+ Huge thanks for hitting one hundred reviews, everyone! Never even imagined I'd hit that for this story. So happy for everyone following along and enjoying the story, and big things on the way for it soon! Good, considering it's now 200k+ words in. In this chapter, intrigue, philosophy, old colleagues reuniting, family squabbles, and saying hello to a major new face. Was two chapters, but they were sort of light on meat, so I turned 'em into one long mega-chapter.

/ / / / /

"So you go to one jam-packed church service, listen to someone spout some lines, you know everything about a man? Excellent ingenuity, Terra, how did I not think of this earlier? I'm going to announce to a crowd tomorrow that I'm the empress of Panem. I hope your bowing skills are up to par. Someone has to kiss my feet, after all."

I scowled, folded my arms, and slumped back in my seat at Xanthia's sarcasm. "You told me to go there. Lucrezia told me to watch. So I watched."

"She and I didn't tell you to gobble up Pyre's spiel like gospel," Xanthia snorted. "Next you're going to tell me I'm doomed for one of the two hells because I don't make offerings to the sun god, or whatever they talk about."

"I'm not gobbling anything! Pyre talked – preached, whatever – about stuff that would make people suspicious of each other. It was…radical, I guess. Paranoid kind of stuff. Like, on the lines of ratting your neighbor out because they're not faithful enough."

"Oh, wow, anything else? Is Pyre a man, perhaps? Did you find out what color his hair is?"

Her little quips angered me. Xanthia wasn't doing any of the work. She was little more than a bureaucrat behind a desk. I was the one pretending to be someone else, walking into an intimidating place, and putting my skin on the line.

"It's not that I think you're terrible at this, although I don't have enough data to back that up," Xanthia went on. "It's just that charging into the church and thinking the first thing you hear out of Pyre York's mouth is the answer isn't really the best way to go about things. Everyone already knows who the man is in public. We want to know what he says behind closed doors."

Annoyed, I said, "Why d'you even care? You're a…you sit at a desk and write stuff."

"You think I'm fine letting crazies run around unattended?"

"What?"

"These cultists. Religious fundamentalists. They're like chickens with their heads cut off. So eager to find some meaning of why they work and live and die in this backwater dustbin that they grab onto whatever someone with an air of authority says, as long as it makes them look good. Don't like your life? Well, good news for you, it'll get better in the afterlife – and those schmucks you don't like are in for it! All you have to do is kill a few of them and pay up. That's a lot nicer than the authorities who tell you to sacrifice your kids for the Hunger Games, right? Soon you don't just want better in the afterlife, you want better now. So to appeal even more to the shit you believe in, you go all-out and kill not only the bad guys, but the good guys who aren't good enough. It starts with an innocent faith, but all it takes is one ambitious man leading everyone down the path he wants and everything goes to hell. This is how war crimes happened in the Dark Days, Terra, on both sides. Wasn't religion that did it then, but ideology is ideology. Zealots are good at wearing different clothes. You want to go back to that? Be my guest. Everyone dies and the ones who don't die sure don't end up with happy endings. You in?"

"Fine, I get it," I muttered.

"Kind of obvious. So who'd you actually meet, then? You went undercover. You won't learn anything about Pyre unless people tell you things and trust you enough to tell you more. Eventually, that works up to the head preacher himself. So who'd you meet?"

I clutched my shoulders and looked at my lap. "Well, my mentor was there."

Xanthia snorted. "Daud Mosely's brain could fit into a thimble. He's about as useful at giving us clues on how to dig up zealots as I am at solving District 11's poverty problem. Is that it? Anyone with an actual touch of social awareness?"

"Yeah. A little. A friend of mine. Blaze. I talked to him while I was there. I met Pyre through him a couple years ago, once, but that –"

"Why didn't you say that in the first place?" said Xanthia, rolling her eyes.

"I don't want to hurt him."

"So, you're happy letting him get caught up in a cult that preaches all sorts of doom awaiting nonbelievers, which would include you in that category, but you don't want to use him to help dilute this cult before it gets really nasty? Strange sense of morality you have going on."

"Here's what you do," Xanthia went on as I huddled in my chair. "You limit seeing him undercover to the church for now. Build that up to more frequently little by little. For talking with him as your normal self, limit that. Try to keep one foot in both lives and you'll mix them up over time. If you want to play this little game, you don't get to shy away from opportunities just because you might jeopardize a friendship."

