Note: this story is not consistent with the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

DAY 1

She Who Remembers

An Outside Perspective

Few remaining had lived through the war.

It had been 100 years, and even in the Capitol living that long was something few accomplished (though as the war vanished into the rearview mirror the number steadily would steadily grow) and they hoarded their medical knowledge, not even allowing Districts 1 and 2 so much as a glance—even District 3, while it certainly created many of the tools used, was inferior to Capitol Medical Researchers, one of the few true jobs that remained in that special place.

Out of those who were alive during the Dark Days, even fewer were old enough to remember it.

That crossed out most of the remaining elderly, including every single centenarian outside the Capitol.

And then there was the issue of senility, the issue of not remembering because of recent breakdowns in mental status rather than said mental status only just going online at the time in question.

That crossed out all but one.

Pi Gable had been born seven years before the end of the Dark Days.

She was 107 now, and lived in the same apartment she'd lived in since she was 26. A nurse came every day and attended to her from dawn to dusk, and she had an avox besides—she'd tried to refuse the kindness, having always found something deeply disturbing about their lack of tongues, but her refusal had been refused.

Most days she spent reading.

She liked reading.

She particularly favored fiction books, and ones with happy endings.

In her younger days she'd read just about anything she could get her hands on, no matter the topic or quality. She'd been a professor, then, and had mainly taught math and chemistry—other subjects interested her, but she wasn't so foolish as to voice her opinion on most of them.

Life in the Capitol was nice, but only to those who did as they were told.

Still, she'd read quite a bit.

And she'd taught.

She'd liked math and science, had pushed unsuccessfully for the recreation of the sort of space department countries had had Before (Before the Dark Days, before the life before the Dark Days, even before Panem—nearly 600 years, give or take.)

She'd never been given a reason why her petitions were turned down, but she'd also never been disappeared into the night so she'd supposed it wasn't something that was considered traitorous.

Now, though, her mind had grown wary of her old pursuits.

Instead she read happy books that took place in worlds as far away from reality as possible and always had happy endings.

Usually they were children's books.

It would not have surprised her to know that she was the last who remembered the Dark Days.

She'd been there, after all, when each and every one of her compatriots began dying out, when their bodies—no matter the leaps technology had taken—couldn't quite put up with it anymore, not with how poorly their first few years had gone.

She was also more aware than most about the condition of the Districts—her statistics work had been frequently used to keep track of said condition.

The thing was, for all that the Capitol liked pretending the Dark Days had been the uprising of all of the Districts against What Was Right, she also remembered that (at least according to her parents) the war hadn't been all that popular among most of the Districts.

That wasn't to say they didn't want to rebel—well, Pi actually didn't know one way or another what they wanted, but she did know that her parents thought, based on what they knew, that the Districts weren't particularly eager for war.

Most Districts had guessed, correctly as it turned out, that they would lose.

It hadn't seemed that way at first.

There had been, for some time, a great wrestling of forces back and forth between the Districts and Capitol.

The Capitol's local military force had been the kind that never put boots on the ground, that sent flying things out in great numbers and sometimes, on occasion, other things too.

Pi supposed it would have gone very differently if they'd fought alone.

The thing is, though, they hadn't.

District 13—and this was well known to all, publicly taught because it fit so well into the Capitol's idea of the events—District 13 had declared war in an actual letter.

It was based on a historical document, the "Declaration of Independence", as well as a great many others like it, and it had asserted that every District—each and every one—was now free.

And then District 13 had done the sensible thing and begun backing up its opinion with weapons.

At the time, too, District 13 had had quite a lot of them. It had (and this wasn't made publicly known) been the District for Nuclear Weapons, and while none were actually kept in the District—the Capitol held that honor itself—it did have all the necessary tools to create one.

While it was busy doing that, it also made use of its second purpose (or third, depending on how you ranked graphite mining, which was the stated purpose of the district.)

The Capitol had never been one for risking their own lives in combat. Now, after the war, they mostly farmed that out to (when possible) robots or (when not) Peacekeepers (who had, coincidentally, existed before the war, just in a much smaller role.)

Prior to the war, however, they had relied nearly entirely on The National Guard.

The National Guard, Pi remembered, had been just about the best of the best of District 13.

They would go around quelling rebellions when the Peacekeepers weren't enough, and sometimes they'd do other things too, but she'd always been a bit hazy about that part.

She remembered that they'd been quite well liked, though, at least in the Capitol.

Still, in hindsight it wasn't a surprise that they'd been the leading force to turn against the Capitol—after all, they'd gone to the worst of each and every District and seen it firsthand and, unlike the citizens of Panem, they weren't benefiting from the others' suffering in any way.

(The Capitol spent quite a bit of money, now, doing their best to ensure Peacekeepers wouldn't go the same way.)

Anyway.

The point was, District 13 had sent that pretty little letter of independence (they'd called it the Declaration of Independence and copied much of the wording exactly in what likely would have been considered plagiarism if anyone involved, however remotely, had still been around) to get the war started.

But they hadn't quite gotten to the part of informing the rest of Panem before actually sending the thing.

They'd adapted quickly, of course (how could they do anything else when missiles of death were raining from above?), but they'd had no time to prepare.

It had been Districts 1 and 2 who had been the first to turn around and say "actually, we'd prefer working with you."

(Pi didn't actually remember them having not worked with the Capitol, and she couldn't remember her parents saying anything to that effect either, but according to the Capitol's official history that was what happened.)

