oOo
Plutarch Heavensbee spends twenty-six years as the Head Gamemaker, and in that time, he does his absolute best to make the Games more boring. He's sneaky about it under President Snow, but once Snow dies…
First there's that year of confusion, then Claudius Templesmith takes over and Plutarch can make his machinations more obvious. Snow would have removed him long ago, but Claudius never does. Plutarch isn't sure if Claudius doesn't realize what he's doing or if he doesn't have the guts to protest. Or if Finnick Odair's leash is that short.
Probably the last.
He makes the Hunger Games much more boring, much more predictable, so the Capitol finds them less interesting.
Meanwhile, he invents new diversions, new events for the Capitol to enjoy. To bet on.
And it works. Attention on the Hunger Games slowly wavers, then wanes, as fascinated Capitolites clamor for more feats of endurance, tests of strength, and skill-based competitions. Finally the Hunger Games is one spectacle among many instead of the sole event the Capitol lives for.
Once the Hunger Games are sidelined - most of the stylists have moved to something new, Effie Trinket is the toast of Panem, and even Caesar Flickerman tried to get in on the new Olympics - Plutarch knows it's time.
With the Victors, he begins to push Claudius to end the Games.
"They're not necessary," he says at one meeting.
"People love those new Olympics," he says at another.
"People get angry when you kill their children. Best to keep the districts pacified," he says at a third.
Slowly, it works. Claudius hasn't taken that leap yet, but one day soon, he will.
Plutarch still wishes there had been a true revolution, that Katniss Everdeen had been able to live up to the hopes laid upon her. But she was a child, and her shoulders weren't wide enough. Revolution - true revolution - failed.
Instead the Capitol is not destroyed, not changed. They still eat too much and vomit it up, care about the silliest things, and ignore the plight of those without enough in the districts. But at least they no longer cheer for the deaths of children.
It will have to do.
oOo
District Four is beautiful.
It always has been, really. At least, to Annie it has.
But the scenery is nothing when compared with the people.
The most wonderful thing she could imagine is playing with her husband and their children in the ocean surrounding their home. Yes, the ocean itself is beautiful, but it's the people in it who truly hold her attention. Finnick, unscarred despite the wounds he's sustained, catches their daughter and lifts her above his head while their son dances around them, giggling all the while.
Their children should be older, in their teens instead of seven and three. They should have more than just two; Annie always wanted a big family. She treasures the family she has even though a part of her will always ache for what she should have gotten.
They weren't able to live the life they deserved. The Games, the Capitol, took so much from them. Finnick spent years as a slave, forced into a veneer of availability so the Capitol could think of him as someone they could own. Annie spent years stuck inside her own head, unable - unwilling - to trust that anything was real.
They're finally starting to heal, to get back what should have been theirs.
She'll never be completely sane. He'll never be completely unscarred (even if those scars never show on his falsely perfect skin). The rest of the Victors will always be immutably changed, whether dead like Katniss Everdeen or permanently wounded like Johanna Mason.
But still. This is better. And if they have their way, by the time their children are old enough to be Reaped, the Hunger Games will no longer exist.
oOo
Sometimes it feels like Twelve has been asleep for hundreds of years, and that it just woke up. What used to be a grim coal-covered town is now-
Well, it's still coal-covered.
But it's happy, vibrant. The people talk as they run their errands. They chat with Sae when they buy her stew and linger to eat.
What's in the stew is better, too. There were lean years, hard ones, after Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne died and the woods were fully blocked off. Head Peacekeeper Thread didn't make it any easier. But now things are different. The woods are still off-limits, but more supplies come into Twelve, and there have even been raises at the mines. More people can afford to buy food, and Sae can afford better meat to put in it. There's even a new market where she has a stall.
Of course, she still serves squirrel stew sometimes. The little buggers are on the trees inside the fence as well as out, and Vick Hawthorne's a good trapper. She's got a wealth of customers now, people who want what she cooks. Everyone from the miners to the merchants to the Mayor comes by her booth.
Even Peeta Mellark comes sometimes, no matter that he can afford far better food than her measly squirrel stew - even if he always treats it as though it's the best meal he's ever had.
From what Sae can see, he's happier than he used to be, at least most of the year. Right before the Games, he always goes into a funk, and he doesn't come out of it until a month or so after he returns from the Capitol. He still hasn't brought home a Victor, but looking at him, Sae's not sure he truly wants to.
She's just glad that none of her grandchildren were ever Reaped. Her heart still aches for her oldest daughter, dead in the 47th Hunger Games. Pica was only twelve. She never had a chance.
But maybe future children will.
oOo
A month after the 98th Hunger Games, Darius is finally free.
It's President Templesmith's newest initiative - a new Avox hasn't been made in almost five years, and the current ones are being released to live their lives.
Many of them stay anyway, because where else can they go? Lavinia tells him she's going to keep spying for Finnick Odair and the other Victors - best to keep Panem moving in this better direction. But now she can do it as a servant, not a slave.
The thought of staying, if he has any other choice, makes him sick. Even if there isn't a place for them. The Capitol will recoil at people so mauled, and most of them have no connection to the districts. Besides, a lack of tongues makes it difficult to communicate.
But enough of them are determined to leave that they're going to make their own place. Even if it means they go to Twelve - Darius's years there were among the happiest of his life. Life was simple back then. Sure, Twelve was always a mess, but eating squirrel stew, tugging Katniss Everdeen's braid, working under a Head Peacekeeper who was content to live and let live… it was a good life. Twelve is worth a try.