"Bet that's really hard for you to decide," I snarked.

"Oh, a teenager insulting me. I'd better go jump off a high cliff. My self-esteem might be shattered. Go run off to that dust bowl you call the Victor's Village and think on it. If you're caught up on whoever you call friends around here, you'll be spending a lot of time there for the rest of your life."

That'd been two days ago. Now I knelt over a solar panel with the noonday sun cranking up the desert furnace. Blue wire to second port, light green wire to first port. It felt good to do something simple with my hands, working on something where there was a right way and a wrong way to go about finding a solution. No subtleties, no discretions and lies. Just machinery and technology that worked exactly like you told it to. If I'd never gone into the Hunger Games and never seen what lay beyond District 5 and the power plants, I could have been content doing this for my life. Now the floodgates were open, the dam breached. I couldn't go back to this forever knowing the things I did.

Blaze stood nearby, checking over another group of power cells with a few other of our co-workers. I'd barely spoken to him at all since seeing him in the pews. He'd barely noticed, for whatever reason, but I wanted to shake off this dumb act. Can I ask you about something? I imagined myself saying to him. Something I heard the other day. And someone I saw.

I left it in my imagination. No matter how much my heart wanted me to make an obscene gesture to Lucrezia and Xanthia and go back to cultivating one of the only friendships I'd ever made here in District 5, it paled against my ravenous interest in Pyre York's plans and what they meant to the Capitol. If I threw away my progress now, the hunger would crop up again in less than a week – and then I wouldn't have a chance to satiate it.

A cloud of dust, the stench of exhaust, and the squeal of brakes announced the arrival of an old, four-wheeled all-terrain vehicle. Olive paint flaked off of its hood and doors, and rust rimmed the iron bars of its roll cage that hung over a two-by-two set of hard-backed seats. The jeep bounced on oversized black tires as it came to a halt, the three gray crates on its rear bed sliding around at the sudden stop. A Peacekeeper hopped out of the driver's seat, clutching his helmet under his arm, the sand and dust turning his armor a shade of musty red-brown. He was a well-built man with a doughy face, the kind that made him look ten years too young for his graying, thinning hair and forehead creases.

He pointed at me and said, "Got a visitor. C'mon."

I shot a look Blaze's direction, wiped off my pants, and stood up. "Way to be play favorites, Orson," Blaze laughed.

"I'm not paying her. Of course she's my favorite," the Peacekeeper said with a shrug.

"Can I get off early, too?"

"Am I paying you?"

Blaze grinned, but I ignored him and looked away. Don't mix your identities. Gods, it was hard to internalize that.

Orson revved up the jeep and drove us out across the flats, dust kicking up behind the tires. Far off in the distance, a sandstorm migrated across the desert, engulfing a rocky butte and swarming across the top of the canyon miles in the distance. A lone vulture soared overhead on the warm noonday thermals, searching for carrion drying in the heat.

"Who's visiting?" I asked as the jump bounced and rocked over the bumpy terrain.

Orson shrugged and jerked the jeep to the right, dodging a jackrabbit springing across the cracked earth. I imagined a lot of other Peacekeepers would've just run over the animal. "Didn't say his name," said my supervisor. "Flashed a fancy-looking badge that checked out and said he was looking for you. I didn't feel like arguing, if you get me."

"Fine. What's he look like, then?"

"Thinking when of your Capitol friends is showing up? I admit, replacing you would be a pain. No one else wants to work for free, so I might have to hire someone sane to do your job if you run off with some Capitol guy. You victors can do that, right?"

"Not with any Capitol guy I know."

Orson frowned and looked out at the building sandstorm. "Tall guy. Pretty powerful-looking for a Capitolian. Weird bright yellow hair and almost white eyes. Kinda freaky appearance, really, like he was staring into you, almost. I dunno. You can talk him."

Yellow hair, white eyes. Didn't sound like anyone I knew. Then again, if my time with Lucrezia and Xanthia had taught me anything so far, it was that looks didn't tell the whole story.

The Capitolian man loitered near one of our gear sheds when Orson and I drove back to the canyon lip. A pair of Peacekeepers stood nearby, their rifles slung over their shoulders as the idled in conversation. I sure didn't recognize him, and whoever he was, he didn't seem the type to indulge in the Capitol's fads. He'd done well to blend in, wearing a simple brown overcoat and gray trousers, but he couldn't hide that garish, lemon hair. The eyes were just as strange as Orson had described them, as if I looked into pupils set in vacant white globes.

