Two weeks before reaping day for the 68th Hunger Games, there was a messenger on our doorstep telling me I was requested at the Senior Training Centre immediately. Grumpy at being summoned like some trained puppy I made the messenger wait impatiently, dancing nervously from foot to foot while I deliberately wasted time.

When I eventually arrived, the senior trainers and Brutus were standing around in a tight circle, talking intently. I cleared my throat, trying to appear braver than I felt when confronted with basically all the authority figures of the Centre. Aemilia turned and looked at me first, her eyes as cold as ever.

"You finally decided to grace us with your presence then?" she snarled.

"I was busy," I replied curtly before walking forwards towards the group. To my surprise they made room for me and I walked up next to Brutus, who was easily a head taller than me.

"Enobaria you will be a mentor for this year's Games," Priscus stated without delay. I was still focused on glaring at Aemilia so it took me a moment to process his words.

"Mentor?" I repeated dumbly, staring at him. "I only won last year though. What about Ramona or, or...?" Suddenly I realised there wasn't anyone else. We had so many Victors but somehow Ramona and I had ended up being the only eligible females. The last five female Victors were myself, Tass, Ramona, Lyme and my mother. Two of those were dead.

"Ramona's been retired. Your turn," Domitius said gruffly without looking directly at me. I didn't respond to his comments, falling short of fully ignoring him. I still hadn't forgiven him for his inability to tell me what awaited in the Capitol.

Facing Priscus again I opened my mouth to argue, decline the role. Mentor was the last thing I wanted. It would mean more time in the Capitol. I shuddered at the thought of having to go there every year. Not to mention the role of actually mentoring two tributes in the Games. Assuming this year's tributes were both 18 we'd be the same age for goodness sake. I would be mentoring students from my class potentially. That would never work.

"It is not a request, Ms. Reyes," Priscus said simply, his eyes flashing warningly. "It is an order. You know the way things work." I shut my mouth again quickly and glared furiously at the ground. I couldn't help but feel there was Snow's old threat in his words and I felt betrayed by one of my own.

For the first time I watched Reaping Day from the stage instead of the crowds. It felt wrong to be up there flanked by town officials and Capitol people. I felt like a traitor and I hated every minute of it.

I glared stonily out at the crowd trying to look over their heads and not focus on individual faces. I didn't yet know who the tributes would be and I didn't want to try and guess.

The same Capitol escort as last year flounced out onto stage, though this time her long hair was orange instead of magenta. She cooed out at the crowd who stared solemnly back at her. I wondered how many reapings it would take her to realise that District 2 did not smile politely for the Capitol, no matter how close we were to the city. The usual film played and then she was stepping up to the large glass bowls which were practically ornamental in this district.

"Bea Cassare!" she called in a clear voice, beaming around the crowd. A fifteen year old quarry worker moved away from her group to the centre of the crowd.

"I volunteer." I looked with everyone towards the voice as a tall, black haired girl moved out of the 18 year old section and walked steadily towards the stage. I tried to place her face but I didn't recognise her at all. She must not have been one of the students in my classes because until the escort asked her name I didn't have a clue who she was.

"Alethia Rodriguez." The girl stared back at the crowd with a strong, cold gaze and I allowed myself to hope that perhaps this would be a tribute to walk out of the Arena. I quickly pushed the idea away- every district 2 tribute looked like they had the ability to win, but most didn't. I had to face that fact. Although we brought home many more tributes than any other district, the truth was we still lost a lot. In the last twenty years we'd had six victors, including myself. That was six survivors out of forty tributes. Better odds than any other district but still not overly high.

While I had been lost in my thoughts the male tribute had been called, and I only tuned back in when I heard another cry of volunteering go up from the crowd. I forced myself to focus back on the scene in front of me in time to see a familiar dark haired boy walk out of the crowd. His name was Myron and he had been in Aemilia's class. I remembered him well. He had been the one to pin my arms behind my back while Ronan had assaulted me. As he walked up to the stage our eyes connected for a second and he gave me a cool smirk. I stared coldly back at him. I was a Victor of the Hunger Games now, not some seemingly-defenceless student in the Centre. He might think he was in control but when he was in the Arena I would hold his life in my hands. I stared back at him till he dropped his gaze and then allowed myself to feel mildly triumphant.

As we went through the train journey, the arrival in the Capitol, the painful presenting and parading, I tried not to remember that it had been only a year ago that I had been the one to do these things. At the time I had thought it would simply be a matter of fighting, killing and then leaving but since then I seemed to have endlessly found myself in the Capitol, the place I hated most in the world.

Standing in the Control Room for the first time on the morning of the Games, Hazel seemed to read my mind.

