[A/N:] Here we are, my friends and minions: the end of this tale. You know the drill - R&R, all that. Hope you like it!

Chapter Three
Self-Destruct

The war goes on for another year, I think. Since we don't know the days, we name a new day That Day and have a short funeral-like memorial ceremony for Mother, Stave's wife and Arabel's parents. I learn how to use the bow and how to carve arrows and I become quite adept with it. I make sure Tommas and Delidah know too, lest be killed one day.

I have a feeling we're winning. The Capitol is running out of soldiers, and District Twelve fights back whenever new ones are brought in. Everyone has their own personal reasons for battling: avenging a loved one, hatred towards to Capitol, simple bloodthirstiness.

I don't know how the other districts are going, or our own soldiers in the Capitol, but I hope they're doing as well as we are.

Then the war finally ends.

It's during another retaliation. I forbid my siblings to join me in fighting back, but this day they put their feet down and come out with me. I hate it, I hate it how they're growing up and getting their own ideas. It's dangerous, and I can't bear the thought of losing one of them. Especially when Mother's past request still floats around my mind: 'Protect Tommas.'

We're well into the retaliation when something goes horribly wrong. Massive planes approach us, roaring, stop above us. Everyone freezes and stares as more and more Capitol soldiers drop down. Hundreds and hundreds, three soldiers for every District citizen. And they open fire on us like we're wild birds trying to escape but we have no wings, instead we're just running about as if we're headless. There's screaming, and death from all sides. The piercing, distinct rattling of bullet fire is drumming against my head.

"GET TO THE HOUSE!" I holler at my siblings, ducking low and covering my head instinctively. They follow my lead and we charge towards the house, weaving between panicking people and cruel soldiers and the dead and the dying. Suddenly something — a rock, I think — hits Tommas in the head. He staggers and drops unconscious. Delidah screams, thinking he's been shot. I scoop him up in my arms. "He's not dead! GO!" I yell at Delidah. We carry on but I can't do it, Tommas is too heavy and it's too difficult. Change of plan. "Delidah, the woods! Wait in the woods!" I say to my sister. I pour Tommas into her arms. "It's not far! Head to the woods, I'll be with you soon! I'm going to find Stave and Arabel!"

"No!" she says. "I'm not leaving you!"

"NOW!"

She turns around and runs away as fast as she can. I go to dive into the mess. But I glance over my shoulder, just one more time, to make sure they're OK.

DELIDAH

I spare one last glance over my shoulder. Raven does, too, and she catches my eye. There's a small, sad smile on her face and I think she nods. I know what she's saying. "Protect Tommas." Then blood explodes on her face and she drops to the ground. Shot. Dead. Gone.

There's no time for regrets. I whirl around and charge away.

Tom is so heavy. But I can see the gap in the fence, just up ahead. Get to the fence, get to the fence...

What happened? Why are there so many enemy soldiers? Where have they come from? My brain is a muddle. A bullet skims past me, nicking my shoulder. I cry out and stumble, but the adrenaline keeps me going. Then we're at the fence. I roll my brother through the gap and wriggle under after him. I pick him up again, almost tripping over another person who tried to escape but was killed, and hurry into the woods, to the lake that Raven showed me, with the Katniss roots.

I hide in a bush, with Tom in my lap. I can hear the pandemonium, the fire raging and the people screaming like lost souls in Hell.

I can't believe it. Raven is dead. After everything we've been through, she's gone just like that. She spent three years protecting us and bringing us up all on her own. Making decisions for us when we couldn't. Hiding us from the enemy. Staying awake all night if need be. Finding us food. And she's gone.

Tears begin to flow down my cheeks and I'm overwhelmed by sadness. I double over, resting my head on Tom's chest, sobbing. Father is dead. Mother is dead. Raven is dead. Tom could be dead. Life isn't fair. What did anyone do to deserve this?

My shoulder is leaking blood. I rip off a strip of material from my shirt and use it as a bandage. It's throbbing and it feels like it's burning a little, but the damage could have been a lot worse. Damage… I have a sinking feeling around the country it's a lot worse than this bullet brushing my shoulder.

The chaos quickly ends. We've lost. The soldiers have won. Please, I think. Please, don't have let us lose this whole war...