"Could we get somewhere private?" the man rumbled as I hopped out of the jeep.

Orson looked around and shrugged. "Best shot at that's getting down to the floor level. Couple sheds around I could clear out, I guess."

The Capitolian thought better of it, waved him off, and said, "How about that? Mind if I borrow your jeep?"

"You…" Orson started to protest. He looked at the man, glanced back at me, and thought better of it. He was a simple Peacekeeper sergeant, far below a Capitol man in any pecking order. "Yeah. Sure. You know how to drive that?"

"Of course. I have my own hovercraft, too," the Capitolian said with a grin. "Ms. Pike. Let's go for a ride."

Hesitant, I stepped back into the passenger seat as the man slid next to me. He took up a lot of space in here even though he was trim, athletic even. The car lurched to a start, and he spared no time gunning the engine, clearing a good deal of distance between us and the canyon lip until Orson and the other Peacekeepers disappeared behind a series of rocky mounts.

"Far enough for a little privacy," he said, stopping the keep and peering out at the horizon. "Storm's coming."

"Maybe we should hurry up, then," I suggested. The man made me uncomfortable: Taking the Peacekeeper jeep just to shuttle me out into the middle of nowhere for a chat? Most Capitolians would've been happy for the attention. "I don't think we've ever met."

He snorted. "Of course we've met. It's been some time. A little over two years, actually. I'm sorry that I haven't been able to see you since then – a lot of other things have taken up my time. Important things. I hear you've been involved in important things too, so maybe it's for the best. This is good timing, anyway."

I racked my brain. A little over two years…the 97th Games? Was he a sponsor, looking for some exclusive deal before the Quarter Quell? The 100th Hunger Games were a big event, so maybe that was it. Something else? An entertainer, maybe, that I'd met in passing at one of those big galas Finch and I had stopped by?

"Why's it good timing?" I asked, kicking a rock and staring at the ground.

"Look what's coming up," he said. "The 100th Games. The fourth Quarter Quell. Whatever you want to call it. A momentous occasion."

Sponsor for sure. I scowled and stared off into the distance, hoping he'd get his spiel over with soon. The man sighed and pulled out a small, silver disc from his pocket. "Nothing better to celebrate Panem's history with than the Hunger Games."

"Sure," I said, shrugging. "History's good."

"It's a catalogue of mindless violence and navel-gazing, wrapped in a shell of arbitrary whims of authority and morality. Perfect for the Hunger Games."

I stopped. Those weren't the words of a Capitolian. They weren't words anyone would say in Panem territory, even.

"I'm sorry," I said, taking a step towards the jeep. "I really don't know you. Really."

"Maybe you're choosing to forget that time, as if that's the only way to satisfy your conscience," the Capitolian said.

He stared down at the disc, and his face…shifted. Little by little, the well-tanned man with the yellow hair and white eyes broke off, spilling into little black dots that collected on the disc like a puzzle coming apart. After just a few seconds, the Capitolian man no longer stood there.

In his place stood Suleiman.

Everything boiled up in me all at once. The events of the 97th Hunger Games, Creon's death, the numbness of losing in the Games each year since, Calla's rule, all of it. I half-snarled, half-screamed, and threw a punch.

He dodged it with little more than a flinch. "That's no way to treat an old colleague."

"You're a murderer!" I snarled, balling my fists.

"You're that angry that I killed a few Peacekeepers back when we first met? They would have found you in that warehouse in Auburn's Belly. I expect that would have been an awkward interrogation."

"Not them! I know you killed him! You killed Creon. I know you did. That's why you wanted to go with me that night to Calla's place. That's where the bomb went off. You did it."

Suleiman laughed. He laughed, but he didn't smile, his face still stoic and still as he chuckled, "You think I killed the president?"

"Yeah."

"Your investigative skills need work. I didn't kill him. Nor did Arrian. I don't care who holds the presidency. It might matter to you and Taurus Sharpe and Cyrus Locke and everyone else who dances around the Presidential Mansion, but it doesn't matter to me. One Snow is the next Snow, regardless of their ruling philosophies. Ignorance. Solipsism. Progress aborted before it has the chance to take its first breath. Do you think a change in ruler would alter that? Especially handing off leadership to someone as shallow as Calla Snow?"

