AN: Last AN for a while! Quick shout out to . . .
Slhutcherson — I have TORTURED you with this story ever since I started writing it. And for some reason, you've KEPT reading it, and KEPT talking to me! Seriously, thank you so much for letting me bounce ideas off you and constantly updating you on everything that happened in my fanfic world! You're an amazingly, perfect friend. 3

kayheshh — Well, there's not much I haven't told you already, but, even if you haven't kept up on the story, you've always been a huge supporter of my fics and I can (and do) bounce/tell/fangirl/scream about ideas off you constantly. So thank you so much for reading and being you, lol. You're just jdkfgkj dfkj 3

I've written so much I actually have a blister on my thumb from hitting the space bar, haha. So enjoy this chapter!

It's hardly — hardly, if I must — a surprise when I wake up earlier than I intend. I know it'd be unfair to steal Gale away for a hunt that evening, but I need a day to think anyways.

I'm still trying to decide where exactly he's coming from. I pulled a stunt out in the valley with the kiss thing, but that was just two kids crashing down a hill and daring each other. We hunt together to survive, and partly because the woods are intimidating when you're out there alone. Companionship was something that grew over the years.

I slowly turn in my bed to face Prim and my mother. Prim long since gave up sleeping in my bed, when I wake up thrashing every night. Buttercup, for some odd reason, finds my feet the best sleeping place in the entire (and still tiny) cabin.

I realize that I'm padding down the streets of 12 long after I actually made it out there. I've got but one trade, which is really just a measly handful of strawberries. The Mayor of 12's house sits at the end of the street of where the Victor's Village houses are. I don't spend too much in that part of town, which is no doubt the wealthier sector. Creeping past the Victor's Village homes, I can feel the washed away, dull emptiness that fills the row of homes.

The only living victor of 12 is Haymitch Abernathy, who's claim to fame is consuming more in alcohol than all of 12 uses in water every year and manages to stay alive. All I've seen of him has been from past reapings, where he stumbles on stage to shake hands with the victors (or something of the likes, he's never sober enough to actually shake hands) or vomit on the Capitol escort, Effie. One of the two.

The Mayor lives subtly. Considering that it is 12, there's not much that the title really gives. His daughter is still eligible for the reapings, and the town rumor is that his wife is chronically sick.

I slip to the back of the home. It's not entirely stately, but it's not shabby by any stretch. Reaching the steps, I give one swift tap before the Mayor himself steps out.

"Katniss, eh?" he says with a smile. He's a jolly man, which is surprising, when he's expected to govern, lead and watch over this ocean of sad, dying people. As far as physique goes, he's plump and what one would assume healthy. But, he doesn't walk quite right, and his face isn't entirely symmetrical.

"Got some strawberries for me?" he asks, when I don't return his greeting.

"Indeed I do," I reply plainly, holding out the berries. "Best I could find."

"And best they are," he says as he rolls them in his palm. "What would you like? Something for the Hawthornes?"

It's well known that the Hawthornes are basically an extension of my family — or perhaps vice versa, when my family is hardly a family at all. "If you can spare it," I answer.

The Mayor always trades far more than the berries are worth. I expect he'd be able to find plenty of strawberries on the edges of town if he went out on his own, but of course he doesn't. Maybe, he's happy just to support the poor of his district in whatever way he can.

"Need bread?" he calls when he pops back in the doorway. I didn't realize he had left. It's just not one of my sharpest days.

I nod, smiling shortly. "Always."

They've got to be bread from the Mellarks, I note as he passes them to me. I force a brighter smile on my face, and thank him politely before I head back home before school.

I look down at the bread in my hands. Besides the fact that there's nowhere else to get bread in the district besides the Capitol, the Mellarks always wrap their loaves incredibly neatly. These aren't warm like the ones I had gotten from Peeta — was that his name? — but, they're nice loaves of bread that will fill up a stomach.

I pass the Hawthornes' house on my way home, and I study the window in the back where I expect Gale is sleeping. Really, it's not like him to sleep in, when there's wood to be chopped and stacked and a million other chores to do as there always is in 12. But, he did confess that he's still haunted by nightmares.

I wonder if his nightmares are anything like mine. He only mentioned the ones about his father and the mine, but by the way his eyes grew haunted, I suspect there's other terrors that strike him at night.

Mine primarily tell of my father's demise, one way or another, but certain events of the year, like Reaping Day, bring different dreams to me at night. Sometimes, when the Games are in full swing, I'll dream of the tributes that I only get glimpses of from the required viewing.

Required viewing. I hadn't even thought about the tributes in the arena since the Reaping. I don't even remember watching their training scores that night. Gale and I have managed to be out in the woods, or the valley, every time.

I wonder how my mother's covered for my absence. Sometimes, if the Games have been particularly gruesome, extra Peacekeepers will come in from the Capitol and check all the homes to make sure people are watching, equipped with their Capitol wrist computers, that I'm sure have every citizen of Panem programmed into them.

Even more surprisingly, I haven't heard much about the Games in town. They've been remarkably quiet this year, enough that I've seen nothing but glances, and heard nothing at all.

Althea and Tug, the tributes from 12. I wonder how they're faring. Haymitch's drinking problem can't make for a very good experience in the arena, when the only person who can bring in sponsors is pass out drunk. I almost feel bad for someone, who's turned to alcohol for whatever reason. The thing is, he has the money to spend on alcohol, which turns the pity to jealousy.

I don't have enough room in my mind to worry about jealousy, right now. Half of my thoughts are completely and utterly consumed by Gale, who I seem to be able to relate to practically everything.

I see his eyes in the puddles of silvery-water that collect in the dips of the stone town square. The Panem logo, embossed into it, collections with the metallic-y water, which has lost it's natural clarity with every manufacturing plant the Capitol put up. It's almost as if the world of Panem is a giant arena for it's own kind of Hunger Games.

What if really, we're just players in someone else's games — and by we, I mean the nation of Panem, as a whole? What if this horrible, twisted government is nothing to what governs us in this possible entirety?