I crawl over to the lake and cup some water in my hand, which I splash over Tom's face. He awakes with a start, spluttering and coughing. "Raven!" he cries. Then he sees me alone. "Wh-where's Raven?" he asks.

I shake my head.

His face screws up and he begins to cry, shaking his head in denial. "I don't understand," he says. "I don't understand!"

"She's... She's dead, Tom," I say, my voice catching.

"No!" he cries. "No, she can't be! She's not dead."

I take him in my arms and he sobs into my shirt. I choke back more of my own tears. I have to be the strong one now.

"No," Tom mumbles through his tears. "No."

A loud voice surprises us. "Citizens of Panem, gather round and heed my words well," it says.

Tom and I freeze. I realize the voice came from District 12. "Come on, Tom," I say gently, standing up and taking his hand, tugging him. He stumbles along behind me as I break into a run to get there in time to hear whatever this loud man has to say. We crouch out of sight near the fence, and see a giant screen projected in the sky with the distraught face of a young man of maybe twenty. And when he speaks, it's like the entire world comes toppling down onto me.

"People of Panem — I am your new president, President Snow. I was going to make Panem a place of equality and peace. Each district would be as rich as the Capitol. No one would die of untreated sickness or injuries, or of starvation, or of dehydration. Everything would be better. But then you, the people of my country, rebelled against me when I had done nothing. And in your stupidity and blindness and ignorance, you murdered my daughter. She was all I had left. Your actions were a big mistake. This is something that cannot, and shall not go unpunished.

"As a reminder to you all of your unforgivable crime, you will all see what it feels like to lose a child, how it feels to see someone you love be murdered at merciless hands. You will all feel the pain! I have created a tournament I shall name the Hunger Games. One boy and one girl from each district will be sent into an arena, where they will have to fight to the death, and you will celebrate it. The Hunger Games will take place every year, I swear on my life, until I the day I die. And I will make sure I live the longest any man has ever lived. Every year you will see your own be killed by each other. And you will suffer, as I suffer.

"The first annual Hunger Games shall go forth in the first month of next year. If you try to run, you will die. If you try to fight back, you will die. You will be destroyed, just as District Thirteen was." The screen cuts to a shot of my home, flaming and virtually non-existent. All that stands is the Justice Building.

"No," I choke out.

"And may the odds be ever in your favor," President Snow adds cruelly with a small smile. His face is blotchy and his eyes are bloodshot from crying, and those parting words, with that little smile of his, make him seem insane and broken. Maybe he is, now.

The screen vanishes. There's a beat of confused silence throughout the district, then the screaming starts again. More people are shot dead, and thrown into whatever houses are left standing.

"Come on," I say to Tom in a ragged voice, my entire body quivering. We slide under the fence and sneak to our house. Mostly it's still standing, just one wall smashed down. We go inside and find Raven's bow and arrows sitting on the ground. Sadness sweeps over me and I can't breathe. Tom and I both fall to the floor. Stave is nowhere to be seen. Then we hear a small voice. "Delly? Tom?"

We see a small fire of hair poke out of the pantry. "Arabel," I rasp. I clear my throat. "Bel, is that you?"

"Yes, it's me." Arabel folds herself out of the pantry, walking over to us but stopping a few feet away from us. "Where's Stave?" she asks.

I shake my head. "I don't know."

"Is he dead?"

"I... think so."

Arabel's face is so serious for a seven-year-old. She takes this in a calm silence. "Where's Raven?" she asks softly.

"She's..." I suck in a shaky breath, my chest tightening. "She's…" I manage to spit out some word which resembles "dead".

"Is it just us now?"

I nod. Arabel stands in the same spot for a moment before walking away. I don't blame her. I wouldn't want to be around a broken mess of people if I were her, either. But she comes back with a hairbrush in her hand. She has a comb, one made of wood that I carved for her a while ago, and she used to take great joy in yanking all the knots out of my hair so it was all smooth, but I have never seen this brush before. She puts it on the ground and walks away again.

She fetches a bowl of water from our stash of lake water in a few buckets, and a piece of rag. She crouches in front of Tom and dips the rag in the water, then scrubs the dirt and grime and blood and sweat and tears from Tom's face until he's clean and pink from being rubbed at. He doesn't respond at all to this treatment. When she's done, she says, "Clean with a kiss," and pecks Tom on the cheek.