His words had a power and strength behind them, a subtle storm at first that snowballed in power with every sentence. Suleiman didn't have to raise his voice. His calm, passive cynicism was enough. "Bullshit," I cried, verbally lashing out to defend myself against the onslaught. "Whatever game you play, you and Arrian, you want things. Arrian offered to save my tributes that year if I did things for him. You want something too."

"Of course I want something," he said, smirking. "Everyone wants something. But maybe I don't want to tell you. Or maybe you should stop assuming what people want just because they tell you something, or just because they don't disagree with your assumptions."

He bent down, picked up a foot-sized rock, and turned it over in his hands. "What I want to know is why a victor's so keen on helping the very people who make life difficult in the districts."

I gaped, unsure of how to respond. "What?"

"Do you think Lucrezia Bierce's biggest priority is stamping out a cult?"

"What're you talking about?"

"You tell me. You're the one playing junior detective. First for Creon, now for Lucrezia. Struck out the first time."

"I don't know how you heard about this –"

"Please."

"-but Taurus made me do it. He told me to look into these things, and Lucrezia barged in. I'm not trying to move to the Capitol and become buddies with everyone."

"Of course you are, Terra. That's exactly what you want. I'm not omniscient; I don't know if Taurus told you to or not. But I know you're too happy to go along with it. The mystery provokes you. It's more exciting than sitting in a dark house in the Victor's Village. Finch and Daud's lives disgust you, don't they? Living as marked people for eleven months out of the year, isolated, out of the loop, uninformed, their only respite to become pawns for one month out of every twelve."

"I do not –"

"That's why you spend your time working when you don't have to. It distracts from the horror that is monotony. More importantly, that's why you're so happy to work with the likes of Taurus and Creon and Lucrezia. Few victors practice court intrigue."

"So what do you want, then? If you don't like me so much, why bother me?"

Suleiman tossed the rock out into the desert, the stone landing with a soft piff in the sand. It didn't bounce once, merely settling in to the exact place his throw had sent it. "Arrian's offer still stands."

"No," I said immediately. As much as the thought had once tempted me, the lurking danger that Arrian – and now Suleiman – would ask a price far, far more damning stayed my hand.

"One job for one tribute. It's a fairer deal than you'll get anywhere else in Panem. It's not like you're the first victor I've ever approached with an offer. One even took me up years ago, and she's doing better than ever."

"Forget it."

He shrugged. "This year's the Quell. You might not say 'no' for long."

Suleiman stepped back into his jeep, but when I tried to follow, he closed the passenger-side door. "Take a long walk back. Think on things. The desert air's dry and good for moments of solitude."

"Oh," he added as the vehicle's ignition rumbled. "Your newest victor's stopping by in a few days on his tour. Do me a favor and have a nice conversation with him. Expand your worldview and you might start to question things. Until this year's Games, Terra. I'll see you in the Capitol then."

/ / / / /

"Do you ever think you were born a bad person?"

Thunk! A dart implanted into Daud's kitchen wall, quivering in the middle of a crude, hand-drawn, charcoal circle. Daud admired his shot, took a drink, and said, "Done plenty of bad things."

"That's not what I'm asking, I said, frowning and crossing my legs as my mentor lined up another dart. "Do you think that…just…that some people are made to do bad things?"

"Why ask that?" Thunk!

I shrugged. I certainly wasn't going to tell him the reason behind my question.

After a long pause and another drink, he leaned back, belched, and said, "Nah. I don't think I was born bad."

"Sometimes I think I was," I mumbled, slouching down, leaning my arms across his kitchen table, and resting my chin on them.

Daud was quiet, swishing his drink, eying its milky white sloshing, waiting for me to go on. Staring off into the distance, I said, "Sometimes I don't know why I do things."

He fretted and said, "Do things need a why?"

"Some things, yeah. Important things."

"I don't think so. Things happen. The why gets settled later. Good things with bad justification are still good things."

I watched him pitch another dart at the wall. There wasn't any residue of a white lie on his face, no graying of doubt in his eyes. Daud had this…this contentment that I envied, despite the person he was and all the people who scoffed at him. He could live with cutting down doomed avoxes for sponsorships.

"It never gets to you?" I asked. "Anything you do?"

He took a drink. "Nah. Only the things I don't."

"The…the people you kill, that never bothers you?"

"Nah. Why would it?"

"I mean, they're people."

"I'd rather die than live like that. At least they can die for a good cause that way."

I stewed on my next question, debating how to phrase it. "Let's say all that does get a tribute out –"

"It did."

