District Five's Demi Quinlan's POV:

Silence seems to surround me at the moment. So much so that even the faint noises of the arguing couple next door seem to fill my room and hurt my ears. Sitting silently on my bed I try to focus on their argument, try to find something to distract myself from this boredom. But they have just digressed to name calling and I don't think even they know how the argument started anymore.

Looking around mine and Christine's sparse little room I try to find something else to distract myself with but it's no use, there's nothing in here except two small draws, hers overflowing with colour and mine neatly closed. I wonder where she is now and instantly hate myself for thinking it; of course where she would be would be better than here. She was probably with friends, a large group of them making noise and having fun. While I sat silently on my bed, terrified of making any loud sounds that may wake Mom from her sleep.

Outside I watch the sun set slowly and wonder if we'll see Dad tonight, he'd been away working at a hydro plant for a week and he was due back yesterday with his much needed pay packet. I know it'll be depleted from the bars and gambling dens he and his colleagues would have found on the long walk home but if there was only a small amount of money left after we'd paid the rent for some fresh vegetables or maybe a slice of meat I could cook for us I'd be happy. Standing slowly up on the cold concrete floor I step over to the window and look down the street watching as people come and go and children play out on the street. As I watch them laugh and play I can't help but feel empty, there was nothing for me here, just a sick mother, an absent father and a twin sister who probably didn't know I exist.

I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to shout something but nothing comes out. Nothing ever comes out, Christine calls me stupid. Says I don't have a thought in my mind and that's why I barely ever talk. She doesn't know I heard her say that of course, it was one evening a couple of years ago when Zoe and I were following her after school, pretending we were tracking her in the Hunger Games.

"Demi!" My Mom's voice splits the silence from downstairs "Come help me to the privy" she calls.

I slip out of my room and walk downstairs to where our front room had been turned into my mother's room after she lost her sight and couldn't use the stairs anymore. I slide the door open slowly and look at her for a moment, taking in how tired and grumpy she looked, how angry her bright purple eyes appeared so I could best judge her mood before making myself known to her. The sleep seemed to have calmed her however as her exotic eyes seem cool and collected for a change. I knew they weren't natural and I'd always remember a moment of a memory when I was a small child with a mother with cool grey eyes that matched my own. I don't know how or when they changed but when they did she did, she lost her sight and her happiness along with it.

"Demi" she calls again moving her head around the room as if she were searching for me in the darkness.

"Here Mom" I reply quietly.

"Help me up" she says and I hold onto her as she moves out of bed and help her slide her feet into her shoes before leading her out of the front room, through the kitchen and into the yard where the privy was attached to the back of the house. I step out into the yard for a moment as I wait for her and look at the state of the place, the trash would need taking to the dump soon, a round trip that would take me the best part of an afternoon and I'd also need to clean the concrete floor and the windows needed a wipe over.

Of course I'd get no help with these chores Christine would ignore any plea for help just as she's been doing her whole life.

"All done sweetie" Mom calls and I let myself in to the privy to help her back to her room. Once she's sat down on her chair I move to pull my hand away from hers but she holds on.

"Thank you darling" she says, looking in the direction she thinks I am "I wouldn't be able to survive without you my baby girl"

"It's okay" I reply "It's why I'm here"

"You've always been so selfless Demi" she says with a smile "You remind me of my mother in that way. I fear your sister has too much of your father and I in her. Selfish through and through that one, just like me."

Mom never really talks this much; especially not to me so I'm flummoxed for words for a moment "You're not selfish Mom" I say eventually "You're ill, so I look after you"

"I made myself this way darling" she sighs "in my vanity I thought I could find another miracle like you and Christine. I was promised beauty beyond compare and I got two useless eyes. Promise me something Demi"

"Anything"

"No matter what they offer you don't take it. It's not worth the price."

"Mom I take the tesserae" I reply "You know that, Christine does too, we need the food for when fathers not home"

"They will offer so much more than food" she says "But don't take them on their word, the capitol; they're all liars and thieves. They took my eyes from me." She begins to cry and I stroke her hand.

