I have changed this story's status from Complete to Incomplete. I originally intended on ending this story with Chapter 7, but a friend of mine convinced me otherwise, saying the end of Copper's Games aren't the end of her, and I should figure out if she would make it through the Victor's Purge and Revolution. The next several chapters, therefore, will be a bit longer, for everything I need to cover.

All credit goes to Suzanne Collins, except for some original characters. Best, BetaBrass.


The 72nd Annual Hunger Games had lasted 47 days. It had lasted over a month and a half, and had set the record for both the longest lasting games, and for the earliest death. Notably, the girl from Eleven had dropped her token, a wooden ball, while waiting for the timer to reach zero, and set off her landmine. A state of emergency had been called in District Seven, the result of a "disastrous" series of landslides that had buried several towns. The Capitol had pulled almost every hovercraft from the rest of the districts to help in relief efforts. Then, District Two had been shaken with massive mine collapses, and the relief efforts had to be split between the two districts. The gamemakers, bereft of their hovercraft, since it had been claimed for relief aid, had had to improvise, and control the Games using older, out of date systems. For this reason, the Games had been absent of its usual muttations, arena challenges, and the killing was left to the tributes themselves. The Games, punctuated by the relief efforts in Districts Two and Seven, had all had to share airing time, leading to the Games being more drawn out. And it was all a lie.

Clove had been initially annoyed when the Capitol had begun to take time from the Games to air the disaster in Seven. What if the sponsors took pity on their tributes, and diverted money that might have otherwise been spent on her siblings? Not that anyone was being sponsored by the look of it. None of the tributes had received a single sponsor gift, career or otherwise. Cadfael had implied that the gamemakers couldn't send sponsored gifts, since they didn't have their hovercraft. He had alternatively implied that they wouldn't, as some kind of punishment for fellow Panem citizens' refusal to follow Capitol orders.

After her sister's surprise reaping, Clove had retreated up the mountain, again. She and Copper had clipped the only sunflower that had bloomed so far, so there weren't anymore bloomed flowers that she could cut in Copper's honor. She had settled for the next best option, which was a sunflower that was close to blooming. As she used her knife to cut it, she hoped it would bloom while in a vase of water. Clove had become angry again. She knew her aunt and uncle saw it, and had searched for a way to talk about it. The Katonas weren't known for sharing their feelings, however, and the guardians faltered in their attempts to draw Clove into conversation. She and Copper, despite having spent almost every moment since birth together, had never lacked for anything to say to each other, so her silence worried her guardians.

"Can't you be excused from the Capitol for even a day or two?" Aunt Amber had wheedled at Cadfael and Rye. "She's so quiet now, and she doesn't even bake anymore." But no amount of pleading would bring them to visit. They didn't want to jeopardize their precarious position with the president.

Clove would train in the mornings, see her tutor in the afternoons, take her shift at the quarries after that until dinner. Routine. After dinner, though, she would steal up the mountain and tend the patch of sunflowers her siblings had had to abandon. She didn't have the green thumb that Rye and Copper had had. Several of them had already been blown down by the wind, because she had forgotten to stake them. The snails were easy enough to find and throw to the far side of the stream some distance away. The slugs were another matter. She had eventually remembered that their slime reacted with copper, causing an electro-neural shock. Taking a spool of copper wire, she had wrapped each stem with a length of wire that she had coiled to create a sleeve at each base, hoping it would work.