"Forget me. Let's say someone else. It just means that some other tribute from some other district who could've won didn't."

"That's your problem," Daud said, waving his glass at me and spilling a wave of wine over the lip. "You keep getting caught up that one life equals another with no difference. That ain't so."

"Why not? They're both, well, lives."

"Because one means something to you and one doesn't."

"Well, that doesn't matter. I could say that for anyone else."

"Except you and I aren't anyone else. You don't live everyone's lives."

I sat back in my chair. The spilled wine dripped off the table bit by bit, drip, drip, drip, pooling in a pale embolism within a narrow crack on the floor. It was getting harder to keep everything inside of me. Bit by bit, drip, drip, drip, questions and admissions popped out of my skin.

"If you could guarantee to get someone out of the arena," I said, "would you do it if you had to kill a thousand people?"

"That's damn ridiculous. Where's this even comin' from?"

"Pretend."

Daud swirled his wine in his cup again. L was catching on that he did that every time thoughts whirled around in his head. "Do I know these thousand people?"

"Probably not."

"Alright. Sure. I'll kill 'em."

I pawed at a dart on the table, poking my index finger against its needle tip. "I don't think I could."

"That's never something you're gonna do anyway."

"Yeah, but what if I have to decide on something similar?"

"You won't. Stop talking about this. You're getting all caught up in your head. That's the fastest way to go crazy."

I turned the dart over in my hand. Dusk had already settled in. This wasn't a conversation I should've been having: Earlier in the day, District 12's new victor, Roan Hawthorne, had given his speech in the town square. Officials were showing him around the district on various tours now, but in two hours I'd have to be at the Justice Hall, putting on my best smile and meeting him for the first time. I still didn't know anything about him – his speech had been run-of-the-mill, reading-off-a-card stuff – and the weight of Suleiman's accusations and Daud's philosophy was not something I needed pressing on me.

Idling, I chucked my dart at the wall. It missed the wall entirely, flying off down the hall and clattering against the floor.

"Awful throw," Daud scoffed. "Who taught you to throw darts?"

"No one," I mumbled, leaning over on the table again and laying my head down. I didn't feel good.

Daud set his drink down and pushed his chair back. "Get up. Pick up that dart and try aiming this time."

I grumbled and played along. When I moved to chuck again, however, Daud held my arm back before I could throw. "Using too much of your shoulder, girl," he said. "You're not killing the wall. You're trying to hit the middle of the circle. Here."

He pulled my forearm back to ninety degrees and held my shoulder steady. "Straighten your arm in one go and use your wrist to fine-tune your aim. It's a dart, not a javelin."

I bit my lip and threw. Thunk! The dart slammed into the wall just outside of the charcoal circle, a far cry from my mentor's precise bullseyes, but better than the last time. "At least you hit the wall," Daud said, satisfied.

I smiled just as his front door slammed open. Finch barged into the room, a flowing scarlet dress swishing around her, a grin plastered on her face that fluttered away the moment she saw us. "What are you two doing?" she asked, her tone taking on authority with every word. "We've got ninety minutes 'til the dinner starts."

"Sounds like loads of fun," Daud said, dropping back into his chair and picking his glass up. "A polite dinner with polite folk. Sign me up."

"Well, you are. Go get dressed. Terra, you too."

"Screw that," countered Daud. "I'm not goin'. Give Haymitch my regards."

Anger flashed across Finch's eyes. "Daud, we're supposed to be there. We. That means you too."

"Yeah. Sorry, not gonna make it."

I started to say something, but Finch pushed me towards the door. "Terra, out. Go get dressed."

"But –"

"Now. I laid out your dress earlier. Go."

Sulking, I dashed out of the kitchen as Finch rounded on Daud. I didn't shut the front door all the way, however, nor did I run off to go get dressed. I wanted to listen.

"What the hell are you doing?" I heard Finch say. "It's one night, Daud."

"So they're not gonna miss me much. Great."

"And what are you saying about our district when you don't show up? When it's just two out of us three?"

"That I don't do fancy dinners? That's what a normal person would think."

Someone slapped a wall. "She doesn't have anyone else to look up to, get it?" Finch yelled. "You know what message you're sending to Terra?"

"That she shouldn't care about fancy dinners, either?"

"That it's alright to half-ass everything! What the hell happened to you? You weren't always like this back when we first met, or so many of those years later. But now, these last three years especially, you've been so…so goddamn lazy!"

