CONTENT NOTE: Gidget's POV contains reference to her pregnancy loss. Oop that's right I put in the wrong mentors again... oh well too late


ALLURE BELDAM- Dionysus Bacchus

Wow, I kinda didn't think I'd get this far. I didn't think about being One's last hope. I thought the Careers would dominate until one last climactic battle ending the Games. Instead Allure was out and One's hopes rested on me. Honestly kind of their fault for picking me, though.


CHEYANNE TALOR- Nailah Nebit

It wasn't what they said it would be- killing, I meant. I liked it less every time I did it. It was so hypocritical how adults told us life had meaning… but not that life. And it wasn't as simple as that, I knew. War wasn't the same as murder. One of the reasons I'd volunteered was to connect with my heritage, but I'd come to see that protecting a nation from invasion wasn't at all like the Hunger Games. It was too late to change my mind now but I would carry it with me- silently, almost certainly- that this was wrong.


Gidget Ford, District Three mentor

Everyone knows the closest years are the hardest. But I don't know if it's really a matter of easier or harder. When both my Tributes died in the Bloodbath I sometimes related it to my miscarriage. They were gone before I knew them but they were still alive once and then gone. They mattered and I grieved for them and it didn't go away like it had never happened. But this year I had time to know both Preji and Cheyanne. It was a different kind of pain. Not better, not worse. Different.


District Three

Despite Preji's certainty that everyone hated him, he was mourned by his family and even by people he often annoyed. Just because someone was a negative person didn't mean we wanted them to die. It's miraculous, sometimes, how small the world is. After her death, Cheyanne's family had no motivation to look into her biological parents further. If they'd had the means they might have discovered the truth: Allure's disdain for Cheyanne's beauty was far closer to home than she would ever know. Even the elite have their teenage indiscretions, and Deluxe Beldam thought his partners were as disposable as his servants. But Cheyanne and Allure were equally dead, and only one knew what it was to have a truly loving family.


RJ MACREADY- Oberon Martell

I wasn't proud of it. Pride is a luxury some people can't afford. Pride is something secure and safe people talk about, completely oblivious to the reality that some people are concerned with their very lives. RJ was more affluent than I was, but he was never proud. He was noble, that was true. Nobility gets people killed but still I was glad there were people who lived it out.


Oberon Murdoch, District Nine male (17)

I ran through an entire room before I could convince myself the Careers weren't following me. I'd spent the night huddled in a pile of fallen leaves and I still hadn't found a place I wanted to settle in. Just after I got into the larger interior gardens from where RJ and I had been outside, I found myself in a room full of fruit trees and other edible plants. There had to be a lot of Tributes in such a hospitable area, so I kept moving the next day after gathering some food.

Regan would have loved the garden I found. She loved wildflowers and making little bouquets. Sometimes kindly passersby offered to buy them for a dollar or two and she was always so excited to show me her earnings. We never had flowers like this back in Nine. Even while I was appreciating their beauty I was resentful knowing that that many bulbs and plants had to have cost more than most of us spend on food for a year. This was nothing to the Capitol- just window dressing, or casual spending money. They valued a flower over someone like me or Regan. I didn't understand it.

While the sunken garden seemed like just a decoration, there was food to be had here, and not everyone knew about it. Everyone knew bananas and mangoes were edible but not everyone knew rosehips and nasturtiums were. I had a little experience nibbling clover or dandelion greens with Regan in between jobs so there were a few plants I recognized. I didn't see any signs of any other Tributes, so it might be I'd found myself a place I could make camp for the time being. The fountains in the pond kept the water circulating, which I remembered meant it was cleaner than stagnant water.

RJ would have loved this place, too. Just because I'd had to leave him didn't mean we were never friends. We both knew going in that at least one of us would lose the other. I was glad I'd gotten to know him and I felt for his family. Panem lost a good man, and more importantly, a good man lost his life prematurely. He would have liked all these flowers and knowing that someone cared enough to grow and arrange them. I wondered what flowers his parents would put on his grave.

We all make choices in life, I thought as I held a peony by its stem. While they're limited and shaped by our environments, we all decide what we're going to prioritize. Other people, the common good, our own principles, future generations, our desires, or so many other things. I'd chosen my own life in the short-term, but longer-term I'd chosen the people who depended on me. Even if I thought it was worth it, I couldn't have helped RJ. Regan needed me too and I'd decided she came first, before anyone else and before my own morality. She had a chance at a good life if I came through for her. That was worth anything, even being the bad guy.


Soleil Kingston, District Eleven female (17)

Someone's here with me.

When I felt the bush rustling I shot upright from where I'd been asleep so quickly my hair tangled in the branches above me. I shoved down panic as I forced myself to remain still and carefully pick myself free without giving myself away by moving the bush more. I crouched down on my stomach and turned my head to look up at whatever was with me.

It's a Career. They've already seen me. They're just moving the bush slowly so they don't get pricked. They're going to kill me.

I didn't even recognize the person I could just barely see through the tangle of thorns. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen them in the Capitol past being in the same room during training. It wasn't a Career, though. It was a single boy about my age. He didn't seem to see me. His eyes were obscured by the branches but he seemed to be focused on what he was doing. The bush jiggled intermittently as he plucked at it.

He's picking rosehips, I thought. He wasn't here to kill me at all. He was just trying to find food.

I hadn't seen another person in so long. I hadn't spoken to anyone since the Games started. I felt like a feral beast looking up at the boy. I kept drinking him in with my eyes, exulting in another human soul after so long entirely alone. I could talk to another person at last. I wasn't even a people person but after all this I just wanted to see someone and remember what a person's hand felt like.

It couldn't be that easy, though. I couldn't afford to yearn for that when I had to stay alive. When I looked up at the boy I had to think about how he was pulling rosehips off the bush and how the Careers would see someone had been here. Was he leaving footprints? Would he make noise? After all the precautions I'd taken I could die because someone else led my murderers to me.

It happened so quickly. His eyes moved and he saw me peering up at him from the gloom. I had an instant to gauge how he'd react, from running to smiling to trying to kill me. I never saw how he would have reacted, since I reacted first. I could have extended a hand or begged him to go away. Something inside me reacted faster than my brain and I shoved upward with my spear.

I couldn't believe how it felt. The spear went so much farther into his flesh than I would have thought with a hasty point made from rubbing it against a stone. At the same time, I felt his flesh resist the strike and push me backward. But it went far enough that he bled, and fell to his knees, and I could see his eyes were afraid of me now. He opened his mouth to scream- to bring the Careers down on me. So I pushed again, the leverage better since we were more level, and he gasped instead of screaming. Quiet gasps, quieter and quieter as he lay looking at me in betrayal and pain, and then up at the roses above him. As I waited for the hovercraft, I thought of how appropriate it would be if the Careers found me by the blood of dripping from the thorns.


9th place: Oberon Murdoch- speared by Soleil

It's not because he abandoned RJ. This just ended up being a good place to both kill him and have Soleil be more active. What's interesting about Oberon is the coolest part of his story came before the Games. There's so much to his past of rescuing Regan and growing up before his time. He already seemed like an adult before he even went into the Arena. Perhaps a more mature and less idealistic author would have picked him to win. I anticipate he'll do well in the other stories so that will be exciting to see. Thanks Sparky for someone with so much characterization I didn't have to do any work at all.