Not exactly the same as the other two, but I tried.
For those of you that have read and understood the previous two installments of this, that's helpful. But for those that haven't - feel free to read the AN specifically for the first chapter if you really want to understand what I wrote here and why I specifically wrote it.
What's different, obviously, is the Final 9. So yes, to get it out of the way, this is theoretically how the Games would have gone had I not pulled my escaping bullshit. I tried to, for some parts of the 9, leave it mildly ambiguous, because I'm slightly curious to see how some people form the list in their head and figure it out. Some bits will be more obvious than others, as per usual. Yes, it was hard to come up with, but I'm almost positive this is how it would have went down. Twenty-four to ten is what would be considered "standard" - aka for real what would have happened had each of them won.
But I guess we'll never really know, will we?
TW: Suicide, self harm, throwaway mention of alcohol abuse. You know, the general stuff.
24th. The Unprepared.
There's no rulebook, for what happens when the battle fodder survives.
He knew that's what he was meant to be, all along. Back then it didn't hurt. It didn't sting the way everything in the arena did, killing the other Careers just to prove that he could, letting the whole alliance rip themselves apart from the inside out.
You think when he wins he would get back and it would change. That he would start to feel like someone different, someone who was meant to be standing where he was. But that's the worst lie of them all, and everyone was always so honest to him before, about where he stood.
People shake his hand. Congratulate him. Comment on his skills and his abilities and how lovely he was the entire time, how wonderful of a victor he makes now.
Those lies are worse. He knows he doesn't look like a victor.
He knows that because he looks in the mirror and all he sees someone who was prepared to die.
23rd. The Resentful.
He changes the locks on the house five times.
Seven's village is blocked off from the rest of the world by a thicket of trees and bramble so vast that you can't see out the other side. Fitting, for how hard he tries to keep everyone else out of it.
His family all comes individually, struggling, through the trees and in the door like they have every right to be there. Evie is the only one that stays more than an hour, trying to understand and failing, asking questions that don't get answered. Each and every time he gets the locks changed after they leave, all four of them, unaware of who had given them all access in the first place.
He's not sure why he does it a fifth time. Call it paranoia, perhaps. Or maybe that final time is for him and him alone.
What he does know is that it works, because they never come back. The whole house and the victory is for him and him only, as it should have been. No one else will even get to lay a hand on it.
That doesn't change the fact that there are five chairs around the table, one for each of them.
His is the only one that ever gets filled.
22nd. The Pure.
Before all of this, she only knew acceptance.
Acceptance becomes much more difficult when you know the exact details of what you did to survive, and how you and only you know what you were thinking when it happened. That doesn't stop her from launching herself off the train and into Austin's arms, because they're open and waiting, and she was so afraid they wouldn't be.
She was never under any grand delusion, that she'd live the life she was so close to having before. That all changed when she killed that final person, even though she was weeping over their body, holding onto the knife like it was all she had left. Probably because it was.
The fact of the matter is, she has to accept a lot of things. The monster that tried to take her, the families of the people she killed looking at her like it succeeded. She has to accept that not everything works out, least of all a blip of simple happiness.
Austin was that, for a long time. But gradually she learns to be it for herself, too.
He leaves her before they hit eighteen.
She learns to live with it.
21st. The Scrappy.
The Capitol likes change.
He does not.
A lot of people expect a lot of things, suddenly, when you come back. Most of all they expect you to take your house and your money and stay put, like a good little victor, until they require you again for the next year, to train two more kids on the principles of dying.
He'd like to believe that most people, most victors, deserved it. He deserves nothing. He's still that street kid, deep down, the one so fearful to step into the Vanserra household like it held the plague inside its walls, the kid who won when he probably just should have let someone else have it.
There comes a point in time when he can no longer sit in the house, complacent and quiet. The night takes him back like the comfort of an old friend, the things he steals from the market familiar, except there's one thing that's different. This time, there's someone there. He hears the footfalls, hears the click of a gun ready to ward off an intruder.
There's two of them. The shopkeepers, probably. The man raises the gun, and two seconds later the woman behind him realizes, sets eyes on his face and understands who he is. She opens her mouth.
But not quick enough.
He lives a thief and dies a thief, and all is right in the world.
20th. The Caring.
