Carameuse Heloise, 48
Capitol Citizen

"It was a careless avox that knocked you unconscious," the nurse explains as she bandages the side of Carameuse's head and uses a cloth to wipe away the dried blood that pooled on her neck, the blood that had flowed out of the wound while she had remained on the floor until the frantic avox found someone to help Carameuse's limp body up and to the nurse. "They were just trying to bring a tray of cold drinks to one of the rooms in Car Two, and they bumped into you when they tripped over a fold in the carpeting. From what I've heard, they've been replaced with another avox. I hope that makes you feel a bit better about the whole thing, especially considering the fact that you were out for the count for all of District Ten. I'm horribly sorry about the whole thing, and you've been given a free card that lets you buy anything you want for no price at all. I hope that can start to even begin making up for this whole mess."

"No, no, that's fine," Carameuse says hoarsely as she struggles to sit up on the cushioned counter that she's been lying on. "I feel a bit better now that it's been stitched up. Would I be able to travel to Nine tomorrow along with the rest of the passengers?"

"My, my, you are persistent!" the nurse laughs while helping Carameuse up. "I can't let you off of this train today, but you'll be able to visit Eight at the next stop. Again, we all send our apologies for this dreadful mistake."

Carameuse waves her away and grabs a pack of ice, trying to stop her throbbing headache from getting much worse. "I suppose I'll be held hostage in here for today."

"That is correct." The nurse bustles around the other end of the compartment, searching through bottles of pills before she makes a little cry of delight from the bottom of her throat and swerves around to hand a bottle to Carameuse. "This will help with the headache."

She fills up a glass of water and Carameuse takes it gratefully, downing the water and the pills before swallowing. As soon as she does, the cold sensation of water running down her throat distracts her from the pain, and as she savours the feeling, she realizes that her headache is starting to vanish like that. "It works like a miracle, doesn't it?"

"Specially ordered from the best pharmaceutists!" the nurse says cheerfully, opening the door and turning to walk out. She looks back at Carameuse and smiles with a look that Carameuse interprets to be one of pity. "I hope you don't mind if you're here by yourself for a bit. I have to check with another passenger who has a nasty case of the flu."

Carameuse nods and waits for the nurse to return, her headache nearly gone. It feels like she focuses so much on other things, she hasn't realized how great Capitol medicine is.

Maybe it's because she surrounds with people that Capitol technology can't bring back.

Emma von Hapsburg, 17
District Nine Female

Outside her window, white and blue spider-thin lines of frost running up the side of the glass pane, snow is falling.

"Supper's ready!" calls her father, the scent of freshly baked bread wafting up the staircase to her small room. She smiles and traces her finger along the side of the small, light blue book in her hand, the outline of a little girl reaching for a crown on the cover. When she was little, she pretended she was the girl, running around with paper crowns on her head and an imaginary gown fluttering down to her ankles as she ran through the fields of freshly shorn wheat, her father trying his best to break his back with the amount of wheat he carried to the carts.

But she's no princess. She knows that, she's known it for years now. She's not a princess.

Not anymore.

With a hand to the side to hold on to the old wooden bannister, she descends down the staircase and straight into the kitchen, where her father and mother bustle around to steaming ovens and boiling pots of stew to ladle the whole mess onto plates for Emma and Sophia. The dog wanders into the kitchen during the chaos and is promptly shooed out by Emma, who places plates onto the table for her mother while the rest take their seats around the table. Just as quickly as she had arrived, they're all gathered around the table and taking spoonfuls of the bread-bowl stew that her parents had prepared for the night. Emma stirs around the thick liquid and picks up a potato with her spoon, nibbling at the hot potato until she's eaten it all. She purposely leaves alone the few bits of beef that have made it into the stew in the side of the bread bowl, saving them to eat at the end of the meal. Whenever they get even a bit of meat, it's a treat for the whole family.

"How are your foremen?" Mother asks as she starts eating her bread bowl, a few crumbs bouncing down her sharp chin and onto the table. Mother always eats faster than the rest of the family. "I've heard that it's going to be a hard year."

"Eh, we'll survive," Father states bluntly, digging his spoon into the bowl and coming up with a strand of meat.

"But I've heard that this year will be wonderful," Sophia says, twisting a lock of blonde hair around her finger. "Mariano told me himself yesterday when we went to the shops."

"Mariano has too big of a mouth and not enough of a brain." Emma laughs and spoons more stew into her mouth, ignoring the angry looks from her sister. "He's always wrong about these sorts of things, you should know that already."

