A/N: This story is compliant with all of my canon-compliant stories (it complies with the AUs until their point of divergence from canon). Many of the OCs featured here feature in my other stories. I am Jewish myself but know very little about Judaism, so if you spot any errors that can't be chalked up to Diana being as nescient as me in matters of religion, do point them out.

"Diana Cohen!"

For a second, Diana thought she had misheard, but no - the giant television screens that dotted the giant field right outside Six's Centre were all showing her ID photo. Back when she had been twelve, there had been no televisions. Not like it made much of a difference. Before, she had wondered why nobody ever tried to just not go up, but the thought of staying put didn't even enter her mind now. She just walked. What else was she supposed to do?

Even as Diana began to walk to the stage, she couldn't believe it. Was she having a nightmare?

"Rafael Sanchez, ID number 093489236!" No photo for him, only the number.

Well, this would take a while, especially if Rafael Sanchez had not brought his documents or did not know his number by heart. Diana looked around her for the first time, noticing how the mass of other girls were trying to not look at her. Then it hit her. She nearly tripped as the realization hit that she was going to die next week. It was absurd, her mind refused to process it, but there was nothing she could do about it. She hated those girls. Why did it have to be her? This was her last Reaping, she should have been free now! She wanted to scream, she wanted to cry, she suddenly needed to pee.

The walk passed as in a fog, and suddenly, Diana was mounting the stairs as a group of younger boys descended from the stage. None of them were the right one. One by one, boys walked up to the stage and had their blood taken again, sighing in relief when told they could go. Diana envied and hated them.

"Please, everyone called Rafael Sanchez - or Rafa, or anything else of the sort - please come up here," the escort chirped into the microphone. Eleftherios Sokullu, or Elly as he usually introduced himself, was an average-sized man with light-brown skin, blue eyes that were probably contact lenses, and a short beard dyed rainbow, as was his shoulder-length hair. His suit was an odd shade of blue. Ever since Elly had come to Six a couple years back, Diana had wondered if he knew his first name was Greek and his last name was Turkish, or that the two countries hated each other.

Oh, what did it matter what Greece and Turkey thought of each other? They clearly didn't think much about Panem, which was why Diana was going to die next week. Despite the extreme heat, she realized she was shaking. She hated herself for that, hated how afraid she was. Only cowards sat around whimpering when the nation called. Her relatives had been heroes in the Dark Days, and Diana hated herself for not being as heroic as them. She was simply scared.

She wouldn't even get to say goodbye to her family, friends, coworkers, neighbours - anybody. Diana couldn't imagine dying, the mental image stubbornly refused to form, but logically, she knew that she was a goner. Diana desperately tried to hold back tears. She wouldn't give up now. She'd just keep on going, and when she died, it's not like she would care at that point. She may have gone to synagogue every so often, which was why she knew about other countries (the rabbi corresponded with cousins in Israel), but she didn't actually believe. Diana wished she could believe there would be something after this, but she just couldn't.

Finally, the correct Rafael Sanchez was identified. He was also eighteen and dressed similar to her, in clothes that were fine and in good repair but not particularly expensive, by general standards. His shirt was white while hers was black, their shoes could have come from the same shop, and he wore somewhat loose-fitting trousers while she wore the baggy skirt she wore to synagogue that brushed the toes of her shoes. Rafael was probably about a metre sixty-five to her metre fifty-five, their skin was the same light-brown and their hair the same black, their short curly hair was cut in basically the same way and their builds were similar, though he was definitely scrawnier than her. The only difference was that Rafael had a short beard which made him look older than his age.

The Treaty of Treason was recited and they were bundled off to the closest Justice Building, where they were supposed to be visited. This Justice Building was very similar to the one she had gone to a few times with her family to get paperwork registered and whatever. But there was no family here. Only a parade of functionaries.

"Thank you for your sacrifice," the District Mayor said.

"Thank you for your sacrifice," the city mayor said.

"Thank you for your sacrifice," the Head Peacekeeper said.

Diana felt like she should have been awed to be in the presence of such important people, but she only wanted to shout at them. She wasn't dead yet! Then, they left, leaving her alone in the room.

Diana was resigned to being stuck alone with her thoughts, but to her surprise, the moment she leaned back on the soft couch, a middle-aged Jewish man, that being obvious from his kippah, appeared.

"Hello, Diana," he said gently. "I'm Rabbi Miller. Rabbi Simon asked me to visit you."

Of course he had. "Thank you," Diana said. "But I don't think you can help me."

