oOo
Prim isn't Reaped for the 75th Games.
Or the 76th, or the 77th, or the 78th, or the 79th.
The day before the 80th Games, she goes to speak to Peeta. He's been trying to push her away for years, but she won't leave him alone. He loved - loves - her sister. He'd almost been her brother. And that matters.
"Be honest with me," she says as she prepares a stew for dinner. If she doesn't cook, he probably won't eat. "What are my chances of being Reaped tomorrow?" She has eleven slips in the bowl. More than some people, but far fewer than most of the Seam - Vick Hawthorne, who's three years younger than her, already has twenty-one. She and her mother made it through the 78th Games by spending Katniss's money carefully, but after that tesserae became a necessity. Taking them felt like breaking Katniss's trust, but Katniss was long-dead, and they needed the grain.
Peeta shakes his head. "You won't be Reaped," he says with absolute certainty.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know who it'll be, but it won't be you. Put you in the Games, and everyone will remember Katniss. She'll be a symbol again. The districts might coalesce around you the way they almost did around her. That's the last thing Snow wants." He shakes his head again. "No, much safer to keep you out. Your name isn't even in that bowl, Prim. I guarantee it. Those eleven slips you have? Probably destroyed less than an hour after you wrote them."
Prim's chest loosens, then tightens. "Maybe I should volunteer." She can't just leave some other girl to face the Games, can she? Katniss kept her out, can she do anything else?
Peeta's breath catches. "Don't. Not unless you're okay with dying, with your mother dying."
Fear stabs through her. "Ma?"
"Snow would kill her in a heartbeat. And I'm not sure she'd survive your death anyway. It would… look, just don't. Please, Prim."
Part of her still thinks she should. But it's been a long time since Peeta allowed that much real emotion into his voice. Besides, he's probably right about her mother, and Prim doesn't want to be responsible for her mother's death. "Okay," she says, placing her hand on his. "I won't. I promise."
"Thank you," he says, his voice brimming with emotion.
The next morning, Prim's closest friend is Reaped. She opens her mouth to volunteer. But her eyes lock with Peeta's, and she sees the promise she made in them.
And, no matter how much it pains her, she closes her mouth without saying anything. Katniss would have volunteered anyway, part of her whispers.
I'm not Katniss, she reminds it.
Two weeks later, Anna is dead and Prim is delivering a baby.
Life goes on, she thinks as she helps the child breathe for the first time. Even here, life goes on.
oOo
As much as she sometimes wishes it wouldn't, life goes on.
Lavinia is beautiful and young and much in demand as an Avox. She spends most of the year serving the government of Panem, except when the Games are in session and the government takes its annual break to enjoy the slaughter. She doesn't get a break, of course. She's the lowest of the low, a voiceless slave, and so she must never stop working.
It's not a good life or even an easy one. But it's what she has. And there's a part of her that wants to live, no matter how terrible life is.
Every year, when she returns to Twelve's rooms on the top floor of the Training Center, she remembers Katniss Everdeen and the kindness she showed her. Lavinia does her best to return that kindness. She can't help Katniss anymore, but Peeta was her district partner and co-Victor, so he is her focus.
He must notice, because when he returns to the Capitol for the 81st Games, he speaks to Lavinia in halting Avox sign. He doesn't know much, but he knows just enough to begin to understand her.
"How did you learn?" she asks, moving her hands far slower and in much wider gestures than she would with another Avox.
"Finnick Odair," he signs with painful slowness. "He keeps-" he hesitates before figuring out the word "-secrets."
Lavinia knows plenty of secrets. Serving the government of Panem as a nameless voiceless slave who's essentially part of the scenery has given her a lot of information. But she's never been able to use it before. She's never even thought of it as an option.
Well. Now she has at least one person she can tell those secrets to, and maybe - just maybe - they'll finally do some good.
oOo
Johanna hates watching other Victors destroy themselves. It hits too close to home.
Peeta Mellark's not there yet, but he's on the way. Too much whoring, too much death, and he's changed from the person he once was - the boy who told Katniss Everdeen that he didn't want the Games to change him.