"He treats me like a princess, like I should be." Sophia sniffs haughtily and stalks away from the table, leaving her bread bowl unfinished. Emma leans over and throws it to the tan and dark coloured dog in the corner, who wags his tail and devours the bread to bits. Sophia never finishes her food, but she's always had the stomach the size of a bird's. Why would she start finishing now?

She and her parents continue eating quietly, ignoring the way Sophia had left the table and the bread Emma had wasted by giving to the dog. She knows that she shouldn't have been that spiteful today, but she just doesn't care. Not when she has news for the family.

A few minutes go by, then Emma begins to speak. "Mother, Father," she begins hesitantly, careful to keep her tone respectful. After all, she doesn't know how they're going to react to this. "I was walking in town a few days ago, and a man came up to me and told me from he was from the Capitol."

"So you just listened to him?" her father sputters, dropping his spoon onto the garnished brown table. "I suppose you'll be running away into your own little fairy tale with him tomorrow. You can't believe every knight in shining armour, Emma. You should know better."

"No, no," she protests, shaking her head. Her dirty-blonde hair comes close to flopping into her soup, but she tucks it back and continues to speak. "He's shown me a business card, he has the official passport and a stamp from the Capitol and everything. I made sure to check with a peacekeeper afterwards. He's apparently really big in the Capitol, from what I've been told. And he offered me a..."

She pauses, waiting a moment to increase the tension. When she knows she has the attention of both of her parents, she takes the plunge. "He's offering me a modelling contract, Mom. I could help out, here, Dad! I can support you and we can get a little closer to what we formerly were!"

"I'll hear nothing of this contract," her mother sniffs, stirring her soup and taking sips without looking at Emma. "You know who walks down catwalks for Capitolites? Hookers do, my dear. You're not a hooker, are you?"

"But that's not what it is!" Emma bursts out, her excitement under her skin already replaced by liquid rage. She's good at getting angry. "I'm not a hooker, mother! I'll just be modelling clothes!"

"With less and less clothing to wear every time," her father adds. "Your sister has tried this already, Emma. Modelling takes girls like you nowhere. Why don't you do something ambitious, like entering law? That would give you your royal dream."

"You don't have to demonize everything I do!" Emma shouts, pushing back her chair and stomping away from the table. Her parents don't look worried, but calmly continue to eat as she slams the door and heads outside. For people who are so eager to forget they're ancestors of pre-Dark Days royalty, from a whole other continent for crying out loud, they sure eat like they're dining with a queen.

Her breathing slows as she walks further away from the house and onto the road, the falling snow sparkling from the light coming from her home. She smiles and twirls around as she watches the dancing lights of the snow, taking a breath before closing her eyes and letting herself fall back onto her back. Then she opens her eyes and stares at the stars, which gleam all the brighter in the light of the snow.

Maybe she doesn't need a stage to walk on after all. She has her snow, her fields, her own walkway that's just as beautiful as a Capitol building in it's own right.

It's fit for a princess.

Ezra Winfield, 13
District Nine Male

"Why do I have to go to bed so early?"

"Can't I stay outside a little longer?"

"Do I really have to go to school tomorrow?"

Ezra tests these questions against his mother, each one met by an equally firm no from the woman. She escorts Ezra through the hallway and into his room, blue wallpaper adorning the walls and peeling off in the corner close to his window. "You know you're not going back out to play detective or something, Ezra. You're going to school tomorrow, and that's final. Can't you focus on something that actually is beneficial to your future tonight? You know you have a test. Now sleep, or I'll have to get your father in here to convince you otherwise, young man."

Ezra hastily - and rather wisely - shuts up and pulls the covers over his head, waiting for his mother to leave before letting out a fake snore. Mom might be his greatest ally in education, but she just doesn't understand what it's like to search for crime. Not like Uncle Norbert.

A few minutes pass by, and Ezra peeks out of his doorway to see if his mother is still watching him. Her back is to him as she sits in a rocking chair in their small living room and starts to knit something, muttering about their neighbour's new baby and how they need clothes. Shouldn't the neighbour be the one to make their own clothes for the new baby, not Mom? But he pushes that question away in favour of his mission and closes his door, silent as a mouse.