It came time that the Capitol remembered that Copper had not been given time to receive a token from home, and they had sent word to the Katonas. Her aunt and uncle had started to go through their valuables, looking for something suitable. But for all of their wealth, it hadn't occurred to the Katonas to buy much jewelry upon obtaining their place as a victor's family. District Two's culture lent itself more to utilitarian goods, and the only splurge they made was when Flint Katona had bought Amber Pomeline their wedding rings, and then when his younger brother, Tinder, had done the same for Domitia Sterling a few years later. As it was, there was little that Flint and Amber could think of to offer their niece. Clove had disappeared to her bedroom that she shared with Copper. She had emerged with a lump of the obsidian the Katona siblings had collected after Rye's return as victor, and the brass chain that Copper had been given for their shared thirteenth birthday, just weeks before Strate's reaping. It had been in reference to a joke, because the chain was made of a brass alloy, used to make the Brasses, one of Panem's coins. The Simila, or Sim, was Panem's basic currency, and a brass was worth two sims. Aunt Amber had hypothesized that the reason brasses were sometimes called Coppers was because the civilization that had existed before Panem had never used brass in their currency, instead using copper. Somewhere along the line, the population's collective memory still associated copper with money, and nicknamed brasses with coppers. It was sometimes simpler to say, with fewer 's's.

Clove had drilled a hole into the edge of the obsidian herself, strung it through, and even buffed the rock a little, to make sure it wouldn't be sharp enough to be construed as a weapon. She had watched the interview with Caesar Flickerman. Had seen him drawing out the dilemma that faced the siblings, and the way he had dramatized the doom that they faced. She felt her temperature grow hotter as she watched the Capitol citizens chuckle at her sister, who had been dressed in a silly yellow and white dress. It might had been designed to make Copper look more mature, with a Spartan warrior theme, but it served only to make her look like a child who had been invited to an adult's game for laughs. She listened as Caesar Flickerman and that Lartius Baxol had sat around, musing over the chances different tributes had. What were the odds for or against their favor? She had listened as the two men, with their garish styles and overdone mannerisms, had exclaimed their excitement at having the prospect of watching siblings kill each other. Would they do it? She had incriminated herself for allowing Copper to get the jump on her in volunteering. Stupid of her, since Clove had consistently received higher marks than Copper in their training.

The audience had leaped with excitement at the fate of Roxen, the girl from Eleven, who had dropped her token and died before the countdown ended. Then the Games had started. The siblings were immediately pegged as contenders for the final eight, because it was so clear they could work together. The boy from One seemed alright, although not the sharpest career seen. The girl had certainly gained popularity for her beauty, and that she had killed the most at the bloodbath added to her favor. Frankly, Clove thought she looked like a narcissistic girl who had been lucky enough to stumble on the winning weapons first.

The cameras had focused on Laurel, the girl from Three, since she was clearly sharp, and had assembled the rifle she'd pilfered without difficulty. They had edited it so that it looked like a race between Laurel and Copper, though they certainly weren't racing to construct the rifles. Then they had edited her encounter with the career pack with music of impending trouble. Then, shots of Laurel's rifle's view. Where the cameras were placed, Clove couldn't see from the screen, but it must have been near the scope, because the audience could from see the rifle's perspective as Laurel aimed at Emmer's face. She must have pulled the trigger wrong, or shifted, so her aim was thrown off, because the camera was able to catch the bullet's path through his arm.

Clove had stopped breathing, and been glued to the screen, drinking everything in, until they showed Copper and the other boy laying Emmer onto the couch in their den. She had just lulled herself into a sense of security when the cameras went to the boy from Eight as he spied on the three. She watched as he mounted the stairs to the roof, and coughed loud enough to draw the one on watch. As he cracked a bottle on his head and laid in wait for Copper. Don't be stupid, Clove had been screaming at the screen, alone in the living room. Don't go up, Clove had shouted. But she had, and that was it. In a trance, Clove had watched as the cameras focused on Copper's face as she ran out of air. The silvery moonbeams had struck Copper's eyes at an angle, and lit them up, showing a view of her contracting pupils, her face going a pale grey-blue color. Cut to a shot of Emmer, coming up the stairs in time to see what was happening. His popularity had ballooned, as they played and replayed the moment. Emmer had looked to be the size of an animal, scooping Eight up with seemingly no effort, and tossing him over the ledge of the roof. Cut to an angle from below, showing his face illuminated by the moon, and in partial darkness. It was a fearsome shot, and Lartius Baxol had started to advise sponsors that Emmer was a tribute with the odds in his favor.

