I have goofed (to no one's surprise, I'm sure). Harmony was from Nine.

Calvary Warsaw

I botched it again, and they wanted to see it a third time. I was back in what looked like the same bed I woke up in last time I died. The doctor was different, though. For all I knew it had been so long the old one was dead.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"What do you care?" I asked back. They didn't do anything when I died twice. Now they pretended they cared about my health and wellbeing. "First do no harm" my butt. The doctor said something else, which I ignored. I turned away and faced the wall until he left. After a few minutes someone was at the door again.

"What now?" I asked. Then it clicked that it wasn't a doctor. I only knew one person who knocked four times, so softly I could barely hear. Looked like it hadn't been as long as I was afraid of.

"Come in," I asked, because I knew Cornflower wouldn't think she was allowed to come in unless I said so. She was like a vampire. I turned back over and to my surprise, she had someone with her, along with a dog.

"You got married? And you're a cougar?" I asked. The boy she was with looked closer to my age than hers. I never in a million years would have guessed it of her. Cornflower looked at the boy in hopes he'd talk so she wouldn't have to. He looked shy enough that he'd stay quiet around most people, but he'd apparently known the present company long enough to know he had to pick up the slack.

"I'm Bambi, Ten's second Victor," he said.

"We finally got one, did we?" I asked. Bambi had a death grip on the dog's collar. Just Ten's luck that we got two wallflower Victors. I couldn't imagine how the Bambi even got mentored between the two of them being scared of each other. "What number is this?"

"Forty-three, and one was a Resurrection Games," Bambi said. So things weren't completely horrible. There were still some people that remembered me.

"Wait, this one's not a Resurrection Games? Oh no. What is it?" I asked. Did they bring me back to be some ghost or zombie mutt? Was I going to be used in an experiment too horrible to use people anyone could trace? It couldn't be good. Nothing good came of the Capitol.

"It's the new president's daughter's birthday," Cornflower said, and she actually looked excited. She always did seem younger than she was. She was probably thinking about confetti and cake.

"New president?" I asked. "Is she better than Galba?"

"He's wor- he's more authoritative," Bambi said. Which could have meant anything from "he talks louder than Galba" to "Avoxed for not praising him loudly enough".

"Wonderful. He brought me back for his daughter's birthday? What am I, a clown?" I asked.

"It's sort of a special one-off Hunger Games. Snow's daughter Rose just turned ten, so he let her pick ten Tributes to come back and fight. Whoever wins gets to be her... I don't know, governess?" Bambi said.

I always put survival first, but that was stretching it. I didn't want to be some spoiled princess's new toy. I definitely didn't want anything to do with her father. It looked like if I won, I had a life of tea parties and dress-up. Life sucks in Panem.

"Who else did she pick?" I asked. We both looked toward Cornflower, who was looking off to one side.

"Mei Cheung Rapure Kai Demetria Rhye Aimee Anderson Emma Wolfe-"

"Emma?" I interrupted. I expected to hear a bunch of names I didn't know and a bunch from decades past. I didn't expect to hear that name again. Emma was... not as bad as everyone else I'd known from the Games.

"Jonathan Wright Angus Jenkins Harmony Griffith Eleanor Cotton," Cornflower said, her monotone drone unbroken by my outburst. "Yeah, I thought you'd like her."

Life sucked in Panem, but I had a few things that weren't so bad. It was good that I hadn't woken up a hundred years in the future. It was nice to see a familiar face and to know that there was one thing that would never change. It would be nice to see Emma again, too. We were a strange pair- the urchin from Ten and the royalty from One. When we first met, I thought she was a shiftless snob. But somehow, we became friends in the Arena.

"Can I see her?" I asked.

"She's probably already training," Bambi said. I got up and went for the door. If Emma still felt the same way I did, I would know our friendship was forever. It would have lasted even past death.