Everything in the AN for the first chapter of this still stands. If you didn't read that, for whatever reason, I'd recommend reading that first to have a better understanding of this. It will probably help a whole hell of a lot. Also, did it just take me a solid four months to get to this point after writing almost all of this in the past two days? Absolutely. Did this somehow get more dark-sided than the last one? Absolutely. Should probably change that summary.
TW: Suicide, self-harm, alcohol and drug abuse, mild homophobia.
24th. The Oddity.
It's true – he always imagined what it would be like to be reaped.
He never imagined what winning would feel like.
It goes like this; when he watches Viscaria and Glenn die, four hours apart, he hides under a bed and cares, undeniably. Cares and mourns for two days, tops, before he wakes up the next morning and that feeling is gone entirely, like it was never there. There's a distant part of him that wishes he wasn't like this, because they were as close to friends as he could get in a place like this. If the situation had been reversed they would have cared. Of course they would have.
That's how he's always been, though. Maybe out of self-preservation, because ever since Mom died his father's been worse than usual and his brother's been a monster for years now, worse than even his own murderous hands.
He doesn't expect that to change when he gets back, and it doesn't.
Why should he change when nothing else will?
23rd. The Unseen.
To this day he doesn't know how he made it off his plate.
Everything that happened was a blur. Every waking minute of every single day until the hovercraft plucked him out of the freezing water after half the ship exploded. He learns later on that it was the Six boy's doing, that even the Capitol hadn't anticipated how much damage gas could do to the entire ship. Half the Gamemakers end up dead for the mistake.
That kind of makes sense. He didn't kill anyone, after all, so it's only right that their deaths are mostly on his head now. They only saved him because he was mostly intact and close to the surface. They never wanted it to be him.
He didn't really want it to be him, either. But back home in the pastures, out with the cows, he doesn't tend to think about that.
22nd. The Competition.
Victory is everything it's cracked up to be.
Not that she ever doubted that, of course. But it makes it all the more sweeter, watching all of her allies fall one by one, as if she cared a day in the world about them at all. Her and Alana make ruins of that entire ship, slaughter anyone in their path. She'll give the other girl credit – by the time they're finished fighting she's exhausted, hands slick with sweat against the end of the spear.
She still beats her, though. As if there was ever any doubt.
Duke's family looks hollow, unsurprised, and it takes all her self-control not to flip her hair over her shoulder and beam in their direction. The Capitol likes their victors at least a tad sympathetic, so that she'll have to work on.
If only she had that sympathy in the Games. Maybe all of her allies wouldn't have ended up dead at her feet, if she had.
21st. The Underdog.
She thought when she punched Leuth Saylor in the face she'd never be more terrified in her life.
How wrong she was.
They manage to kill Alana, her and Elias. Not quick enough, though, because not five minutes later he's on the floor dying, wheezing for every breath he has left and she can do nothing but sit there with a hand on his arm, like that makes it any better at all. She sits there for a long time, after, the realization that she's alone hitting her full force. Cerise and Larkin have been gone for two days and they hadn't seen them since. Maybe they killed each other. Maybe someone else got there first.
By the time she ends up finding anyone else there's only five of them left, and she's standing there looking Duke, Seren, Meritt and Kal in the face wondering how things could've been different, had she gone with them instead. She stands there and takes them all in because she's figures these are her last moments, that there's no chance of her beating any of them. That's when the real terror hits.
She's still thinking about how terrified she was in those moments, years later.
20th. The Childish.
Her siblings have never looked at her like this before.
Acantha and Kylan, both of them never really cared. Walked away at the goodbyes the second she told them to because she's a spoiled brat and that's all they've ever known. She knows that better than anyone else. The difference now is that when they meet her eyes they don't know whether to hold her gaze or look away like she's capable of scorching them with just that.
Maybe it's because she left both of her allies to die, watched both of their faces appear in the sky that very night. Maybe it's because she decided that she didn't need anyone to help her, no matter how small she was. Maybe because she's only District Twelve's third victor in the past fifty years and people like her never, ever come back.
They can call her whatever they want, think traitorous things about their own sibling.
They cannot, however, take this victory away from her.
19th. The Obstinate.
Riela leaves her house on the fourth day that she's gone and the next morning her mother is dead.
