A/N: Scarlett's POV

The cool night air of the Capitol closed around me as I stood with Blight, trying to be attentive to Charlotte and Cephalus, wanting to be anywhere but the Capitol that night. But I had to be there. I was the only living District Seven female victor. The only one. Charlotte would have nobody else but Blight.

Well, Blight had mentored me to a win, so he wasn't too shabby, was he?

But that wasn't the point. It was my job. Despite my distaste for Charlotte, she needed me, and whatever was going on in my personal life, I owed it to her to give her my full attention. And it was better, anyway, than thinking about Snow's ultimatum.

Charlotte was glaring daggers at me, but I figured that was probably her newest hobby, with how much of her time she spent doing it. What on earth she would do to occupy her time in the Games I didn't know… probably glare at leaves while her crazed and hungry mind hallucinated that they were me.

Was it bad that the thought of her hallucinating with hunger gave me a warm, happy feeling in my stomach? Probably.

But I couldn't be bothered with her problems. I had my own.

I watched Charlotte drag herself along in her ridiculous heels, clearly never having worn a pair before in her life, obviously not knowing how to walk in the dress the stylist had given her, or rather, the tree outfit. Always trees, District Seven, hardly ever any originality. I had to work very hard not to roll my eyes.

"Ready?" Blight asked Cephalus, who was fiddling with some leaves dangling off his wrist.

"Do I look ridiculous?" he asked.

"No more ridiculous than Charlotte," I replied with a snort, which earned me a disapproving look from Blight, but I didn't care. "Just get on your chariot, the pair of you. They're not likely to even notice how absurd you look compared with the cows up in District Ten."

I wasn't being unnecessarily rude. The poor tributes of District Ten were actually dressed as cattle, as if such a thing was ever a good idea. Truly, worse than trees. There was just no way to make cattle look flattering or interesting or attractive.

But then, maybe it would be to their credit, if they won, not to look attractive. I wished so much that I could go back in time and make myself wear a far more ridiculous costume than even the cows. Maybe then I could have avoided the whole mess I found myself in. But I probably would have lost, so I couldn't say for sure which would be better.

The boy from District Ten was watching me, I realized, as I took in the absurd costumes. Without thinking about it, probably because I was so angry, I stuck my tongue out at him, and he just suppressed a grin, watching me, winking.

Winking?

Who was this boy that had the audacity to wink at me?

I tried to think back to what I knew about him as I looked away. District Ten… Draven, Draven Dupre, seventeen. I looked back. He was strong, probably from working with cattle, and his dark hair and tanned skin made me remember the description Finnick had given me that morning of the sort of boy he thought I'd be interested in. Tall, dark, and handsome.

But what did it matter who I found handsome? My life was being decided for me by the Capitol. Even if I liked this boy, I couldn't. I couldn't allow him close to me. He would be in danger.

Besides, he was likely to be dead in a few days, anyway. Nothing to worry about.

I ignored Draven Dupre, turning back to Charlotte, who was glaring at me still. But she was always glaring at me.

"They'll be starting any moment now," Blight said, frowning at the leading chariot, which the District One tributes were already climbing into. "You'd best be getting in. It's going to go rather fast once things get started."

Cephalus and Charlotte climbed up into the chariot and I felt oddly like I was watching from a distance.

"All right, there they go," Blight said. "Chins up."

I watched the chariots heading out of the door, one by one, the silly costumed tributes heading out to be received by the Capitol and Blight and I turned to the screens to get the view Panem was getting.

"Did I look that absurd?" I asked Blight, looking up at the screen with a frown.

"No," said Finnick's voice from behind me. "You looked regal and spectacular."

I snorted.

"Says the boy who was practically naked," I teased, and he shrugged.

"Yes, well, Stella and I may have been dressed as prostitutes, but I survived, and that's the important thing."

My stomach churned at his words and I grimaced.

"Excuse me," I muttered, turning away to find someone, anyone, who wasn't standing around me in that moment.

"Hey," said a mildly familiar voice. "How are you feeling?"

It was Lyme, the woman from District Two, and there was a surprising amount of softness in her voice. This seemed so out of place that I was momentarily confused but then I looked in her eyes and I realized: she knew. She could have been quite a beauty in her youth. Perhaps many years ago she had been in my place.

"Nauseous," I admitted.

She nodded slowly.

"Yes, that's common," she said, watching the screen out of the corner of her eye, apparently trying to make our talk like a simple discussion of the chariots, of the Games. If only. "Best to grit your teeth and bare it. It's all over soon enough."