Then Arabel picks up the brush and sits behind me, and proceeds to brush my hair. It isn't like the comb. This is smooth and bristly and calming. Arabel brushes my hair until it's completely knot-free, then runs her fingers through it once just to check. She crawls in front of us and sits down. I look at her, asking her why, with no words.

"I don't remember my mommy very well," she says. "But I remember that whenever I cried or was sad, she washed my face and brushed my hair. This was her brush." She held up the hairbrush. "Stave said to keep it safe and private. But I thought, since you were sad, and Stave is maybe dead and so is your sister but definitely, I thought Stave would say, 'OK. You can show them your mommy's brush.'"

"Aren't you sad?" I whisper.

Arabel nodded. "I will miss Stave a lot. But Daddy always said that when your friend is sad you have to be strong for them. If you cry, then they have to be strong for you. Even if you are both sad, the person not crying has to be strong for the crying person. I didn't really know what he meant until he and Mommy died and Stave was strong for me. Then his wife died and I was strong for him."

I realize how incredibly intelligent this girl is.

"Can I ask you a question?" she says.

I swallow and nod, hoping it's not going to be a hard one to answer.

"Who was that man outside? The one with the loud voice?" she asks. I sigh with relief.

"That was our new president," I say.

She nods. "He sounded very upset."

"He was. He is."

"Why?"

I take a shaky breath. "The people fighting on our side made a big mistake. They killed his daughter."

Arabel frowns. "Why did they do that? That's bad."

I shake my head. "I don't know, Bel. People do stupid things sometimes."

Arabel thinks this over. "What did he say?"

My heart skips a beat in fear. "Well... He said that he was very upset, and that he is going to punish us."

"What's he going to do?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," I say with a forced smile. Arabel studies my face intently.

"But you're worrying about it, Delly," she says. "Are we going to be OK?"

"You're going to be fine," I say.

"Are we, though?" she insists impatiently. "Are you and Tom?"

She's got me. "For a while, yes."

"How long is a while?" Arabel prompts, getting hurt by the secrecy.

I can't lie to her any longer. I just don't have the strength. "Till the first month of next year."

"What's going to happen?"

These questions are tiring me out. "I don't know exactly, Bel, I'm too tired."

"OK, sleep then. But you will tell me, won't you? Pinky promise?" She sticks out her little finger.

I stare at her. "What?"

"Pinky promise," she says. "You get your pinky and we wrap them together and shake. You can't break a pinky promise."

"All right," I sigh. Arabel curls her finger around mine and shakes. I drag myself over to the bed, brush the rocks from it, and collapse onto it.

Arabel turns to Tom. "Tom," she says gently. "Bed time now."

He doesn't move. She takes his hand, stands up, and pulls her towards the bed. He walks over willingly as if in a trance. He curls up on the bed next to me. I try to go to sleep, but I'm used to having R— her leg resting over mine, and her fingers on my arm. Tom stares straight ahead, unblinking and unmoving and awake. I wriggle over to him and wrap my arm around him. Lying that way, we manage to drift off to sleep.

Next year...

Tomorrow is the day that these Hunger Games begin. We're to gather in the centre of the district and the name of one girl and one boy between the ages of twelve and eighteen will be drawn and they have to go on stage. Besides that, no one knows what else is going to happen before the killing starts.

I've taken a new name — Gerzy. It's a boy's name, yes, because I've been pretending to be a boy ever since a week after the war ended. I cut my hair short and wore male clothing — baggy shirts, to disguise my hips — and tied a piece of cloth tightly around my chest. People honestly believe I am a boy. There was a massive plummet in population numbers, and men were raping women and girls as young as ten, just to get them pregnant and repopulate the country. I'm not the only one to dress up as a boy, but most women and girls hide in their homes, wasting away.

People having started working again, and school has opened, and we all have to go. Arabel enjoys it well enough, but Tom and I think it's a bore. I earn some money by selling my illegally-hunted game to a few people who are willing to buy it. We meet in a warehouse that until recently was used to store exports.

We rebuilt the crumbled wall of our house. People have just got their lives somewhat back on track. Now it's all going down the drain again.

There have been a lot of suicides lately. Teenagers killing themselves to avoid these dreaded Hunger Games.

School has been closed for the week. The streets are near bare. People are just staying at home, spending as much time with their children as possible. I know I'm with Arabel and Tom all the time. It took weeks, but we finally dared to go out in the woods and use R— the bow and arrows again.

