Valencia Cadillac, District Six female (18)

The Capitol looked so much like home. Looking out as I rode the glass elevator to the roof, the rows of towering buildings looked just like the clogged streets of Six. The only difference was how clean they were. To someone from Ten or Eleven, it must look like some space-age science fiction story. No, that was really how it was- some people living in skyscrapers, some people living on the streets.

As I opened the door to the roof, I saw someone was already up there. It was a girl. She was bent over the side railing- not looking like she was going to jump off, but just looking over the side. She shook a little and I realized she'd come up here to cry.

A good person would help, I thought. Not, I'm going to help, just that a good person should. I stood in the doorway and put out a hand to stop the door so it wouldn't make noise. It creaked, though, and I winced as the girl looked behind her.

"Sorry," the girl from Eight said, like she had something to apologize for. "You come up here to cry, too?"

"Something like that," I said, letting the door fall shut. I tried to think of a quick excuse to leave.

"Do you think it hurts to be dead?" the girl asked. Her thin little voice wormed into me. There wasn't any kind thing I could tell her to make this easier. She was going to die in a day, like most of us. I couldn't care for her. I had someone else who needed me more.

"Not in my experience," I said. The girl smiled a little, thinking I was making a dark joke. Actually I was talking about the corpses I'd seen. They always looked relaxed.

"Maybe I'll live for a while," she said, like she was hoping someone would agree with her.

"That would be good," I said softly as I came to stand next to her by the railing. I'd tried again to go back down the stairs for my son, but it was my son who stopped me. This girl was someone's baby. Somewhere out there, a mother was praying someone would show her baby kindness. I prayed the same thing for my son.

"I never thought about dying before," the girl said. "I'm Kade, by the way." She said it so offhandedly after just talking about her own death. Kids are so flexible in their thoughts. The world has so many possibilities that adults have forgotten about. Not that I was hardly an adult by age, but I was by experience.

"That's a nice name," I said. If I couldn't help her, I could give her that. "I'm Valencia."

The girl nodded. "That man keeps following you around. I don't like him."

"Smart kid," I said.

Kade looked up at me. Her birthmark stood out in the shifting shadows from the lights below. Her eyes seemed far behind it. "Why do people have to die?" she asked.

"You'll have to ask someone smarter than me," I said.

"My mom's going to miss me," Kade said. "I think sometimes she liked money more than she liked me, but she did like me." I bit back an urge to say her mother should have loved her while she had the chance. That some mothers would have cut off their own legs to hold their son one more time.

"You don't have any allies," Kade said.

My stomach dropped. Here it comes. Something I couldn't do.

"You could be allies with me." Kade's voice shimmered like the water in her eyes. She looked up at me like I was an angel.

I hesitated. She saw me hesitate.

"Find me after the Bloodbath," I said. I meant it, too. If she survived the Bloodbath. She had to do that on her own.

Rainbow Luca, District Ten female (14)

I wandered aimlessly around the jewelry store, not looking to buy anything. I just wanted to kill time on my last night in the Capitol- maybe my last night alive. I looked at fancy crystal glasses and multicolored necklaces and some things I couldn't even tell how you were supposed to wear them. It wasn't any of them that caught my eye. It was a simple gold ring.

"You're married?" I asked the young worker behind the counter.

She looked up at me with surprise. "What? Oh, yes. I'm married."

"Do you love them?" I asked.

"What a strange thing to ask!" the woman said, with a flustered smile. Her teeth were weirdly white, like so many Capitolites. "Of course I love him."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"What do you mean, 'how do I know'?" the woman asked. She didn't seem offended so much as purely confused, like she'd never thought about it.

"How do you know it's real love? What is real love like?" I asked.

"I guess..." the woman considered. "He makes me happy. I make him happy."

"That's it? That's all love is?" I asked. I'd made boyfriends happy before. I'd had boyfriends who made me happy before. It never lasted, though. If that was love, why didn't it last?

"What else is there?" the woman asked. She put out one arm palm-up in a querying gesture.

"I always thought love was..." I thought about it. "You don't just love what someone does for you- that they make you happy. You love them. You love the person, no matter what. I mean, not if they hit you or cheat on you or something like that, but you love them. Even if you're not happy right at that moment."

The woman looked at her ring. "Sounds like you know a lot about love."

"Not really," I said. "I wish I did. I think I thought I did but I never really did." As soon as I started, the words poured out of me. "I've had lots of boyfriends but I think I just loved having a boyfriend and I didn't actually love them. I loved how they made me feel pretty and wanted to be with me, since it made me feel special, but that's not what love is. That's just wanting attention. I've never really loved anyone and I don't think anyone has really loved me."

"You're still young. You'll find someone," the worker said nervously.

"I'm going into the Games tomorrow. I don't think I ever will," I said. An oppressive heaviness fell over me. I wanted to sprint out the store and run all the way to the Games center door and just keep running. I could live on the streets and find someone who had no idea about me or my past and we could fall in real love.

"I... um," the woman started. She looked around for something to help her. Her eyes fell on a display case and she lit up. "Can I help you find something? Maybe for a date?"

I started toward the door. "No, thank you. You don't sell what I'm looking for."

Anjou Corriente, District Ten male (18)

Rainbow was off doing some shopping, probably looking for girly things to distract her from what was going to happen tomorrow. Timber was trying to sleep, so that left only the older members of the alliance to gather in the Ten lounge, since Romeo couldn't go in the Six lounge without Lancia harassing him.

