A/N Thank you to The Mockingjay Lives for your submission of Roy and his family. This was a very well done submission and I hope I can do it justice for you, Ally!

Peregrine Family

Roy (15)

Ashella (65)

Calob (67)

Roy studied the numbers on the page. They marched across, clean and black and all straight. Each one knew its story and knew just where it fit into everything else.

There was nothing frightening in numbers. No, they were old friends to Roy Peregrine. He was comforted by their predictability. Plug one thing into a particular function and that number would be the same thing every time. Methodical and wonderful, if you asked him.

He wasn't so far gone from the reality of the world that he spent all his time doing math, though. Of course not. But looking at these familiar numbers always seemed to calm him down and settle his mind for what was to come. And with all the events about to happen today, he was sure he was going to need a little settling.

The sun was only just making its journey up on the horizon. When Roy had woke, it was still pitch black out. He could not sleep. Not on a day like today. Now he was sitting at the worn desk of his, crammed into the corner of his tiny bedroom. His desk was right next to a window, from which he could see the street below. The streetlights were still on, casting a warm glow on the wet pavement, making it shimmer. The streets were empty and Roy felt calm and alone.

Being alone was not an unwelcome feeling to him.

His desk was completely covered in papers. There were charts and diagrams and scale drawings. Lines started and seemed to go on forever. Numbers marched silently across white pages, every problem quietly and diligently completed by Roy's scrawl.

But Roy knew that the real treasures of this cluttered mess lay in the drawers. They had been shoved back there in the hopes that they would be seen by no eyes except the wide, owl-like brown ones of their creator.

They were maps. Each one was meticulously drawn, down to the very most minute details. Some were colored with pale water colors, while others were left black and white. They were drawn to scale, a feat in itself which surely must have taken an extremely detailed hand and a lot of time. Both of which Roy had. He had spent countless hours working on these maps. That one of the huge forest, with the mountain at its center, was his first. He was still proud of those lines, slightly shaky from a twelve year old's hand.

A twelve year old who had already seen too much.

Every year, during the time of the Games, Roy made a map of the arena. And not just any map either. A map that showed where important events had occurred and when. There weren't just maps in those drawers either.

Crumpled and crinkled and shoved in the eaves were dozens upon dozens of pictures. Faces of children. There were girls with dark hair and pale skin,staring blankly. There were tough-looking guys with their hair swept to the side, trying hard to look composed as possible. Others glared with intimidating glances. Some were very young and others looked even older than eighteen.

All of them had been tributes in past Games. Roy had studied their pictures on his grandparent's television. Yes, they were one of the few families who had one. They were some of the elite, his grandfather being very high up in his position as a Peacekeeper.

At the bottom of their pictures, a few letters were scrawled out in pencil. A single sentence on each one, really. They were quotes the tributes had said, usually during the interviews, that stuck out to Roy. He shuffled through them, sifting around and then chose one at random. It showed a picture of a dark haired girl who had startling bright blue eyes. She was from the Games two years ago, from District Ten.

"I will get home to my family," it read on the bottom. "There is just no other option."

Roy smoothed out the wrinkles of the paper and stared down at his drawing. Of course it was life-like. All of his drawings were. But now, for some reason, it seemed even more real. He read her name at the top, even though he had memorized it long ago. Nim Hardix. Age fifteen. Funny how she had seemed so much older to him then, when he was thirteen. Now, with a start, he realized that they were the same age. Nim would be forever fifteen. She had died on the third day, her back driven through with a machete from the District Two boy.

He placed her picture back into the drawer and chose another one. A boy with wide brown eyes and shaggy black hair. Roy scanned the top of the paper, though he knew this face just as well as the last. "Mikey Thorne;12;District 7," it said. Mikey had been twelve years old. Roy moved his eyes down to read Mikey's quote and mouthed the words to himself.

"I'm not scared. I may be only twelve, but I'm gonna fight my hardest and hope my hardest, too."

It hadn't been enough. Roy let out a sigh. Poor little Mikey had died in the Bloodbath. Silly kid had sprinted to get a water bottle. A water bottle. Roy couldn't believe a little boy lost his life for a water bottle.

And now, here was another picture.

This one was even more detailed than the last two. This one was his most recent. It showed a girl with plain brown hair and plain brown eyes. Still, there was something about her that could draw anyone in. Maybe it was the focus in her eyes. She had a goal and she wasn't letting fear stand in her way of getting there. Or maybe it was the way she was frowning slightly, in an almost defiant way. Perhaps it was defiance! Roy wouldn't put it past her. Actually, he would not put anything past this girl.