While relieved with the result at the end of that episode, she had sworn off the Hunger Games. It was too much of a rollercoaster, and Clove was still to angry to watch the Games as if it were any other year. She would listen to updates from her aunt and uncle, they were alive, thirteen left. They were alive, twelve left. As time stretched by, Clove was almost able to pretend that nothing was wrong. Copper and Emmer were just off on one of their survival trainings, practicing at being in the bush, being hungry, dehydrated, and such. Her trainings were straightforward, and she enjoyed the companionship with the other trainees. Her tutor was just as dry as ever, but it was her quarry shifts she would have skipped if she were to have had a choice. She shared the early evening shift with the other kids her age, both career trainee and not. The others had been jealous of the twins, for their wealth and fame. After Strate had come in second, and especially when Emmer and Copper had been reaped, they had averted their gazes for a time. The day after the episode when Emmer had been shot, Clove's workmates had stepped up, offered their gestures of community, and offered to share their water. She had her own water, but it was the gesture that was being offered, and it had softened her towards them.

She would train, study, work, and retreat up the mountain. Cadfael and Rye had returned home in anticipation of the Final Eight interviews, and had rejoined their old workmates at the quarries, in part for the cameras and in part to catch up. The sunflowers were beginning to bloom in full, now, and would follow the sun in its arc across the sky. It was a shock to her carefully created routine, then, when airtime was taken from the Hunger Games and given to relief efforts to the landslides that had happened in District Seven. The aerial footage of the sites showed the debris of trees, stumps, mud and bits of buildings. Clove had tuned in for the news, and had seen Flint shaking his head.

"That debris, there," he pointed to certain bits on screen, "its burnt." He didn't need to further explain himself. Explosives had been used, and that the Capitol was so eager in saying it was caused by excess rain was telling. The landslide wasn't an accident. It was just days later when Clove arrived with her workmates at the quarry to find that it had collapsed under a rockfall. Rains had come to District 2, and soaked everything, foreshadowing a slick and muddy time. She and the evening workshift quarriers, made up mostly of fifteen-year-olds, sixteen-year-olds and their supervisors, had worked through the night to excavate their friends and family. Hovercraft, cameras and shovels arrived. Why the Capitol had sent shovels was a mystery, because they were useless against the debris that ranged from fist-sized rocks to small and large boulders. Their heavy machinery had been buried, leaving only their hands to salvage what they could.

It had finally set in for Clove that she was alone when she and her workmates had been made to go home for sleep. She had left her parents for training in the kitchen, as they finished their breakfast before they left for the quarry. Her brothers left with her, doing up their quarry jumpsuits on their way to the quarry. That afternoon, she had arrived at the quarry, helped with the efforts of struggling to loosen the rocks enough to lift them up and away. She had tried not to think back to when she and Copper were eight, when they dug through the rubble to find their parents, killed in the rockfall after Cadfael's misdemeanor. Copper had found their father, and soon a multitude of hands were reaching in, lifting him up. It was dawn the next day when they had found their mother. Now, Clove sat at home, not knowing if she even wanted to sleep. Her aunt and uncle, her brothers, were all on shift when the quarry collapsed, leaving the same telltale singed rocks that denoted explosives. Despite the rain, her gut clenched hot inside, fanning her fury.


Lyme had been the first familiar face Copper had seen after leaving the arena. She had shown the first sign of affection by hugging her, whispering into Copper's ear. The information had been fragmented, because Lyme would only acknowledge that anything was wrong while imparting the story.

District Seven had had a riot. It was rumored that it was really just a protest over the Capitol's increased orders of logging. They had ordered that certain areas be logged, and were giving Seven no allocation for replanting. Seven had put a halt on all logging until the Capitol gave them the funding to replant the plots to restabilize the slopes. In response, the Capitol was rumored to have detonated small explosions, setting off the landslides. The official story was that, after a rainstorm, the saturated area had slid and covered the areas. Everyone knew that Seven was rarely without a rainy day, so it wasn't out of the question that a landslide would occur.