"Back so soon?" she teased with a small smile, sliding into place next to me. I ignored her and stiffened my shoulders as the other mentors began to trickle into the room.

It was a long room filled with twelve desks. Each desk reminded me of Domitius' back in the Training Centre, covered in papers and charts. They also held a monitor which I presumed tracked each tribute. Few of the mentors though took up their positions as the desks. Instead they congregated at the far end of the room where a wall of screens showed several camera views as well as a constant stream of tribute profiles, stats and odds. Despite the fact that their tributes would be fighting to the death in mere minutes the mentors seemed surprisingly friendly with each other, though the atmosphere of the room was sombre.

Many of them I recognised from my own viewings of the Hunger Games, though quite a few of the outer districts had been before I was born. The District One mentors were standing aloofly to one side of the room, whispering to each other and staring coldly at everyone else. The woman, Velvet, I remembered had won only a few years before I had, but the man, Emporio, had won when I was small. Brutus was yet to arrive in the room, in fact I had barely seen him since our arrival in the Capitol. Finnick Odair was talking sternly with a group of older mentors on the opposite side of the room and as I watched he glanced up as if he could feel my eyes on him. His returned gaze was not friendly and I remembered his words of warning to me about not hurting Raven. It was evident he blamed me for whatever had happened to her.

"Good morning, Hazelnut," said a friendly voice from beside us and I pulled my attention from the dark looking Finnick Odair to see the District 10 Victor, Hyde, standing next to us. Oblivious to me he was giving Hazel a small, charming smile which she was not returning.

"Call me that again Hyde and it'll be the last you hear of any nuts."

Seemingly completely undaunted by her threat he smiled again and sauntered away towards Finnick's group. So I guess he was a District 10 mentor.

For many of the other districts, their mentors were the only surviving Victors they had. District 12 only had one mentor, the perpetually drunk Haymitch Abernathy who at that very moment slouched into the room and instantly threw himself into his desk and crashed his head down on its surface. No one even seemed to notice.

"They'll be starting soon," Hazel said simply and walked away. After a pause I followed her and took up a position with a clear view of the screens. Alethia and Myron were ranked in the top two positions, with the boy from One and the boy from Four coming close behind them. The rest of the mentors settled into a restless silence and moments later the screens showing the Arena lit up.

There was a rustle of murmuring in the room as everyone surveyed the Arena. It looked tranquil, deceptively so I guessed. I couldn't help but think of my own Arena, of the frozen lake and snow capped mountains and the dark, appealing forest. It was the complete opposite of this sun drenched field that stretched for miles. Desperately scanning the screens I looked for hiding places and found none. It wasn't until the tributes rose into position that I realised the real trick of the Arena. From above it had looked like a simple field but once all twenty four teenagers were in place there was a gasp of surprise as everyone in the room realised the tall, golden stalks of the field were far taller than even the tallest tribute. They would be lost in a field of wheat, forging their own paths and with nowhere to gain a higher advantage.

"Hm. This'll be interesting," muttered Brutus who had suddenly appeared beside me. He looked at the screen with complete disinterest.

"You don't care if either of them survive, do you?" I asked, my curiosity overruling my pride. He turned towards me but his eyes didn't focus on me and it was then that I could smell the stench of alcohol on him.

"Give it one or two years and you won't give a damn either."

Once the Games were underway the atmosphere of the room changed completely. Velvet and Emporio snapped into action, approaching Brutus and I and barraging us with alliance talk which had already been agreed but had to be put into practice. Mostly it involved using the strength of the alliance to get sponsors and then distributing the results between our tributes.

All of them escaped the first round of mutts but a lot of others didn't. Six were taken out by the enormous vultures that descended on those that were already wounded. The birds were twice the size of any of the tributes and many of them didn't even stand a chance against the claws and beaks of the creatures. Hazel lost both of her tributes to the mutts, Hyde and Finnick each lost one of theirs. The Career pack of Districts 1 and 2 and the boy from 4 was still going strong on the fourth day, despite us having to send them sponsor's gifts of water. They managed to keep the food from the Cornucopia but there was no source of fresh water in the Arena and several poorer tributes died of thirst.

Myron was the first of the Career pack to die. He was taken out by the second round of mutts on the fifth day. I watched a pack of mutation rats descend on him with indifference. I found it hard to feel any sympathy for the boy who had been part of an attack on me, no matter how brutal his death.

"Your new one's an ice queen, Brutus," I heard someone mutter as I stared stonily at the screen as the boy screamed agonisingly. Carefully I turned my gaze from the bloodied body of the boy on the screen to the groups of mentors, though I didn't know who had spoken. Several pairs of eyes blinked back at me for a moment before glancing away, moving onto the next event of the Games.