"Sorry I'm not living up to your ideal. I didn't realize we were fucking married."

"It's not us!"

"Then what is it? In actual plain terms, not with your little implications and hints."

"A long time ago, way back when I first knew you, you said you would've wanted kids if you hadn't been a victor. Well there! That's the closest you're gonna get!"

"Oh, so I'm the bad parent? Gods, what does that make you?"

"A helluva lot more responsible!"

"Grow up, Finch! This is all bullshittery. We don't have to stand on ceremony to give Terra the right direction."

"She's gonna be a victor the rest of her life. That's a lot of years of 'standing on ceremony.' Think for a stupid second!"

"And that's a lot of years where she can pick and choose how to live. Stop trying to force everything in your damn pigeonhole."

I clapped my hands over my ears, shut my eyes, and slumped down on the porch, my back to the wall, sand kicking up around me. Another bad outcome that centered on me. Another argument that, just…ugh. I didn't want to say it. Another argument that would've have happened if I wasn't here.

The glittering blue dress resting on my bed didn't ease my self-loathing, and it was all I could do to keep myself from crying as I smeared makeup all over my face. Finch looked angry as she gathered me for the dinner, and neither of us said a word as we trudged down the dirt roads into town.

Light poured out of the Hall of Justice into the bright night, with a milky full moon watching overhead. Capitol banners and television screens still hung around the square from the earlier speech, and Finch half-dragged me through the front doors as I lingered to look about.

"There's a lot of people who are going to be here, okay?" Finch said, stopping me down one of the halls. Forlorn old man looked on from their oil painting prisons along the walls, their lips turned up in stoic smiles as if chuckling at my misery.

"I know, Finch," I mumbled. "We did it last year. And the year before."

"Roan's going to be here, and Haymitch, and their escort, their stylist too –"

"Finch, I know!"

She nodded, gave me an uneasy smile, and led me into the main assembly room.

It was a far cry from any Capitolian gala. A scant two tables of food lined opposite walls, filled with desert delicacies that I'd tasted for far too many years. The Capitol-made chandeliers couldn't hide the dust that had built up on their bulbs. A stain outlasted multiple laundry runs here and there on the giant golden tablecloth that lined the great meeting table at the center of the room, now host to pitchers of wine and ale. District…dignitaries, I suppose, though I hesitated to use the term…filled the room, talking with the few Capitolians there, eying the Peacekeeper guards who covered the entrances, and turning in unison as Finch and I stepped in.

Finch smiled, patted my arm, and said, "I'm gonna go mingle. Have fun. Talk to people."

Easier said than done. As soon as she abandoned my side, a trio of older men I didn't know – or at least didn't remember – wandered up, asking this shallow question and that. I wrangled up poor excuses to get away and hide at a food table, filling up a carved stone goblet to the brim with wine and taking a long drink.

Fifteen more agonizing minutes passed before the doors to the waiting rooms opened to our guests. Some green-haired, yellow-faced woman with eyes too large for her head trotted in first, waving, smiling, and giggling as she shook hands and chatted with the first people she ran into. Escort. I suddenly felt guilty for having an escort like Elan, a man who did his job and want over and above for his charges but never lost himself in the fineries of the position. Didn't look like District 12 was so lucky.

Finally the newest victor walked in. Roan Hawthorne looked even less interested than he'd seemed at the speech. Could the boy even smile? He was eighteen like me, but his close-cropped black hair, high cheekbones, and forlorn gray eyes made him look older. Something close to cynicism flashed across his face as he looked around, his frown deepening a tad as he shook hands. I felt for him. I didn't want to be here either, not after my conversations with Daud and Suleiman.

Haymitch wandered in a few steps behind him, even less eager to socialize. He flashed a plastic smile, wiped his long gray hair out of his eyes, and shouldered his way through the crowd as the guests swarmed his victor.

He wasn't just looking to avoid people, however. He spotted me, made eye contact, nodded, and made a beeline in my direction. I didn't have time to flee before he was on me, frowning, putting a hand on my shoulder, and saying, "Why don't we move off to a corner in private?"

"Hello, too," I grumbled, but I didn't fight him. I didn't view Haymitch too highly – he seemed like a version of Daud who'd lost all fight and hope, and he hung out with freaking Johanna Mason to boot, an instant negative – but the last thing I wanted was to create drama tonight.

