A big thank you to all my reviewers. Sharp eyed readers are the reason plot holes were sidestepped and blunders corrected, and every single one of you makes me feel special just for being able to share my passion. Dear guests, I cannot contact you by PM, but do not mistake my silence for lack of appreciation.

About Gingerfluff's comments on gender-balancing: I never thought to count how many characters I had of each gender and watch how it correlates with their importance in the story. Now that you do mention it, there are indeed more 'important' women than in your average novel but I don't think the men are sold short. I don't like books where the heroine kicks ass but all the other women are (almost) useless. Those hardly promote gender equality...

Anyway, read on and have fun (if you find this chapter funny, you have an... interesting sense of humor.)

Fife

The inebriating burst of hope which had accompanied Constantine's revelations that he could pilot a hovercraft had dissipated from her mind and Fife now knew with despairing clarity that she had been had.

The howling wind tore tears from her eyes as she stared at the ground flying past some fifty feet below. Large sharp rocks cast dangerous shadows in the gloomy night.

How could she have let Constantine drag her in the hovercraft! She couldn't jump. If the height didn't kill her, the speed surely would. The engines groaned as Constantine squeezed every last drop of power out of them, slaloming to stay close to the hostile mountain slopes. Every second now, airborne peacekeepers would lock on to them and shower the ground with metal dust and human ashes. They had to land quickly, find some rebels, and use the last hours of nighttime to flee, but Constantine seemed intent on flying circles through narrower and narrower paths.

Fife clutched her trembling arms, fighting down panic. If she had to die, she'd rather die bravely, but she didn't have to die. Constantine didn't even glance at her, his face set in a mask of stone. Yet his dark brown eyes were alight with fervor, like a man who had found his destiny. Fife was appalled. Constantine was able, fit and wealthy. How could one find more meaning in their death than in their life? How could he commit suicide of all things?

"What about your family," she said, her lips quivering with cold and fright as she stepped closer to Constantine, "how can you not fight to get back to them?"

No answer. The aristocratic boy stood immobile in the gloom, cold and handsome, like a statue of old. Fife could see the shine of sweat on his brow, the slight tremble to his fingers, little signs of weakness she knew to exploit, but time was running out and she couldn't afford to misstep.

"They don't love you?"

"I don't know," Constantine said, his voice soft. "They're proud of me. They need an heir to perpetuate their name."

Fife's heart clenched. She grasped Constantine's arm, hoping he would not mistake her compassion for pity and that he'd let himself be distracted into speaking more, and thus delaying their deaths. She knew everything about wearing masks, but at least she knew that at home she could be herself and that she was cherished for who she was.

Constantine chuckled dryly.

"My mother conceived me at forty-six, my father was almost sixty. They had been married for over twenty years. It is plain that I was a social necessity, one far down on their list of priorities. Once I was there, they groomed me. They were fair and paid close attention to my education in all things. They were great teachers but not parents, not in the sense you intend it. I have always been a very rewarding investment. Coraline has showed me more love than they ever did, and she's a paid servant. I owe my parents, I appreciate and respect them, but I do not see the appeal of the life I was conceived to lead. No matter how wealthy and well connected, I would be powerless, forced to deal with idiots for shallow goals. Teal will live and Mags will cleanse Panem of the plague scouring it."

Powerless? Fife struggled to understand. He was all but powerless. And dying for Mags… Fife didn't doubt the girl's intentions or her willpower, just the impact a lone teenager, no matter how admirable, could have on Panem.

The rocks below were still but gray and brown blurs.

Constantine's eyes were a compassionate caress. He looked on the verge of apologizing yet Fife could not discern any cracks in his resolve. In Constantine's world sacrifice was heroic and noble. He was not afraid of death. Because of that, Fife feared him more than anyone else. She tightened her hold on his arm. She had to get him away from those controls. Her eyes flickered from the tiny colored lights next to the buttons to the lit panels. It was nothing like the tractors or the manufacture robots. She might as well have been trying to read hieroglyphs.

"You're angry," Constantine said. He looked sincerely apologetic, but Fife knew it wouldn't be enough.

"No." She was too stunned to be angry. "I'm about to die and struggling to process the fact." She spoke slowly, as if it would give the world enough time to set itself right. "You volunteered because you wanted to be free of the life you would have otherwise had in One, Constantine? You felt that jailed?"

Fife refused to believe it. She'd have given an arm and a leg to have Constantine's life: power, wealth and security in a world where the poor had neither rights nor freedom. He had brilliant friends for hugs if he had parent issues, damn it!