"What if your name is drawn? Or mine?" Tom asks me when we're alone in one of the two rooms of the house.

"Then, I suppose, we'll have to go, and we'll have to try to win," I say. "And if we don't, well, the other will still have Bel."

"But there are hundreds of kids, right?" Tom says.

"Don't say that, Tom," I say. "If you say that, you'll get picked for sure."

He sighs. "I miss Raven."

I can't even bare to speak or think her name anymore. I look at my hands. "I know. I do too."

"I think... I think I miss her more than I miss Mother and Father," he says guiltily.

"I do too." There's a pause between us.

"What do you think she'd say, about the Hunger Games?" Tom asks.

"I think," I say, "she'd that we have to win. Because that's what we've tried to do since the war first started. I mean, haven't we?" I look up at Tom, realizing the truth in my words. "Haven't we tried to win? We've fought for our lives. We've made it against all odds. So really, Tom, though it may not seem like it, so far, we're winning already."

Tom flinches. "Don't hex yourself, Delidah. Talking like that is going to make things worse."

I stare at him, trying to get him to understand. "If we don't hope, then we're going to lose."

"We already have!" Tom yells. Arabel comes in from another room, disturbed by the noise.

"Are you two fighting?" she asks.

Tom sighs. "No, Bel, it's all right. We're just discussing things."

Arabel frowns but doesn't reply; she just disappears back into the room.

I sigh. "I'm not going to waste what may be my last day with you arguing. Just remember what I said."

Tom nods.

The next day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, we are called to the centre square. Everyone has to come, even if you are so sick you can't stand up. Only if you're on death's doorstep can you stay home, apparently. The Capitol soldiers who now live here to keep order — called 'Peacekeepers' — are checking every single house in the district, and killing anyone who's at home and not at what the Capitol has called the 'reaping'.

There are cameramen everywhere, like ants feasting on a picnic — or, rather, wild dogs eyeing lost children, considering eating them for lunch.

There's a platform, and two chairs sitting on it, behind a tall wooden rectangular thing with a microphone at the top.

When I arrive, holding tightly onto Arabel's and Tom's hands, I'm pushed away from them and ushered into a group of teenagers my age. "Tom! Bel!" I call, trying to push my way through. I can see them. Tom is separated from Bel, and although he and Bel fight back it's no use. He's thrown into a group of people his age and Bel is tossed to the side to join the children too young and the adults too old to enter. Then I can't see her, or Tom.

Two people take their places on the stage. A man I know to be the mayor of District Twelve, and a woman so bright it hurts my eyes to look at her. She's obviously from the Capitol. She has elbow-length hair, all in ringlets of a different color, and a suit with a skirt instead of trousers that's covered in gold, glittering sequins. Her face is covered in tattoos of various things, like birds, smiling girls, flowers, suns with grinning faces on them, all sorts of happy things. It's disgusting. Only her lips are untouched, instead painted with a bright red, sparkly lipstick. Her teeth are blindingly white. She totters up to the microphone and taps it experimentally. "Uh, excuse me," she says in a voice so strange it takes me a while to decipher what she's saying. Her voice is high-pitched like Arabel's, but that's not the problem. It's her accent. I never knew the Capitol to have an accent, but I guess it does. She sounds like a snake — a dizzy snake. Her S's are long, and her vowels go up and down in strange places. Yet besides keeping her toothy smile in place, her lips barely move.

"Excuse me," she repeats. "All right, yes, I know it's exciting, but can everyone settle down so we can crack on with the show."

A Peacekeeper fires his gun into the air. Everyone is immediately silent.

The disgusting Capitol woman introduces herself, and her name is so strange it just goes way over my head. She says she's our 'district escort', which means every year she will draw the names of our district 'tributes' and take them to the Capitol. She explains the entire process of the Hunger Games.

It sends the district into uproar. Televised? Dressed up and presented to everyone, like cattle being put into costumes before they're slaughtered? What is this, a game? An innocent children's television program? A festivity?

Yes. That's what President Snow wants us to treat it as. All of those things.

More warning shots are fired into the air by Peacekeepers. Everyone settles down, but I can feel the outrage sizzling just under the surface, like a bomb waiting to explode.