She was a difficult one to figure out, that Katniss Everdeen.

He studied her picture a little while longer. Next to her name and age was a little crown, the symbol he drew on the victors' drawings. He couldn't figure out why the president had let two tributes win last year. That was beyond him. For a guy who loved strategy, Roy was thoroughly puzzled as to what the president's strategy might be. Why would he want to keep both of them alive? They were just two kids from Twelve. Roy would admit it, he was the type who stuck his nose up at the people from Twelve. They were nothing like the people from Three.

In Three, people were calm and level-headed. Over in the outer districts, the people were wild and rebellious. Roy had already heard talk of sparks lighting up, thanks to his skill in eavesdropping in on his grandfather's conversations. Sparks that, he well knew, were caused by that girl.

Over in those outer districts, like Ten, Eleven and Twelve, people had no technology whatsoever. It was like they were oblivious to the time around them. Roy pitied such people. His own mind was so geared towards technology that it was hard for him to imagine anything else.

Some might call him pompous, for looking down on these people the way he did. He did not mean to be pompous, of course. The arrogant never think that they are arrogant, after all. But he wasn't even that. Roy Peregrine was more naive than anything else. He just didn't know better.

He thought the way he did because he had been raised in on of the few elite homes in the district and, though he saw that Three was certainly not devoid of poverty, he could not imagine what life would be like if he lived in Twelve.

And why should he think about that?

He had better things to occupy his mind. Like the Games.

The bedroom door suddenly burst open and Roy jolted up in his chair. He grandmother walked into the room. Her eyes fell on the stack of papers and the picture in Roy's hands. He was still holding the one of the girl from Twelve. Other pictures of tributes from years past littered the desk and the floor nearby. Her eyes blinked slowly. They were a watery grey shade, clear and sharp.

She sighed softly and walked towards him, her long brown skit touching the floor. Roy felt her cold hand touch his shoulder. "Oh, Roy." She shook her head softly. "What am I going to do with you?"

Roy shrugged his bony shoulders. He hated when his grandmother gave him that sad look. He always had. After all, she had been his caregiver since he was too young to remember, after his parents had both been killed in the Hunger Games, fifteen years ago.

Ashella, his grandmother, seemed to know that he was thinking about them.

She sat down on the bed, which made a creaking sound. Roy imagined the old woman's joints creaking along with it. She sighed again and cleared her throat. "Roy dear, I know it's difficult. I can't imagine how hard it is to have lost your parents in such a violent way. Oh, I can try all I want to protect you from watching and thinking about the Games. But it's just not going to work. Whether or not I like it, you will always have a tie to the Games. But I never thought it would end up like this."

"Like what?!" Roy snapped. Though he knew perfectly well what she was referring to.

His grandmother only had to gesture to his desk, covered in maps and strategy diagrams of tributes in years past. "This is an obsession, Roy. Face it. The Games are all you can think about." Though she was old and her face was worn with wrinkles, Ashella's eyes never failed to have an intensity to them, just like his grandfather's.

He stared down at the linoleum floor. "Sorry if this makes you sad to see, grandma." His voice was apologetic, for he did not like to disappoint his grandmother, whom he was very close to. "I can't help being a little paranoid. You have to admit that my odds of being selected are greatly increased, since I had not only one, but two parents in the Games. It makes for good entertainment! Don't you see? The year they went in, oh, the Capital got their entertainment all right. One young man volunteering to protect his lover. Then them both dying at the hands of some brutish District Two boy!" His voice ended on a high, shrieking note.

Ashella walked slowly to where her grandson sat and put a hand on his shoulder. "I miss my daughter. I miss Alere just as much as you do. Even more so because I knew her. But something good did come out of something so awful. And that was you. Her little baby with those big owl eyes. You're everything to me and to your grandfather, too. And we don't want to see you like this."

Roy placed the maps and pictures back into the drawers. His eyes floated over all the notes he had jotted down on various strategies. He pulled his eyes away quickly, though.

A day like today did not need any more sadness to it.

"I want you to look presentable," his grandmother was saying. "Just in case those cameras should find you, and they likely will. People over in the Capital will likely want to know how you look now and all of that. I'm sure many of them still remember your parents."

"Not in the way I'd want them to be remembered," he mumbled to himself.

His grandmother, thank goodness, was losing her hearing. "How about this?" She pulled out a simple white button-down shirt and well-tailored black pants. The fact that his grandfather was a Peacekeeper, along with the fact that they were mildly famous in the Capital meant that they could afford such things.

"That's fine."