Before, he didn't matter much.
His nightmare treat him like he matters, like he's finally the narrator of a story that's worth telling. He rarely wakes up screaming, all the way into his twenties, thirties, forties. He feels like he should, with how much happened. So much of it nearly dragged him down with it.
He has one thing that sticks with him. Kelsea had said it, before - just keep going. Please keep going.
She had only said it because she knew she wouldn't be able to.
And so he does. He wakes up every morning, on a ranch bigger than he knows what to do with. Moves through his morning routine. Drinks his coffee while the sun rises far away, in a place bigger than here.
Once darkness falls again it'll take him back. But for now, he has the sun.
And he's fine with that.
19th. The Desperate.
He only ever really wanted to survive for one reason, and one reason only.
That reason is wary of him, when he steps off the train. Though Declan will never admit it, he's scared. Nervous. That was never his brother's job, before. It was up to him to worry, and to be scared, and to wonder how long they had in a world that had been cruel and unforgiving to them from the very start.
The house doesn't help. Neither does the money. Declan talks to him less and less every day, until the only noise in the house is the very faint patter of the dog circling around, wondering what's happened to them both.
His own voice is hoarse from disuse. The only time he spoke, from day four to eight, was when Farren was bleeding out on the ground in front of him, and when he was pleading with her, sobbing for her to stay alive. She dies four hours later, because he couldn't bring himself to finish her off. Couldn't make it easier for her. And right now he's not making it any easier for himself, either.
Of all the people that could have lived, and it wound up being him. He hates that it was him.
He wish he had the courage to say that, too, but doesn't have the voice for it anymore.
18th. The Uncommon.
When she wins, things start to change.
It's not just her age, her ability to launch herself into things that no thirteen year old would ever in their right mind do. It's her being Eight's third victor in ten years, and the people out on the streets starting to look less thin than usual.
The Career movement in Ten died before it ever really got anywhere, but it's almost the same. For a beautiful moment it looks like things are starting to look up, that there's something incredible on the horizon all for her to grab at, just the way she wanted.
The next year they reap two twelve year olds, the first two to die in the bloodbath. The year after they're older but the Careers target both of them before they can even get twenty feet away. And on and on it goes, year after year. She watches them run the Eights through, making sure it won't happen again. They won't let it.
This is the price she pays, for daring to win. For thinking she had any right to.
It's hard to tell at that point, if it's worth it.
17th. The Youngblood.
Two has never produced a Victor under the age of sixteen.
She hadn't realized, before going in, how the odds were already stacked against her. They've had volunteers her age. Ones younger, too. None that have ever come back. Few that have even really gotten close. It's satisfying, for a while, watching them glorify her. Watching the Capitol fawn over her and the other victors embracing her with open arms, pulling her into their lives.
A month after she gets home the President shows up in Two, with a motorcade the length of two city blocks. The morning after they find Ashlar with his brains bashed in just outside the gate. Two days later Seren's dead on her kitchen floor, a ligature mark pressed around the length of her neck, her blood still fresh on the tiled floor.
She's learned that nothing is a happy accident. Not her victory, not how many days the Games lasted, and not this.
The day before the President leaves she sits her down and stares at her. She's not used to feeling small, for how small she actually is. But it's hard not to, under a gaze like this.
"Did you have any knowledge of any plans of rebellion?" she asks. "Any plans that may have involved the arena being destroyed?"
"No," she answers, because it's the truth. Everything previously lined up in her head changes.
The President leaves. Cicely fake cries in front of the cameras, fake cries at both of their funerals. She stares at both of their empty houses and Blair's grave and wonders, what the other option was.
No is the truth, but she wishes it wasn't.
16th. The Wildcard.
Not a single person is surprised to find her grinning, sharp as a knife, in the aftermath.
It's always the stuff inside that kills, anyway, but even that is nothing but an almost non-existent shred. There's remorse and then there's letting the guilt eat you alive, and she'd sooner bite it back than let that happen to her.
But that's the problem, when it comes down to it.
She's not a Career. Everyone knows it, regardless of the score or who she was allied with. It's the idea of someone from Eleven of all places doing what she did and coming through the other side of it perfectly fine, no repercussions. It's her laughing in the interviewer's face when they asked her how she possibly could have done it, like it doesn't make any sense.
