Thanks for the reviews, guys. It's good to know that more people like this fic - it gives me the motivation to continue.

Enjoy.

When I wake up the sun still hasn't risen. For a second I wonder where I am. Then I remember, and immediately wish I hadn't. There's no way I'm going to get any sleep now, so I get up and get dressed.

For want of anything better to do, I leave my room and wander down the corridors. My feet trace the path I walked yesterday to dinner. My feet… Hang on, I forgot my mop. Lucky nobody saw me.

I almost run back to my room then decide against it. Instead I walk back at a speed that means I can easily switch to a limp if I see anyone. Then I grab my mop and walk normally back the way I came. I don't even know why I'm walking, but I figure that it's better to do something than stay locked up in my quarters.

I reach the television room where we watched the Reapings and pull the door open, only to find that there's already someone in there. Ando's sitting and watching replays of previous games – of his Hunger Games, I notice with a shock.

"Hello Lucas," he says "come in."

I do.

"Oh, so you can walk," says Ando. "You've been plotting since the second your name was called, haven't you? Maybe we do have a chance this year."

Quickly I start limping again. I hadn't realised I forgot to fake it, which is worrying. I must be more careful in the future, I decide.

"Are there any cameras on the train?" I ask him.

"Nope," replies Ando cheerfully, as if he's unaware of what's going on onscreen.

I relax. My secret is safe.

"I still do have a crippled leg," I say. "But it isn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. You won't tell anybody, will you?"

"Not even Morgan?"

"Not even Morgan or Kyra. The more people who know the worse it is for me," I tell him firmly.

"Very well." He accepts my decision. "Though wouldn't Kyra already know?"

I hadn't though of that, but I shake my head. Better to be safe than sorry. We sit there in silence for a while, staring at the screen. I don't want to watch, but I'm unable to tear my eyes away.

"Why are you always so cheerful?" I ask Ando after a while.

"Why not?" he responds.

I think. "Well after what you've been through I'd expect you to be more…"

"Like Morgan?" he finishes.

I nod. "Kind of. But not necessarily like Morgan. Just… you know, less cheerful?"

He grins. "Well if I'm not cheerful, who will be? Certainly not Morgan, and not you or Kyra either. Someone needs to be the comic relief."

He pauses for a while and then grows more serious.

"Besides. I didn't have to actually kill anyone to win. Maybe I threw Aspen into that snake pit, but I didn't plant the trap. My hands are more or less clean, so I'm not as haunted by my victory as most of the others are."

Ando smiles again. "And being cheerful annoys the Capitol more than anything else. They've set it up so that even the victor suffers. They see me perfectly happy and they can't do anything about it. They hate it."

We watch the replay in silence for another few minutes. This isn't the whole Games, of course. What we're watching is the three hour highlights video that was made after the Hunger Games.

Ando is the one to break our silence this time.

"You're Tomas Haron's kid, aren't you?"

I nod. I can't bring myself to say anything else.

"I worked with your father. He was a good man. I heard about the accident, but I couldn't come round to help."

He gestures at the television, which is showing Ando sprinting through the jungle as fast as he can, with some kind of animal hot on his tail.

"As you can see, I was… otherwise occupied."

Abruptly, Ando switches the television off and changes the subject at the same time. Which is really annoying, because I wanted to hear more about Dad.

"You shouldn't be watching this. Not right before the games, anyway. It does wonders in lowering your optimism."

But what am I supposed to do? I can't just pass the time fretting over what's going to happen to me. Then again, Ando has a point. Watching all those deaths is just going to make me feel worse.

Ando sees that I'm not going to say anything.

"I'd try to get some more sleep if I were you. You're going to need all your energy tomorrow."

A few hours later, I realise that Ando was right. I thought that the arena was going to be bad, but this is far worse. There are some things I really, really hate. Being pitied is one of them. Losing my dignity is the other. It seems that the Capitol is determined to take the few things I have left after the accident away from me. Yet another reason I should hate them.

At the moment, I have been striped of my dignity entirely. I should probably forget it even existed – as they say, ignorance is bliss. I don't agree with that though. I'd rather be in a bad situation and know I'm in one than walk around with my head in the clouds. At least if you know the facts you have a chance of manipulating your situation to give you an advantage. If you don't know anything, then how can you hope to avoid your fate?

Then again, I don't think knowledge of my situation is going to do me any good for the immediate future. I don't see any way to get out of this torture that my prep team call 'getting you ready for your big day'. What big day? I'm going to be the laughing stock of Panem. Again.

To add insult to injury, this 'preparation' hurts. I should be used to pain, what with my leg and all, but this is different. It's pain mixed in with the utter absence of modesty.

