"New Beginnings"

A/N: Well I find the idea of ending a story on an A/N kinda gross so there won't be one next chapter, and in a lot of ways this is the real end of the story, with next chapter being an epilogue, so there won't be an A/N at the end of this chapter either. So this'll be the last authors note of this trilogy.

Wow.

It feels like so long ago that I decided to take the plunge back into the syot community one more time and post the prologue for a little story called Role Model. And now over four and a half years later here we are, and that story is coming to an end. It feels kind of surreal to be here after all this time. It's been a long road, and a bumpy one at times, but at the end of the day I wouldn't trade it for anything. I'm so grateful to all the friends I made along the way, and I'm so glad I was able to wrap up this story to the point where I can say that I'm proud of what I've created. I'm going to miss all the amazing characters in this universe so much, but everything has to come to an end eventually, and I'm glad I could end it on my own terms instead of leaving it unfinished. I've grown so much as an author and as a person over this trilogy, and no matter what I go on to do next, it'll always hold a special place in my heart.

Dreamer, Celtic, Bluesquad, Sarah, Goldie, Ryan, Lauren, Opti, Fete, Trace, Micah, CC, and all the other people that have supported me throughout this trilogy, past and present: thank you. I wouldn't be here now if it weren't for you. See you all on the flip.

~Forget what we're told

Before we get too old

Show me a garden that's bursting into life~

Marquise Clifton

It seemed like life was a repeating sequence. After all that had happened, all the change he had gone through, there he was. Broken. Ashamed. Feeling a lack of purpose. Laying in a hospital room bed, wondering why it was that he was still alive when so many others had died.

Marquise got the feeling that wasn't something he would find an answer to so easily. There were no words of wisdom waiting for him. Nobody sat in his corner, telling him that he had to keep on fighting, no matter how hard.

The door cracked open.

A familiar face peered through, hands in her pockets as she stepped into the room, averting her eyes to the ground. Neither of them said anything as Hailey took her time, wandering the room for a moment before sitting down at the seat of the bed.

"Hey," she said finally, breaking the silence with a stiff attempt at casualness.

"Hello again," he replied, his voice hoarse and dry.

"Doesn't feel like it was just a week ago, does it?" Hailey asked. Her eyes looked tired and worn down. He imagined his looked much the same.

"Time is a strange thing at times," he agreed.

There was a stillness in the air. Perhaps it was the surrealness of it all. He hadn't anticipated ever exiting the arena, and now that it had happened nothing felt quite real. He was a victor, and blood stained his hands. How had that happened?

"So what are you gonna do now?" She asked.

He sighed at that, sitting up and swinging his feet off the bed, letting them dangle as he thought. "That's a question I don't have an answer for. To be honest, I hadn't ever thought I'd be here. It doesn't feel right to go back to District Eleven and continue life the same way I did before. What do you do? To pass the time. To make it feel like your survival wasn't for nothing."

Hailey didn't look ready for that question. "I was kinda hoping you'd have an answer to that," she said glumly. "You're the one with all the wisdom, not me."

"I'm not wise." Marquise replied instantly. "I'm just a fool that the universe has been working hard to try to shape into something more. Sometimes I wonder why it bothers at all."

"The first few days are the hardest," Hailey said, looking down at her lap. "It doesn't get easy or anything, but still."

"This is different," Marquise said, shaking his head. "This was supposed to be my way of balancing my scales. Dying in that arena, letting someone else more deserving live on in my place, that was the only thing that I could do to wipe my slate clean." He lowered his head. "Now I've just dug myself deeper. Maybe that evil that I've done can't ever truly be washed away. Maybe I was wrong, and this hasn't been about redemption. It's been about punishment."

"If keeping you alive is the best punishment it can think of, the universe is pretty shitty at its job," Hailey said.

Marquise almost was able to crack a smile at that, but he couldn't find the energy within him to force his lips to curl. "I just don't know what to do with myself anymore," he said, his voice splintering as the words came out in cracked fragments.

"You'll figure something out," Hailey said, and her voice wavered as she attempted to keep it strong. Marquise looked over and saw wetness in her eyes. "We all will."

"I hope that you're right," he said quietly. "I really do. It's just starting to feel like nothing I do matters. Things aren't changing. I'm not making things better. It's just more of the same. I thought I was reaching an end where I could finally find peace. But really all I'm doing is running in circles." He laughed humorlessly. "I could use some sage wisdom right about now."