"On the contrary," Rabbi Miller said, leaning closer to her, "I can. Let me give you some advice. In your interview, you need to make your Jewishness obvious. Not to the point where everyone realizes what's going on, but if you allude to speaking Hebrew or recite a line of prayer, every single Jewish person will rush to sponsor you."

Diana shook her head. "Me instead of their Tributes?" In school and at work, everyone had always told them to donate for Six.

"Of course. Do you know this Rafael Sanchez?"

"No."

"Neither does the vast majority of the District. It is an atomized world we live in, Diana. Anything that makes people feel like you are one of them, anything that makes them feel connected to you, will make a difference. Remember how Tributes appeal for support? They mention things they like, the job they do, the social roles they have. You will be at an advantage because you will be appealing to something that has, in part, an actual network. There has never been a Jewish tribute before, the numbers are too small, so it will be totally new, every single synagogue will be fundraising for you."

"So what do I do?" Diana asked even though she knew Rabbi Miller could hardly help her in the Arena.

"Do what you must to survive, and know that we are with you every step of the way."

Diana nodded. "It's alright to kill people in the Games, right?" All of a sudden, she wanted to know the answer to that.

Rabbi Miller just looked at her. "Will my answer change what you already think?"

"Well, no," Diana had to admit. She knew full well that even if it was wrong, she'd do it without blinking. Anything to stay alive.

"Here," he said, and gave her a well-worn siddur. "Rabbi Simon told me you can read Hebrew. He told me your family attends services but doesn't truly believe, but I hope that the prayers will be a source of comfort, or at least routine, nevertheless."

"Thank you." Diana flipped through the prayer-book and put it in her skirt pocket. "Do you have any more advice?"

Rabbi Miller glanced towards the door. "So much I wish I could tell you. For now - do you have any wishes for your funeral?"

Diana felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Logically, she knew she had no chances, but she was still furious that even Rabbi Miller was telling her to prepare for death. "No. Just bury me in the Tribute graveyard like anyone else."

"Is there anyone you would like to speak or-."

"No!" Diana snapped. "Figure it out yourselves. I won't be around to care anyway."

"Alright." Diana was surprised he just let it go, but maybe it was because of how little time they had together. "And don't worry about your family. We'll help them."

Diana really didn't want to think about that. "Thank you."

"Don't give up now," Rabbi Miller said, noticing how she was feeling. "Your odds are already quite high. You're eighteen, as are more than half of Victors, and you will have plenty of sponsors."

He wasn't wrong, there were twice as many eighteen-year-old Victors as seventeen-year-old ones. Given the income of the average Tribute, that extra year usually made a big difference. "But I'm not strong, I don't know how to fight."

"Half of the Victors are boys, half are girls. What does that tell you?"

"That just physical strength isn't much of an advantage. But I don't know how to fight." Not for real.

"You can learn during training. Remember, everyone else is as unprepared as you and the Careers are just six people. Plus, they only won once in the past ten years. They seem to be dominant because they always make it into the top eight, but the Gamemakers like creating surprises. Terrain matters. Weather matters. Keep going, Diana. Don't die before you have to."

That, at least, she could do.

The train was fantastically luxurious, like something from a movie. Diana and Rafael were brought in by Elly and taken for lunch, which was already laid out.

"Where are our mentors?" Rafael asked. He had a heavy Spanish accent.

"They'll be here soon."

Diana wasn't so sure. In sixty years of the Hunger Games, Six had won three times. Luisa Moreno had won the Fourteenth Games and died something like ten years later of complications to her injuries, leaving Diana and Rafael with Blake Young and Maria Popescu. Young had won the Twenty-Fifth - 'everyone knew' he had been voted in by the parents of his classmates, as he had been a serial rapist, and rumour had it he had been castrated after his victory. More plausible were the rumours that both he and Popescu, who had won in the Fifty-Third, were addicted to opiates. Young had won in a barren Arena by being the most vicious fighter in an Arena of everyone from other rapists to gang leaders, and Popescu had won in a lush forest by charming enough sponsors to get herself food and water, getting her hands on a knife at the Cornucopia, and winning all the fights she got into skulking around the woods. The second option seemed more likely for Diana.

"Let's eat," Elly said.

There was a massive amount of food. Diana's family was hardly poor, she had never been hungry in her life, but what they ate was cheap, monotonous, and often flavourless, the opposite of this, and while her parents had given her and Leonella food and money for the trip - they had taken the special train yesterday evening - that had all been used up that morning, so she was very hungry. She got herself a bowl of beans, rice, and a bunch of different vegetables she couldn't recognize. Rafael did likewise, and Elly focused on his cell phone. Over the past few years, the richest people in the city had been getting those, but Diana's family were factory workers and mechanics. Diana had been getting an apprenticeship in boilermaking.