Alethia and Gloss, the boy from One, were the last two in the Arena. The others were methodically taken down by the Career pack, thirst and the scorching heat of the relentless sun. By the final two both Alethia and Gloss looked ragged, covered in dirt, dust and blood. They were both too focused on fighting each other to notice the flickering wall of wild fire that approached them through the field until it was already upon them.

I noticed the fire on the screens at the same moment that Velvet did and we both cried out involuntarily, realising that we couldn't do a thing to help our tributes. Some of the other mentors called out to the screens, urging the tributes to realise the threat that was nearly upon them, but District 1 and I just stared in frozen anticipation. Gloss noticed first. He was facing the fire front and suddenly his eyes widened and he took off away from Alethia. She hovered for a second, stunned at her opponent's sudden and unexpected retreat then seemed to realise that something wasn't right, turning and gasping in horror at the eerily smokeless flames that danced feet from her. She took off after Gloss, all thoughts of fighting leaving both tributes minds, but those few seconds had cost her dearly. The flames raced ahead, sparking on a bunch of stalks ahead of her and she skidded to a halt, spinning in a wild circle as she realised too late that she was trapped by flames on all sides. I lost track of Gloss, though I could hear Emporio shouting behind me, and I watched only Alethia as the flames closed in on her. It didn't take long. A licking tongue of fire caressing her side and then her jacket was alight. She screamed as she tried to put out the flames but her wild spinning only pushed her further towards the danger and as I watched in silent horror she became a flailing silhouette as the flames encased her body. I don't know how long it was before she fell to the ground, the flames almost immediately subsiding as a canon fired around the room. There was a stunned silence and then people began to turn to Emporio and Velvet, solemnly congratulating them in listless voices. I suspected the end of a Games was always like this, but I could tell from the look of pain in even Hazel's eyes that this end had been particularly brutal. The mentors trailed out of the room in tense silence and no one made eye contact with me.

When I was left alone in the room, staring at the screens which now only showed the profile of the boy from One, the Victor, I tried to tell myself that this was one year down. I hated this, every minute of it, but I could do it.

I was sure that the one advantage of not having a Victor would be less time in the Capitol. My tributes were dead, I thought that would be the end of it for another year and I could just return to District 2 and no one would bother me. By now I really should have known better than to hope for that.

Every time the new Victor had an event to attend I found a rose on my doorstep. Every single one I crushed in my fist and threw away before Clove could see them. I didn't want her to ever work out what they meant and she wasn't a naive little girl any more, she was starting to notice things.

Just like mine the end of Gloss' Victory Tour resulted in a ball which all previous Victor's were invited to. I was starting to see a pattern though in those that 'chose' to attend. Hazel was there, every time, as were Finnick Odair, Hyde from District 10, Brutus and several others- all the recent Victors, the ones that were still young and pretty and sober or relatively so. It was when I returned from this ball, weary and bitter, that Clove first raised her concerns.

"You're never home anymore," she commented that evening as we both picked moodily at our food. I could tell from her voice and the way she kept her eyes firmly on her plate that her casualness and indifference were forced. "You're always in the Capitol instead."

I let a moments silence stretch between us before I answered her. It was difficult to know how to respond. On one hand I couldn't let her know what it was really like, the real reason I went to the Capitol. I didn't know how Clove would react to that news. She might feel afraid, afraid that they threatened her life, but I knew she'd also feel angry and, just like me, she wasn't predictable or rational when she was angry. But then on the other hand I hated it too much to lie and tell her it was fun and exciting in the Capitol. So instead I went for vagueness.

"I'm a Victor now, Clove. There are...duties that come with that."

"Tell them you can't go. Tell them you don't want to..." she trailed off and then swiped a section of hair from her eyes before looking hesitantly up at me. "...unless you do want to go?" she continued, then spoke in a flustered rush. "I mean, it's boring here and the Capitol would be better I get that but-" she stopped, watching me closely, waiting for me to tell her she was wrong.

I looked down at my plate and viciously stabbed a piece of vegetable with my knife. "It's not better than here, Clove," I said as blandly as I could, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. If only she knew how much better District 2 was than anything in the Capitol. We might be poor and cruel and powerless but at least we weren't the Capitol. I would rather our life any day than anything the Capitol could offer me, I just didn't know how to explain that to her.

"Right," she said in a disheartened voice as if she didn't believe me. Before I could speak again she had dropped her own knife onto her plate with a loud crash. "I liked it better when you weren't a Victor," she said simply before sliding from her seat and trudging from the room. Sighing I picked up our plates, both pretty much uneaten, and dumped them in the sink.

A/N: Thank you everyone who has been reviewing this story. It's great to know there are so many people out there enjoying it. -Lu