Hailey mimicked his laugh, shaking her head as she looked down at her hands. "Well, I'm not exactly wise. Not even close, really. But a pretty wise dude told me once that, even if it seems impossible, that we don't get to give up. We gotta keep on working to make things better." Her voice went quiet. "To make ourselves better."

Marquise almost laughed, a smile crossing his lips. "Your friend sounds wise."

She shrugged. "He has his moments," she said, the smile spreading across to her.

The smile dropped as he turned back to the ground, shaking his head. "It's just that sometimes it feels like. . . that nothing I do will ever be enough. That I'll spend the rest of my life chasing redemption, and I'll never get it. It's starting to seem impossible to reach."

"Well," Hailey asked, kicking her foot against the ground. "Do you believe yourself capable of change?

Marquise went silent for a long moment, looking down at his palms. The scars were still there, proof of the person that he once was. Proof of the answer to that exact question. That no matter how awful things would seem, that one thing could always be certain.

He looked up to her, and she was staring at him expectantly. He nodded his head. "Yes, I do," he said faintly.

Hailey stood up, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and smiled. Then, she stuck her hands in her pockets, turned, and walked away, leaving him alone in the hospital room.

Marquise allowed himself to smile as he bowed his head. Maybe redemption wasn't so far as he had thought. Maybe it was even further than he could imagine. But no matter where his path would take him, from the highest highs to the lowest lows, from now on, he wouldn't need to walk it alone.

Lana Birkhead

Everything after the arena was a blur. She remembered waking up in a hospital bed. If she concentrated hard enough she could remember other pieces. Dashiel came to visit her, and he told her that she had won. Two others won with her, the girl from Five and the boy from Eleven, Marquise Clifton. She still felt woozy with every step, but they brought her back out onto the same interview stage from a week earlier. The other two were there two, and they showed them all a video tape of the highlights of the arena.

She was glad she couldn't remember most of that. The little bits she could remember just made her feel sad. Watching herself killing was bad enough, but it was seeing Talon again that made her feel sick.

After that she was asleep for a while. Then before she knew it she was back on the same train that she met Talon for the first time on. She wandered the halls, and it didn't feel right. It felt empty, like ghosts were slinking through the train cars. Lana sat at the kitchen counter and sipped on hot chocolate, but there was nobody there to laugh as the foam stuck to her lips.

And then the train was back at District Two, and they were telling her she was back home. It didn't feel like home though. Everything felt just as foreign as the Capitol, or even the arena. She stepped off the train and people were there cheering and clapping, and Dashiel said it was for her. She didn't believe that though, and decided Dashiel was lying. Why would they cheer for her?

Dashiel told her some other things too. The man in the suit, the one that had been there for as long as she could remember, he was put away somewhere that he could never hurt her again. Lana made him promise that, and he nodded his head and agreed. Lana thought that he wasn't lying about that.

He couldn't come with her any further though, and Lana waved goodbye as his train drove away, and she was left alone again. It was only strangers everywhere she looked. A few Peacekeepers came up to her, and she panicked for a moment. They looked just like the guards, the ones with the masks. The ones that had made her kill the man. The ones that made her see red until she didn't have control of her hands or the dagger in it anymore.

But they were just Peacekeepers. She knew that. She just had to remind herself sometimes. They escorted her to the place they said was going to be her new home. There used to be more people living there, they told her. But now it would be just her, a whole neighborhood to herself. They apologized, but she told them that it was okay.

She was used to being lonely.

They gave her a key and showed her a house in the middle of the neighborhood, a big tall red roof and a neatly trimmed green yard. The door was the brightest blue she had ever seen, and when they left she pushed it open and walked inside, not bothering to close the door behind her.

She checked every room. Every closet and cabinet and even under the sink and in the bathtub, expecting to find something. Waiting to see one of those monsters hiding in the shadows, waiting to jump out at her. But there was nothing. It was empty.

Somehow that scared her even worse.

There was a telephone attached to one of the walls, and Lana dug a note out of her pocket, reading over the numbers. One of the victors, the girl from District One named Glory, had come to see her just before her train was about to leave. She had a nice smile and handed her the note, and told her to call when she got back home, or if she was ever lonely. They all had to stick together, the girl had said.