He threw on the clothes she had offered him, relishing in the feeling of the crisp fabric. Roy was the type of guy who liked to look presentable. He was likely going to see a lot of the girls from school at the Reaping. Well, none of them did really stand out to him. They were either from Three's much poorer side, or ugly or dumb or all three of those things.

His grandfather was in the apartment's airy kitchen, spooning oatmeal into bowls. He whistled while he worked. In general Roy's grandfather, Calob Paregrine, was a happy sort of man. Even as a Peacekeeper, which many people likely found surprising. But he was well-liked enough. The people of Three knew him as a just sort of Peacekeeper.

And so, though Peacekeepers could not possibly be liked by the people, Calob Peregrine did come pretty close. He had even allowed some people to escape punishment, if he felt they didn't deserve it.

"Take a seat," he said gruffly. "There's some brown sugar for your oatmeal on the table. Eat and quickly because you don't have much time."

"Where's Lyrana?" Roy asked with mild interest as he plopped down into the chair. Lyrana was the family's maid. She had been working for them since she was Roy's age. Roy had grown very close to her, as he sometimes felt removed from his grandparents because they were so much older than he was. She was very pretty and an excellent cook. When Roy was younger, he had thought he was in love with her. Now he knew better, but he did still have somewhat of a crush on her. She was just so much more mature than the other girls Roy's own age.

Maturity was very important to him.

But this was all silliness that he didn't want to think too much of. Roy played with his spoon, a plain wooden one. He knew that as soon as he would swallow the oatmeal, it would only seem to stick to his stomach and make his nerve-sick stomach even more queasy.

"Oh, Reaping Day's practically a holiday, I think," his grandfather said. "Your grandmother and I gave her the day off."

Roy nodded. That seemed fair. They had already established a reputation as being fair to their workers. This would only help that. Besides, he wouldn't want her to see him like this.

On Reaping Day, Roy's skin seemed to become a shade paler than its usual ghost white. His eyes were narrowed and glazed over. Anyone could see that his mind was clearly somewhere else. His hair went unbrushed and hung in wild, unkempt waves. And his fingers! They never stopped that strange fluttering they always did when he was truly afraid.

This was going to be a long day.

He felt the air shift slightly as his grandfather slowly lowered himself to the chair across from Roy. Calob grunted slightly and Roy was again reminded of the ages of these two. Some day soon, he was sure, he was going to be the one taking care or them.

And he did not mind this. They were family. Roy was, if anything, loyal. He was close to these grandparents of his, even though they could not compare to parents. They were close enough for him.

Besides. He had never known anything different.

He let his eyes drift around the room, in an attempt to calm himself down before the inevitable storm of emotions he was sure to encounter once those two kids' names were called. He blinked twice, hard. There was a window, letting in the morning sunlight. Outside of it there were window bowed full of petunias. His grandmother's work. The chairs and the table, as well as the floor were made of the same colorless linoleum type material. Wood was hard to come by in Three.

Still, the walls were painted a nice peach and there were little touches of home throughout the apartment. District Three apartments were known to be small, metallic and generally cold-looking. Not the Peregrines'.

This was his home. And it had been a satisfactory place to grow up in, he thought. Especially compared to where a lot of his peers were coming from.

The scraping of his grandfather's chair against the floor woke Roy from his little reverie. Calob put his hands on the table and stared at Roy with that authoritative expression that he was so prone to slipping into. "I know that today is a hard day for you," he said.

Roy nodded stiffly.

"Just hold your head up, boy. No matter what happens. You're a Peregrine, no matter how scared you might be feeling. Alere did just that until her dying breath. She did. And you? You've already been through so much. We know that you're a strong kid, Roy."

At this, Roy could not help but let out a little gulp.

To his surprise, his grandfather laughed and slammed the table, making the bowls jump up and make a clattering sound. "Believe it or not, there is bravery somewhere in those veins!"

Now he cracked a little smile. Just a small one, if only to see his grandfather laugh again.

At that moment, his grandmother came back into the room. She waved her hands at Roy. "What are you still doing here? Get a move on!"

Roy got up and silently pushed his chair back into the table. It made a creaking noise. When he looked down for a split second, he realized that his knuckles were white from gripping onto the chair. Was he really this frightened? Apparently so. He could feel moistness of sweat under his arms and on his brow. His stomach was coiled into knots already.

He walked to the door, feeling as thought his feet were made of lead. And, delicately as possible, he twisted the doorknob. As the door swung open and revealed the dimly-lit hallway outside the apartment, Roy threw a glance back at his grandparents, who were standing together right behind him.

"You go on now," said his grandmother. "You've got to go earlier than we do, to sign in and all of that. We'll catch up late." She waved her hands again.

