A/N: Today we have the Goodbye and Train for District Two! I am happy to revisit this pair and I'm excited to see them develop in the future :D Enjoy your reading, I hope it is good! :)

Trigger Warnings: Profanity

And all I can say, is as of today, evading the greys.

Midnight flights and lack of sleep.

And migraine headaches, and sweaty sheets.

And all those things that point to me, oh yeah.

Tyberios Palatium, 18

District Two Male

I step onto the stage, the air around me bulging as it fills with the loud cries of approval from the general public congregated in the square below me. I stand on the stage, and repress a thin smile, nodding curtly at the crowd as I shake Ardin's hand. My body feels numb, I feel nothing. I feel blank, empty, limitless, gray, clean, vacuous, any other damn synonym you can contrive. Every word revolves in my head as the cheers wrap themselves around my shoulders like a heavy woolen cloak, a bit damp, but it masks me from everything. I feel empty. I feel nothing.

It feels so damn good.

Not even a prick of pain in the back of my head. My brain is just that, a brain, a wet, bloody heap of tissue and tendons and whatever else is in there; it is just a brain. It is not a red hot nebula of pain throbbing in my skull; it is not a fizzling stick of dynamite with the fuse perpetually just about to blow; it is not a firework crackling awkwardly in the confines of my head, trying to fight its way out down the back of my throat, out my nose, out my ears. I feel blissful nothing standing there, the grimy warm air hitting my face as it is filled to the max with adoring yells. It bubbles around me like hot tar broiling around my skin, and I feel the pain inching its way back in, trickling in like thick sludge, sliding forward sluggishly. It sears my skull, and I try to repress to urge to fight back out to that stage as Cretta guides Ardin and I into the Justice Building. My angle is stoic, emotionless, gruff. Running back out onto the stage and gesturing wildly for them to start screaming my name again to erase my migraines will ruin my image completely. By the time I am sitting alone in one of the back rooms of the Justice Building, the pain is back full force, slamming its angry fists around my head, making up for time lost. I squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the slate gray walls and the granite bench I sit on, the only piece of furniture I sit on. I press my warm, throbbing forehead to the cool, slick granite. I let out a soft hiss, and the granite heats up and the solace in the cool fades away. I press my forehead down again, on a new patch, and I repeat the process until my family comes in.

"What the actual fuck are you doing?!" Fulmia asks, her arms crossed indignantly. My mother and father, Gaius and Euritea, are well known Peacekeepers who have a calm, quiet, caring disposition. I do not know how Fulmia and myself came from them. A spitfire daughter and a son with a volanco bursting constantly in his head? We must be adopted. My parents stand behind Fulmia and try to calm her down, smiling. My father places a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs it off violently, and my father staggers backward, his smile folding into a sour grimace. Fulmia gets right up in my face and glares into my eyes.

"You're going to die, Tyberios fucking Palatium. Don't be too long at the River Styx; the Reaper doesn't like when his poor damned souls tarry on their journey to everlasting Hell." She snickers wildly and walks out of the door, slamming it behind her.

My parents crowd around me and hug me tight. "It's alright, son," my father murmurs. "Fulmia is bitter ever since she found out she was not accepted into the Peacekeeper Institute. Forgive her, you both can make amends when you return."

"She didn't make it? How?! She's damn amazing!" I reply, astonished.

"They said her disposition was too...unpredictable, and that she was...unreliable...to Panem's safety," my mother says with a thin lipped smile, her dark blue eyes twinkling with unspoken words. I nod slowly. I always thought Fulmia was a little unsettled, a little against authority, but I never thought she'd felt like that. I'd never realized why she truly hated me so much. Because I was what she detested so much deep down.

"Have a good trip, son. Do us proud," my father mutters kindly. I hug them again before they leave, and then I sit down on the bench. A couple of my friends, Marion and Pablo, come in, and I chat and joke with them for a bit. I don't really have any...deep friends really. We just fight and laugh and sometimes do illegal stuff, nothing serious, nothing most kids don't do. After bidding them farewell, I sit on the bench for a half hour alone. I knew that we have to wait longer than the other Districts due to the thing about us being so close to the Capitol, but I never knew that it would be this grueling, alone in the gray box of a room, with the pain driving my jittery brain into splinters, sharp and thin and small. When the Peacekeepers open the door, I shoot to my feet and squeeze my eyes closed for a moment before following them out of the room stiffly. I feel everything right now. It's too much.