As we remain silent in this moment of bonding her sat on her chair and me stood silently beside her, the door flies open and bangs against the wall pulling us from our moment.

"Have you made her cry again, you stupid girl" Father strides into the room his face glowing an angry drunken red and I feel mother let her hand go from mine.

"Falcon" she sighs "it's been so long since I heard your voice"

"I rushed home to you as soon as I could my dear" he lies swooning over Mom, I can smell the beer on him though and see the bags under his eyes that tell me he's probably been up playing cards the last few nights.

"Have you got your wages?" I ask him "I need some things for the kitchen and some thread to fix our clothes."

"Get out of here girl" he shouts

"Only if you give me money to buy us food" I reply "or do you want us to starve next time you go for weeks on end."

Dad growls and pulls an envelope from his back pocket pulling out about half the notes he throws them on the floor "Go buy whatever you want my darling girl" he snarls "and get me something strong to go with it"

I gather up the notes and stuff them in my pockets as I leave the room, leaving our house I step around the corner and take a moment to compose myself. I hate getting into confrontations like that with Father, especially with Mom in the room. She'll remember that for weeks now and even when Father has gone back to working on the hydro plant she'll take out that anger on me. I'm not going to see her that calm and happy for a long time to come.

I make the short walk to the small market place in the centre of our neighbourhood and decide to seek out Bod first to buy a bottle of something for Father.

"You're out late Demi" he says as I take a couple of small bottles from his stand and pass him a couple of notes in return.

"Had to pick up a few things" I reply before wandering away, Bod's a friendly enough guy but I always get the feeling he's talking to my chest not my face and though Christine loves the attention our curvy figure gets from guys I'm not so keen.

After I make a few more careful purchases of thread, salt and preserves from the closing market stalls I make sure to keep a chunk of the money for myself to use over the coming weeks. No point blowing it all in one go.

I head away from the market and make my way slowly back home, really hoping that I've bought enough booze to keep Dad happy for the night.

"Hey isn't that your sister?" I hear a shout from before me, I recognise the voice as belonging to Lumen one of Christine's louder friends.

"It can't be her, she doesn't leave the house" Seth adds to general laughter all around. I keep my head down and keep walking but they catch up with me quickly.

"Hey Demi" calls Niels "tell us again what it's like being the ugly twin"

"Christine tells us you were born with an extra toe" laughs Astrid "Let's have a look"

They all continue to laugh and throw insults as me as I walk down the street home, all except Christine of course, she never insulted me to my face, that's what friends were for after all.

"I'm going home now" she announces to the group of them "I'll see you in the morning" and like that her friends scatter off like rats and after a quick snog from Seth her boyfriend it's just the two of us.

"What you doing with that alcohol" she asks as we walk up the front path.

"Dads home" I reply, I see her face drop.

"Oh" she sighs as I push open the door, the front room is shut off and I can hear some unsavoury noises coming from within.

"I can't deal with this" Christine says "I'm going over to Seth's, tell me when he's gone" and moments after returning home she's gone again. I creep through to the kitchen and leave the bottles on the table and the food in the cupboard, arranging it in a neat straight line. Carefully I make my way upstairs and hide the remainder of our money in a sock under my mattress.

Pulling on my night shirt I lay under my quilt as I listen to the couple next door have make up sex, focussing on those noises to hide the ones from downstairs. I scrunch my eyes closed and curl up in a ball, what was I suppose to do to escape this? This stupid life I'd been given the day mother joined that experiment to give her twins, one of the ones Zippina our mad victor is always talking about. I knew I was the extra kid, the one made in the same image as Christine but with a little bit less of everything. Demi, the insignificant one, the smaller fraction, the disposable one.

District Five's Hugh Kratis' POV:

I run the smooth surface of the concrete wall I perch on under my fingers, as I sit outside the labs to wait for my parents to leave work. They were supposed to be using their one day off a week to walk with me to the market to buy me some new shoes, but of course they had to stop by work first.