The next few minutes are occupied by quiet searching for clothes to stuff under his sheets, Ezra soon finding enough clothes to make the shape of a thirteen-year-old boy who's too curious for his own good. He smiles and tucks the clothes under his top sheet, then carefully walks to the window, careful to avoid the spot right next to the dresser where the floor creaks. He unlatches the window and ever-so-slowly lifts it up, only stopping when it's high enough for him to latch it to the rope he attached to the ceiling yesterday and stay up for him to squeeze through. He can't bring it back down when he jumps into the cold night and grabs the brown loafers he hid in a bush, but that's no serious matter. After all, he has to have a way to get back inside when he's finished.

He takes a look to the road and sees one of the trucks that peacekeepers use to drive around the district, quickly making a round of the town to make sure that everyone's inside after curfew. But instead of heading to the road, he pulls down his sleeves, makes sure that his socks are high enough to not get any ticks onto his skin, then takes off his glasses and seats them firmly on the bridge of his nose before diving into the field of wheat. He'll find crime soon enough. He just has to look around enough.

A mockingjay gives a cry of delight as he makes his way through these endless fields of grain, flying over his head and into the night. Funny, there aren't often mockingjays in the fields. They tend to stick to the small patches of stunted forest near the town, searching for food and trying not to be the target of a hungry teen with a homemade slingshot. "Why would a mockingjay be in the fields?" he mutters to make it stick in his head. "I hope that it isn't because it lost its nest."

But the mockingjay has vanished, and with it, any sign of life in these fields. Only the moon is left in Ezra's view, the moon and the stars. "An ode to the moon, my friend in the night, your cream-coloured faces smiling so bright," he whispers, the old school poem that he learned when he was five rattling around in his brain. Most of the time, he talks to himself to make things stick. But he's trying to flush this one out, get it away from his productive thoughts so that he can continue focusing on the case. "Whether quarter, a crescent, waning or full face, watch down on us all, from your orbit in space."

He laughs again continues to walk, the childish poem out of his mind. He had memorized the phases of the moon long before the teachers had ever tried to get it to stick in every one of his classmate's heads, yet he was the only one to actually remember how the poem went.

Funny how the mind works, isn't it?

But his mind is still thinking about the broach Mrs. Gladstone told him she had lost the other day, the ruby facets of the broach glimmering in his mind. He saw Missy Amarinth play with something sparkly yesterday, but she had ran into Victor's Village and hid somewhere where he couldn't find her before coming back without the object - mainly because his mother had yelled at him to hurry up and get home before dinner had cooled down, and he had watched her walk out with nothing in her hands as he hurried home. But as he steps out of the field and looks at the twelve large houses that make up Victor's Village, he gives a little smirk.

Missy can't hide the broach forever.

He starts looking near the woodpile closest to him, the moon shining down on his glasses as he looks for the broach. Minutes pass by, but he's still looking around the woodpile, then moves to another house and looks around the bushes, then -

The glimmer of something shiny surprises him, and he moves closer. When he gets to the path that the object is on, he sees the ruby in the middle of the broach and lets out a whoop, snatching up the broach and jumping in delight. Victory is his!

He stumbles when he lands and falls on his back, his glasses skittering away towards the house where he had found the broach. He sighs and gets on his hands and knees to look for the glasses, carefully feeling everywhere to make sure he doesn't miss them. First he feels something dry yet sticky, and frowns as he keeps looking around for it. Probably someone dropped a candy bar there and it dried in the sun, or something else. It's none of his concern -

His groping hands touch flesh, then he shouts and pushes away from the object. He finds his glasses in the grass as he moves away, but he has to take a second to slow his breathing, put on the wire-rimmed glasses, and properly see Falcon Jacobs lying prone on the ground.

But when Ezra touches his neck hesitantly, scarcely daring to think that the victor may be dead, he realizes something else.

Falcon's still breathing.

A/N: Another finished district! Hurray! I'm too happy about finally getting out another chapter XD

Anyways, here's District Nine! The povs aren't a few weeks before the reapings, Ezra is a few weeks after Panem Day (can you guess why? XD) and Emma's is somewhere in March. I sure hope you liked them! It might sound silly, but I feel like I did pretty well with these two. I hope y'all think the same XD

If you have questions about these two, you'll find them in the train rides and the Capitol. Don't worry, these two still have a few layers to dig through. I really enjoyed writing them!

Anyways, that's all I got for you. Let's see if I'll manage to get another chapter out soon, especially since we're pretty close to the end of the reapings! I'm really excited to get there :DDD Have a great day, it'd be fun to see some of your reviews - of course I want to see some, ignore my begging XD - and let's do this! Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