"Okay then." Roy shuffled his feet. "Um, bye then."

His grandmother smiled. "Goodbye."

The door shut.

As Roy walked down the narrow hallway and to the stairwell, he felt like his heart had thudded to the bottom of his chest. Something just didn't seem right today. And it wasn't just because today was Reaping Day. No, Roy always felt strange then. His mind was already whirring, thinking of how he could apply some new drawing techniques he had picked up tonight when the tributes' faces would be on screen for the first time. A little blending using his finger would make them look even more realistic….

But his heart wasn't in it this time around. Yes, that was it.

He walked down the stairwell, his feet making thudding sounds. On each floor of the building, he could hear different families getting ready. Preparing themselves for the difficult time ahead.

A Quell was no easy thing to prepare for, either. It was made even more difficult because this Quell, Roy thought, was even crueler than the two Quells of the past. An entire family from each district! How many children would die? Little siblings and babies even? Older people, like his grandparents?

He shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to think about it.

Roy Peregrine had never been very good at trying not to think about things. That was a fact.

He turned out of the stairwell at the bottom floor, not even winded from the long climb down. His body was pumping with fear and adrenaline. Oh, why did this year feel so different? He headed out the door and into the street. The streets normally seemed very wide, but today they were crowded.

It was easy to spot small children this year who usually were kept inside and shielded from the horror that was the Reaping. At first, Roy wasn't sure why this was. Then, of course, it hit him. These kids could be going to the Games.

That little girl with the faded blue dress. Or the little boy bouncing the rubber ball.

This was too horrible to think about.

Roy waled over to the tables and signed himself in, thrusting his hand forward so that the blood could be collected, so as to verify that he wasn't a runner. He cringed at the sight of the blood and hoped none of it would get on his white shirt. He had always hated the blood.

He took a moment to stare up at the sky and calm himself. It was a brilliant blue. Almost as though, on such a nice day, nothing could go wrong.

And so Roy slipped in the crowd of boys in the fifteen-her olds section.

Not a moment too soon to hear his name being called.

The Goodbye Room

Roy walked to the stage with his feet crunching the gravel. Crunch.

He shuddered, but somehow managed to keep his head up. He focused his eyes on the escort's bright pink suit. It seemed to waver in front of him and he nearly lost his balance.

The whole crowd of people was staring at him. He could feel their eyes bearing into his back. It felt like something was burning into his skin. Roy pressed into his hands so hard with his nails that he could make out little crescents of blood forming. His breath came out in shallow gasps. It was so silent he could hear his heart beating.

Thud. Thud.

The escort's eyes never left his figure. She tilted her head as he made his way up the narrow wooden steps to the stage. He grabbed the railing so hard that his hand began to hurt. But he had to hold onto something. Anything to keep him from slipping in shock. There were seven steps. Each one's creaking noise sounded loud as a gunshot in the utter silence that enveloped the Square.

Creak.

He made it onto the stage, a roaring noise sounding in his ears. What was that? Panic. Sheer panic. Because it wasn't just him going in. No, he was not going to be alone. Roy felt his knees buckle under his weight as he realized with sheer terror that it was not just him he needed to panic for.

His family was going in with him.

Sure enough, the escort cleared her throat with a flutter. "Roy will now be escorted to the Justice Building," she said into the microphone. She did seem just a little flustered, as this was breaking the standard that had fallen into place after seventy-five years of Reapings. She shuffled in place slightly. "His family will be found and brought to him. All will depart to the Capital together."

At that, she gave a wave of her hand and two Peacekeepers came forward. Roy instinctively backed away, but his legs felt useless and numb. The Peacekeepers grabbed both of his arms stiffly. They stared straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with him. One of them did look vaguely familiar, though.

Roy realized with a start that it was Maximus. Max was his grandfather's friend. He had been in their house several times. Had a drink at their table. Ate his grandmother's cooking and shared stories on the family's couch.

As Max and the other man led Roy to the Justice Building, he felt his heart sinking in his chest. Here was a man so dear to his family that Roy had even gone so far as to call him "Uncle Max." And now, that same man was leading his dear friend's grandson to his death. Without so much as a glance at the boy.

But why should he offer some sympathy? This was nothing new or appalling to anyone. There had been Reaping for as long as anyone had been alive here. It was an inevitable part of life. Perhaps Max had even seen it coming. Either way, Roy knew that the man would go home to his family and eat a good meal in celebration that no one in his family had been Reaped.

