+ Again, big thanks to Dancing-Souls for the review, and to everyone reading along! Sorry for the long wait; writer's block hitting hard, especially on a talky chapter like this. I promise more action is coming soon (really!)

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The train is cold.

The train was cold, and the night sky peering in through its frosted windows inky and starless. The polished chrome decorations and glittering chandeliers hanging in the lounge car were little comfort against the chill. Every mile the train sped away from District 5 sapped away the warmth of my sunny desert home, and the first spots of white on the ground shook me. It was an alien landscape, something I'd only seen from afar atop the peaks surrounding the Capitol: Snow.

I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and huddled against the side of a wide, plush couch, as if shrinking into the tiniest space possible would shield me from the Victory Tour's unfamiliarities. However, it wasn't just the darkness outside and the frozen winds blowing along the plains that frightened me, but the memories that I knew would creep up the closer we drew to District 12. A familiar face waited from the grave in Panem's easternmost district. Perhaps more than any other tribute in the Games, Ember from District 12 had meant something to me. He'd cared when he had no reason to. He'd followed me when he should've never trusted my judgment. He'd died only because I'd fallen into a trap – and he wouldn't give up trying to find me again in that horrible arena.

I still remembered what he'd told me – and what might await me tomorrow. Pox, he'd said. It had taken his mother and both of his sisters, leaving only his father and him around. Would I have to look into his last family member's eyes as I gave some stupid, silly speech? Thanks for your kid's death, I imagined myself droning. Sorry to leave you nothing to live for now that your family's dead. Had to do it, y'know. Nothing personal.

A shiver ran up the back of my neck. How many pairs of empty eyes would stare back at me with gray vacancy tomorrow? How many more Embers still trudged on year after year in a place like District 12? I'd always known it was Panem's poorest district, but from Ember's accounts, I imagined I'd be fighting back emotions up on stage.

The lounge car door opened with a loud bang! Finch crept in, grimacing as she shut the door so quietly I couldn't hear it click shut. "Sorry," she said, shaking her hair loose and plopping down on a couch across from me. "What are you still doing up?"

I shook my head and burrowed my face in the blanket. So much for being alone. I wasn't in the mood to talk, especially not with Finch. My mentor had her heart in the right place, but all her advice and reasoning wouldn't help push my thoughts away.

Finch leaned towards me. "Thinking about tomorrow."

"Yeah."

"It's just a speech, Terra. Won't be long."

"Mmm."

"Hey," said Finch, reaching out to touch me but holding back at the last second, leaving her hand hanging in the air. "You can tell me if something's wrong, okay? I'm supposed to be here for you. It's my job."

I pushed my face further into the blanket. "At least you're paid."

"That's not what I meant. I just…do you wanna talk about it?"

"Not really."

She didn't get the memo. "I wish…I dunno. I know about the memories, Terra. They hit all of us victors. I've got my own, even in District 12. I still remember the name of one of their tributes in my games. Pretty girl. Twelve years old. Primrose. I think her last name was Evergreen, or something."

"I don't know if she ever was much in the arena," Finch went on. I gave up trying to drown her out with blankets. "But I remember when I stumbled across her. I'd stayed out of sight the entire time, keeping tabs on the other kids and making sure they didn't see me. Stupidly, I thought I could go the entire Games without killing anyone. I knew better, but I just denied it. I could steal food from them, I could stay out of the way, but eventually, I'd have to get some blood on my hands."

"So Primrose ran into the cave I'd staked out. I dunno if she was running from something, but I remember blood running down her face. I couldn't have her leading people back to me. At the time it was a rational decision, just…just taking the rock that was my only protection and bashing her with it. It made sense. Ever since then, though, it hasn't. Maybe I could've hid her. Maybe I could've thought up something else if I hadn't panicked, but I did. These things don't go away, Terra, and you can't just 'get over' killing someone…but for what everyone else doesn't understand, all I can say is that we do. Daud, me, everyone who's survived the arena gets it. We've all done this stuff. So if you need help or need someone to listen, just ask. I want to help you. I do."

For a moment I wanted to give in. I wanted to tell her, yes, I do want someone to listen. I do want someone to empathize, to hear me out, to have my back when it felt like no one – not my family, not Daud, not anyone else I knew or thought I knew well – wanted to prop me up.

But I didn't. I only forced a smile and said, "I'm fine."

I hoped my fake smile was better than Finch's.

A sea of white blanketed the ground when I woke up the next morning. Skeletal trees shook with each clump of snow that fell from their dead branches. The hostile world told me to stay in the train, in the heat and under the lights that crowded out the depressed gray skies outside. I sleptwalk through the morning, feeling only apathy as my prep team worked me over. "Beautiful," they crowed, turning me around in front of a mirror and admiring their work. "Stunning. Elegant."

I felt like the trees and the sky.

"Eat," Finch sighed at the breakfast table as I picked over something yellow and goopy. "I have to go talk to the conductor. Elan, make her eat."

I grunted as Finch shoved open the door to the next car. "Is Daud ever coming out?"

My mentor paused. She grimaced, holding up a hand in hesitation as if weighing the costs of responding. "He's not coming," she said at last. "Not today."

"What? Why?"

Finch shut the door with a loud slam! before I could get my answer.

"A story for the Capitol, perhaps," Elan said, spearing a sausage. "No time to get into all the details, either. We're no more than twenty minutes from District 12."

