A/N: I know I'm posting this late at night, but please don't read it through right before bed. I just wanted to get this little filler in and done before I was on the road all morning tomorrow.

Eighth months before the 127th Annual Reaping

Nothing but the gentle light of a lamp.

He didn't care if Ekaterina was asleep in the other room with the door closed… If she awakened, even a little bit… She would know. And for once, he didn't want her to know. He didn't need her to see him like this. This wasn't the Stellan she knew, it wasn't the one that she loved. And even though he knew that she would still love him, and stay by his side like this… He didn't want to trouble her.

Stellan was a lover, but he was also a hider. He didn't want her pity. He didn't want the pity of the rescued tributes either, the ones that he had a heavy hand in saving. It wasn't that they would love or respect him any less. It was just that some things were better to be handled alone.

Maybe he made it harder on himself for living like this. But this wasn't her problem, it wasn't any of their problem to take on. It was Stellan's, and his alone. And he would continue to fight the battle just as God intended for it to be fought: alone.

He knew that if only they knew, they would be beside themselves. They didn't want him to sit here and do this to himself. But he also knew that this pain wasn't theirs to be bothered with. It would only hurt them more if they knew.

Stellan's eyes had been leaking tears for hours. Nowadays, it seemed he cried every day. There was always so much to be done and he was always worried that something would go wrong, something would happen, and they would all be exposed to the nation. The Capitol had already shown that they had no regard for the lives of the people, famous or not.

Phil…

And while the death of his bandmate still stung, he wasn't thinking about the pianist tonight.

Tuck.

Just thinking the name made Wolf feel disgusting. Like a failure. He squeezed his fists, creating deep red crevices in his palms, trying to calm himself down. The pain, the squeezing, they were the only things he could do to keep from wearing out his voice yelling. And when she left in the morning, that was exactly what he would do. Just the thought of being excited for it – sitting on the floor of the shower and grabbing his stomach until he was all cried out, and later admiring the deep red marks of his nails – was miserable enough to make the tears continue their way out of his eyes.

He had barely eaten dinner. And after Mari, Kat always noticed when her loved ones didn't eat. He just wasn't hungry, at the time. And now, though his stomach cramped and grumbled, he refused to eat. He didn't feel like he deserved to eat, not after all the ways he'd failed. Not after all the holes in his plans, holes that he was always so hyperaware of. Not on the eve of his friend's murder.

How different would their lives have been if Wolf hadn't been such a coward then? He didn't want to take a stand then. And why would he? He was on his way to university, away from the poverty, away from the drugs. He was so sure Jill would follow, he knew how bright she was. He didn't want to ruin that amazing opportunity for himself.

So selfish. So stupid.Why am I so fucking stupid? His nails pressed deeper into his hands as fresh tears replaced the old ones, which had long since caked onto his cheeks. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to do anything. He couldn't make himself get up and get water. What was a headache, compared to all the people he was letting down? What was a little hunger compared to the lives he was putting in danger? Stellan had been hungrier than this before. And Jill, she had certainly been hungrier, after he left her by herself. He didn't blame her for turning away from his hopes for her. If he were left behind… Well, he was sure he would have done something similar. Maybe even more stupid.

And now, only after Tuck was dead and Jill lost the man that she… The man that she loved… Because Wolf couldn't save them… Now was when he finally decided to do something. And that something was just so far from perfect. He was forcing these poor kids to endure the trauma of their past and putting them into the world of the ones that were trying to destroy them, and for what? So that they could all get caught in the act and be killed!? Wasn't that what he was trying to avoid for them!?

It was too much. There were too many questions that he couldn't answer. He was completely overwhelmed. But he couldn't talk to anyone about it. Kat was his girlfriend, not his therapist, and it wasn't fair for him to keep rattling off the same insecurities over and over again. Jo was one of his closest friends, but her concern would definitely rope in Camellia and Malloy, and those two had so much more to worry about – and they had it so much worse than Wolf. Wolf just got lucky. He didn't have to survive through much of anything. He ran away from it all, and left the others behind. He left Phil behind, and Phil was innocent. He did nothing wrong.

All of it was Stellan's fault, and everyone knew it. God, he felt like such a failure. Sure, it all looked okay, but he felt like everything he did was held together by fucking scotch tape and he was just trying to hold it all together. They all looked up to him, thought he was so strong, well they were all so foolish and they had no idea.