The Games didn't change him. But the aftermath…
He's just a little bit harder, more uncaring, than he was. Seven straight years of dead tributes, seven straight years of being whored out. It's enough to change anyone. And this eighth year - the 82nd Games - doesn't look to be all that different.
While the tributes are off in the Remake Center getting prepped for the parade, the Victors meet up. It's the first time they've all seen each other in almost a year, and it's always a roaring party.
Johanna's not friends with these people - she doesn't have friends - but she understands them, and they understand her, in a way that she can't relate to District Seven anymore. Grabbing a fruity drink which probably has three times as much alcohol as anyone would expect, she makes her way to Peeta's corner. He's sitting nursing a whiskey, looking so much like his mentor despite the differences in their coloring that it makes her breath catch.
She misses Haymitch. And Mags, who had a stroke two years ago and died peacefully in her sleep. Even Wiress, who finally got so loopy that Snow told her never to leave District Three. The older Victors dwindle every year, those who are too sick to come or just plain dead. Instead there are new faces - Zink from Ten, a blacksmith's son who won the Third Quarter Quell; Glaze from One who's almost as popular as Finnick Odair; Prairy from Nine who's been a Victor for barely three years and already shows signs of morphling addiction.
And then there's Peeta. She taps his glass with hers. "To the dead."
"To the dead," he echoes and drinks.
On the other side of the room, Brutus has his head together with Cashmere and Gloss, no doubt already planning the Career pack.
"The odds aren't in our favor," Johanna mutters.
Peeta gives her a wry smile. "They never have been for Twelve."
That's true. He's never had a tribute last more than three days in his seven years of mentoring. She doubts it'll be any different this year, not after what she saw of his kids at the Reaping. Frankly, hers probably won't do much better. Cypress is wily and might make it a week, but he's not a fighter. Astrid is barely thirteen.
She clinks his glass again. "To freedom."
This time his smile isn't false. He isn't completely lost, and for a broken girl with walls around her heart, that's strangely comforting. "To freedom."
oOo
Boggs isn't sure that President Coin made the right decision, backing away from the plans for revolution because Katniss Everdeen is dead.
On the other hand, he's not sure she made the wrong decision.
Either way, what's done is done, and all they can do is move forward.
Thirteen goes on as it always has. They live underground. They train for a war that hasn't yet come. They live their lives by the schedule.
People find partners, have sex. Children continue to be born, but fewer every year. More and more people present with fertility problems - Boggs is only one of many who will never father a child. And of the children who are born, too many belong to the same few families.
The flow of migrants slows, becomes a trickle, as the Capitol puts more safeguards in the wilderness between Twelve and Thirteen. The border with Six is strengthened. Migrants still try to come, sure, but only the hardy - the lucky - make it all the way to Thirteen. In a good year, they get four or five.
Most years aren't good ones.
Because the numbers are so few and they need all the population they can get, they accept everyone who comes. Until finally one migrant, supposedly an escapee from the Capitol itself, arrives carrying a Capitol-incubated disease. He's not sick. But he is a carrier.
The disease rushes through Thirteen, destroying their district. Over eighty percent of the population gets sick. Of those, half die and another quarter are left infertile. Only a quarter retain their reproductive capacity. And most of those will always have some scar - whether physical or mental - of the illness.
For an already shrinking population, it's a death blow. The next generation won't be viable, and everyone knows it. They'll never replace their numbers.
They've missed their one chance.
After all this time, the Capitol finally wins.
oOo
The Capitol always wins.
In Two, that is not opinion; it is fact.
No matter what happens, in the end, the Capitol will always win.
Lyme had thought, hoped, for one brief moment that Katniss Everdeen would be the one to prove that maxim wrong, that finally the districts would rise up and take back what was rightfully theirs.
That hope is dead.
It's been ten years since the 74th Games, and Katniss Everdeen is just a memory, a cautionary tale. Instead of the girl on fire, she's a symbol of why you shouldn't burn.
Lyme keeps pushing against the system, but a rebellion of one will never go far, and Two's other Victors are reluctant to join her.
"What's the point?" Enobaria asks. Those gold fangs glimmer in the light. "We're what they made us."
"But don't you want to be something more?" If she can get just one...