She learns this before she even gets back to Three. Aukai sits her down and tells her quietly, too quietly, too gently, that they found her dead in the living room. Don't know what she took, just yet, only that it was far too much. She can hear it already – Amias shrieking from the second Riela opened the door. She made her friend take care of her family because she wasn't sure they would survive without her and even then she was still right. Being right suddenly doesn't feel so good.
When she gets back it's too quiet, even though her mother never talked much, and she tries to hold her little brother from shaking apart at night when it feels like she should be the one falling apart. She has every right to be. Amias looks at her with a hint of fear in his eyes, because if anything six year olds are brutally honest and he saw what she did in those Games. Every second of it.
He's scared of her, she thinks. But she's all he has left.
18th. The Unorthodox.
In the end he winds up moving to the Capitol.
Whether anyone believes him or not isn't the question. He did not kill two people and ruin himself doing it to not get his way once he got out. After a while they don't have a choice but to listen to him, if only to get him to shut up. He frames the certificate once again, crumpled as it was after all the time it spent in his frankly ratty pocket, and hangs it above the mantle for everyone to see. If anyone ever visited.
In three years' time he'll be the stylist for Eleven. Right the wrongs of the past, and all that. He still remembers how awful he looked that day.
If no one really talks to him, he doesn't care. They were never worthy anyway.
17th. The Devoted.
It turns out the goodbyes are the last time she ever sees her mother.
She gets back to Seven to Andie and Deviryn and her sister, all beaming and so much like home it makes her heart ache. Her mother is nowhere in sight. She's not dead - she'd refuse to die just to spite them all. To no one's surprise she's moved on with her life, cast them all out all because she had the audacity to fight for someone she loved. The audacity to love her at all, in the first place.
She marries Andie and moves into their new house and for some stupid, foolish reason she expects her mother to come knocking. Expects them to make up, to apologize to each other and embrace like mother and daughter should, because after everything that's happened this shouldn't be.
The knock never comes.
16th. The Assertive.
He thought, when he finally won, that he would have free reign over his life.
He could do whatever he wanted without his parents' permission, could cast aside Alisha and be who he really was, instead of hiding it all the time. He trained for so long, perfected everything he could just so it could lead to this moment.
The six months between his victory and the tour are easily some of the worst of his life. If it was bad before it's worse now. He can never get away from his parents and Alisha refuses to let go of his arm, no matter what words spill out of his mouth. He can't get anywhere alone and his house isn't his, not really. Nothing is really his, not even his own life.
He sits in District One with a hand on top of Duke's grave and thinks, maybe, that Duke had the right idea dying while he had the chance.
15th. The Challenger.
'Poster Girl' is not a title she minds very much. In fact, she's rather in love with it.
District Nine just doesn't know victors like her. She's got all the confidence of a Career, striking in her own right and capturing the gaze of everyone in the room when she walks in. At the start of it all no one would say she had a chance at all. She'll forgive them for that. They're simpletons, after all, and she's leagues above them all, untouchable and as icy as a glacier. It's not their fault they didn't see her coming. Someone like her doesn't come around very often.
She killed Arella, and Sinora later on, and then allied with the Twelve Girl and the Seven boy, who had only made it that far by some unknowable grace, so it was easier to kill them in their sleep. There was no faltering there, not like so many of them.
It's not long until they're wondering if she was born in the wrong place.
Not that it matters now. Now she's right where she belongs: at the top.
14th. The Tortured.
It seems like nothing's changed.
There were more shackles holding him down, now. On top of the loathing and spiteful glances the District is now wondering why they had to get him back instead of Kole. It makes sense – she was all light where he's obviously not. But not everyone thinks that.
His parents are still mostly indifferent to his sexuality and he has no friends, never did, but he goes back to school and a girl sits next to him and never leaves. Day after day she's still there, talking like they're childhood friends, and three days later it's a boy in the chair behind him. They don't say as much but he hears it in their voices. We're not all bad. Forgive us for not trying to prove that sooner.
After a while the gazes fade. People forget how he lives his life and turn to focus on their own. Those two people who sat down next to him and now walk home with him, eat with him at the bakery after school, they're enough to make what he hates about himself fade to background noise.