District Two had not had a riot. They hadn't had a riot in over a quarter of a century, and was nowhere near having one, now. But they had had dissenters. Down in the mines, and out at the quarries, beyond the Capitol's sensitive hearing, there had been whispers of expanding their network. No one knew what had truly happened, but either someone had ratted them out, or the Capitol was simply cleaning house for the sake of thoroughness. The tragic rock fall at the two main quarries in District Two had killed a confirmed forty people, but the estimates were higher, hovering at around ninety people more than the confirmed forty, whose bodies weren't accounted for. The quarry's base had been buried deep, and most of the skilled quarriers had died in the rockfall, so the effort of rescue had changed to that of recovery.

Copper had tried to ask Lyme if her parents were alright, since they both worked the quarries. She hadn't answered. Her brothers and sister had all been in Two, to participate in the hometown interviews of the final Eight. The three of them worked the quarries, though Cadfael and Rye were more honorary guests at the quarry than actual workers. She had asked about them, but Lyme had told her to shut up and eat. Via, the District Two escort, had been hands-off before the Games, and had stepped up when she had been given a victor to work with. She had batted her purple eyelashes and given Copper the first genial hug since her return from the arena. She thought Via might give her some heartwarming advice, but then she gave her usual stream of consciousness.

"Its wonderful to work with District Two, you're always all so professional. Before you lot, I was stuck with Five, can you image how mundane that was? Well, chop chop, its time to begin your treatment." Copper had some residual weakness in her side, and needed treatments to stimulate the healing of her muscles and skin in her side. The gamemakers had realized the end was imminent a little late, and it hadn't arrived until a couple of hours after the official end of the games. She hadn't noticed, because by that time she was so empty she might as well have sat there two minutes before being urged to mount the ladder.

Eventually, the voice of a gamemaker had jostled her from her reverie, and she remembered to take Emmer's token. Slipping it over her head, she froze to the ladder and unfroze once inside. By the time they had her on the operating table, she had had an open wound for nearly a day, and while they had worked magic, her recovery period was slower than it would have been. She had been unable to walk, partly from exhaustion taking over, partly from the muscles on her right side being cut and sewn back together, and partly because she couldn't imagine why she should need to walk. The lack of information made it pretty clear her family was dead, and all Via would say is that it was good that Copper hadn't had any sponsors to thank, because Copper looked like a wooden fish. She couldn't avoid what was going to happen, but she couldn't bring herself to care, either.

"Copper," Lyme had come to her, a stern look. "You're not out of this, yet. You need to prepare for your viewing and interview. For Clove." It was the first time anyone had mentioned a clue as to her family's welfare. It got her attention, and Copper's face animated with hunger for more news. "Just Clove, so far." Lyme had said. So far. But the rockfall had happened early in the fourth week of the arena, which meant any survivors would have to survive through the fourth, fifth, sixth and the better part of the seventh week, plus the several days after Copper had been out of the arena. It left the simple fact that the twins only had one another at this point.

Copper's team diminished her scars, clipped her split ends, cleared her complexion, reshaped her nails, cleaned and brightened her teeth. They chattered on in an attempt to keep her in the present. Even they had noticed that their victor was no longer quite as capable of maintaining a thought or conversation as she had been before. Maybe she had been an eager to please, awkward girl-next-door before. She had never seen herself that way, really, but one could always see things better in hindsight.

Ligna handed Copper her dress. It was the dress she'd worn on the train for her arrival in the Capitol. What game Ligna and Lyme were playing, Copper didn't have the energy to figure out. Still in a daze, Copper allowed herself to be made up, her hair styled and her make up done to make her look slightly less deadpan. All too soon, she was being greeted on stage by Caesar Flickerman's white smile, his smooth handshake, his gracious manners. It was time to watch the special capstone episode to wrap up the 72nd Hunger Games.