Enobaria shakes her head. "If it were possible, sure. But it's never going to happen. The Capitol always wins."
Lyme doesn't stop. Can't stop. Until, finally, she pushes a little bit too hard in exactly the wrong way, and Snow comes down on her hard.
Two has enough Victors. No one will miss one middle-aged woman who won over thirty years ago. Not with all the others vying for attention. Not when Enobaria mentored yet another tribute to victory just this year.
And like that, she's another cautionary tale.
Don't go against the Capitol. You'll never win.
oOo
Posy Hawthorne is fourteen years old, and she's going to die.
She's not pretty or deadly, so unless the Arena is somehow a coal mine, it's not like she'll have any advantage. And the chances of that are practically nil - caves don't film well, so while there's usually (but not always, she saw the 77th Games) some shelter in the Arenas, there's never been a mine.
She's fooling herself, really. District Twelve kids don't go into the mines for anything other than the occasional field trip. Her experience down there lasted less than three hours and taught her very little. She spent the whole trip panicking because both her father and her brother died in a place like that, and it was dark and scary and the thought of working there was completely terrifying.
Well, win or lose, she'll never have to enter a mine again. Victors don't work, and dead tributes…
Her district partner, a boy who's two years older who she recognizes vaguely from school, babbles at their mentor, Peeta Mellark, without making the slightest dent in the man's concentration. He's ignoring them to read a letter which Posy recognizes as the one Mayor Undersee handed to him just before they boarded the train.
She wonders what it says - anything to keep herself from worrying over where and when and how she's going to die.
He smiles, an expression she hasn't seen him wear since Katniss Everdeen died, before tucking the letter into his jacket pocket. With a jolt, he comes back to himself, finally listening to whatever Cann is babbling about.
"So, you're supposed to give us advice," Posy interrupts them both.
Peeta blinks at her, his eyes going through a contortion of emotions she can't name even though not a single one shows on his face. "Here's some advice. Stay alive."
He seems to be waiting for something, but after a minute of silence where Posy and Cann just stare at him, he sighs and heads over to the bar in the corner.
Great. Only one fourteen-year-old has ever won the Games (and Finnick Odair was so popular that the Capitol itself bought him a golden trident of all things), she's got no idea what she's doing, and now her mentor is useless. Besides, it's not like the Games will ever change. The Capitol loves its dead children too much.
Yeah.
She's definitely going to die.
oOo
Coriolanus Snow holds onto power until the very end.
The poison he used on so many others finally works its way through his body, intent on claiming its last victim. There's something terribly ironic about that.
But he knew it was coming, so he's set things in motion for his heir. Demetrius is unfortunately fairly incompetent, but if he comes into an already-established system, he should manage. At least, that's what Coriolanus hopes.
...Perhaps he should name Titania his heir? Her daughter Hippolyta shows promise, anyway. But no. Your oldest child is your heir, and he's never been one to go against tradition.
Anyway, it's too late now. The poison is spreading, drawing him in, making him remember both the best and the worst moments of his life.
Climbing the ranks of power.
Almost being taken down by his own poison.
His wife's death.
The destruction of District Thirteen - oh, they're not officially gone, but they'll never come back. Alma Coin may live on, but her hope for a revolution will not.
The death of Katniss Everdeen.
Killing Katniss Everdeen when the girl was stupid enough to go beyond the fence… that was one of the smartest moves he ever made. Far better than what he'd originally considered, a Quell starring the Victors. It would have been glorious, a show for the ages. Adults, killers all, competing for the crown.
But he'd have lost so many of his moneymakers.
And part of the reason the Games work is because the Capitol isn't attached to the tributes until they win. Then the Capitol is very attached to its Victors. Sending Victors into the Arena? The Capitol might have acted like the Districts, and while he could withstand a disorganized rebellion from Twelve or Eleven or Eight, he would never have been able to survive a rebellion from the Capitol itself.
No. Making the girl a martyr might have destroyed him. Making her instead an object lesson has worked out very well. It's been eleven years since her death, and children are still warned not to go into the woods, or something might eat you.
As he slips toward death, he smiles. Demetrius will continue on his path. In his image.
And isn't that all he could truly hope for?
oOo