That was irrelevant now. Diana ate her beans and rice, which were amazingly flavourful, and tried not to cry. When she finished, she took a blueberry bagel and ate it, too. It was tough on the inside and soft inside, and had a lot of blueberries. There was a wide variety of fresh fruit available, all cut up into small pieces. Diana ate a funny-looking large red berry with a tough skin that looked like a gooseberry, a peach quarter, a piece of what must have been pineapple, and a little white fruit she had to clean of its tough pink rind.

"Let's watch the recap, then?" Elly offered. He turned on the television and left. Diana looked at Rafael, who also looked confused, and focused on the screen.

In One, there were two volunteers, like always. In the past few years, the Careers had become far less fearsome than before. Granted, they had always been the targets of a disproportional amount of Gamemaker traps, but now, they were awful at any kind of survival skills, often couldn't even climb a tree, and didn't know how to swim. Nobody had any idea what had happened there, but Diana was glad for anything that made her opponents weaker.

In Two, more volunteers. In Three, the boy was seventeen and the girl eighteen, and they looked to be quite poor. From Four, volunteers. From Five, the girl was fourteen and the boy fifteen. Those were both goners. Only three fifteen-year-olds had ever won, and all had been fully grown by that point. Strength did matter, to a certain extent. It was just that so much was determined by the Arena and how the Gamemakers were feeling, just being a boy Career was only an advantage, not a guarantee. That was why boys and girls were thrown in together, unlike in sports, where you were divided once you got to twelve - bone density and musculature meant nothing when you had a sprained ankle and were malnourished and exhausted. The reason for the age range was the Dark Days. If twelve-year-olds had been called up to fight side-by-side with adults back in the day, they could do it here. Even if there was a big difference between war and the Hunger Games.

They were next. Diana was surprised to see herself looking so calm. Then came the rest, with no surprises. This year, there was a twelve-year-old, the boy from Ten. Diana's younger sister Leonella loved math (which was why at fifteen, she was still in academic school, unlike Diana who had finished elementary and gone to trade school) and had done the numbers. Given the cumulative slips, and presuming the same number of kids in each age cohort, the chance of a twelve-year-old being picked was 3.5%, or one out of twenty-eight, which meant that there would be one kid that age picked most years. Of course, a quarter of the time, someone would volunteer for them. Conversely, the odds of it being an eighteen-year-old were a quarter. Even assuming the volunteers were all replacing younger kids, that would be half the field being eighteen, so the odds of a Victor that age were still disproportionate to their amount in the Arena.

The girl from Ten was fourteen but strong-looking. The girl from Eleven was eighteen and the boy was fifteen, both short and scrawny. Both from Twelve were seventeen. Purely from the point of view of strength, Diana could probably take all of the non-Career girls in an unarmed fight, and all of the boys fifteen and under. The problem was that the fight could easily be not so even.

They sat there for a while, watching television. Eventually, Elly came back and told them to go sleep. Wasn't he and the Mentors supposed to be helping them? Full of rage and fury, Diana wasn't sure if she'd be able to sleep, but she eventually was.

When she woke up, Diana said morning prayers, more out of lack of anything else to do than conviction. She went into the nice bathroom, which had no mold or silverfish, and washed herself with the warm water and a bar of soap. It was hard to enjoy the warmth. Diana was going to die and there was nothing she could do about it.

Just days ago, someone had come to the factory and talked to the adolescent workers and apprentices about how they were supposed to hope they would be Reaped, and Diana had ignored him, certain that her name would never be drawn. It was so unfair that she only had seven slips in there and one of them was the one picked by Elly. When Diana had been little, she had daydreamed about going to the Games, but she had been too small then to grasp the certainty of death that waited, and she had never been one of those people who wanted to die. The Games had always just been there, something that happened to other people. Nobody had ever been Reaped from her school, her work, or her neighbourhood. Even Mom, who was always scared of everything, had simply waved when Diana and Leonella had left the apartment yesterday evening to head for the train station.

When she had been little, Diana and her friends had played 'Hunger Games' in the lot encircled by several apartment buildings including hers, chasing each other like in tag but fighting to decide who would be 'it' next. At school around this time, all the teachers talked about the glory of the Games. Diana didn't want to imagine what Leonella was thinking right now. Every year, the families appeared on television to talk about how proud they were that their child was a Tribute and how glad they were that they were going to die in such a glorious way. It hit Diana now that they had all been lying. Sure, her family would be proud, but she couldn't imagine them being glad.