I suppose I should be glad that two-thirds of my prep team is male, but considering the fact that my designer is supposedly called Vesta I have no hopes that it's going to be male. Have these people even heard of modesty? Or do they think that we're just animals to be played with, and therefore we don't care if the opposite sex sees us naked?

Well, I'll have you know that I'm human, thank you very much, and I do care about being seen naked. I might be able to put up with that simple indignity, but I'm also being poked and prodded in very uncomfortable places. And I've been scrubbed till my skin feels like it. Then they striped me of am my body hair, everywhere. And I mean everywhere. What's up with that?

Now Juno, the female member of my prep team, darts out the door to 'consult with Vesta'. Can't she at least bring the woman in to see me for herself?

Juno, a woman so covered in red she looks like she was in some kind of explosion at a paint factory, returns.

"Vesta isn't coming yet. She wants us to begin the first layer."

Uh oh. I really don't like the sound of that. The three members of my prep team – the two males are called Remus and Romulus, and are almost identical, just wearing inverted colours – put on some kind of masks. Romulus hands me another of the masks and helps me to put it on.

I wonder what the masks are for. It doesn't take me long to find out. Then Romulus, Remus and Juno each grab a bottle of some sort of body paint and spray it over me. The fumes spray my eyes, so I quickly jam them shut.

This is going to be as terrible as last year. Last year, the tributes were gargoyles. A few years before that, they took a page from District Twelve's book and were dressed up as quarry workers. Another year our tributes were simply a block of stone. Our district isn't as hard to work for as Twelve, who do coal, or Eight, who are in charge of livestock, but stone is still pretty hard. There's a limit to how much you can do with a block of stone. I hope I don't end up naked, like some poor tributes from District Twelve were one year.

After a while, the sound of spraying stops and I judge it safe to open my eyes again. My entire body is covered in light grey paint. Remus is in front of me brandishing a spray bottle. He pulls off my mask.

"Hold your breath," he says. "This won't hurt a bit."

I comply, and Remus quickly sprays some paint onto the part of my face that was covered by the mask.

"We need it all to be the same colour, you see" says Romulus. "Usually, we'd do your face by hand, but the foundation layer needs to be evenly coloured."

Juno goes to fetch Vesta while the twins prop a mirror in front of me. I am completely and utterly grey. Even my usually light brown hair is the same colour as the rest of my body. The only spot of colour anywhere comes from my blue eyes.

Juno skips back into the room, a tall woman with deathly pale skin and yellow hair following her. She's my designer then. She doesn't look too bad – after Theodora's pinstriped skin and Juno's red explosion, she looks positively normal. I dimly recognise her – didn't she do District Eleven last year?

"Come here, boy," Vesta says.

I come. She surveys me critically.

"Hmm. You're a bit small but you'll do."

It's not like I can help being small! Just because she hasn't gone hungry a day in her life doesn't mean the rest of us haven't! I nearly tell her this before I remember my cover. The thing's necessary and all, but sometimes I wish I was free to speak for myself. But there's no point dwelling on what might have been. I'm stuck playing the cripple and there's nothing I can do about it.

Vesta tosses me what looks like a stone rod but obviously isn't as she's able to throw it.

"Use this and follow me."

I limp after Vesta and we move into another room. The three members of my prep team follow.

"As you are probably aware, it is not easy to create costumes for your district," Vesta begins.

So she's one of those designers. Those who treat their charges reasonably well, if condescendingly. Those who feel an incessant need to explain everything. Those who love the sound of their own voice. Ah well, fine by me. At least she's treating me like I'm a human being, which is more than can be said for my prep team.

"You are going to be a stone carving. This means the texture of your skin must look correct, down to the finest minute detail. Your crippled foot presented a problem but I believe I have come up with the perfect solution."

She pauses, like she's waiting for something. Dutifully I ask her what it is.

"Your foot is going to look like fractured stone!" she exclaims, amazed at her own brilliance. "It's going to look like the person who carved you was unaware that there was a flaw in the stone."

"But what am I going to be?" I ask. Better just to humour her. "What is the carving of?"

"Have you heard of the game of chess?" Vesta replies.

I nod.

"Well, you're going to be a chess piece! The white king, to be exact. Isn't that wonderful?"

Oh how wonderfully symbolic. Firstly, king implies to the audience that I'm a champion. Next, the chess is a reference – which Vesta probably didn't mean to make – to how I'm a pawn in the Capitol's games. And the white king, which means I make the first move. Kyra's probably the black queen, implying how she's stronger than me because of my leg and also placing us on opposite sides of the court.

But I won't complain. This must be better than gargoyles. Or naked and covered in coal dust. Or dressed up like a pumpkin, which is what happened to Eleven the year before last.

