In loving memory:

District 6

Koia felt pissed.

She couldn't explain why watching Zilla made her want to scream all the time, but it just did. What was so special about some redneck hick from 10 that Zilla felt more open with him than she did with her sister? Why was Zilla never like this before? She had known Koia all her life! And Koia didn't get any affection from the Odbody cyborg!?

You're being irrational, said the voice in the back of her head. You're being selfish. Maybe there's a reason your sister never felt comfortable expressing her emotions to you?

"Shut up!" Koia yelled, shoving her face into her pillow. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"
"Honey?" There was a knock at the door. "Are you okay?"
"No! Go away?"

She didn't care that she was being emotional or selfish or carrying on in an immature way. Fuck, let her grieve! Just let her grieve for the sister she lost, even if she wouldn't do so with anyone else around. As far as everyone else was cared, it was a sad moment, but who really cared? At this point, Koia's family was half its original size and losing Zilla was like watching an old robot break down for good.

The truth was, Koia was always going to miss Zilla.

For whatever reason, she felt like she couldn't let anyone else know.

After all, it had always been Koia yelling at Zilla, right? Telling she that she was the weird one? Asking her, practically begging her, just to a normal human being with normal human emotions for once in her life. Always taking her sister for granted without realizing how much it probably hurt...

The guilt inside her felt like it was eating away at her heart. She couldn't shake the feeling off, but she didn't want it to consume her. Koia didn't want to feel this way as she grabbed at her hair. Burying her face further in the pillow, she bit back the urge to scream as tears streamed down her face. Eventually, it was all too much.

Koia ran out from her home, past her concerned mother, out the front door, and onto the streets. She didn't stop running as she sobbed and gasped for air. her feet carried her as fast as they could. Past homes, past factories, past the library.

Inside, a young woman quietly browsed the shelves. She wasn't looking for any specific books, but rather a certain topic. A topic that was rather close to her heart. And in a sense, it was one of the few ways she could keep her late brother alive, by escaping into the pages he loved to get lost in.

"Anything you need help with?"

Maria Thompson smiled politely at the old librarian. "Oh, no thank you. I'm good."
"You remind me a lot of your brother. I'm so sorry for your loss. How is your family holding up?"

"We're okay," Maria sighed. That wasn't a lie. Her family was okay as they could possibly be, but things would never be okay again. "Eddie's taken it the hardest, but my parents are looking after him and I know he'll be alright. I didn't get much of a break from my work to mourn, unfortunately. Just enough time for the funeral. Do you have any books of toxicology?"

The librarian smiled and disappeared behind a shelf. A moment later, she was back in several books. She held up the book on the top of her stack. "This one was his favourite. I'd be closing up and I'd almost forget that he was still here; he'd be in the back corner. And his nose was always buried in this."

Maria laughed. "Sounds like Charles."
"I highly doubt anybody else would be even looking at these old things. Why don't you take a book home to your family?"
"Permanently? No, no, no, I couldn't."

The librarian's response was to gently place the book in Maria's hands. "It's fine by me, dear. Something to remember your brother by, no?"

Well, that's why she was here anyways.

Maria hesitated, then finally accepted the book. The cover felt cool and smooth in her hands, the pages old but still in amazing condition. She gently fixed a dog-eared corner as tears brimmed at her eyes. "You're right. Thank you so much."

District 5

Claire Williams sat numbly at her bed, staring blankly at the wall in front of her. The 9th Hunger Games had ended about an hour ago and she still couldn't believe everything that had happened. And she couldn't believe the little girl she had seen representing her district.

That wasn't her daughter. That couldn't be her daughter.

Even after everything she had seen Amelia go through, Claire knew that the tribute the Capitol was trying to convince her was a monster...no, Amelia would never become a monster. Sure, she misbehaved and lashed out and got in trouble, but all kids did that! Who did these idiots think they were, trying to push the narrative that Amelia was nothing redeemable? Trying to turn the entire world against her?

Claire knew Amelia. Amelia would never kill anyone. Amelia would never backstab anyone. Amelia would never...

"Mom?" Damon carefully shoved the door open. "Hey."
"That wasn't her. I don't know who it was, but it wasn't her. Amelia is a good girl, she's a good child. I don't know what they did to her..."

"I know." Damon sat down next to his mother. The truth was, he hated what how the Capitol had twisted his little sister into a full-blown villain, someone they wanted everyone to hate for just trying to survive. The amount of people who'd glare at him as he walked by, blaming him for Amelia's misdeeds when they had no context for anything. How dare they tell him how he was supposed to feel!

If only the district had seen how Damon cried with relief when Amelia got away from Veles. How he held his sobbing mother while watching Twill shoot Amelia down, and the inner disgust he felt when his neighbours cheered about it. A little girl was dead and they had the audacity to smile about it. Did they not remember she had people she loved? People who loved her back?