Thwnxssssssssskrbd Kfdbwnc, or whatever the Capitol woman said her name is, trots up to a large, round bowl, with a sickeningly cheery, "Ladies first!" and plunges her hand in. I hold my breath, feeling lightheaded with fear, until I realize that I'm counted as a boy. The district escort pulls out a small piece of paper with a name written on it. "Faye Sanderglove," she reads. There are a few screams and cries of disbelief and distraught from loved ones and the crowd murmurs sympathetically. The girl, Faye, walks through the crowd, which parts for her, and onto the platform. She's crying, her entire body visibly shaking. She looks about seventeen. So close to getting out of it, yet so far.

"Anyone want to volunteer in Faye's place?" the escort pipes. There's a loud sobbing coming from somewhere, but no one speaks up. Loyalty can only go so far. Faye is a mess. Her face is as pale as a sheet. Her violently shaking legs look fit to collapse from under her. The mayor, a kind man I suppose, stands up and takes his chair over to her, offering it to her with, "I'm sorry." She nods her thanks, swooning, and falls into it. The mayor returns to his spot, only this time standing.

"Well, next up, the boys!" the district escort says as if this is a good thing. She hops over to another bowl identical to the other, and fishes around inside it. Please don't be me, I think. If there's any god up there, please, don't let it be me.

Too late I realize I should be praying for—

Oh, no. No. It's him. It's Tom. His name has been called. How? His name was one tiny little slip. I hear Arabel's little voice cry out, "Tom!" Black spots swim before my eyes. I almost faint as Tom walks up onto the platform, looking just as bad as Faye.

Protect Tommas. That's what Father, and Mother, and most importantly R— she had said. Protect Tommas. And I can't.

Then I look down at myself. I'm a boy. Yes, I can protect him. The district escort asks for volunteers and my hand shoots up. I make sure to keep my voice a slightly deeper teenage boy's voice, one whose voice hasn't broken yet but is going to soon, when I call, "Yes! I volunteer!"

Tom freezes on the platform.

The escort scans the crowd for me. I push my way through until people get the idea and move for me. "I volunteer in place of Tom," I say breathlessly when I reach the bottom of the platform. I feel so elated I'm not failing R— her last request that I'm not even scared.

"No, you can't," Tom whispers to me, fear and pain clear in his eyes. "I won't let you."

"Do you know what Father's, Mother's, and R— Raven's," I force out, "last request was?"

"No."

"Protect Tommas."

"What? Why?" he cries, but I turn around and at the escort's request to state my name.

"Your brother, is it?" the escort says, gesturing to Tom. I nod. The escort winks knowingly. "I understand sibling rivalry. I have a brother myself. Hate it when he takes all the fame, too." She laughs lightly.

Tom yanks me back by my arm. "Don't make me tell them!" he hisses in my ear. "I'll tell them you're a girl!"

"Listen, Tom," I say seriously. "Father, Mother and Raven all died to save you. Would you have them all die in vain? Do you want their last wishes to not be fulfilled?"

Tom's grip slackens on my arm, remembering as I am of the time that Raven used the same argument on us when discussing moving to District 12, and his face morphs into an expression of betrayal. I take my arm back and stride to the centre of the stage.

"All right, then!" the escort trills excitedly. "Let's give them a hand, everyone!"

No one claps. I can feel Tom's gaze on the back of my head. He hasn't moved from the platform.

"Well, anyway, Gerzy, Faye, shake hands," the escort directs us. We do. Faye's hand is cold and sweaty and shivering. She can't look me in the eye. It's hard facing someone who will be trying to kill you in a few days.

The escort smiles widely and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, your first District Twelve Hunger Games tributes!"

I face the crowd, my hands clenched into fists. I am the first male tribute for District Twleve in the first annual Hunger Games. Tommas is the only one left of my family, my blood family. Arabel has taken our name, but she wasn't born with it. Only Tom can pass on our family name. I hope my descendents will fight as hard as I will, as Tom will, as Raven always had. People may find out that my name is Delidah, not Gerzy; that I am female, not male. It doesn't matter.

But I hope, in future generations, people will remember me, remember the family name three people died for.

Remember me, Delidah Everdeen.

[A/N:] Cue collective gasp of realisation from audience...
By the way, Tommas doesn't die. Just to let you know. In case you haven't pieced the puzzle together. Yeah.
Olive-wah, peepsicles!

~Yours truly, LuvRuePrim XD