The small space that Roy had filled in his life, and in the lives of the other people he knew, would silently vanish. This was how it always was. And always had been. In past years, after the Games had begun, there was often an empty desk in Roy's class. The students walked around that desk. Only a few stopped to stare at it, knowing something was very off. The teacher ignored the desk for the most part, but every year he could see that teacher quietly pick the desk up and move it out of the room. Like it never had been there.

The students would whisper their classmate's name every now and then. And then the whispers would get quieter and fewer in number. Until the name had vanished from people's lips entirely.

So it went.

His head was pounding with all of these thought as the Peacekeepers led him into the huge, cold and forbidding Justice Building. The elevator they went into was so narrow that Roy felt his chest constricting. He shoved his hands into his pockets and balled them into tight fists.

Max and the other man led him into a room painted gray, with muted furniture and a large window overlooking the street.

This was the Goodbye room.

Thy left silently. Max, though, turned his head around to look at Roy. They made eye contact. Roy held his gaze steady and so did Max. Then, the man slowly shook his head. Out of sadness, regret or merely telling himself not to do anything at all, Roy wasn't sure.

Either way, Max pulled his gaze sharply away and walked out of the door.

Now, Roy was completely alone.

The room was large, but Roy felt as though the walls were slowly moving inward. Trapping him.

He gasped for air and gripped the sides of the chair he was sitting on. Sweat beads formed above his lip and his whole body ached from being tense and in shock for so long. There was a rushing in his ears, like a strong wind or the sea in motion. The rushing sound kept repeating his name. Just like the escort had read it.

He stared down at the ground. Scenes from past Games rushed through his head. Children being wrestled to the ground. Young boys and girls running as fast as their legs could carry them, but it never being enough. It was never enough. Careers with their cold eyes and expressionless glares, methodically murdering anyone who stood in their way. And blood. So, so much blood.

He was going to be part of that now. This was going to be his new reality.

The Games were no longer just going to be something on screen. Something that stayed far away and did not touch his little bubble, so lovingly constructed by his grandparents. The Games were no longer going to be just a vague term that dotted his grandparents' nighttime conversations, which he had eavesdropped on as a small child.

They were very, very real.

How was he possibly going to face that?

Well, there were many strategies to choose from. Perhaps those endless maps, diagrams and charts he had contracted were finally going to help him. Maybe he could put his paranoia to use somehow. If only to put off the inevitable.

He could lay low until the Games. Go around the Training Center picking useful, but simple stations and not make contact with anyone else. By doing this, he would not be making any enemies with anyone or sticking out in anyone's eye. Not catching the attention of others had been a strategy used by a few, like Kai Halcyon from Four during the seventy-third Games or Jetta Manon from Seven or Finch Adoms last year. It had worked well enough for a little while, yes. Only, none of them had survived. Then there was the strategy adopted by, say, Mira Lannis two years ago or Tad Alcins three Games past. That was to find as many allies as possible.

This way, he could be protected. But what of the families?

Everything was so twisted this year that it was going to be impossible to strategize.

He put his head in his arms and let out a long, heavy sigh. He was going to have to find a way to face the days to come. It was going to be his job to make sure that no harm would come to his grandparents. But Roy had never protected anyone before.

Not ever.

Roy had been the one being protected.

But it was clear that no one could shelter him from what was coming. This was his reality now and he was just going to have to face it. The same way his own mother did, fifteen years ago. He was a Peregrine, after all. Peregrines did not hide away all day, avoiding the light of day like he had been doing. Peregrines did not run like cowards, nor leave other unprotected.

He was his mother's child. And it was time he showed that.

At the moment he had reached this conclusion with himself, the door opened. He lifted his head to see two very familiar figures walk inside. His grandfather was holding his grandmother's arm. She was leaning heavily on him for support. Roy fleet his breath catch in his throat.

They walked toward him and his grandmother slowly sat on the couch next to him.

One slow tear made its way down her cheek, catching in the grooves and lines. Her eyes were already rimmed with red.

Roy drew a sharp breath in.

And then, he did something he had not done in years.

He drew his grandmother into an embrace.

A/N Another thank you goes out to Roy's fantastic submitter, who took a lot of risks when she submitted his form. He was a great experience to write for.

What did you all think of the small Peregrine family? Let me know in your reviews.

Again, updates for this may be few and far between, but please know that I will never, ever abandon you guys. I have the most wonderful band of extremely loyal readers. You know who you are! You are the ones who review every chapter no matter what. When I see your review alerts, a smile lights up my face before I can even read what you have to say!

You submitted wonderful tributes who I will do my best to do justice for.

And that is my promise!

Peace, love, and best wishes to all you writers!