He didn't blame Twill; the boy was dead. He could easily ignore his neighbours; nothing more than a bunch of vapid airheads. But the Capitol could not be ignored and could not escape the blame. If Damon Williams had his way, they'd all suffer for what they made his baby sister go through.

"It's okay, Mom." He kept his voice low, so nobody else could hear him. "We'll get back at them; we'll get back at all of them. They will all pay for what they've done to her."

At the dinner table in her house, Leslie Reid was clearly struggling with her homework.

Screw this. School was so hard. Her brother made it look so easy with the marks he was bringing home all the time. Maybe Corbyn was a little bit different, but he was smart, and he was good at this stuff, and he wasn't...

Well, Leslie wasn't Corbyn. And never would be.

Math was Leslie's best subject, which was funny considering it was the one thing Corbyn always struggled with. As she wrote down the answer for the last question she had to do, her parents took her work and looked over it.

"Excellent job," Susan told her. "If only you applied this much effort in the rest of your subjects."
Leslie groaned. "Mom, I'm trying to! Alright? Math is easy, everything else is just hard!"

Helios scratched the back of his head. "What is it you don't get, Leslie? Maybe your mother and I can try to help you. Or Matt, if he's home yet. We want you to do well in school and we'll help you succeed at that-"

"You don't want me to do well in school," Leslie spat. "You want me to be Corbyn."
"Leslie! Enough of that!"

"No! Enough of you! Every time I bring my report card home, it's always Corbyn I get compared to, not even Matt! I get it, Corbyn's dead! And he's never coming back! So stop pretending I'm him! I can't be Corbyn and I never will! Why is it so hard for you to see that!?"

Leslie grabbed her work and stormed upstairs. She could hear both her parents yelling at her to come back and Matt poked his head from his bedroom, bothered by all the sudden noise. She didn't care. She slipped inside her own room and considered slamming the door shut, but gently closed it instead. No need to slam it and let the entire district know how bad of a mood she was in.

Throwing her homework down, she flopped onto her bed and began to sob.

Damn it, Corbyn. Why did you have to leave?

District 4

He looked so beautiful and angelic in the coffin and it wasn't fair.

Even if Clare noticed the streaks of mascara on her face, she wouldn't have cared. No, she needed to grieve and say goodbye to a man who had captured her heart like no other. It was just so...why? Why did he die? Why was he taken from her, caught on a breeze that dragged him to his untimely end?

Haruhi's still hands were clasped together across his chest. Clare wanted to reach out and lock her fingers with his, but it just wouldn't feel the same anymore. His skin was too cold and stiff. Besides, what made her so important that she had to touch him? They weren't dating anymore, right?

Three years. Three wonderfully and romantic years. All to come to sudden bitter halt like this.

Clare watched as Haruhi's family gratefully accepted the visitors to the funeral home, doing their best to hide their grief and keep it together. She didn't move from her spot next to the coffin. Then a girl about her age watched and came for her, instead of saying something to the family. Huh. She wasn't anything special. Why talk to her?

"You must be Clare. I'm Cora. I was Haruhi's...err...friend."
Clare gently shook the other girl's hand as a third one approached their ranks. "Well, what's going on here, ladies? All crowded around the man of the hour with no room for me? I'm Angela, by the way."

"It's nice to meet you all," Clare said politely. "Even if it had to be like this. I really miss him."
"Me too," Angela sighed. "It's not everyday a man like him comes round the corner. What on earth were you thinking, breaking up with him?"

That got a nervous laugh from Clare. "I see that I'm not the only one with eyes for Haruhi. And yes, I do feel a bit bad about the break-up, even if it was for the best. Had I known this was going to happen to him..."

Cora shook her head. "No. Don't blame yourself. You had no way of knowing. And you can always come to us if you wanna talk about it, or him. We certainty don't mind."

That was true. Clare couldn't see the future and neither could Haruhi. The only thing she could do was keep moving on. But Angela and Cora seemed like such nice girls, and they both graciously accepted Clare's offer to go for a swim together after the visitation. She was glad to have a new shoulder to lean on. At least she wouldn't have to mourn alone.

Meanwhile, a saddened father was very much alone.

At this point, Farraday Kerrick had nothing but his trinkets left. So he threw himself into polishing them. Until there was no rust left in his house.

It was all he knew how to do at this point. No daughter to try and pull him away and ask for his attention, to beg him to answer a question that stung too much. yet, he should've given her the answer a long time ago. What good had wallowing in his grief done for him?

Farraday threw down the rag. It landed on a chair. Dell used to sit there and watch him. oh, what a father would give to hear her complain about him preferring his trinkets over her one last time! Anything just to have her voice back!

"I couldn't," he told himself. "I couldn't tell her. It hurt too much. I can't tell anyone ever again."