His stomach pained him again, but the only thing he could do was lay his head on the table and stay like that. His neck hurt. He didn't care enough to move so that it didn't. He should feel this miserable. For all the things he could have done and didn't do. There was no room for failure, and yet he felt like there were so many areas in which he failed. He didn't know how one person was supposed to do all of this, but at the same time, he felt like he had to find a way.

Tears leaked out of his eyes like a faucet as he kept his head down on the desk, trying to motivate himself to do anything, and failing. He felt sick, and dizzy. Even if he had the energy to get up, he felt like he would just fall over again. Why couldn't he just have died instead? Sometimes he just didn't know.

A gentle touch, a blanket around his shoulders, caused his thoughts to cease for a moment. She thought he was sleeping. It was better that she thought he was sleeping. Maybe she would just go back to bed. It was the literal ass crack of dawn and there was no reason for him to keep her awake.

"You can't fool me, Stellan."

Damn her and her highly perceptive nature. Wolf closed his eyes again. He didn't want to ignore her, but he wanted her to go back to bed and not worry about him. They did indeed have a really happy night together – that was how this all started out after all. But all of this… This sadness, was just festering inside of him like a wound all night long. He didn't deserve a fun night like this. He deserved to just be alone, to ache and to hurt. It was the only thing he thought was appropriate.

"So what are you eating then?" Kat asked him, setting a glass of water down next to him.

"I'm not hungry. Go to bed." His voice was deflated of all emotion, even if he wanted to have some bite.

"Famous last words. On with it then, what's it going to be? Sandwich?"

"Nothing."

Kat shook her head and started making him a sandwich anyways. "I'm not just going to let you not eat."

She sounded so tired. She looked so tired. He felt horrible. Horrible that she was doing this, all because he was too weak to even stand. She didn't have any business doing this for him. It was because she loved him. But she had no business doing that either.

He was too weak to even try to fight her though. He couldn't do fucking anything. His fists tightened again. He grabbed his thigh under the desk. Anything to try and ground himself, get himself out of this place, keep from yelling and startling her. He didn't want to scare her, but he just felt so damn scared and helpless for himself.

He felt the cold touch of Kat poking his arm with the water glass, trying to get him to sit up. He did what she wanted, but only trying to make her feel good about making him feel better and go to bed.

"I don't want that." He took the water and his eyes were on the sandwich.

"Stellan, you have to eat." His stomach growled in response.

"I don't want to."

"Well you're going to."

Stellan took a few slow sips of the water. The coldness soothed his aching throat, and before he knew it he drank the whole glass. He hadn't realized how thirsty he was until he started drinking. Did he deserve to be hydrated? Maybe he wanted this headache to last. It would be the only pain he could make himself feel because he was too afraid to get a knife.

Kat took the glass and went to refill it.

"Go to bed." His voice had more strength to it now. He was so lucky to have even transitioned at all. And yet he didn't deserve it.

"Not happening." She set the glass down in front of him and waited for him to pick it up and drink again.

"You don't need to tell me what's going on, but you're not going to go through it alone."

Stellan swallowed and blinked a few times. For the first time all night, the tears had slowed. He shrugged off the blanket – crying sweats were too real – and whispered feebly to keep the wobble out of his voice.

"Tuck." It was all she needed to know, and he could tell by her face. "The kids. I can't… I can't be there for the kids. Everyone keeps calling me, they want jobs, they want to fight, and I don't know what to tell them, but they won't stop. They want to do things and they want me to be in charge, but how can I do that when… When I can't do anything right? When I keep letting all of them down?"

Kat opened her mouth to tell him to stop that, but she closed it after a moment. That wasn't going to help. She wished she could help more. "You aren't letting them down. They love you."

"They shouldn't."

Kat's eyes were now tearing up, and Stellan did everything in him to not slap himself. Dammit Stellan. Now she's spiraling, and it's all because of you.

"Don't say that…" Kat whispered. "You know that's not true."

"I know what I said. Now just go sleep. Nothing you say is going to help and you need to be rested." He felt so tense. He was grabbing his thigh again. He noticed because she took his other hand, seeing the way it was clenched so tightly, and gently unfolding his fingers.