For the next hour Vesta and the prep team work on my skin to make me look as rocklike as possible, drawing designs that look like the natural grain of the rock onto my skin. Then they help me into my regal looking costume and affix a crown on my head. The costume is made of a stiff fabric which doesn't move at all and seems to be made of stone, but it's not at all heavy. We seem to be finished just in time, for Vesta looks at the clock and gasps.

"Is that the time? We must hurry or else we will be late!"

We meet Kyra and her designer, a blue-skinned man by the name of Janus, by the elevator. As I predicted, Kyra is indeed the Black Queen. Her skin isn't black but is a far darker grey than mine and her style of dress is similar. She glares at me as we go into the elevator. I don't know what's wrong with her. Ever since she helped me onto the train she's been avoiding me as if I have the plague. It's not like my injury's contagious.

The elevator takes us down to the bottom floor, where the tributes will be assembled and loaded onto chariots for the opening ceremony. Most of the districts are already there when we arrive. We're just missing Seven, Nine and Twelve. When I look over at District Eight in front of me my feelings about my outfit become much more positive. Their designer obviously took 'livestock' far too seriously, and those poor souls are dressed up as cattle – complete with horns on their heads and bells around their necks.

The rest of the Districts arrive soon after. The more tributes I see, the happier I am about my own clothes. District Five's girl looks more fox-like than ever dressed up in copper and District Nine looks like they were covered in glue and made to roll around in a scrap metal heap. Nine is where all the metals come from, as well as some of the jewels, so usually they look like shivering carbon copies of District One. Obviously their designer decided to be original this year. Obviously it didn't have the intended affect.

"Try not to look too pathetic, please," Kyra says suddenly, as we are all waiting on District Twelve.

"What! Me, pathetic?" I'm in shock. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

She sighs. "Cut it out, Lucas. I know what you're up to. I did go to the same school as you, remember? It's a good idea, but no one will want to sponsor someone who looks too scared."

"Shhh," I hiss, glancing around to make sure no one overheard us. "Not so loud! Look, we can talk later, okay? Just somewhere where no one can hear us."

"Fine then." She glares at me.

"What is it with you?" I say.

"Nothing's with me," Kyra says. "I'm just trying to survive, same as everyone else. You can't afford to have friends in the arena."

I'm not so sure about that. If everyone knows you and likes you, then it's going to be harder for them to kill you later. Of course, I don't tell Kyra that. Instead, I say:

"Oh really? Then why did you help me on the train?"

Kyra laughs, but not in a kind way.

"I didn't help you because I like you. I don't. But unlike you, I don't like being a laughing stock. Some of us have our pride, you know. I felt sorry for you, too. Poor little cripple, afraid to show his true -"

That's it. I hate it when people feel sorry for me. I can't stand it at all. I know that Kyra's trying to wind me up, but I can't help going along with it. I do have my pride! How dare she suggest otherwise! I just know enough to put it aside for the moment, but Kyra's words just serve to make me want to forget my cover.

Then I realise what she's trying to do. If everyone knows what I'm really capable of, I don't stand a chance. Kyra just wants to eliminate one of her opponents. But I'm not going to let that happen.

"Shut up, Kyra. If you want to yell at me, do it later. But right now we're about to be on camera. At least try to look happy, if not for my sake for your own sake. Our impression here could affect both of us."

Kyra doesn't look too happy, but she knows I'm right, so she leaves it. Just in time, too. District Twelve is finally here and we're off.

Twenty minutes, two laps of the City Centre and one extremely boring speech later, I'm being helped off the chariot by Vesta who manages to simultaneously beam at us and send a venomous expression towards District Twelve. I don't see what she's so upset about. Sure, District Twelve got far more than their share of camera time but what they're usually dressed up in is by far the worst of all the Districts, so they deserve a little time in the limelight. And I didn't have to look interested during President Snow's speech – there was no camera on me to film my bored expression.

"Great work!" cries Vesta.

I'm not sure whether she's referring to us or herself, but her next comment reveals all.

"It's a pity that the newbie stole your fire, but you were good enough to get me promoted to a richer District next year."

Thanks, Vesta. So glad to know I matter.

Theodora arrives just in time to prevent Janus from also saying something stupid. Luckily Kyra's stylist seems quieter than mine is. Which is good, because most of these Capitol people seem to say something offensive every time they open their mouths.

After gossiping with the designers for a while, Theodora tells Kyra and me to follow her and strides off towards the elevators. We get in one with the team from District Seven. The two mentors seem to be good friends, as they immediately embrace and start chattering excitedly. Seven's girl stares at the ground but the boy catches my glance and rolls his eyes at me. I give him a half smile back.

And even though in a few days we will be enemies, the two of us are for now united in our contempt for the Capitol.