Sae's cat ass soup and calling it clam chowder—one of District 4's main exports, I think.

"Damon." Steffy says in his 'I'm Gonna Tell Elena' voice. It's clearly a threat-less warning.

"Okay, okay, you caught me. I'm really an undercover spy for the Capitol here to harvest your tiny brain for experimentation."

Stefan sighs, "Damon, really. What. Are. You. Doing?"

I see dad's head disappear as he turns the corner—moving in the opposite direction of the bakery. Go figure.

"Follow me," I tell him, shooting him an annoyed look.

He proceeds to tell me what I should be doing—getting ready to watch two poor losers go to their deaths—but does as I say anyway.

I enter my father's bedroom.

The bastard has the biggest room out of the entire house. While Stefan and I have to share a room, he has this one all to himself. Giuseppe Salvatore also forbade his teenage sons from going in it. I speculate that he probably has a hidden stash of Morphling in here, but that's hardly what I am after. Morphling addicts are often desperate and horrid-looking in appearance, I would never want to give up my good looks for some stupid hallucinations.

I automatically go over to his bed and lift the edge of the mattress up. Underneath, a small metal key glints in the darkness.

"Ah ha!" I reach under the rickety excuse for a bed, and take it.

"Damon." Stefan says. He has five different ways of saying my name. Earlier, he used way numero uno—the 'My Brother Is On Serious Drugs' way. The way he put into action now was the one I dubbed 'Damon's Just Breaking The Rules Because He Is Clearly Starved For Dad's Love And I'm An Attention-Whore' way. The other three consist of: the 'I Don't Want To Know' way, the 'I'm Going To Have To Bail Damon Out Of Jail' way, and, the most commonly used one: the 'Damon! That's Not Nice, You're Hurting 'insert fucker's name here''way.

I ignore him.

"Are you serious—"

I roll my eyes. "Go keep watch!"

"For what?"

"Who do you think, Dumb ass?"

Stefan furrows his eyebrows. "Damon, I'm not going to look for Dad while you attempt to do whatever it is you're going to do. It's wrong."

"Thank you Captain Obvious!"

Despite the fact that Stefan makes no move to do what I said, I go over to the cabinet on the far side of the room. It's a beat-up safe-type thing, a large lock sits in the middle of it, preventing me from opening it with ease.

I open the lock, look inside the safe, and pull a small flask of liquid out of it.

"Damon!" Stefan says, combining ways one and four. "The legal drinking age is twenty one!"

"Tell that to someone who cares." I say, taking a sip of beer.

I hear the door open and close, then.

Shit!

I throw the glass bottle into the safe and slam it shut. I hear the sound of something shattering—the flask, otherwise known as the metaphor for the end of my life—and I cringe.

"Crap! Stefan go stall!"

"No, are you insane? This is—" he is cut of by a feminine voice.

"Stefan?"

His entire face lights up, and that (plus the voice) can only mean one thing:

Elena Gilbert is here.

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Elena has always had a thing for Stefan, despite my being the hotter brother.

When I was fourteen, I had asked her if she wanted to hang out by the fence, I even offered to pick wild flowers for her. I never offered to do anything for anyone up until that point! Of course, she turned me down in favor of my younger brother, because the sun shines out of his ass.

They have being "in love" ever since.

I throw up a little every time I think about it.

We both go downstairs to greet her, and—because my life is shit—they start making out in front of me. And, to top it off, they exchange those three words that make me want to gauge my fucking eyes out.

"I love you!" she exclaims, smiling.

"I love you, too." he replies.

I hate the both of them.


Part lll

The Female Tribute

Bonnie Bennett: Volunteered


The Town Square is packed by the time I get there.

It is roped off in clearly labeled sections, each big enough to hold a pen full of bull imported from District 10. We are sorted into age groups during each reaping. The twelve year old kids stand in the area closest to the stage, the thirteen year old kids stand on the other side, by Jenna's shop, the fourteens are put by the bakery, the fifteens are in the pen farthest from the stage, the sixteens are just to the left of them, I will have to stand in the pen directly next to the execution weapons (which are hardly ever used due to the lax judgment by Mayor Undersee and the Peacekeepers) and the eighteens are to the right of the seventeen pen.