"I truly believed there would be little competition," Constantine said with a self-deprecating grin. He really didn't seem afraid. Fife let him go and moved away from him. The looming mountain slopes seemed darker with every second.

Constantine was about to lead them to their death for a cause he'd learned to believe in. He was dying for a person he admired and for the woman he believed to love. Fife was so tense that she couldn't even swallow. He wouldn't listen to reason. What was the point of fighting for a grand cause if you would never see the fruit of your labor?

There will never be another rebellion if people think like you, Cat had said; Cat, who chewed on her blonde locks when she was nervous and curled her nose when she tackled a sensitive issue. Cat, who'd sown pink teddy bears to the school's bully's gym clothes and who said 'I dare you!' whenever Fife chickened out on a risky plan; Fife had never wanted to see her best friend as desperately as she did now.

The mountain wall was almost upon them, and Constantine made no move to turn. He was really going to do it. He was about to kill them both.

Fife instinctively took a step back, as if it would keep her safe from an impeding collision. Her voice rose to a shriek. "Constantine steer away!"

"Panem must be changed. Do not be selfish." The young man's knuckles were white on the controls. "It will be brief, Fife. Mags must be given this chance."

Mags would never be happy. She carried the world on her shoulders. Fife could be happy. It wasn't fair! Fife couldn't give up. Hate suddenly boiled in her blood, burning away her fear and feeding her resolve. How dare Constantine dismiss her life as some necessary sacrifice!

She snarled and rammed her shoulder into his chest, throwing him off balance. Her hands flew to the hovercraft's command panel. She slammed the joystick to the side. The hovercraft lurched dangerously. Constantine fell, rolling on the floor as they took a sharp turn away from the mountain.

The eighteen year old was up again in seconds. He shoved Fife against the wall, inches away from the open latch. The blow tore the gun out of her hand, making it disappear into the night. Cold sweat trickled slowly down her neck, as she pushed away the hair stuck to her face, trying to ignore the wind's bite and keep her balance. Swift as an adder, she pulled out her knife, but Fife knew she had lost her advantage even before Constantine wrestled the weapon out of her hand with little more effort than if she had been a stuffed doll. He pushed her down again, hard enough to bruise. She stopped struggling when she saw it was no use. She should have shot him instead of slamming into him.

"You foolish girl," Constantine snarled, his face flushed with ire, "you are too weak to overpower me. Do try to keep a semblance of dignity."

"I won't die for some noble bullshit of yours," Fife snapped back, staying on the floor only because he was stabilizing the craft once more. "Take us away, Constantine! We can make it!"

"Grow up, Fife. Those rules even you cannot break! You're just a cunning kid from Nine's streets. You know nothing of true power."

Fife looked down, her voice a husky whisper. The nearest mountain was still too close. Anger would only kill her. She let her fury be washed away by helplessness; "I haven't even ever kissed a guy," she said brokenly.

Constantine faltered. He unclenched his free hand and slowly reached out to her, a forlorn light entering his eyes. For a second he was torn enough to be vulnerable. That's all she'd needed.

Fife threw her leg out. She'd aimed for Constantine's crotch. She hit his gut.

He gasped, doubling over.

"In a nicer world, we could've been great friends, Constantine. Goodbye," she said, her chest tight as she took in his handsome face one last time.

The hovercraft tilted, coming almost at a standstill, twenty feet off the ground, about to plunge nose first.

Dirt and pebble paths amidst big rocks and even greater threats maybe lay concealed by the night. Death awaited her everywhere. Constantine grunted, his arm reaching for the controls.

The wind was so cold.

'I dare you, Fife!'

Cat's voice had the effect of a physical shove. Fife jumped out of the hovercraft.

All those jokes about flying being easy but landing being hard crystallized in her over-oxygenated brain and popped like a glass bubble as she hit the ground. Her legs collapsed under her with a horrible crunching sound. Pebbles became bullets as they collided with her chest. She rolled down the slope, the ground burning her clothes off her, screams ringing in her ears. Her screams.

They were not loud enough to cover the explosion that resonated like a doomsday herald across the whole range. Constantine. He'd made sure to crash it at least a hundred yards away from where she'd fallen. The noble fool.

Goodbye, Constantine.

Everything hurt too much to let her grieve. Her battered body in agony, Fife wondered why life was worth so much pain.

Her body had come to a halt, she wasn't tumbling downhill anymore. She forced her mouth shut and eyes open, begging her brain not to shut down. She blinked repeatedly in the darkness, unsure if her eyes were open or closed. She wiped them with a miraculously cooperating arm and only succeeded in spreading more grime over them. Watery colors and blurred shapes appeared after an agonizing eternity. Shapes, coming closer; Fife couldn't even turn herself on her back.