She gets it. She played the Game, just not in the way they wanted her to. If she had played the way they wanted her to she would have laid down and died like almost every other kid from Eleven, let one of her allies slit her throat when the audience finally decided they liked them better.
There are consequences to every action. Consequences for stepping onto the game board and making the wrong move.
Hers comes the next year, when they reap her brother.
15th. The Studious.
He spends a lot of time in the Capitol, immediately after.
The main university there is bigger than anything he's ever laid eyes on in his life. Too big. The people seem to eat it up, the fact that he's so invested in all their knowledge. Like he's just dying to know all that they do, to be like them, to think like them.
But God, if he thought like them, he definitely wouldn't be alive.
Being there, though, shows him that there's more than just the books. More than just a school in a previously unattainable place. He has a driver, always, and each and every time he looks out the window and sees something new. A new building or a new gaggle of people, a new shop opening up.
He knows that Rooke would have loved it. Seeing all of this.
He sticks his head back in a book - that's as close as he can get, to giving up. That's reverting back to his previous state, ignoring the world and living in the past.
The past isn't a bad thing. It kept him alive.
But the future isn't going to look like anything at all, if he doesn't change it.
14th. The Spitfire.
Zion wouldn't let go of her, when he was dying.
She thinks he panicked. In his last moments he realized he wasn't fully prepared for it, and tried to come back. But for all she tried she couldn't pull him back up with her, when she rose once again.
She didn't kill anyone, either, until he was long gone. But after it came naturally, like she should have been born a Career, training in an Academy for four more years until she was ready for it. With every hit, with every spurt of blood, she thinks of him and wonders how much he'd hate her for it, or if he'd just apologize for her, clean up her messes.
She's good at messes. Creating them, anyway. She's just so angry all the time, and bitter, and longs for the feeling of blood underneath her fingernails because at least then it made sense. She contemplates climbing the fence and disappearing into the wilderness. She considers drinking herself into a stupor at fifteen years old.
She puts a hole in the plaster next to the front door the day they move into the Village, angrier than she's been in a while because she knows she can't bring herself to do any of it. Her hand bleeds more than the wall does.
She is destined for self-destruction.
If only the person watching over her now would ever let that happen.
13th. The Unwilling.
He figures one good thing can come from all of this: he's created a new benchmark, for how much hatred one person can live through.
Maybe it's different, when it's internalized. Maybe all of that really doesn't count at all. When it's like that it's hard for anyone to tell what he's going through, so it's even harder for them to ask.
When it gets really bad, he thinks of his siblings finding him.
Willa's still working, even though she doesn't need to. Farley and Maren and Brin all go back to school. Inexplicably one of them will always be back at the house for lunch, or Willa will take a break twice the length of her normal one to trek all the way back to the house, for no reason at all. He thinks about any one of them coming home and finding him dead, and he can hear the screaming, hear the sobs, see their outfits when they walk up to his funeral.
They take him for the Victory Tour in January, and he sits down alone in his train car and thinks about his siblings again, in a house that he's never going back to.
They find him dead in the bathroom before they hit Twelve's station.
12th. The Healer.
He's always hated that bullshit word, for every penny it was worth.
When you're someone people come to for help, you're not seen as a monster, even if deep down you feel like you are one. But when you kill three people instead of saving them, including one of your allies, people stop looking at you like you're going to save them.
His parents are - unimpressed? It doesn't seem weighty enough. He was raised to have a healer's hands because that's what they did, not because it's what he always wanted. If they had taught him to fight instead, maybe they wouldn't have that look in their eyes.
Their business goes down. People would rather go underground, to a doctor on the black market, then let a murderer save their life. They all notice it. It's their livelihood.
The thing is, he never really felt alive helping people, and he felt no more alive killing them, either.
And what are you supposed to do, when there's no in-between?
11th. The Cutthroat.
No victor of Five has ever killed seven people before.
A fact she's presented with quite immediately, something that becomes more of a moniker than a fact.
The arena does not forgive villains, and neither do the families of the tributes they kill, but she finds she doesn't care about that and neither does the audience. They scream and cry and cheer for those that are worthy, for those that they crown as their new royalty, as if they're an empire starving for a new ruler.
