Prologue, Part Two.

Dominika Gardell, 43 years, President of Panem.

God, did she hate District Two with an almighty passion.

She wondered who did this place in so badly that even the sun now hates it. She's been here a few times in her years, scattered across the seasons, and the damn sun hasn't been seen once. The Capitol isn't all that far from here and the sun seems to never set.

So what's up with this place?

Something to do with the people, she thought. It's one extreme or the other - those who work underground twelve straight hours a day or those who are well-off, selling precious gemstones in the square and building entire neighbourhoods in their spare time. Most of them stopped when the car detail drove by, watched in quiet fascination. But she still saw those few that stared with open, undisguised malice. It doesn't matter where you are. There's always a few.

She arrived twenty-three minutes early to the house in the victor's village that she gifted the Dobrana family. An apology, sort of, for accidentally losing their daughter and failing to find her for four and a half years.

For a long while, she was so convinced they would find a corpse.

Yesterday, it was no surprise at all when she was woken up in the dead of night to the news that the girl was back.

Dominika doesn't quite know when her opinion on the matter changed. She had just survived the Hunger Games; surely she could handle Arker. Most people didn't think that way. But the longer they went without a body, without any trace of her, the more convinced she was that Seren would either come back, or they'd never find anything at all.

With the car stopped outside the house, she is at least happy that her suspicions were right.

The whole victor's village seemed to be alive. Most if not all of the victors were lurking around and watched with barely disguised curiosity. Cicely Arlington sat across the way on her own front steps, elbows on her knees, seeming to be in the middle of glaring a hole into the front door of the Dobrana house. She wouldn't be surprised to see it happen.

It wasn't not just her, though. It was Ashar Vikken standing on his own front porch, one arm wrapped tight around his wife. It was the minimum three faces she could see peeking out of the windows of every other house, watching. Like they think anything she has on her face is going to give away what happened here.

She still had twenty-three minutes.

"Is it always like this?" Cybell asked from beside her. Her assistant had never been in Two before in all the years they'd been working together.

"Besides the whole returning from the dead shtick?" She questioned. "Usually. Never seems to get any better."

She waited until the security detail had swept the area, watched Cybell step out of the car. Her hair was more magenta than cotton candy pink these days but she still looked too unusually bright for this place. Clearly, Cybell could feel that even more than she could.

It was no question that she had to be here. There were conversations to be had, decisions to be made. She had to start to piece together everything that had happened since the day they had realized Seren was missing. No one in the Capitol had been able to string things along well enough for the story to make any sort of coherent sense, not even her smartest advisers.

They were missing too many things.

When she stepped out of the car she felt a shift in the air. Seren's mother opened the front door of the house, like she had waited until the car door opened for the opportunity. As she walked towards the front steps to greet her she couldn't help but wonder just exactly what she was walking into. The only information she had was that Seren was okay, not the state she was in or anything else of the sort.

"Madam President," her mother greeted. "Thank you for coming. I apologize for my husband's absence. It was quite short notice - he should be home from work shortly."

Things never stopped moving in District Two, not even for her. She wouldn't ask them to. That would be like asking them to do anything other than feign politeness and patriotism.

Behind Mrs. Dobrana she could see both of Seren's brothers lurking in the hallway. Not really a surprise; the two of them had been doing the exact same thing the first time she had come here, a week after the 155th. Mostly silent, disappeared the second she got close. She watched them do the same, flee to some other room before she could even get close.

"No need to apologize," she replied, still watching them go.

She declined the offer of any refreshments and let Mrs. Dobrana usher her to the study, where she said Seren was waiting. The house was quiet, like even the walls were waiting with bated breath to see what would happen. She let the door close behind her, leaving Seren's mother to wait in the hallway outside. The girl - though was she really even a girl, anymore? - had her back to Dominika, sitting in the chair facing the opposite wall. She turned as the door clicked shut.

Dominika hadn't really known what to expect. She looked different than before, though that was no surprise. She was leaner, more sharp. She looked like she hadn't slept through the night in a while. There were scars littered all over her hands and wrists and though Dominika couldn't see elsewhere she could only imagine she looked much the same all over her body.

She looked like she had spent the past few years in the wild.

Dominika didn't know if that was really the truth or not.

She didn't let Seren stand up. She crossed to the other side of the desk and sat down, crossing her legs and folding her hands in front of her. The girl still hadn't said a word and her eyes were full of nothing at all. Nothing she could read.

"Why don't we cut the bullshit," she started. "And you tell me everything that happened."

She watched Seren's face come to life. Watched something spill back into her eyes, watched the corners of her mouth quirk up in something that almost resembled a smirk.

Seren leaned back in the chair and laughed. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

No one know's what's going on - the sequel.

Submissions are still open, obviously. Right now I'm leaning towards asking for more tributes in the 14-16 range and maybe even a twelve year old or two, because I haven't gotten any of those, but my list is starting to look better by the day. Girls are still way more competitive than guys, especially older girls, so you might want to keep that in mind.

My guess is that I'll be publishing the last prologue sometime between Friday and Monday if all goes well; aka your deadline.

Until next time.