It started out with coverage of the District Seven landslides, of the devastation. Then switched to the District Two quarry collapses, of people using their hands to try to move boulders the size of half a train car. They included static noise to make it feel like the footage had been hard to come by. Then the reapings, the volunteers, Charm Inchcape's smiling face as she volunteered by pre-arrangement. The music preluding the train's troubling future. Footage of the newsreels, hearing of her death. The arrival of the maverick replacement, the diminutive girl who, regardless of career training, could never win. The scores, flashes of some of the interview highlights. The music focused in as they allowed Furr, Zither, Copper and Emmer their full interviews. Furr, as he proclaimed his love for Panem, Zither's beauty, and her dedication to training. Copper, where the music gave an eerie quality, showing her as the young, naive diamond in the rough, the tragedy of not comprehending her doomed fate. Emmer, with his effective one line. "There can only be one." was played with an echo, and served as a segway for the program. The audience had wept at the scene.

Roxen, the girl from Eleven, as she fiddled with her token, as it slipped, and as the two tributes next to her clung to their platforms to avoid being blown off. The Games began with the traditionally dramatic, intense music and shots of different tributes running. They paid special attention to Emmer defending Copper from the boy from Six, and Copper tackling Emmer against the grenade's blast.

From there, they showed the different alliances and individual tributes setting up places to sleep. Copper noticed the music they played was cheery, filled with camaraderie, which almost brought an ironic smile to her face, since almost everyone on screen was going to die a terrible death. They gave screentime to Laurel and Copper, flashing between the two of them as they constructed their rifles. They had to edit Copper's a lot to make it smoother, because otherwise it would be clear she had no real idea of what she was doing. Laurel had been able to snap hers together with very little figuring. She had been the tribute who had played with her token all through their training. It had been some sort of tattered cube with a maze on each side, and bars on the inside. She would drag the bars here and there, solving and resolving the puzzle with dexterous hands. She had had a mind for puzzles.

Then came the career pack's first night of hunting. The sound effects enhanced the anxiety in the crowd as Laurel cocked her rifle, aimed, and fired, showed Emmer falling to his knees, hit the ground and lose consciousness. Showed Copper herself as she stood over him, looking for Laurel, who refocused on Copper's face, followed it as she shifted positions. When Copper had knelt, Laurel had tensed, ready to shoot, and missed when Copper had hit the ground. The bullet would have hit Copper somewhere in the chest, but then she was standing, and the cameras zoomed in on Copper as she raised the rifle and pulled the trigger. She felt sick, watching it all over again, listening to the music that made it seem like fiction and gave the audience the idea that Copper had pulled the trigger as cool as she pleased. Cut to Laurel being clipped in the head, slumping and going in and out of consciousness. Cut to Copper kicking the door in. A sort of choral sound took over as Copper approached, and the screen split to both girl's faces and climaxed with the knife. Cut to the careers continuing on their hunt, then to the career den, where Brannock had taken watch. Talon, the boy from Eight, as he lured Brannock to the roof. As he lay in wait for Copper when she came looking.

She had checked out, and knew that when the cameras showed her face in the corner of the screen, it was clear she wasn't really watching the show. She was only vaguely aware of the scene until Emmer arrived and tossed the smaller boy like he was a small cat. They used the shot of one of the cameras from below, showing his silhouette, and reused the choral chanting.

They spent some time showing Furr and Azulina, the careers of One and Four, as they became ever more friendly. It was clear that Azulina had mildly enjoyed Furr's company, but it was equally clear he truly began to care for her. The audience swooned at their romance. It wasn't very common, but a mild crush did occasionally happen. They had cut out the scenes where Azulina had given Furr some of her food, where Furr had kissed Azulina. The others in the career pack had ignored it for the most part, but it was not secret, and Copper was fascinated that the Capitol had decided to leave the seriousness of Furr's feelings out.