Regardless of what everyone may think, she can be that ruler. She was born to be that ruler, since she took her first feeble breaths. She's a daughter of politics and secrecy, reborn in the blood of seven different people.
She waits to receive the crown, a circlet of silver and black held between Dominika Gardell's hands much like a trophy would be.
It doesn't feel so strange, nestled on her head.
"Hold onto today," the President says, the iciness in her eyes not quite unlike her own. "A reign doesn't last forever."
She smiles. "Are you so sure about that?"
10th. The Darkened.
She plants flowers at Casper's grave, once every summer.
Six gets cold enough that they never come back properly. But after the reapings every year, once she's back from the Capitol, she makes sure to take all her stuff and head far out, to the tribute graveyard. It's hard, not to look at how empty and barren most of them are, and not feel the same way.
Some days one of her siblings will come with her. Sometimes Casper's brother, although Declan never does more than sit there and occasionally suggest that she should get a bench installed, so he doesn't get in her way.
There's no reason for her to still be doing this, years later. But the fact is she comes back every year, having watched two more Sixes die, and hates herself a little more each time. Every time it gets harder to actually come back at all, instead of just letting herself go. She hates herself for thinking it, and then hates herself for not having the guts to go through with it.
She doesn't even know if Casper liked flowers, or what his favorite color was, even though she's certain he told her. Maybe it's just the fact that it gives her something to do every year. It's something to look forward to, something she knows she has to return to even when she doesn't want to.
If only she could bring herself to go to Eight and do the same.
9th. The Golden.
A part of him knew exactly how it would end.
But he would never dare to say it out-loud.
But there's a reason why he rarely hesitated to walk in front. He knew that if something was going to happen it was meant to happen to him and him only. He's the one that walked into this waiting to die, wondering, and he was the one that would take the fall when it was meant to happen.
And he falls. Harder than he expected to.
Even in his last few seconds he's not sure where he came from, or how long it took. One second he's walking and the next he's got the blade of a scythe buried six inches deep in the center of his chest. He's not sure who yells, either, or if he falls to the ground by himself or if someone puts him there. All he knows is that someone's trying to stop the blood but it's not Celia, because he watches her tear after him, even though he can hardly see, can't do anything because of how bad it hurts.
Someone yells again, a hoarse shout of pain, but it's not him. He can't even take a proper breath, can't do anything but choke up his own blood. He can't help but wonder why he ever thought this was going to be okay, why he ever thought he was ready for this.
Celia's still gone.
He can't manage to keep his eyes open long enough, to wait for her.
8th. The Apparition.
Parker would know what to do here.
And Parker may have tried to take on two Careers, but apparently four was pushing it.
He's not sure why it happens the way it happens. He's been panicking since long before this moment. Since his name got plucked out of the bowl, since his platform locked into place, since Laurel and Parker were both dying on the ground in front of him because of equally stupid mistakes.
He's just been good at hiding it. The panic, that is.
But not anymore.
In that moment he thinks of nothing except getting away, of their footsteps getting closer and closer to him with every passing second. It doesn't even have to be him in particular. He launches himself away, and the scythe closer. He doesn't stick around to see what happens, even though he knows he has no chance, not with that many of them.
Something rips through his leg, and he screams.
He knows what hitting the ground feels like. The tip of an arrow has burst free from the front of his thigh, all the way through to the other side. He doesn't get the chance to move before she's on him, the other Four. She rips the arrow back out and his skin tears even more, the hole opening up and dripping blood underneath him.
Someone rounds the corner behind her, one of the others, and he's saying something - someone's dead, but his head is ringing and he can hardly see and he has no idea who, or what, or if there's anywhere to go.
Or maybe, he can't help but think, the guy was talking about him, as the sword descends.
7th. The Prodigy.
It's not easy, when you lose two people in one go.
One that's lying dead on the ground in front of them, until they eventually force each other to drag him off into some space of open air to be taken away, and the second that goes completely dead behind the eyes at the sight of his dead body.
She knows the others are close. The space is too little, for them to hide from each other. But it's been hardly any time at all, since Rory, and she's not even sure how much of Celia is really standing next to her, right now. She just wants to go home, and she wants to lay down next to Kali and keep her safe from the stage next year, wants nothing more than to be out of here right now.