And there's a storm you're starting

I'm a wanderess

I'm a one night stand

Don't belong to no city

Don't belong to no man

I'm the violence in the pouring rain

I'm a hurricane

I'm a hurricane

I'm a hurricane

Ardin Varnell, 18

District Two Female

Walking out of the goodbye room, everything is splayed in tactical maps in my head. I must walk through the halls proudly; maybe these Peacekeepers will spare a few coins to my sponsor fund if they see how put together I am even behind doors. Not that the Justice Building is private; it's literally pretty much the definition of public space after all. I study the two Peacekeepers that walk on either side of me. The man on my left has a thick scar on his bottom lip and his mouth is curled in a prominent frown. His bad side is obvious, isn't it? He might hit his wife, or drink too much on Saturday nights alone in the pub. Then there's the other guy, with a youthful face and a bounce in his step and unblemished skin. One look into his dark blue eyes, though, and I know he isn't this innocent man prancing in front of me. What did he do? Did he rape a girl when he was teenager? Did his father beat him and he does the same to his young children just out of instinct? Did he kill someone else in the Academy like lots of people accidentally do? I never did, although, to be honest, I considered it when a few girls were higher than me in the rankings. Sometimes tactics can't be disarming someone or moving them. Sometimes tactics have to be total elimination, murder. And, anyway, tactics are never honest. Tactics are lies and deceit woven together into a working tapestry called a plan.

I reach the platform, and I keep my head up as Tyberios emerges from the Justice Building as well. We stand on the platform. I'm airier, he's gruffer. It's just our angles. I'm playing the so-called Swan, the graceful girl-next-door who shocks the audience with her prowess. Tyberios is playing the Brute, the gruff hunk of muscle with only one agenda: to pulverize the competition. I wonder how good he'll be at his job. I know I'll be splendid with mine.

As I step onto the train, I let everything go. I imagine a bundle of balloons in my hands, and I let them go one by one as my foot slowly steps over the threshold into the dining car of the train. I watch the balloons float away in my mind's eye. Too-polite mother. Harsh father. Transgender sister. Disapproving brother. Carefree friends. Rivalry with Venia Turettes. Academy Roster. The perfect life. I hold onto one balloon and chuckle at it what it says, and keep it to myself.

Tyberios and I walk into the dining car. Cretta, Headmistress, and Scylas sit at the table. None of them are eating. Cretta is rigid as we sit down, Headmistress gives her signature cold, boring-into-your-soul look, and Scylas just nibbles on his lip and folds his hands in his lap. I start with the most obvious bad side. Headmistress. Every cadet out of Two knows the screams that come from her office. Never has she touched any of her children, but when a cadet misbehaves, they're in Headmistress Manchas' office for an hour, and when they come out they can barely walk and are sent to the infirmary. I never went up to her office. I have no idea what it looks like. Some say Headmistress has leftover rage from her Games, some say she didn't do all the killing she needed to. I say that she just disciplines her cadets because she thinks it's the right thing to do. She thinks it's the way to make them respectable and honorable, and in many cases what she does does whip kids into shape. Headmistress is stone cold. If I ever voiced my opinions on her quasi-illegal punishments, positive or not, she'd have me killed some way or another. That's why I don't say a word. Cretta's bad side is probably something with a drug or abuse filled child hood and a terrible temper. I can just sense it. Scylas seems the hardest, but then I remember the silver card a trainer gave him one day when he was teaching a strength class. He blushed and stuttered, the first time I'd ever seen Scylas Ondino frazzled. Something bad. A secret lover? Threats from Snow? Ah, Snow, that has to be it. What sort of threats? To his family? To a lover? Everyone knows about Victor prostitution, maybe that? Who knows? It's fun to decode the people around me and to know that I am unreadable to most.