"Great," I muttered.

"It's certainly not a place worthy of enthusiasm," Elan admitted. "Panem's most tragic district. Only two winners in the ninety-six Hunger Games that have ever occurred, and the only one who still lives is a drunkard."

"Sounds fun."

"Oh, Haymitch Abernathy is the least of District 12's troubles," Elan said, setting down his sausage and propping himself up on both elbows. "The district has suffered through a…rather rash period of poor fortune of late. A pox infection two years ago wiped out a significant portion of its population – an infection that has proven tough to stamp out - and rumor in the Capitol has it that House Snow hasn't given any slack to the coal miners who call this place home. That's a poor combination for keeping the peace, if you get my drift."

I stared him in the eye. What was he saying? "You mean…"

"Oh, I'm not implying anything," Elan said. From the way he cocked his eyebrows in mock surprise, I figured he wasn't telling the truth. "But the only thing more rampant than pox around these parts is hardship. You remember your ally in the arena, Ember?"

"Yeah. He said –"

"He was not lying. Whatever you may think about District 5, you and your district folk have it well-off compared to District 12. Here, the majority are fortunate to have enough to eat every night. Electricity is a scarce commodity. Things you take for granted – your father's cantina, your intact family, even Daud's Church – are rare indeed in District 12. Anyone who flourishes here is a rare breed. But hardship can create survivors."

The way Elan spoke about District 12 as if he knew every in and out of the place struck me as odd. "How do you know all that?"

He was silent for a moment, paused, staring down at his lap as if I'd attacked him. "One day, perhaps when you and I are garnering sponsorships for some unlucky boy or girl in the future," he said. "I'll tell you how I become an escort, and just my job can entail. But not now. You have other things to worry about now."

I was about to open my mouth to press the issue when a thin metal fence whizzed past the window. Shacks – if I could even call them that – rose out of the hills in the distance, mere spots of brown and white against the backdrop of the dead forest that flanked District 12. Upon the frozen, corrugated metal door of one shack, someone had painted a bright red X.

"Another to the morgue," Elan mused. "If they had a morgue here, of course."

"How does the victor – Haymitch, or whatever – not got sick?"

Elan scoffed. "You think the Head Gamesmaker would allow a victor to fall ill? No, no, they take care to ensure he stays alive, even with his alcoholism. You don't need to worry about catching anything yourself. You, me, Finch, we're public figures, too valuable to lose to a virus. But the people here aren't so lucky. To them, those of us immune to the struggles of eking out survival may as well be a different species altogether. There is not the shred of allegiance to Panem here."

"So I shouldn't expect a warm welcome?"

"Mmm."

The train screeched to a halt in front of a run-down, wooden train station with a rusted aluminum-roofed platform. A motley crew waited in the icy conditions to greet us: A humble, middle-aged mayor with grey hairs infiltrating her blonde curls, a collection of Peacekeepers who looked as if they'd have rather been anywhere else, and a few Capitol cameramen, looking more concerned with keeping themselves warm than taping the event.

An icy blast smacked me as soon as I stepped off the train, and my thick fur overcoat wasn't enough to ward out the cold. It was so disorienting and alien that I stepped right into a strange puddle on the edge of the train station.

I looked down. Thick, congealing blood pooled in the snow around my boot.

"Let's try to avoid that," Finch said, steering me towards the waiting party. "Not really a great introduction to snow, huh?"

I was surprised the district even had a car to take us to the town's square for my speech – one I was in no hurry to give as our party drove down the snow-covered dirt roads of District 12. District folk clad in ragged winter gear stared as we passed. Some stared with empty faces blackened by work in the coal mines, the only thing – other than Ember – that I knew this place for. Others stared with contempt.

"I guess you were right," I muttered to Elan, leaning against the car window as he pressed a piece of paper into my hand, my speech written on it in neat computerized writing. "It looks terrible here."

"It's an everyday horror," he said. "But you're more likely to face real hostility in other districts, especially ones such as Districts 2 and 4."

"What? Why?"

Elan paused as the car passed by a family trudging down the road. The father, a short, thin man with slumped shoulders and wild facial hair, only looked down at the ground as he trudged through the snowdrifts. The mother, however, pulled her two gangly children into her ripped jacket and narrowed her eyes at the car.

"I told you before your Games to build a brand," he said, watching the family as we drove past them. "To stand out. I originally told you to outthink your competitors, but once you got in the arena, you gave me a perfect opportunity to re-write your story. I could sell you to sponsors in a much more enticing way, a way to get you real gifts – such as the dagger you received that ultimately ended Acheron McRath's life."

Something about the low, hollow way he said that sent a shiver down my spine. It wasn't the cold that was responsible. "What did you tell them?"

"The details are long and dull," he said. "But each Hunger Games is its own story. Not every protagonist is a hero, or even a good person. Every hero has to have a nemesis. Once you struck down the boy from District 7, I had an idea on who you could become. It only grew stronger when you put Glenn out of his misery. To you, it was mercy. I understood that…but that wasn't a good storyline."

"The likes of District 1 likely will see you how I sold you to Cicero Templesmith and every sponsor I came across during the late stages of the Games – and how the television coverage subsequently portrayed you," Elan said. "You did me a favor with your willingness to do anything to survive, Terra. I made you the 96th Hunger Games's villain."