"I can't sleep if I know you're in pain," she whispered, gently tracing the crescents with her finger. "We're a team now. I chose you, remember? And you chose me."

"Well, you didn't choose this."

"Yes, I did." Kat put her fingers in his palm to keep him from closing his fist anymore. "And I love you every day. No matter what."

"Love you too," he said miserably. He didn't deserve her love. Not after everything she had been through, and all the ways he reminded her about it every day.

"Now, do you know what time it is?"

"Too fucking late for you to be up, worrying about me."

"No. It's time for the scheduled landing." Kat picked up the sandwich and made an airplane sound effect with it. She even made it do a loop as she pressed it to his lips, which were stubbornly closed. "Please. Do it for yourself. Show yourself this care."

Wolf shook his head at that. He couldn't do that. He didn't like himself, not even a little bit. He couldn't. He couldn't love himself like she so badly wanted him to. He couldn't see what she saw.

"Then do it for us."

Her eyes were so soft, and desperate as she tapped his lips again with the corner of the sandwich.

He wasn't happy about it. He wasn't happy about anything. He felt like a disgrace, a failure, trying to do everything for his kids and it still not being enough. Him still not being enough.

But in that moment of time, he opened his mouth, and took a bite.

"I promise I'm not going to leave you." He had to say it out loud. If he promised her out loud, he wouldn't break his word. He had to hear it out loud. He had to make the promise to someone that would break him too much to hurt. He had to say it to her.

"You'd better not." Her face was so horrified at even the thought as he wordlessly went back to eating his sandwich. "Stellan."

"I know. I just had to say it out loud." He finished off the last bite of sandwich and took another long drink of water. The tears had slowed now and he felt a little bit better after eating.

Kat knew better than to say anything else. She wasn't going anywhere, and by now he knew it.

And right now, that was all he needed from her.

~.~.

A/N: And we go from a far too real piece of writing to a far too real A/N.

I'm going to just lay out all the cards on the table. For the seven years I've been on this site, I've tried my best to stay positive, friendly, understanding, and humble. Trying to give everyone screentime, trying to please every single submitter for every story. Focus on giving all 24 tributes something that will make them memorable, have an arc no matter how small, deleted scenes, all that stuff, I did everything I could.

I am at a point in my life where I just can't do that anymore.

I want to continue this story with all 24 characters, but I just don't think I can. Before you review, just try to put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Feel a little empathy. I work 12 hours some days planning lessons, grading, and teaching 130 black boxes that give me nothing in return. Then I come home, and when I actually have the energy, time, and motivation to write this story, I spend almost 2 hours on each POV, post a chapter, and get barely anything in return.

I get it – intros suck, they suck to write, they suck to read, but we have to do them. And when I don't get any feedback, my motivation just disappears. Sharing the journey with readers is the reward to putting in the work to give each tribute their due, and when I get nothing from the readers, surely you can understand that without the reward, it becomes just like another day at work.

On top of spending that time for each POV, I spend half an hour busting my ass to draw each tribute. Make sure everything looks right, clean up the lines, do the best I can because I always found it to be a special thing to have my character drawn by someone else. Total, that is 12 hours – an entire day of my time that I spend on these things – and that's a long time to spend on drawing to only get one or two people appreciating the work I put in.

Especially when I'm working a full job, sacrificing my quality time with my boyfriend to sit and put in my best work to write these stupid intros that get three reviews at most per chapter. When I was still a student, I didn't mind, because I had lots of free time then to waste and I didn't have 130 OTHER brick walls to support. But now it's just not something I can do.

So yes, I did sneak this into a chapter that in all other ways feels completely ordinary, because I need to know who is actually reading and who isn't. Who actually intends to catch up and who doesn't. Because I can't continue to write these characters with nothing in it for myself.

I get that life is busy, but I highly value showing that support to my friends by staying caught up as much as possible on their stories, and the fact that I've been busting my ass and not really gotten the same, yeah, it does bother me. It feels like all the hype for me and my story is just gone. And if that's the case, I'm just not going to bust my ass anymore for it. Right now, I get about the same support that I would get if I just said fuck it and wrote Wolf the rest of this story, which I've been tempted to do. Why not, if nobody cares anyways, right?

I'm just real tired of bending over backwards for no reason anymore.