And then the war had ended.

Pi remembered that too.

She remembered the first Games as well, how disorganized they were, how no one cared—Districts 1 and 2 had sent nobodies the first year, actually, and juvenile delinquents the second, and for most of the rest of the Districts there had been less a reaping and more a 'pick the first age appropriate child you see'-ing.

It had taken some time, really, for the Games to really get going, and by then Districts 1 and 2 were already enjoying the spotlight and the rest of the Districts were in no condition to argue that it wasn't fair (not, mind you, that they'd ever been in that position.)

She did remember quickly tiring of the Games (she'd never liked blood, and the concept behind it had made her sick to her stomach) and abstaining from their viewing as much as possible after that, though.

She'd decided to make an exception for the Centennial Censure.

It was something she did, sometimes, more out of duty than anything else. She'd also watched the Games seven years before, when she had turned 100. It had been the 93rd.

There'd been a lot of killing and the highlight of the Games had been the arena more than anything else—it had taken place in a sort of canal network modeled after the ancient city of Venice, and had held a hell of a lot more of the attention of the announcers than the tributes, who had apparently been unusually boring when not caving someone's head in. Carine had 'won', if you could call it that, was still splattered with the blood of her brother (he'd volunteered after she'd been chosen, was victorious in his effort to keep his twin alive) as she was airlifted away. It was, by all accounts, a rather typical affair.

Her nurse—Pegasus, the latest one was called—had said that Pi should've been born the year before, because then she would've celebrated her birthday with the 92nd, when someone from District 5 named Geralyn managed to win and become the second Victor of that particular District since the 75th.

Pi had nodded amicably, said that did sound nice, then promptly turned on the music when Pegasus tried to follow up the recommendation by beginning the viewing immediately.

Pegasus had gotten the message.

This time, at least, Pegasus had had nothing to say about Pi tuning in during a 'boring' one. She'd been excited for it since January, actually, had brought all the promotional material and watched every second of it with bated breath and trawled on internet forums night and day talking about it and listening to other people talk about it and, when she wasn't doing any of that, when she was supposed to be doing her job, she would talk to Pi about it because apparently forcing oneself to watch it meant one must also participate in the conversation surrounding the event.

The war had ended in the Capitol's favor, Pi thought, primarily because while District 13 had been prepared for war all of the other Districts who they had unwillingly conscripted beside them hadn't.

She firmly believed, even 100 years later, that this was the case.

Her reasoning was quite simple—Districts 1 and 2 had only joined the Capitol because they hadn't known what else to do, and therefore reverted to the status quo, and none of the other Districts hadn't been any help at all because they hadn't been shown how to help.

And then of course there was District 13.

After the Dark Days District 13 had seemed something of a sore point to the Capitol and the Districts alike. The former's reasons were its own, and so were the latter's, but she'd always suspected in the case of both it was because those old enough to understand the war knew that District 13 couldn't have vanished nearly as quickly as it had.

And then had come the days after that, when the next generation—her generation—rose.

It was here, Pi thought, that the seeds of rebellion were planted once more.

The majority of her generation, after all, was not nearly as well-informed as she, and so in the Capitol they just dismissed District 13 as the least successful of the Districts that had gone to war and the rest of them as being duly punished. In the rest of the Districts, on the other hand, 13 had very, very quickly became the phrase of discontent, despite the less-than-kind feelings of the older generation towards that particular actor in history.

The Capitol had realized this and done what it could to quash it, wanting to stop the seed from sprouting, and turned to her.

She had, after some time, returned a very long and very convoluted math formula which, when fed the right variables, seemed to do a better job than any other at guessing when the next uprising would happen.

Pi Gable had been old enough by that point, though, to understand better than she had as a child. She was also ridiculously well read, a polyglot that downplayed her linguistic capabilities, and an avid devourer of every single book she could get her hands on.

She'd understood the power of that seed, of that 13, just as the Capitol had.

She'd handed them the formula and it had been very, very effective.

For a time.

Actually it should have worked as effectively much longer.

Actually, she had made it as it should have been made, with the correct weight placed on the symbolism of '13' and a significant portion dedicated to accounting for the shifts of culture in time.

And then she'd gotten rid of those portions, destroyed the only existing original—written by hand in the back of a translation of '1984', a book whose contents would be banned not a year later—and went happily on with her life.

Some time later, two decades, in fact, they'd come back to her—still effective, they'd assured, but… less so.

She'd agreed to take another look, spent some time poking and prodding around and actually doing nothing, then sent it back with the effect of a shrug.

Not wanting to farm it out to District 3 and being perfectly aware that she was the greatest statistician among the citizens, they'd accepted the formula as is.

As far as she was aware it was, in fact, still being used.

It wasn't until the interviews, though, that she was sure.

The seed has sat, hidden, for decades. The tool she'd given them had torn out the existing greenery around it, but not the little thing hidden in the dirt.

Time had passed, seasons and seasons and seasons, and the cruel gardener had grown rather complacent.

"Nothing grows here but weeds," the imaginary gardener might have said, "and I can deal with those easily enough."

And then the seed had sprouted.

There had been several false starts, several let downs in the past, as the little sapling had tried to grasp for sunlight but found the conditions still too harsh.

Pi, though she knew and remembered many things, didn't know what had changed.

She was, however, very glad that something had.