"One more day," Dahlia said, checking her nails like she didn't care at all.

"You don't even seem nervous," Romeo said.

"I'm not," she said easily. "If anyone comes for me, Timber will get in the way. It's honestly adorable how crazy he is about me. If this wasn't the Games I might keep him around a while. He probably wouldn't even get mouthy like all the others. God, I don't miss having to smack some sense into them."

"Wait, you hit them?" I asked.

"Only when they don't listen to reason," Dahlia said. I glanced sideways at Romeo, who clearly had no problem with it.

"That's not very cool," I said.

Dahlia looked up at me with shocked disgust. "What, you have something to say? You think that makes me a bad girlfriend?" she said snidely, smirking a little.

"Kind of," I said.

"Oh, I suppose you don't hit your daugh- I mean, girlfriends," Dahlia said. "You just give them a lecture and send them to bed without supper?"

"Well, I don't hit them!" I said, heat rising up in my cheeks at Dahlia's underhanded attacks.

"No shit. People get arrested for hitting children," Dahlia said.

"I just kill anyone who pisses me off," Romeo commented casually.

"Yeah, but at least those are other mobsters," I said.

"Nah, I'd kill a kid if he mouthed off to me," Romeo said.

"And you'd-" Dahlia said something horrifically disgusting.

"I would not!" I said. "We waited!"

"Till the moment it was legal," Dahlia sneered. "Isn't that convenient you only wanted to sleep with her at the exact second you wouldn't get arrested for it."

"Well... I didn't!" I said.

"Congrats. You're the boyfriend of the year," Dahlia said.

"It's pretty gross, dude," Romeo added.

"You're making me sound like some horrible person," I said.

"You made it sound that way all by yourself," Dahlia said. "I hope I never become anything near the kind of person you are."

I could have hit her right there. I could have wrapped my hand around her throat and squeezed the sneer right off her lips. But I didn't, and not only because it would get me executed. I didn't want to give her any more ammunition to think I was something I wasn't. I wasn't a monster, no matter what she said. I had my flaws but so did everyone else. So let anyone who was trying to tell me I was a bad person take a good look at themselves.

Isabella Disney-Busattil, District Eleven female (18)

It was clear the League of Evil Exes, as we'd come to call them, wasn't expecting to see me walk through their door.

"What do you want?" Dahlia asked, getting up to push me out the door.

"Just to talk," I said. "Where's everyone else?"

"The kids are sleeping and Anjou threw a tantrum and went off to sulk," Dahlia said. "God, he's emotional."

"That's all right. You two seem to be something of the leaders anyway," I said.

"I am," Dahlia and Romeo said at the same moment. They glared at each other and Dahlia added, "we are."

"Good. Because I have some directions for you," I said. I stayed standing, folding my arms and taking something of a power stance.

"Directions?" Romeo said, narrowing his eyes.

"Directions," I repeated firmly. "For the Bloodbath."

"If you were going to give us orders you should have brought your friends," Dahlia said.

"I didn't think they wanted to see this," I said. I took a step forward and grabbed Dahlia by her collar. I picked her up off her feet, using all of my six feet three inches. I pivoted to pin her against a wall and leaned in right up to her quickly blanching face.

"See, I have some plans for the Bloodbath. You're going to obey them," I hissed.

"You can't hurt us. You'll get executed," Dahlia said, already gaining her composure.

"Tell them," I said. "Tell them Panem's daughter hurt you. They'll believe you." I slid her further up the wall to look me in the eye. "Make an enemy of me," I whispered. "See, a lot of people forget I'm not just Vera's daughter. Happy, peppy Vera, always at one event or another. I'm Frankie's daughter too. My father will stick a knife in a child as soon as look at it because to him it's all the same. No one ever thinks to ask if my happy face is real, or if I just learned from the best how to fake it."

Dahlia's face was guarded but I knew she was scared. I could feel her pulse racing against my fingers on her collar. Behind us, Romeo watched with interest, confident in his own abilities but not ready to take on a very angry double-trained Career unless necessary. He could learn enough about me from his position across the room that I didn't yet need to convince him personally.

"Fine, just tell us the plan," Dahlia said, pretending to be bored. I tossed her sideways and she stumbled and fell onto the couch.

"How many Careers are in the pack?" I asked the two of them.

"Five," Romeo said, after checking on his fingers.

"And there are five people in my alliance, two trained," I said. "And five people in your alliance- one trained. That's a lot of people for one little pack to hunt. A lot can happen if a lot of well-trained outliers were to work together. You'll find what someone can do with my mother's creativity and my father's temperament."

"Surely you don't trust us," Romeo said.

"I don't trust you at all," I said. "But if you betray us you know there will never be a big enough Arena for you to run from me. Not from me and the richest sponsors from the Capitol and three Districts."

I felt dirty as I left Dahlia and Romeo licking their wounds behind me in the lounge. I didn't like being mean, I really didn't. But some people deserved it, and on behalf of my allies, who deserved nothing like this, this once I'd be mean.

I'm still solidifying deaths. If you haven't reviewed AT ALL, it may behoove you to do so. I only ask because if I have reason to believe someone is not reading then it makes sense to kill their Tributes. It's 100% fine to read and not review, but I just need one single review to confirm you're active. I don't care what it is- you can literally review just "a" or something. I only want to know who's active so I concentrate on their Tributes.