Haymitch stole a goblet of wine as we slid into an unoccupied corner of the room far from the action. "Lovely party," he said with a roll of his eyes and a swig of wine.

"What d'you want?" I said, folding my arms and looking away.

"Woo. I'm feeling chilly, too."

"Haymitch, come on."

"Already shaping up to be a pleasant evening. Fine, sweetheart. I was going to ask you for a favor, but if you're too busy trying on your pouty face –"

I waved my hands above my head. "I'm having a bad day. Alright. What's your favor?"

Haymitch frowned, drank, looked around, and lowered his voice: "Look. The boy's not the most social kid ever."

"Roan?"

"No, my dog. What do you think?"

I sighed. "Well, I'm not the most social person, either."

"Oh, bull-double-shit, sweetheart. You get along fine enough with the other victors your age."

"There's no one else to talk to, that's why."

"Well, sure, there's…" he paused and waved his goblet. "Yeah. But do me a favor. No one knows that girl who won last year. And that guy from 2 who won two years ago's a pain in all the wrong places."

"So what? You want me to play friends with your victor?"

Haymitch tilted his goblet and gave me a wry smile. "Friends is a pretty loaded word. But it looks like we're lacking in other younger victors in District 12. It's not like I could've gotten both my tributes out of the arena to give him someone to talk to."

"Why don't you ask Drake to do it? They can do guy-time. Drake's not much older than me."

"Yeah, Drake Odair's a fruit, for one. Second, Roan's not the most optimistic of kids. Shoving Mr. Shiny in his face doesn't sound like a great pairing, does it?"

I slumped my shoulders. "Fine. Any advice to talk with him, then?"

"Smile more. You look like you want to kill something," Haymitch said. "Go, uh…chat up all these fine, upstanding people."

Psh.

I was surprised to see Haymitch give half a hump about his lone victor, but something in his plea touched me. He doesn't want Roan to turn out like himself. That was all I could gather: Haymitch hadn't had a victor for nearly half a century. I doubted he wanted Roan to follow in his footsteps. Even with that, however, I struggled to find Roan all evening. It wasn't until after at least an hour had passed and a handful of people had filed out that I could get a good layout of the room. Fancy-looking people I didn't know here, plates loaded with half-eaten cactus pears and pulled pork there, Finch and Haymitch chatting in a far corner, a goblet of wine sitting on an end table between them. Everywhere I looked – no Roan.

I walked up and down the room twice to make sure he wasn't here, evading half-hearted attempts to get my attention from others on the way. No Roan. A door opened ajar on the far end of the room, just open enough for me to see. Well then. I looked around for a last time, and upon not seeing him, slipped through the door.

The desert air had cooled drastically, and I rubbed my arms to stay warm as I stepped outside. Winters were hot in District 5 given that we were Panem's southernmost district, but temperatures dropped quickly at night. It never snowed here, but that didn't stop the air from feeling icy on my bare shoulders.

The full moon cast shadows behind shrubs and rocks. A pair of glowing eyes stared at me from the branches of a palo verde tree as a ringtail cat clung to its perch. Somewhere up above, an owl hooted as it watched over the shady quiet of the downtown district.

A shadow shuffled a dozen feet away.

I stepped past the tree as the ringtail cat leapt to another tree, seeking safety from my intrusion. There: On a rock beside a building sat Roan, parked behind a cactus and veiled by a creosote bush. Before him, a lone emperor scorpion crept along the ground.

I did my best to smile and said, "Hey." He looked up, startled, his eyes full of suspicion. Trying to remedy my abrupt arrival, I said, "Boring party anyway. Is that your first cactus?"

He ignored my attempt at small talk. "You're Terra, right?" he asked, his voice rich and dark.

I nodded, and he looked back at the scorpion as it slipped into a crack in the wall of the building. "How do you think the average day goes for the average person in there?" he said, propping his elbows on his knees and sticking out his lip. "Wake up late. Screw their wife, husband, friend, whoever. Go to work, maybe file some papers? Go home early afternoon. Screw their mistress. Drink. Sleep. Something like that?"

Trying my best to laugh, I ventured, "What?"

"Nothin'."

An awkward pause settled over us. I clasped my hands and played with my thumbs, hoping he'd say something. When he didn't, I tried my best to break the tension: "So…are you liking being a victor?"

"Feels normal."

"Normal?"

"Pretty tiring. So pretty normal."