Their friendship was made all the more clear, however, when they were out, and Azulina was stabbed. Furr had become frantic, and had carried Azulina all the way back to the center of the arena. She had told him not to bother, she was bleeding too much. He had told her to shut up, that Copper would stitch it up. The audience was quiet, but there were audible sniffs and whispered offerings of tissues to one another. Azulina had received some dignified, sad music and a camera pan up from her body, surrounded by teammates, up to the unreal moon.

The music swelled with vengeance, and showed an efficient montage of Furr killing Raff in retaliation for Azulina, of Copper chipping in by killing the boy from Six, although Six was unrelated to Azulina, then back to Furr as he took his revenge on the girl from Eight, and then to Copper and Furr as they killed the girl from Nine.

Cut to the girl from Twelve. It was the first time anyone from Twelve had made it to the final ten in over five years. Impending music grew, and the cameras cut to the clunky planes that rattled in the sky. The were different from the planes in Copper's history books. They were from after World War II, but had a similar design. Well, they would, since Panem didn't really use planes, since they had hovercraft technology. The shells began to fall, and the girl from Twelve had dove into the doorway of a building, avoiding the first few shells. She was fast and strong, but when the building collapsed, she hadn't stood a chance.

Cut to Copper and Emmer, as they approached the career den from the street. They hadn't shown that they had camped out under a table and gone around the building, so it looked to the audience like the two of them had miraculously survived the shelling. Indigo asked Copper how they'd survived, and they zoomed into her face as she told them they could avoid them by watching where they fell. It made them look wiley and rugged. Emmer, standing beside and just behind her, loomed above her, and the two of them gave the impression of a ragtag team of danger.

A montage of the airstrikes and tributes taking cover provided a mechanism of adding drama while indicating the passage of time. A scene following Copper as she took cover, then ran out into the street during an airstrike, the building she'd just left exploding behind her. Rubble flying in all directions, Copper charging along the street, dodging craters and somehow missing the shells that dropped. Her shouting was drowned out by the noise, but it looked like she was shouting at Indigo to take cover, and they showed him turning, the shell falling, and Indigo's cannon echoed, causing some of his would-be sponsors in the room to cry out. The montage wasn't over. With Rhymer's death, the alliance finally broke, Brannock dying soon after. It was the first time in at least two decades that both tributes from Seven had lasted into the final eight. Furr killed Martial, and the rains came.

There were four left. It had come down between tributes from One and Two, and being a career now offered no advantage. Although the final four had taken at least two weeks of the time in the arena, the editors made it seem like the countdown was ticking in everyone's heads, as they played a ticking sound while taking shots of each of the final four. Furr and Zither ambushed Emmer, he was on the run, and it looked like Zither would overtake him until Copper took her shot. The audience gasped when they saw Zither's chest blossom red, because the editors had turned Copper's presence into a surprise. Three left.

Time must have been running short, and they probably wanted to make Copper look more capable, because they decided to skip over how she had fought with Furr, lost, and been cut. It sort of looked like Copper had randomly been stabbed, because the next scene they showed was of Emmer returning to his den, and of Furr calling out to him, wearing the vest of knives. They zoomed in on the vest that everyone had come to associate with Copper. Furr taunted Emmer and the audience, making them think he'd killed Copper to get it. Emmer and Furr clashed, and seemed at an impasse. Then Copper appeared, with raucous cheering and applause and a swell of sound.

Copper, sitting across from Caesar, had fully checked out. She was barely aware of the program ending, the lights coming up, Caesar taking her hand and lifting her to her feet, raising her hand as a victor. She was unaware of the cold eyes that watched the girl bereft of her identity, and of the snakelike face that curled in a smile. She gazed at the audience, their stamping feet, their tears. They had felt every piece of emotion for all it was worth. She was mildly glad for this, because if it couldn't be her, then someone had to feel.