I shook my head.

"I can't."

"Yes, you can, and you really need to," she said. "This is your duty now. It's a part of winning for many of us, so we simply do our job for the Capitol."

I shook my head again. She really couldn't expect me to just lie there and allow some strange man to violate me because the Capitol thought it was their right to make money at my expense. And Blight… I thought Blight actually cared about me, even just a little. After all, he had kept me alive, he had led me through the ins and outs of being a victor, he had even played with Alyson, despite the fact that she dressed him up in a tiara of twigs and made him have a tea party with her.

So why had everybody turned on me? Why were they trying to make me go so clearly against my conscience? I was saved from having to excuse myself from Lyme when her District partner motioned her over for the speech of President Snow.

"You okay?" Finnick whispered in my ear. "You're jumpy."

"Fine," I said. "I'm just tired."

"Oh," he said, clearly not believing me. "Try to get some sleep tonight, all right? It's going to be a busy few weeks. Don't want you passing out on me or something."

"Yeah," I muttered.

I followed Blight and Charlotte and Cephalus upstairs to the seventh floor, barely noticing the elevator or the other people in it with me. As soon as we got to our floor, I said I was tired and headed to my room, where I saw that an Avox had left a note on the bed for me, with a single, long-stemmed white rose on the bed beside it. I barely looked at the note, seeing that it told me the time and place I was expected to meet some Capitol man named Tryphon James. Anger filled me and I took the piece of paper, ripping it into as many pieces as I could manage before tossing them all angrily to the side.

I tore my clothes off angrily, stomping over to the shower, letting the cold water run along my body.

I wasn't going.

I wasn't.

My family would be able to handle less food. We were tough. My father had managed to keep us going without my mother. My sister and brother-in-law could help him. They would be fine. I didn't need to become a whore for them to be okay. They wouldn't want me to. It shouldn't be even a question. There was nothing to feel guilty about.

When I finally went back out into my room, the white rose was still lying there, strangely more fragrant than a flower ought to have been. I didn't want it in my room. I didn't want it on my bed. It was like a reminder that somewhere in the building there was a Capitol man waiting for me, probably naked on a bed, wondering why I was late. I wondered briefly how long he would wait before deciding I wasn't coming.

On an impulse of anger I took the rose and put it in the shower, turning on the water and watching the harsh jets peel off the petals and suck them down the drain. Then I stuffed the stem down after the petals.

Somehow I had to wonder if Snow had seen that, or someone working for him, and if they were going to report it back to him. Perhaps that should have bothered me, outraged me, even made my skin crawl. After all, I was in little more than my skin and actually in my shower, but somehow I almost expected such a breach of my privacy after everything else he expected me to be willing to do for the Capitol.

My face contorted in anger, I turned and went back to my room, searching the drawers for some night clothes, finding the plainest thing available (for most of the modest choices from the year before had been replaced for racier options, probably for the benefit of my intended 'clients') and pulling it on. It was a mid-thigh white silk nightgown. I crawled into bed, shivering a little from the chill of the shower and the chill in my blood, dreading the morning, but possibly the worst part about it was that the scent of the rose still lingered on the sheets.

I tossed and turned for hours before I finally found sleep, more because my body couldn't stay awake any more than because I'd reached any sort of peaceful state. In fact I was riddled with nightmares that night, mostly of Alyson as an animated corpse looking at my naked body and saying, "You're pretty. You killed me."

She said it over and over, and in my dream I cried and screamed and begged her to leave me alone, but she just came closer and closer and there was nothing I could do to make her go away, no matter what I tried. Someone was shaking me, and I screamed, thinking it was more corpses but when my eyes shot open I saw the sad face of Blight hovering over me.

"You didn't go," he said in a hollow voice. "Why didn't you just go, Scarlett?"

"I c-c-couldn't," I sobbed, shivering in the thin nightgown. "I couldn't do it, Blight. I'd never forgive myself."

He looked so sad that I forgot that I was angry with him, that I was blaming him for everything. He sat on the bed and wrapped his arms around me.

"Scarlett, I'm so, so sorry."

Sorry? Sorry for what, for telling me I should make myself a whore? For letting them try to do this to me? No, none of that was right, but he seemed very upset. And then I realized that some of the tears leaking onto my skin weren't my own, but that Blight was crying and his tears were falling onto my shoulder, rolling down my chest. No, there was something else, something big. Something bigger than… something more than… what had happened while I had been sleeping not peacefully? What had I missed in those… hours? Minutes?