After a moment of no talking, Headmistress clears her throat. "Tyberios, Ardin. Welcome. So, this is how it works. Scylas and I have built up notes about all of the other tributes; we watched the recap while we were waiting for the train to come. We'll give you our opinions, and then we'll split in half to talk about solo strategy and the like, tribute and their respective Mentor. Tyberios, you're with Scylas. Ardin, you're with me."

"So, after studying the Reapings, we've found the most viable threats. The two from One of course, and the male from Four. The girl is a wildcard at this point; she could either be a Career or a weak, mundane party girl that goes in the Bloodbath. There was especially something off with the One male, and the Four male seemed especially frightening. The girl from One seemed pretty run of the mill, although she seems to have an extra edge to her. The boy from Six looks strong but that's just looks; I wouldn't peg him too high at all. The pair from Seven are both formidable and look dangerous. The boy from Nine seems dangerous as well, and his partner could go either way. The boy from Eleven also seems very tough, and from Twelve...well, a pregnant girl was Reaped."

Silence. Nothing. I process the information, and I feel a bit disgusted.

"No one volunteered?" I ask, stupefied. "I know it's Twelve, but still...a pregnant girl? Has this ever happened before?"

"A pregnant girl was Reaped from Two in my year," Scylas replies. "But she got replaced by my District partner. After that, though, the Capitol took notice to the possibility of teen pregnancies in future Games and made a clause about it. The clause states that the expectant mother cannot receive an abortion or be helped with childbirth in any way. If they give birth to the child on their own that is fine, and if it is in the arena the child would be rescued and returned to their home, but if the birth does not happen by the time the mother dies, the baby dies as well. That girl was VERY pregnant, however. She could give birth to her baby on the train, or she might not have it until post-Bloodbath. No one knows."

After we chat a bit more about some of the other, not as threatening tributes, we split apart. Cretta goes into her room to start calling sponsors already, and Tyberios and Scylas head off to another car. That leaves Headmistress and myself sitting at the table. Silence stretches between us for a long moment, and I look into her cold eyes and at her sharp cheekbones and wonder how one woman can be so powerful.

"I trust you have a plan," Headmistress mutters. I lay it out for her step by step; the honor, the loyalty, the injury, the infection, the pity, the split, the stalk, the slaughter, the feast, the Victory. She looks at me long after I've finished, and then sighs.

"Elaborate plans can be as detrimental as they can be helpful, Ardin."

"I am willing to take that risk, Headmistress."

"Please, call me Serephina. We're going to be working on a more...intimate basis now."

I smile at Serephina, and as we talk further in depth about my strategy and about the other tributes, I think about the balloon I did not let go when I stepped onto this train and entered the cruel, ugly world of the Games.

The girl with a plan; Ardin Varnell.

A/N: This took too long for no good reason. I just didn't want to write this not because of the characters or anything like that, just because...well, I have been distracted as of late xD Yeah this is a really late post I just wanted to get this out ASAP for any of you night lurkers that are still on at what is past midnight here in the East Coast/Midwest area. :)

Alliances Right Now (Sorry if I forgot one, please remind me if I did):

Careers: Zirc, Trinity, Tyberios, Ardin, Chavez, Cordelia

Girls Meet World: Bernie, Libby, Gaia, Sage, Carmen

Water Glasses: Soya, Lord

Showstoppers: Fuji, Millard, Ivy, Omri

Mortem: Jayce, Miriam

Who did you like better here, Tyberios or Ardin? Have your thoughts on them changed? What do you think about the Capitol's rules about teen pregnancies in the Games?

I might get the Three chapter out as well tomorrow, so you might not get a notification about it so check in if you want because I will try to get it out by 9 tomorrow if I can. No promises however :) I'll probably do Big Brother: Bite Size instead.

Trivia: (I am going to do a trivia question from each POV to see how much you remember what you read):

Tyberios (1 pt): Why was Fulmia refused to be a Peacekeeper?

Ardin (1 pt): What is the name of Ardin's generic Academy angle?

Until Next Time,

Tracee