"We'll only be five minutes" they'd told me "We just have to check on some samples" that was about half an hour ago.

I'd been entertaining myself people watching as I'd perched outside the physical materials lab on a cold concrete wall. I liked to play a game with myself where I decided where people were going to or who they were meeting. Like the woman in the red blouse moving quickly between the crowds of people, she was late for a date, with some important man, maybe a top scientist or even a capitol delegate. She wasn't a prostitute though, just ambitious. She pushes past a short elderly man in a lab coat, I decided he was a chemist, one of the men who created medicines like morphling, he hated his work because the drugs hurt people but did it anyway for the money. He nods politely at a young couple as he walks past them and I decide they are his neighbours, newly married, maybe she had just got pregnant and with the reaping coming up it was probably all she could think about, that day in twelve years time where her child was at risk like the rest of us.

"Hugh!" I look away from the couple to see Alvie my friend and his parents walk up to me.

"Hey Alvie" I smile "Mr and Mrs Berit" I add as a politeness to his parents.

"What are you doing out here?" Alvie's Mom asks.

"Parents are in work" I reply "we're just on our way to the market" I twist my ankle to show the hole in the soles of my shoes "I need new shoes before reaping day"

"We're buying Alvie a new shirt" Mrs Berit replies and Alvie nods enthusiastically

"Vector's really jealous" he laughs "but I told him he can shut up because he's free from the reaping now"

"Vector's old enough to buy his own shirts" adds Mr Berit "We must be getting on Hugh, do you want to join us"

"I was supposed to wait for them here" I sigh "though I am getting rather bored."

"I'll go see what they're up to" offers Mr Berit removing his work pass from his pocket "I'll be five minutes" he says to his wife and he walks up the stairs and inside the building.

"That's what Mom said" I say with a smile and Alvie laughs

"Where's your brothers?" Mrs Berit asks

"At Aunt Tamsyn's" I reply "We're heading over there for dinner later"

After about ten more minutes of small talk where Alvie's Mom asked me questions and I answered Mr Berit and my parents emerge from the lab.

"Oh Hugh, I'm really sorry" Mom says pulling me into a hug which I wriggle free from quickly as Alvie smirks at me.

"I really doesn't matter" I reply as all six of us continue the walk to the market place, Alvie and I walking just out of hearing from the adults who are all discussing whatever miraculous discovery my parents had made in the lab.

"So the reapings coming up" Alvie says after a moment, he always seemed to know the exact wrong thing to say.

"I can't believe the twins are eligible" I reply with a sigh

"I can't believe Vector isn't" he replies "We always had a thing on reaping day where we'd step out of the house at the same time and back into the house at the same time."

"Cute" I reply, though I didn't quite see how they both fit though the door, Vector was a pretty large lad and Alvie though only fourteen like me wasn't exactly small.

"Liam's been practicing fighting" I say quietly

"With who?"

"Smaller kids at school, they sent a letter home with him the other day but I saw him throw it away."

"It's a phase" Alvie says "remember when we turned twelve"

"I never fought anyone" I say

"Yeah but I recall Otis practicing on you" he says, I scowl at the memory, Otis and his pack of cronies had only just stopped picking on me last year when his cousin Baelfire was reaped for the games. I'd never told Alvie about this but I'd found him crying behind the dumpsters as school and he looked like he needed comforting so I'd told him about my own cousin who'd been killed by in the 143rd games when I was only five.

Gabe had been a good contender they'd all said, he was a tall lad, good looking, he'd got a score of eight, but in the end a career killed him off in the bloodbath and history had forgotten his name.

"Otis is alright" I say "as you say it's just a phase"

We reach the market to see it's even busier than the plaza outside the labs was and I say my farewells to Alvie as we head to different sections.

Barely any time later and I had a fresh pair of black shoes on my feet "Don't wear them when you play out" Mom had said "you have you plimsolls for that, these are smart shoes remember"

"Of course" I respond not saying what I was really thinking, these were my just in case shoes, my reaping shoes and in that eventuality they'd be my funeral shoes too.