Lana had nodded her head and thanked her, but now she stared at the note and set it on the counter, and turned away from the telephone. She walked into the living room, and there was a basket on the table, filled with boxes. Something on the top caught her eye, and she pulled it out, then pushed the basket to the floor, letting the rest of the boxes fall to the ground as she set the chess board down on the table.

She set up the pieces to their starting position, and ran her fingers along the smooth wooden board. She was on the black side, and she was waiting for someone to make a first move. Waiting.

A knock came from the front door, and Lana's hand flinched, knocking over one of the white pieces as she climbed to her feet. She straightened out her shirt, and brought a hand up to her eye, furiously drying it off with her palm as she marched to the door.

Lana swung open the door, and a girl was standing on the other side, looking surprised for a moment before smiling at her and waving timidly. The girl looked the same age as Lana, and she had dark brown hair that rolled down to her shoulders and big chocolatey eyes that reminded her of Talon's.

"Hi," the girl said timidly. "We haven't met yet, but, well I figured we should. I kinda wanted to meet you myself, in person, I guess."

Lana didn't know what to say, and so she kept silent.

"Oh! Right," the girl said, smacking herself in the forehead. She extended a hand out to Lana, and she flinched back for a moment at the movement. "My name's Irelia. I'm Talon's sister."

"Oh," she said. Her eyes went to the ground. "I'm sorry."

"What would you be sorry for?" Irelia asked, tilting her head in confusion. Lana looked up at her, and the girl smiled kindly. "I didn't come here because I wanted you to say sorry. I came here because I figured, well, maybe you could use a friend about now." Her voice went quiet, her smile still holding even as her voice quivered. "I know I could use one."

'I-I'm, I'm not-" Lana stammered. She couldn't think of the words to say.

"Look, I know that Talon cared a lot about you, and well." She shrugged, still holding onto that smile. "That's enough for me to call you family."

The tears that Lana had fought to keep away came streaming out now, and she choked out a sob, nearly falling over as tears blinded her eyes. Irelia stepped forward and wrapped Lana up in a hug, and this time Lana squeezed back, holding on as tightly as she could.

River

She barely recognized the forest anymore. Audra had tried to convince her not to visit, but she needed to see it for herself. It took a few weeks, but Audra finally agreed to help, and a few days later they had brought her back to her home. They told her she couldn't stay, that she could only visit for a few minutes. But that was all she wanted. This place wasn't alive anymore. The trees that were left had no leaves, and the grass had burnt to yellow ash. Not even the insects seemed to live there anymore.

She didn't want to believe it. She wanted to pretend that this was somewhere entirely else, that her home was still somewhere out there, somewhere far away. But this was it. She could see The River that she had come from, still alive and unaffected by all the destruction around it.

She sat down next to The River, her bare feet sinking into the dirt as she watched the calm rocking of the water. Wanderer told her that when they died, their bodies were left behind, but their spirits would return to The River. She wondered if he was there now, just a single drop of water among waves. What would he think of her if he could see her now?

They had names for her. Audra showed her a magazine a few days after the train brought them to District Five, and it had her face on the front of it. She didn't recognize the words, and so Audra had read them for her. She was trying to teach her how to read, but she still didn't understand the point of it.

They called her "The Hunter" and "The Wild Child" and a dozen other names that she didn't remember. None of them were right. She thought that if she could go back home, and listen to The River one final time, the way Wanderer had always told her, that she could hear a name in the water.

She could already tell there was no name hiding from her in the crashing of the waves on the beach. She didn't know what she had expected. How many times had she done the exact same thing, sitting on that same spot and listening to the water, expecting something to be given to her? When had anything ever been given to her?

That wouldn't be how her name would come to her, and sitting in the forest that had been her home for so long, she decided that was okay. She didn't need her name to be given to her. It didn't matter that she didn't have a mother to stand over her and give her destiny to her. A name was a promise. It was what she would spend the rest of her life doing. It would be the reason why through everything that had happened she was still alive, even when she was sitting in the ashes of a place that used to be her home.

A Peacekeeper came up beside her and told her it was time to leave, and she didn't resist, climbing to her feet and looking out at The River one last time. She brought a finger to her lips and pressed her finger to the water as a wave crashed against the dirt and rolled up to her feet, hoping that somewhere in the water, Wanderer was watching her, listening now to the thoughts inside her head.

I will find a name. But nobody will give it to me. Not you, Wanderer. Not the forest or the wind or The River or the sky. I will find a name. And I'll find it myself.