It feels an awful lot like being set free.
13th. The Militant.
Honestly, she wishes she felt bad.
There isn't a single remorseful bone in her body. Watching Rover fall, this time, doesn't mean anything at all. He takes a knife in the chest meant for her and she kills the Ten girl two seconds later, hardly glancing back at his body. All she ever wanted to do was go home, return to the life she had. It's an ugly life, sure, but it's something thrilling. The underground, the gang wars. Maybe that's why she was so suited to the Games.
One day she'll be on her own again. The charge will fall to her, and she'll take it gladly, just like she did every life she took in the Games.
She's going to run this District.
And no, Rover would not be proud.
12th. The Bloodthirsty.
If people were terrified of her before, the looks on their faces now are positively splendid.
She aimed for six, because that would have been poetic, but she had to save Kal for last and so she ended up with seven. She's always been a bit of an over-achiever in that regard, but she gave them quite a beautiful show so she better not here any complaints, at least not while she's still on this earth.
When she gets on the hovercraft she doesn't let them wash her hands, for a bit. She stares at the blood all over her palms and relishes it, watches it bloom and stain over the bed they make her sit on with something akin to marvel in her eyes.
She doesn't know what's more beautiful, the fact that she just finished it or the fact that so much is just beginning.
11th. The Newcomer.
She makes a different decision, this time.
The Careers will take her, but deep down the terror is enough to chase her away. She makes her own group instead - convinces the Four girl to go with her, the Seven girl not long after. The Threes are willing too, and all of a sudden they're bigger then the Careers themselves. They have a shot.
The five of them make it to the final eight. All hell breaks loose.
She kills Mireya and Lynn before they can manage to do much else, and when her back is turned Larz cracks his mace over Arella's skull, a noise that won't leave her for a long, long time. He's injured, though, bleeding from both legs and his side and it's too easy, to kill him too. She feels awful, cries over their bodies, but forces herself to her feet regardless. Kills the only other person left, by then.
She told herself the Careers weren't an option.
She became one anyway.
10th. The Melancholic.
In comparison to the trials and tribulations of the other victors, most would say he had it pretty easy.
He, however, does not necessarily agree with that.
Whenever he goes to sleep it's Glenn's dark eyes he sees reflected back at him, and it takes two weeks before he's hardly sleeping at all, wandering the black hallways of his home in the victor's village, alone because he won't let his parents in and cold no matter what he does because it still feels like he's two seconds from drowning, the water ever-present in his lungs.
Gizelle tries, but even she's not bright enough to make the sun rise every day. It never gets any easier but that makes sense, because what about his life was easy before?
Tying the rope is the only easy thing he's ever done.
9th. The Watcher.
He wonders a lot about what would've happened, had Iridium won.
He himself wouldn't have won, of course. He wouldn't have gone into the Games at all. He wouldn't have fought and bled and cared with his whole heart even when he tried his hardest not to.
When he steps off the train his parents embrace him like they never had before, warm and all-consuming and he wonders, quietly, if that's worth killing four people and watching Kole die. At the end of the day it was just the two of them and he couldn't bear to come back in a coffin like his sister did.
It's too late now. It happened and there's no going back to that moment where he decided to kill her. Where he decided his life was more valuable than anyone else's, despite the wrongness of it all.
God, does he wish that Iridium had won.
8th. The Heart.
Things happen too quickly for him to process.
He shouldn't have been the one to win. It should've been wild Seren (her throat slit, blood spilling all over the carpeted hallway) or haunted, elegant Duke (one of his hands is gone, and then there's a sword in his abdomen and his own sword is lying useless at his feet, and he can't make himself pick the damn thing up). Hell, even Meritt, who for all intents and purposes has slid so far off the deep end he never knew him in the first place, should've gotten it over him.
(But Meritt's blood is all over his hands, pooling sticky between his fingers, and that's his knife in Meritt's throat and God, when did this all go to such shit?)
He asks himself the same question twelve hours later when he wakes up and watches his brother get shot in the head on live television.
7th. The Unknown.
Eleven.
It's the number of people he kills. It's also the amount of hours he survives, after the Games end.
In hindsight, he shouldn't be surprised. They hardly kept him alive the first time, after he ripped his own arms open just to get away, away from their prying and their burning eyes and everything else in that awful room.