And she gets her wish.
There's a lesson to be learned, about being one step ahead. Sometimes it's saves you. Sometimes, in Rory's case, it ends your life. And if it's happened once before, maybe an hour before, then you should have learned it.
She doesn't.
Nadir and Tanis could have been one person, and probably should have been from the get-go. And Celia is half-gone and Blair only manage to move fast enough once there's a knife in her stomach. She ducks enough, the first time. Her spear doesn't even hit anyone. She's in denial about dying until she rips the knife out and feels all the blood, before her legs give out.
Blair's already forced them back with Celia on his heels, and he scoops up the knife she sent skittering across the floor and turns it back into Nadir's ribs, and all she can manage to think about is Kali, trying to hold onto that for as long as she can.
She's not sure who finally turns around. Who realizes.
But she's dead by the time either of them do.
6th. The Unshakable.
It hurts. Her own knife in her ribs, that is.
Ten times worse than a punch to the gut, worse than anything Thane ever did to her, but no one here knows that. Even when they get distracted by Dimara, dead on the floor behind them, she can't push away the thought of how bad it hurts, worse than she expected.
Tanis is dragging her off. Down a set of stairs. There's still yelling behind them, getting more and more distant. She doesn't think it will be that way for long. Their feet splash into water, higher now than ever.
"You need to help me," Tanis says, and for a long hysterical second she thinks something is being asked of her, when she can't even think straight. Her side's on fire. But Tanis continues pleading, unlike anything she's ever heard come out of her mouth, and it's terrifying—
"What's happening?" someone asks, an unfamiliar voice, and she finally forces her head up. Two of them - Eight and Ten. Neither of them are walking.
Above them, a door slams open.
"The fucking— fuck, the Careers," Tanis forces out. "You need to help me."
A cannon goes off. Not hers. Not yet. Dimara, then. But there are footsteps pounding down the stairs.
"Put me down," she orders, and Tanis looks at her, eyes filled with a genuine dose of fear. "Put me down, it's fine."
It's not fine. She's dying. She's not sure if Tanis knows that or not, but she lowers her to the ground, and the water soaks into her pants, an icy chill running through her side where the knife's embedded.
Everything is so slow. So cold. She thought something like that would be stereotypical, untrue, and that if she finally went it would be good, better than what was waiting for her at home.
But it's not.
5th. The Renegade.
He should have jumped.
That's the only thought running through his head. He should have listened, for once in his stupid, useless life. He should have jumped before his legs turned to nothing under him, before it felt like they weren't even working.
Celia's still upstairs, convinced on some level that Dimara's worth saving. Or maybe that's just because she couldn't save Rory, and is trying to cling to what's left. But he knows that's long gone. He's known that since he volunteered, deep down, unwilling to accept it. But he feels it rising now, as his feet hit the bottom of the stairs. That's the reason he's here in the first place. Because he was afraid of what would happen if he didn't. Afraid that he would wind like his father, unable to volunteer, rotting behind bars twenty years later because he snapped and killed someone anyway, because he never got to unleash it.
He didn't want to end up like that.
Three of them look at him. Nadir doesn't. He's not sure if she's dead yet, or just given up. Both, perhaps, which is something he regretfully understands.
"Who's dying first?" he asks, at the same time the cannon goes off.
There's a very large difference, between moving and knowing exactly what you're doing. When he moves there's no rhyme or reason behind it, no training that tells him how to do it, when.
At this point it's mechanical. He can't help but wonder if that's exactly what his father went through as well, in the seconds before he ruined his life forever.
That's the one difference between them, though. The difference he'll never know.
His father lasted.
He's not going to.
4th. The Artist.
He almost doesn't go down.
At this point, terror isn't a rising thing he feels anymore. It's just there, in his blood, which is probably a good thing because he's not sure how much is really working in there anymore. He had so much before. So many idea, and so much creativity there were days when it would all just burst out. So many things to contribute to the world, subtle or not.
He's not sure who lands the killing blow, not even until the last second. All he's aware of in that second is the same thing happens to him, no question about it. There's no need to wonder who did it, no need to ask what. The mace nearly caves his stomach in, everything underneath the first layer collapsing into nothing.