He pressed another Capitol note into my hand and both of our hands were shaking.

"What is this?" I asked, my voice quivering, knowing what it must be, but not wanting it to be true. So I told myself it couldn't be.

"Read it," he said gruffly, hastily wiping his eyes and saying, "and I'll take care of the tributes today. You'll probably want some sleep. Let me know if you want to talk."

As soon as he left the room I turned the note over in my hand, scared to see what words were held inside of it. Finally, unable to take the suspense, she opened the note with shaky hand and read:

Scarlett,

I was disappointed that you disregarded my warnings. I thought you were smarter than that. Your family had a terrible accident yesterday, a fire… No survivors. It would be a shame if your friend, what was her name, Trish, would befall a similar fate. District Seven can be such a dangerous place.

You will be given the night off to collect your thoughts. On the second night after training you will be expected to heed the directions left for you and go to the designated room.

-CS

I felt sick to my stomach.

My family, my whole family, were dead, and it was all my fault. Blight had warned me. I had been stubborn. I hadn't listened. I hadn't wanted to believe that the Capitol could be so cruel, so harsh.

I don't know why I was so surprised. After all, this was the same Capitol that made twenty-four children fight to the death every summer and called it a game. We were all just pawns in their game, and that was all we would ever be. Even my father, one of the most skilled men in all of Panem, was disposable. How much was my body worth, that Snow was willing to kill someone so valuable?

Suddenly I felt sick to my stomach, wondering if my father knew as the house went up in flames, as he watched his children, his granddaughter burn, that it was all my fault. I wondered if he knew as his own skin turned to ash that if I had only decided to just do as the president asked, shameful though it was, that he would have lived, that they would have all lived. I leaned over the bowl of the Capitol toilet and vomited violently.

Dead.

They were all dead.

And if I didn't go to sleep with this Capitol man in two nights, despite my best efforts, Trish would be dead too.

But… if I just let her go, then wouldn't they have to leave me alone? There was nobody else that I cared about enough for them to use against me. I could be like Haymitch, alone and bitter and left more or less to my own devices as long as I continued to show up for mentoring. And really, they didn't even need me for that. They had Blight.

But I couldn't just let them kill Trish. Because what if they killed her family? And… and what if they didn't? Would her mother, her sister understand that it was my fault, my selfishness that caused them the loss of their daughter? And then every year I spent in District Seven I wouldn't be able to face them…

District Seven. I was going to have to go back to District Seven where there was… what? A new house for me to replace the one that burned down? I would live by myself, Blight and Mathias, who was a very old man who had won the 14th Games, would live with me in the Victor's Village. That was all I still had, and I would see the victors as they came through on Victory Tours, and then practice my dancing, which was the only thing that I really did anymore.

But I didn't want to dance anymore. I didn't want to read or dance or do anything I had ever enjoyed, except perhaps throwing axes and hatchets, because I wanted practice in case I ever got a chance to throw one at Snow's head.

When my stomach had been emptied and I retched emptily a few more times I cleaned up my face and went out to pull on some clothes from the drawers that the stylists had designed for me over the year. There was a pretty green sundress that looked like light through the leaves of the trees, and I was painfully reminded of home, wanting to rush back to the toilet and retch some more, although I knew there was nothing to bring up anymore. I pushed it aside and pulled out a black strapless dress that was made of a light material and didn't make me want to vomit.

With a deep breath, I pulled my hair into a bun on top of my head and pulled my face into a sunny smile that I had mastered when I was trying to become the expert of "sweet" for my Games persona, which had become my Capitol persona. It was the only mask I knew of that could outlast my pain inside. With both my hair and my smile in place, I went out to breakfast.

"Morning," I said, sitting down across from Charlotte. "Have you covered training with them, Blight?"

He gave me a small questioning look before nodding and saying, "I thought you said you wanted to sleep in today, Scarlett. Not feeling well, you said."

"I'm feeling better," I lied. "No sense lying about when there's work to be done."

"Would you like some toast?" Cephalus asked kindly. "Makes me feel better when I'm sick."

There was something about the way he said it that made me think of Chance and Alyson and I suddenly had the urge to vomit again.

"No, thank you," I said softly, shaking my head. "I'm not particularly hungry."

I did pour a bit of water into a glass and sipped on it slowly, watching Charlotte and Cephalus eating, wondering why the world hadn't fallen apart around me yet, why reality still went on like normal. But if reality could continue, so could I.