Dad ruffles my head "Smile it'll probably never happen" he says

"But what if it does" I whisper as Mom is distracted by a stall selling some fruit for a ridiculous amount of money.

"You'll be fine" Dad assures me "Our family has had its share of games tragedy hasn't it, lightning never strikes the same place twice"

I nod as Mom rejoins us, a paper bag in her hands, "I bought some apples" she says with a grin "I couldn't resist them, one for each of us and one for Aunt Tamsyn too of course"

Aunt Tamsyn is Dads sister and was Gabe's Mother, but unlike some of the mothers of tributes she seemed to the outside world to be mostly recovered from her tragedy. When we reach her house she comes to the front door in a neat little piny and with a big grin. "Those boys of yours are getting more boisterous every day Issac" she laughs as she hugs dad.

"They must get that from the same side of the family that made you" he laughs as we walk into her neat little home.

As we sit down at the dinner table I finally find out why my parents were so long in the lab, apparently their experiments had just confirmed that a few simple changes to a rocks atomic makeup can alter its state in barely any time at all. As they talk excitedly about how this could revolutionise building methods and the repairing of our roads, but all I can think of is a hundred and one ways a Gamemaker could use this to hurt a tribute.

Head Gamemaker Otho White's POV:

The scene in Five is as usual an austere one, I always found the people of Five far too serious. Which I suppose was a little pot calling kettle black from me, but their just didn't seem to be a smile in the large crowd that drizzly morning.

Like a small fluffy cloud dressed in a woollen coat Cornelius steps up to the microphone which he lowers after the tall mayor steps away. He'd been escorting Ten last year but after a few incidents and clashes with the mentors there I'd quickly swapped him up to Five where the crowd was a bit more forgiving to people who were different.

Cornelius welcomes the crowd with a short speech and moves over to the specially lowered bowls "Boys first" he calls as he draws a name.

"Hugh Kratis" he calls, there is a moment of silence as a boy in shiny new shoes and a smart gray suit steps from the crowd. He seems to be crying and it takes him a moment to stumble up to the stage. As he stands next to Cornelius the tall boy towers over the small man.

"Any volunteers?" asks Cornelius, silence, "Onto the girls then"

He digs a little deeper in the bowl this time before drawing a slip of paper "Christine Quinlan" he calls.

There is a scream of fear from the crowd and the camera zooms over to two identical girls in the crowd, one of whom had shrunk towards the floor as she screamed loudly with fear and horror.

For a moment I assume that to be the reaped girl but after a moment of composing herself the girl beside her steps out of the crowd and onto the stage. She looks nervously over at the crowd as no one volunteers for her, her eyes darting around fearfully.

"Demi" she calls down at the girl "You'll be alright without me, I know"

The pair of tributes shake hands and head into the justice centre as the main feed yet again turns to the studio.

In the two small rooms I watch both tributes closely, I had a good feeling about the girl, she was calm and collected and as her mother was led into the room by her twin sister who still had tears running down her face she remained that way, telling her sister not to waste her life.

A boy came in next and tried to kiss her, Christine pulled away from him though and the two argued a moment about wasting last chances before he stormed out. She didn't look too bothered however, just more determined so by the time the peacekeepers came for her she looked ready to kill.

Meanwhile in the boys room, there had been many tear, many promises and a few useless hints about avoiding the cornucopia unlike some cousin who a quick search told me had died a few years back in the games that Victoria Starr had won.

By the time District Six comes onto the screen I'm already bored of Five, I could see why Syrio used to drink through the reapings, my attention was really starting to wane by now.

A/N: Blog time, I'm finally ready to show everyone the blog I've been working on to go with this story and you can find it at turningofthetidestributes dot blogspot dot com. Any and all feedback and opinions on it would be greatly appreciated as It's still a work in progress.

Thanks to angelofmusic4ever for Demi and Christine and Sparkie Sequins for Hugh, hope you guys liked them. (I aged Hugh down a bit, hope you don't mind Sparkie)