We don't have any space to move.

I told Elena to meet me by the Mellark Family Bakery right after she picks up her indulgent boyfriend. I'm glad she has Stefan Salvatore, even if that means having to deal with his bitch of a brother.

I can hear them from down the street, Damon is making some comment about me being a whore, Elena hits him and tells him to shut up, Stefan attempts to lecture Damon about being kind—again.

I sigh loudly.

"Are they at it again?" Someone asks, it's definitely a familiar voice.

I turn to see Peeta Mellark looking at me with a good-humored grin on his face. "Damon and Stefan? Yeah, they are."

Peeta's mother yells at him from inside the store; and Peeta is forced to leave me alone with Damon Salvatore.

They approach me in a quieter manner, as if I hadn't seen them arguing two seconds ago.

Elena is wearing a purple dress and shoes she can barely walk in. I don't even know where she got them, but Stefan is keeping her from falling.

"Hey Bon," Elena says, giving me a slight wave.

"Hey," I nod to Stefan and completely ignore Damon.

We don't have any time for small talk—thank God—because the five-minute announcement comes over the loudspeakers. If everybody isn't in their designated area by 12:30, the Peacekeepers will shoot at them, even the adults who have no reason to attend the reaping must be here.

"Let's go," Elena says, putting on her reasonable tone. "We don't want to be late!" she takes me by the hand and drags Stefan and I to the seventeens section.

I look over my shoulder, preparing to flip Damon off as punishment for the poorly-whispered "whore" comment, but I pause for a second. He actually looks pensive, as if he actually had brains inside of his empty head. It doesn't last long though, he gives me the finger in response.

Dumb ass.

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I hate the long seconds before the mayor comes on stage to read the history of Panem. It feels as if time has stopped, rather than ticking by at a normal pace. Everything feels so heavy and a lump forms in my throat. Endless What If's pass through my head and it's so hard to think.

Mayor Undersee takes his spot behind the podium.

"The country of Panem rose from the ashes of a place called North America. . ."

I close my eyes.

". . . as punishment for the Dark Days, we have the Hunger Games, a constant reminder of who has control. We must sacrifice one boy and one girl each year, they must go into the arena, where a deadly battle will ensue. . ."

I hear Elena sigh, we grew up listening to this speech.

"Only one may emerge from the Games alive." He finishes in a grave tone.

He then names the only living victor of 12.

Haymitch Abernathy.

District 12's resident drunkard.

Effie Trinket waltzes onstage. She is our escort, the woman in charge of selecting District 12 human sacrifices. She has pink hair and bejeweled eyebrows. Her voice is also highly affected, not a huge surprise, she resides in the Capitol after all.

"Hello District 12!" she begins, and no one even bothers to clap. "May the odds be ever in your favor!"

They weren't in my favor, that's for sure.

Her hand plunges into the glass ball labeled "Female". "Our female tribute is. . . Elena Gilbert!"

I hear Elena gasp.

I hear Stefan cry out—a horrible noise.

Her grip on my hand tightens before she lets go of me and walks up to the stage.

Fear explodes in my gut, I can't watch her die, I can't let her do this.

I have to do something.

For a moment, I can't. I'm paralyzed.

Effie asks the ill-fated question: "Any volunteers?"

I put my hand in the air.


Part lV

The Male Tribute

Damon Salvatore: Reaped


"Me!" A voice calls out, "I volunteer!"

She jumps over the rope that keeps us all fenced in. I'm pleasantly shocked, Elena won't have to go into the Hunger Games, she will be safe.

For a fraction of a second, I actually like Bonnie Bennett.

Imagine that.

I look over at Stefan, he has nearly collapsed with relief.

"And what's your name, sweetie?" Effie asks.

"Bonnie." she responds pointedly. "Bennett."

"Alright then, Miss Bennett. Let's get the male tribute up here!"

She repeats the selection process. "Damon Salvatore fu—" she pauses, re-reading the slip. "Damon Salvatore, I mean."

Fuck. My. Life.