His house was a cluttered mess. Faraday didn't care anymore. He couldn't bring himself to put anything away. Maybe, the old shelf filled to the brim with useless crap would eventually collapse on top of him and put him out of his misery. Maybe he'd inhale too much of the cleaning products and die.

Anything to be with the family he lost.

He continued to scrub clean an old glass bottle. He might try and stick a model sailboat inside afterwards, and then see how much money it could fetch him in the market. Why not let himself drown in a sea of knickknacks like Dell often claimed he did? What more did he have left?

The rest of the 9th Hunger Games wore on. Farraday caught the mandatory viewing and the highlights, and that was it. When he wasn't watching the Games and pretending to care, he was back to polishing and cleaning and all these other trivial activities. They didn't give him the happiness he thought they would.

Nothing made him as happy as his daughter. And she was long gone.

District 3

"Underage possession of alcohol. Possession of illegal substances. Multiple counts! Ladies..." the Mayor was on the verge of slamming his head through the desk. "It's amazing the Peacekeepers haven't locked you up for life already!"

"They can't do that!" Emana sneered, then glanced down sheepishly. "Cant they?"
"No, don't be ridiculous. That's not gonna happen. But this behaviour has got to stop. You've got to find different outlets to-"

Lydia slapped her fists down. "You don't get to talk down to us like that! After what happened and after we lost Astrid, you don't-"
Layla grabbed her friend's arm and dragged her out the door. "Lyd, it's okay."

"No, no it's not! It isn't okay! She's dead and we all saw it happen!" Lydia groaned. "And I miss her! I'm tired of pretending everything's all fine and dandy and shit. I can't do that anymore. Fuck, I seriously need a drink. No. I need a damn pill."

At this point, Layla had enough. "You know what? No more pills. No more drinking. The Peacekeepers will be on our trail anyways. Besides, it's time we all sobered up. Enough of this whole drowning our sorrows in substances thing. We can do better"
"But-" Emana started to argue.

"No." Layla wasn't having it. She was tired of waking up with nasty hangovers after spending the night crying over Astrid with her friends in a dark alleyway. If Astrid's death had taught her anything, it was that life could be cut short by anything. So she needed to make the most of it. And to her, it meant cutting back on her indulges for good.

"Come on, guys." She threw her arms around her friends. "I know it's gonna be tough, but you're not doing it alone. I'll be there with you guys the whole time and I'll help you no matter what. I don't want my life to be a drunken haze anymore. I want it to have some meaning. Let's do it for Astrid, alright?"

Emana and Lydia were still hesitant. But Layla knew that her friends would eventually agree. Cleaning up their acts was the least they could do for Astrid. Would she be proud of them? Layla had no idea. But God forbid death take away another one of them and they didn't go with a clear mind.

The first thing Layla did when she got home was pour her stash of alcohol down the drain. Goodbye, cheap booze.

And she began to feel better.

In another house, a young mother was taking a loss particularly hard. So was her brother, but his means of mourning his nephew were different.

Ollie was pacing back and forth to the point that Nadia wondered if he'd wear down the rug. "I knew it. I should've trained him. Just a bunch of silly exercises weren't going to be enough. He couldn't even protect himself!"

"Ollie, not now. Please..."
"Well why not? Isn't it obvious? We failed Gear. Failed him! He was too weak to do anything and I could've changed that somehow but I didn't."

Nadia didn't want to hear talk of failing Gear. Because she had failed him too as well. Ollie wanted Gear to be able to protect Nadia, but a mother's first priority was always protecting her children. And she couldn't even do that.

Her baby was dead. And all she did was watch.

But whose fault was it? The Capitol. Obviously. They knew who Gear's father was and they wanted to lash out at the young boy. Gear had done nothing wrong, but just happened to be born to the wrong people. He just happened to have a prominent rebel name attached to his identity, and the Capitol didn't care to look further than that, to see just how special and unique Gear see that he was just a little kid.

Both Ollie and Nadia came to that conclusion at the same time.

Ollie stomped upstairs, muttering about Peacekeepers, and rebels, and the dead, and revolution. Nadia dropped her head into her hands. Her entire body shook as she sobbed. She didn't have the energy to be rightfully mad at the Capitol for destroying her family like that.

Not when she was still upset with herself.

Eventually, she went upstairs to her brother's room. She couldn't let him do anything stupid that would get him executed by the Peacekeepers. Not when she had so little family left.

District 2

Bellona Pierce didn't have anyone left to love.

After all, her family was gone and she was the last to pass on. Her body was still shipped back home regardless. Even if nobody would come to her funeral except for the staff running the event, it still felt wrong to deny a tribute of their proper burial.

A few people still came to say their goodbyes.