Bending over backwards to keep everyone happy on the forum, to keep everyone posting on the forum when it was obvious that nobody cared about the forum anymore, not enough to want to be admin, because everything was happening on Discord. By the way, I never said anything because I didn't want to start drama, but I let my fucking abuser on the forum in a hope that we could eliminate cliques. That's how strongly I felt about it. But it didn't work, it failed. Cliques are back in this community and they are real, and it always just made me feel like a failure because my goal was to try and decrease those cliques and instead I was left out of all of them.

Bending over backwards to try and get everyone a meaningful intro, the best possible drawing I can do, and set up a real arc that fits around my subplot, not letting my characters overshadow or overpower everyone else's, when it now just feels like nobody cares about this story anymore. I put in so much time and serious effort, and I just don't think that time and effort is worth it anymore for what I'm getting now. When I do get comments from some people, it's just complaining. Complaining about my subplot decisions, about characters that are featured or lack thereof, it just shows that some people cannot be satisfied unless their character is the main character, which isn't going to happen in my story. That's the simple truth.

Maybe that's not the case and everyone is just real busy or whatever, but that's how I feel. I feel like I've made time and put in energy and effort for everyone and when I need it most (because I've been hanging on by a single thread this entire year), it wasn't returned to me. Maybe I was just too good at putting on a happy face and trying to keep people from worrying, idk what it is. But I'm just laying out how I feel because this has been an issue for a long time. And it's pushed me out of this community, which I have been a part of and loved for at least four years, completely.

So, what does this mean for SoL? DuFE is already gone, after all. I don't want to give up on this story. But that being said, I can't keep opening up this stupid document and having a breakdown when I see that I'm not even halfway done with these fucking intros yet. I cry almost every day after school, this can't be a reason I keep breaking down. It feels like more work. It can't keep happening like this.

So I'm not going to give all 24 characters equal parts anymore, especially for people that fell off the grid, or will never read. It's not fair to me, and I'm so tired of being a people-pleaser. I have to please myself now, because this is a hobby and it's not a second job. Seeing other authors give themselves more freedom has inspired me to do the same and not care about who gets upset.

So that being said, I'm doing an impromptu check-in and I need to hear from you honestly whether or not you actually intend to read this story. Because if nobody is gonna read it, I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want with it and just be happy.

No matter what, I'm going to slice down the pool of tributes and pick a handful to feature instead of focusing on all 24 tributes. You can fill out the form to have your tribute featured only after you check in with me, and I'll send you the link. This is for tributes only. From that pool, I'll choose the ones that I want to feature and finish up intros that haven't been written for that pool, then start the pre-Games from there. And at any time, I have the right to stop writing your character if I don't hear from you for an extended period of time

I don't say this to make anyone feel guilty, but I need everyone to understand why I act how I do, and just how strongly I felt about it. It may be easy to put me as a bad guy in certain situations, but this is why I've acted how I have..

Because of the change, if you want to take your tribute out of this story and give them to someone that will update more frequently, that's cool. You have until Sunday January 10th to let me know and/or get your form back and I'll fill in the open spots with my own characters. I will say that I'm not going to be too picky about featured tributes because I truly enjoy all of these characters, the thing that is making me discouraged and in all honesty a little bitter is the fact that nobody has been checking in. So if you see this chapter and check in, your tribute will have a bigger role in the story. I feel like that's more than fair because again, I can't justify putting in the time into a black hole.

That said, please be honest about if you actually are going to put in the time to support me because I've had some people in the past that said "yes I'll catch up!" and never really did. So please do me a favor and just be honest with me. I appreciate that much more than taking up the spot and my time and energy for no reason. If you're falling out of the community, or my verse, just tell me because honestly, me too. I won't hold it against you.

Alright. That's all I have to say. I apologize for hurt feelings, but I've really been pushed to my breaking point and I can't take anymore. I have to just let it all go because I spend so much time and effort and at this point, I thought I could do it, and I was wrong. I can't. Not like this. Not when my mental health is at such a low, not when I have multiple family members with worrying health issues, high risk for covid, and other personal issues that I don't wave around like a flag. Thanks for understanding.

Don't forget to check in if you're serious about this story. And of course…

Wear a mask.

Wash your hands.

Stay safe out there. It's a scary world.