And it works; Purnia allows them to build their own small settlement, and Madge Undersee and Peeta Mellark lead the district to accepting this new group of strange soundless people who look so different from the Twelve natives. They don't all give their full histories; Lyta, for one, never uses her full name. For all that Twelve is welcoming, Snow's granddaughter might be one step too far, and no one - least of all Lyta herself - would blame them for it.
But as strange as they are, the Avoxes are welcomed and become a part of this new Panem.
And really, what more can a group of ex-slaves ask for?
oOo
At the age of seventy-nine, Beetee Latier goes to sleep and never wakes up. Some part of him knows it's coming, knows it's the end. He welcomes it in a way he couldn't when he was sixteen and terrified to die. He killed then, to survive, used what the Capitol gave him to build a bomb to take out all the Careers at once. Now there's nothing to fight; he'll quietly let himself pass.
His one regret is that he didn't live to see the end of the Games. It hasn't happened yet, but he's certain it's coming. They'll convince Templesmith one day, and the Games will finally be over.
Twenty-five years later than it could have. Than it should have.
Katniss Everdeen still shines in his mind, a brighter spark than any of the false ones made in District Three. She was the Mockingjay. She should have lit the world on fire.
She was cut down too early, too falsely.
There is blood on his hands, but only that which he could not avoid. And he has kept five tributes alive. It's not as many as some mentors, but it's more than most. Those children - adults now - are his legacy.
And what more can a dying man ask for?
oOo
Effie hasn't spoken to Peeta Mellark in years, so she's surprised when he finds her in the audience at the Victory Ceremony for the 100th Hunger Games. She moved on years ago and is no longer Twelve's escort, hasn't been since she began hosting the Olympics. She was reluctant to leave District Twelve, but Peeta urged her to go, to take advantage of the opportunity presented to her. And she did so.
Cinna and Portia left with her; they design for her and the Olympics now. The uniforms are theirs, as are many of the team costumes. They show off their skill with her, dressing her as everything from a starlet to a mockingjay.
It means Peeta is alone other than the Avoxes and the tributes - and, she supposes, the other Victors. But unlike her fears, it doesn't seem to have harmed him.
Peeta looks different, older. It's a jolt to see him like this, when her image of him will always be a boy on the edge of manhood, a sixteen-year-old sharing a couch with Katniss Everdeen. No matter that he hasn't been that age in years. No matter that when she moved on he was over thirty.
They sit together and watch the crowning of the Victor, an eighteen-year-old from Four, one of Mags's great-granddaughters, and listen to President Templesmith's announcement that Margaux Flanagan will be the final Victor - that the Hunger Games are over.
Peeta has a satisfied - but not surprised - smile on his face.
Effie isn't sure what to think. Yes, she loved the Hunger Games when she was younger. Yes, she was an escort for over twenty-five years. But Katniss's death broke something in her and made her wonder for the first time if this was what the districts felt like when one of their own was Reaped.
She never said anything aloud. She still won't.
But after everything, she can't be upset that there will never again be another Hunger Games.
oOo
Peeta Mellark isn't that old, in the grand scheme of things. He's only forty-three.
But he's lived long enough to see the end of the Hunger Games.
It took thirteen years, but they finally convinced President Templesmith that the Games needed to end and Plutarch's distractions would be a better form of entertainment. The Capitol doesn't even seem to miss it, concentrated on Plutarch's Olympics as they are.
He never had a Victor. Twenty-six years of mentoring, and all of his tributes died. One more year than you, old man, he thinks as he stands at Haymitch's grave. He can see the tribute cemetery nearby, those fifty-two young lives he tried and failed to save, from Delly Cartwright all the way down to Maisy Dobbs.
Panem has paid a hard price.
But finally, finally they're free. All the Victors, all those children - they're free. They will never again be called upon to sacrifice their lives, their bodies, or their minds. No more children will die.
He still remembers Katniss, that bright shining spark of a girl who he loved. Now that he's older, he knows he loved the idea of her long before he knew the real her. That doesn't make his love less real, but after she died, he was able to let her go as a dream he never truly had.
He's always reminded of her when he sees Arrow Hawthorne, named in a roundabout way in honor of her aunt. Prim and Rory's daughter is fifteen now, with black Seam hair and blue merchant eyes. She isn't a clone of her aunt, doesn't look exactly like her, but when she stands in just the right way, the resemblance is striking.
Peeta wonders, if the Games had continued, would she have been Reaped?
He's glad he'll never have to find out.
Instead, he can go on and live his life. No more tributes, no more whoring. Just him and District Twelve. His home.
He touches the three middle fingers of his left hand to his mouth and holds them out to Katniss's grave. She didn't make it to the end of the Games. But she was a part of their end. And she'll always be his first love.
This will be his last visit to the cemetery. He's said goodbye. There's nothing left for him here.
Mayor Madge Undersee - older, wiser, and even better than her father at sneaking around under a president's nose - takes his hand as he comes out of the cemetery. "You're free."
He'll never be truly free, and he knows she knows that. But now he has a chance to move on. He squeezes her hand. "That I am." It's time to take a leap of faith. "Come over for dinner?" It's the first time in all those years that he's actually invited her. Every week, she's just shown up.
Her smile is blinding. "I'd love to."
She's not Katniss. She never will be.
But he's not sixteen anymore either. It won't be what he wanted back then. But it could be something wonderful.
Hand-in-hand, they walk forward into the new Panem.
oOo