They were kids Bellona occasionally ran into by the Peacekeeper Academy. Maybe she meant more to them than they ever realized, or they had nothing better to do, or they felt a little guilty, or they just wanted to see what a dead body looked like.

The service itself was rather short, because there was nobody to say some final words or goodbyes. The hired pallbearers picked up the coffin and it was carried to District 2's graveyard. The old gravedigger was patiently waiting by.

The plot had already been dug up. Bellona's grave was rather bare. Just her name, date of birth, date of death, and that was it. No fancy script calling her a loving daughter, a carrying sister, an adoring girlfriend, anything. And even in 2, where many did not weep for the dead, it was a plain gravestone by their standards. Devoid of any charm and personality and anything that made Bellona...well...

Bellona.

There was also a sudden spike in the amount of kids enrolled in 2's Peacekeeper Academy shortly after Bellona's gruesome death was shown to Panem. No doubt if she had heard about that, she wouldn't have been pleased. But it made the kids feel safer.

Even if 2 was never a district to question their glorious Capitol, children secretly feared the Reaping. Training, supposedly as Peacekeepers, gave them that extra feeling of security. That way, should their name ever be called, they had a fighting chance to survive.

At the Academy, Gia Santerre was training for a different reason.

Training was the only way she could feel close to Toren.

She punched the dummy as hard as she could. A nearby trainer found, but Gia couldn't care less that her form wasn't perfect and she wasn't supposed to be using her knuckles. She had never been one take training that seriously anyways, not the way Toren had.

"Excellent force," someone told her. A nameless face in a Peacekeeper uniform. "Don't ball up your hands like that, alright? When you strike, you want-"
"I don't care!" Gia yelled. The Peacekeeper hesitated as she swung her leg round to kick the dummy in the head.

"Miss Santerre, please compose yourself. You're making a scene!"
"I just said I don't care!"
"Miss Santerre-"

A gloved hand reached for Gia and she slapped it away. Then she ran. Into the bathroom and into an empty stall. She locked the door and sunk to the ground. Salty tears stung her eyes and streamed down her face. She heard footsteps outside and someone knocking on the walls, but she ignored all of it.

She was wrong. Training would never replace Toren. Toren was like a brother to her, and she loved him so much, so differently...

Nothing could replace Toren. He was gone and he was never coming back. Damn it, he just had to go and volunteer for the stupid Games and look what happened! Look how he was taken from her! Gia rubbed at her eyes and bit back the urge to scream her head off.

That night, she asked her parents if she could drop out of the Academy. They were both surprised, especially her father who never let her miss a day of training. But they granted her wishes anyways, and never again would Gia face the halls of the building that let Toren sign his own death sentence.

District 1

If her parents knew where she was going, they'd kill her.

Kylian Brodie tugged her hood over her head and picked up her pace. Her heart was pounding and every bit of her conscience was yelling at her. Telling her to turn around, to return to the safety of her home. She had no reason to sneak out here, nothing to gain.

But her brother had lived this kind of lifestyle and he was perfectly fine. What was the worst that could happen to her?

The bodyguard didn't seem too impressed. "You're way too young to be anywhere near here. Scram."
Kylian gulped, then quietly handed over a bag of money. Money she had taken from Stravos's stash.

After a moment of thought, the guard snatched up the money ad she was free to enter. God, this place was intimidating. All these tables and cards and chips. It was just so sketchy! A young girl like her didn't belong in this gambling ring.

And yet, it wasn't too late to run...

No. She had gone through all of the trouble of coming here in the first place. And she had a pretty decent knowledge of various card games. Even if she wasn't fated to win them all, her brother's money would carry her far enough to earn most of it back.

She pulled her hood down one more time, heading towards at empty seat at a poker table. Already, three giant guys were seated a slim dealer in a leather coat. The game was about to begin. They all stared at her, and she felt really small.

The dealer just sneered. "Are you lost, little girl? Looking for your mama? Need us to read you a bedtime story?"
"N-no," Kylian insisted. "I'm here to play. A-and to bet."

The thug beside her was suddenly serious. He slowly shook his head. "Is that so? Because this isn't jacks on the playground, brat. This is a real card game. You're going to lose all of your money. Are you sure you're down for that?"

"Yes." Kylian finally found her voice. This time, she yanked off her hood instead of pulling it up. Now everyone could see her. And she knew exactly who they saw in her. A thieving, scheming, greasy teenager who cheating them all out of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Kylian politely folded her hands on the table. "I said, I'm here to play."

The other half of our little goodbyes. And as you can see, there is someone very notable missing, but that's because she'll obviously get her own time.

Anyways, the next chapter will be our final epilogue, and after that it's time to say goodbye to TMH. After two years and three months of writing, it's hard to believe that I'm actually at this point. But enough of that; I'll save the sappy and emotional AN for that chapter.

See you all then,

-Vr