He does not go out with a bang. Not like he so expected to. Just something slipped into his drink and five minutes later he's dead and no one really even cares, because he's too dangerous alive. No one in the Capitol likes when their victor is just a tad too unhinged.
The only mercy of the whole thing is that this event, of all things, is not something Kane has to watch.
6th. The Enduring.
She's a first, that's for sure.
People have come out of the Games missing pieces but never really gone into them like that the first time around. Before people were disgusted by her, pitying, would cluck their tongues and frown in the direction of the empty air where her arm should be. Now they're in awe, cooing and fawning over her like she's a glass doll. If she was made of glass she wouldn't have survived that explosion in the first place.
She wishes she had two hands to hit them with.
They offer her a replacement arm. She declines. Marcel seems proud of her for it, and Atticus hugs her tight and says as much. The entire District is in awe of her too, but quietly and their eyes are shining with gratitude, and in their minds the empty air doesn't matter.
Finally, she thinks. All of this just to prove that it didn't.
5th. The Optimistic.
He struggles with hating himself, a lot. Over time, he's surprised to find it getting easier.
He's so quiet at first that he worries the people around him. He knows his Dad stays up until he falls asleep most nights and Oliver and Ashton are always on the front step at the most unholy hour of the morning, tugging a bleary-eyed Juniper along behind them. Every time he smiles he falters in shock. Sometimes his friends do too. Sometimes he'll smile and then cry just after, like he has no right in the world to be happy. Sometimes someone will come in the house to him sitting on the stairs, lost in some darkened corner of his head, and they'll fail to pull him out almost every time, the first few months.
Those are the bad days.
But sometimes he'll open the front door and Juniper will have leaves in her hair from when she got shoved into the brush, or his Dad will accidentally set the spray of the kitchen tap on them all until they're wheezing, giggling, arms all wrapped around one another.
He just has to keep reminding himself that there are better ones.
4th. The Faded.
Nothing is the same.
He expects to feel some sort of vindication, stepping off that train. All he does feel is hollow; the same way he's felt since he woke up. Something inside him is missing. Maybe it's always been missing, since Estelle died, and he just now noticed it. He didn't want to be a murderer, a monster. Everyone always said he was too soft for that kind of life, but look at where he is now.
Despite it all, he's too cowardly to off himself. He empties the liquor cabinet in his house and his parents turn a blind eye, and eventually all his friends trickle away except Jesper, but even he looks too tired to deal with it all, some days.
They'll lose the second Galore sibling, one day. They just don't know it yet.
3rd. The Puppet.
He lets Magne kill Erna.
Accidentally, of course. That's what he tells himself repeatedly over the next three days while Magne strides around and complains and he never shuts up, does he? Erna would ask and she'd grin wolfishly at him and why couldn't he have woken up sooner?
The next two days he spends telling himself that he's okay, it was justified after he stabs Magne in the back, because that's what Erna would say and she'd tell him he did the right thing. In the final two the other person drowns before he even sets eyes on their face and he doesn't let himself find out who it ever was.
Back in District Eight, Kiero's always around. Marcos comes to stay with him, occasionally, and he always makes sure to cook him dinner and when he's done he hides the knives in some unseen place that he never ends up finding.
That doesn't matter, though. He spent over half his life living on the streets.
He's more creative than they think.
2nd. The Betrayer.
People aren't as surprised as you think they'd be, when she gets out.
She always had it in her. That's more terrifying than her actually winning. Someone having that capability, especially in Eleven - it's nearly unheard of. This time, she kills not one but two Careers, both her allies, and someone else her District hardly remembers, after seeing the rest. When she comes back, it's different. People are wary, hesitant to catch her eye. Sabrine is the only one who will.
Well, and Phil. But that doesn't last long either. They're in the fields, the two of them, because of everything that's changed he hasn't. What has changed is her, and the sickle in her hand, and the tip gleaming in the afternoon sunlight as she buries it in his neck.
No one will ever know she went from five to six. They won't find his body until two days later. She won't look back.
After all, what's one more betrayal added to the rest?
1st. The Missing.
It doesn't really matter what could've happened to her, does it?
She's already gone.
To everyone that's still here - thank you.