Gods, Haymitch wasn't joking. I looked back at the Justice Hall, wondering if I should leave Roan to his thoughts. Deciding to stick with it, I said, "I remember going to District 12 during my Victory Tour. It seemed…kinda nice. Quaint."

He snorted. "How long'd you stay there?"

"Like, a day."

"It is the goddamn backwater. People there wouldn't even know the Capitol and the districts exist if it weren't for the Peacekeepers and the Games. Might as well be in the middle of the ocean, or on one of those stars up there."

"It's like that a lot of places. Even here sometimes," I said.

"Then it's all a backwater without borders," he said.

After another silence, he said, "So what d'you do?"

"Me? I…I fix solar panels on the power plants in my spare time. I try to help my brother at his pub, but he doesn't want my help a lot."

"Yeah, I don't care about that," Roan said, tossing a rock from hand to hand. "In the Capitol. Come Hunger Games time. What's the word?"

"Nobody else has told you?"

"Nope. Haymitch has been washing down too many drinks to say much."

"That's a way to find out things," I joked.

"I don't drink."

I looked down at my hands. Gods, this kid was tough to figure. "I chat with people. Try to convince them to pay me for my tributes. Try to tell my kids everything they need to know to get out alive. Hasn't worked yet."

"Yeah," he said with a small grin. "Thought it was kinda like that. Anything else?"

"Look, why not – why don't you tell me about you? I don't even know you, really."

"Doubt you want to."

"Try me."

Roan fretted and tossed his rock to the ground. "What do I think? I think this is all a mistake."

"What is?"

"This. Districts. Panem. Hunger Games."

"Well, the Hunger Games, yeah. It's not exactly ideal."

"Think about it," he said, looking up and resting his chin on his thumb. "This all comes because some world before us blows themselves up, right? That's what they teach at school."

"Yeah. So?"

"So they didn't do a great job of blowing themselves up if we're still here. They only did enough of the job that we're making things like the Hunger Games and screwing people over. That's the mistake. Either live in peace or just jump off the tree branch with the noose around your neck, already. Instead, somewhere a mistake happens and Panem pops up. You can't tell me people starve to death because it's the best we can manage."

"It –"

"So, if Panem is a mistake, and the people who came before ended things with a mistake, are all people a mistake? Look at that spider there."

"Tarantula."

"Whatever you call it. It doesn't make a Hunger Games. Hell, it doesn't know it 'is.' Only us people know that. We're the only things that can worry about this crap. That kinda thing doesn't seem very useful to me. Dogs don't worry. Spiders don't worry. Birds don't. Just people. We're the only ones who can come up with ideas that make problems even worse. No other animal comes up with the idea to have a children's killing contest run indefinitely as punishment for a war. I mean, who rationally comes up with that? What does that solve? Just the idea of that implies creating more problems than solutions, yet here we are. Us. Mistake."

I stared off into the night. Roan was…strange. Smart, no doubt, but strange. I didn't have conversations like this with other people. It was…well, I wouldn't want a Peacekeeper to overhear us.

"Maybe there's a reason behind it," I said, eying the church belltower in the distance.

"Yeah, people do dumb things. That's it."

"I mean…"

"What, some sort of spiritualism thing? That's funny," he snorted.

I had a strange feeling about Roan all of the sudden, and in wanting to know more, I asked, "Did you…do you ever talk to your family or parents about this kind of thing? Or Haymitch? Now that you're a victor and all?"

"Haymitch? Ha," he laughed. "Nah, not Haymitch. My mother…uh, she doesn't do step-by-step thinking well. I mean, I wouldn't let her take care of planning big things."

"Is that what your dad does?"

"Nah. He got sick and died."

Ach. I felt horrible the instant he said that. All credit to Roan for admitting that like he was admitting his favorite food, but why did I have to press? "I'm…sorry."

"Mm, well, screw it. Sister too. Boo-hoo, right?"

Gods, I was digging myself a deeper hole with every word. Why did Roan have to be so candid? I almost wished he'd pushed me away and sulked instead, just so I wouldn't have had to hear this.

In the end, I said nothing. Roan got up before I could force something out of my mouth, saying, "Haymitch is gonna hunt me down sooner or later. I'm going in."

I didn't say goodbye. I didn't do much of anything but watch him go. Instead, I sat down on his rock, watching the ringtail cat from earlier peer out at me from a bush, seeing me as a danger, a threat. I felt like it. Worse, maybe.

Maybe "bad person" didn't sum me up. "Mistake" sounded better.