A dim purple halo, auburn hair under the shawl, pressure on her burning shoulder, Chickaree.

"Can't see," Fife rasped.

Help me.

"I'll put her out of her misery before the hounds shoot down the whole mountain. Following their craft was sentimental idiocy of the highest order." Skylar. "Please step aside, Chickaree. We've got no other choice, Ma'am."

Panic unlocked Fife's throat. "I don't want to die! Cut it off!" Her lungs screamed with every breath.

Skylar barked a pained laugh. "What, your head?"

The cameras in her eyes. Fife had just thought of the tracker in her arm. She didn't care about her arm anymore. But her head... Despaired, Fife only clutched Chickaree's clothes harder. They couldn't kill her, they just couldn't.

"Please," she begged.

She wasn't aware enough to identify the blur next to her. Her face exploded. Her whole body was pain. She couldn't even scream. The last shreds of consciousness slipped through her grasp.

Mags

Mags' eyes were riveted on the mountain the hovercraft her two allies had disappeared behind. In addition to the early morning darkness, noxious gazes blurred the air and crippled the hovercrafts' lights' efficiency. This barely heightened the girl's spirits. It had been less than ten minutes since Captain Wickers had burst out of the sewers with a score of men to give the others a chance to flee, but Mags felt like all her life had just been one long messy war.

Few gunshots still pierced the air, and those who reached her came from the mountains behind her. The peacekeepers had almost all put their Tasers and tranquilizer guns away. Twenty fully-manned hovercrafts had launched after Constantine, Fife and the fleeing rebels. The mountains would offer protection, especially to those who knew the lay of the land, but how much?

At least two score rebels were incapacitated, unconscious from the soporific grenades or tied up. Hundreds of peacekeepers had been deployed. Mags' suspicions were confirmed: the Hunger Games had been just one piece of one much larger trap.

A yell caught her attention. Fallen figures began to rise. Mags brought a hand to her mouth in fear. A small rebel group had faked unconsciousness. Gunshots. One, four, nine, twelve peacekeepers dead. Tasers. Tranquilizer shots. One, three, five rebels down. In her mind, she was seeing Captain Wickers fall over and over again. The last great hope of the Rebellion and she had had kill him to keep the Capitol from crushing his spirit and warping his mind, using him as one more puppet in their infamous theater. And she would have to take pride in it in front of cameras, saying she had done it for the good of the Capitol. A lie. Lies were the Capitol's weapons of choice, and they would have to be her shield.

Unarmed and bodily restrained by the peacekeepers, Mags could only watch, her lips twisted into a grim snarl. Tenuous hope still forced her eyes to roam the devastated land before her. Had Sylvan and Chickaree gotten away?

A cannon blast burst from the speakers of the flag-bearing hovercraft. Mags started, almost striking the man closest to her. The significance of such a blast suddenly registered.

Two.

Mags felt like a rock had lodged itself in her throat.

Another blast. The rock was searing hot and scorched her down to her soul.

One.

Fife. Constantine. Condemned since the start, but Mags knew she should have tried harder to save her companions, friends. To save them all.

For the first time, Mags wondered what she'd actually done to win. Why had Constantine's faith in her been justified? How had she been stronger than him, than Fife or even Lila? She barely had a scratch on her.

But wounds she had aplenty, invisible but deep, that would give way to scars just as ugly. Forewarning barely diminished the acute loss ripping at her soul.

A hand slowly fastened itself around her shoulder. Mags couldn't bring herself to react. She wanted to fall to her knees and weep. To hide in a corner and wait to be saved, to be told the monsters were dead and the world beautiful.

Valerian's blue eyes were glittering with warning as he lowered his lips to her ear.

"I'm going to have to explain to my colonel that her son was very explicit about wanting you to win. While Constantine was old enough to make a man's choice, don't ever think to disappoint, Abalone."

Mags feared she would burst into tears as the choking blanket of responsibility viciously wrapped itself around her exhausted body. "Never," she managed to vow.

She could feel Valerian's breath on her neck and hear the steps of a hundred peacekeepers dragging the unconscious prisoners to the hovercrafts. She had rarely been at the center of such bustling activity.

She had never felt so terribly alone.

Mags squared her shoulders and wiped her face. She had asked for this burden. She'd earn that accursed right to be hailed as victor.

Author's note.

One day, I will write a nice fluffy fic where no one dies.

Well, we all knew Mags would win. I hope you are not disappointed by the 'how' of it.

Thank you for reading, reviewing, favoriting, following etc. Was there reviewing in that list? ;P