He's been in a lot of pain, lately. Mental, emotional, physical. Not a single one compares to the pain he feels now, the heartbreak in Kelsea's eyes when she rushes to crouch by his side, hands shaking, tears spilling out.
Whether it's the pain or his fading energy he's not sure, but not a single word will come out. It's not getting better, but it's not getting worse either. He has no way to tell her that.
But that's the thing, about the two of them. For some reason they understood each other, when two people shouldn't have. When she pulls the knife out of her belt he wants to scream but can't, and she's sobbing, sobbing over and over again.
Dimly, he knows the next cannon isn't his.
But it sounds just like it.
3rd. The Unlikely.
The word hollow has never been something she thought applicable to a person.
Not until now.
And maybe it's not. Not really. The word hollow is Vance's dead body at her feet, and the image of Houston's just behind her, and the look in the Seven girl's eyes when she stumbles to her feet and walks right past her, down towards where the hall ends.
"Where are you going?" she asks, and she keeps walking, praying to whoever's left that her legs stay underneath her, long enough for her to get to the edge.
Seven says something else. Not that she hears it. All she hears is the rain, and the building going down, and all she sees is the faintest slip of Vance's blood over her fingertips, not enough to mean that it's real, because none of this can be real.
She's still saying things. Words like stop and don't and please but none of them ring true quite like hollow does.
It's not that long of a drop. The water is so close, nearly enough that she reach down and brush her hand over it, rid her fingers of the blood staining them. But there's no doing that now. That's not good enough. She'll still know it was there. She'll still know what happened.
And she'll still feel just as empty inside as she does now.
The drop's even shorter when she's falling.
2nd. The Maverick.
She hears the shout, sharp and piercing, but doesn't see what happens.
The only thing she comes across, the only thing left to see at that point, is a lone figure at the end of the hallway, looking to the water below. It would be so easy, to raise an arrow and let it go, to win from a distance where it's safest to do so. But she can't.
The crossbow is long gone, to a place where she wishes she was. There's four arrows left in the quiver, one for each of them, but she can't make herself lift the bow up, can't make herself picture what should rightfully be on the other side of it.
Because it shouldn't be her.
She thinks it's been about four hours, too, since this all started. Since Blair kept saying he's dead, Celia like she hadn't heard him properly the first half a dozen times he fucking said it.
"You should jump," she forces out, and Tanis turns around to look at her, face twisted.
"Fuck you," she responds, but there's no venom behind it, no energy. Four hours that felt like years, when you were watching everyone die around you, when you just so happened to be the only one left.
Almost, anyway.
She thinks that might be a part of it, for her. Why she wanted Rory as far away as possible, in the beginning, when she should have been holding him closer than ever. He never wanted to die. But he had accepted it, until those last few seconds, when it was really happening.
And she thinks she finally understands.
If only he was still around, for her to tell him that.
1st. The Unknowing.
The rain is coming down in sheets and burns her skin where she's kneeling at the edge of the balcony, swaying in the breeze. The glass from the broken railing is cutting into her palm, but she's too far up to see it spiral and land in the water below. Her shoulder's bleeding. Her back. Her legs.
There's more blood seeping from the body next to her than anywhere else.
She finds herself sliding over to land on the ground next to it, because that's what it is, nothing more than an it. The floor is icy cold, her clothes soaked through, and her head is a grand inch and a half from the edge of the balcony, ready to take her over.
There's no one else in the building, she thinks. The whole thing is still threatening to go over, and she slides a half inch closer to the edge. It quakes, and one of the walls next to her gives away in its struggle to stay standing, the plaster dusting all across her. Struggling, she knows, against total collapse.
But there's no announcement. No sign of a hovercraft coming for either of them, dead or alive. She opens her eyes and there's blood sticky at the corners of them, layered across her eyelashes.
Nothing's happening. No one's coming for her.
She rolls over onto her stomach, but can't find the strength to move. She looks, and she looks, searching for something on the horizon that won't appear, for a sign of safety that never planned on saving her at all, if they got to this point. But she doesn't know that.
"I won," she says, the only thing that rings true in the midst of the freezing rain, but it's not loud enough for anyone to notice.
Not loud enough for anyone to care.
"I won," she repeats, and the building collapses underneath her.