Despite the hot water, Diana felt cold and she had to fight back tears. What would her relatives have thought had they seen her now? They would have been so disappointed to know their descendant was such a weak coward.

Diana stood there for a while, eventually calming down enough to make a plan. Do everything she could to gain sponsors, both the usual way and by speaking Hebrew. Learn to fight in training - sponsors could send her water and if it came to it a person could live a long time without food, but if she couldn't fight with weapons, any encounter with another Tribute would probably be her last. Also learn first aid, because supplies could be sent in but she'd need to know how to use them. Hope for an Arena where it was possible to hide. And don't die before death. For now, she was alive, and when it ended, she wouldn't be thinking in any case.

Of course, slow death was always possible, but Diana didn't think about that, just as she didn't think about a potentially deadly Arena where she'd have no idea where it was safe to step.

Breakfast was as massive as dinner. The food was completely different, unlike at home where breakfast was leftovers from dinner, so Diana took the most inoffensive-looking things - a boiled egg, an apple, bread with peanut butter and redcurrant jam, tea. Once again, she and Rafael ate without looking at each other, but this time, the Mentors finally arrived. The rumours about Young's castration were either nonsense or he was on testosterone, because his physique was very male, slender, sunken-chested, and with a pointed jaw, he had stubble on his drawn cheeks, and his short grey hair was receding. Popescu looked neater, either because she had no facial hair to act as indicator or because she was younger, though her equally short hair was mostly white. Diana had heard people refer to them as 'morphlings', but that had to be a mix-up. In her parts, morphling was bathtub desomorphine that caused massive infections and rapid death because of its toxic impurities, but some people from out of town called any opioid addicts morphlings, and some even called morphine morphling, which was confusing as hell. Young and Popescu were probably morphlings in the latter sense, there was no way Victors would be buying low-quality stuff - and besides, actual morphlings only lived for a couple of years at most.

"So, are you going to help us?" Rafael demanded.

Popescu looked at him, then at Diana, and flapped her hand. "No point to it."

Rafael got up and stormed from the table. Diana seethed but continued to eat. Back home she didn't listen to the drunks and old people by the building entrance commenting on her personal life, and she wasn't going to listen to Popescu, either. She wasn't going to give up just like that.

"I need another dose," Young said, reaching into his pocket. As Diana watched in horror, he actually proceeded to inject himself right at the table. His arm was covered with tiny faint scars - definitely using quality product, then. Elly put on headphones and listened to music instead. Diana realized that Rabbi Miller had been right. They had no connection to her, no reason to care or to try on her behalf. She needed to reach the people who would.

The train began to slow down, and Diana heard cheering. Heart hammering, she approached the window and saw a massive crowd. It was just like when important people came to her city and everyone was forced to show up and applaud enthusiastically. Someone noticed her and waved to her, and she waved back. The train then pulled into the station, from where she and Rafael were taken in separate directions. Presumably they were going to be prepared somehow for the Tribute Parade, but Diana had no idea what that would look like.

The preparation turned out to be something like what the person who oversaw her apprenticeship program said about the spa vacations he went on. Diana was scrubbed down, her hair was washed and trimmed in a way that made her short curls look elegantly voluminous instead of a chaotic mess, and most of her body hair was removed. At least it wasn't all, because if there had been a need to remove her pubic hair, she would have begun to worry about being sent out in the carriage naked. That happened sometimes - last year, it had been the Ones to go out wearing only gold dust (nice, but Grandpa had nearly exploded), and a few years back, the Twelves had gone out covered in coal dust (they had been underweight, so not so nice).

The cleaning was done by three people wearing smocks over simple shirts and trousers made from cheap-looking brightly dyed material, like what hospital staff wore, and with very expensive body mods of the sort Diana usually associated with young government functionaries and professionals. They also wore thick rubber gloves and masks, probably in case someone had lice or was contagious. They worked in silence for a very long time before passing her over to a doctor, who looked her over, checked her eyes and blood, gave her an injection that would make her skip her next period (which was a relief, because there wouldn't be pads in the Arena), and perfunctorily asked how she was feeling. Once she left, Diana was alone in the room in a bathrobe, stinging all over from her plucked eyebrows to her trimmed toenails. The bathrobe was unbelievably soft. Diana fidgeted with the sleeves as she waited for the stylist.

The stylist, an unbelievably beautiful tall woman with long coily yellow hair in an impossibly neat dandelion puff and an elegant white suit came in, introduced herself as Michelle Warner, and hung an outfit covered up in the fabric thing you put over your best clothes on a hook. Warner was familiar to Diana, she had been a stylist for Six for something like ten years now, her originally dark-brown skin overtaken with more and more patches of albino white with each Games. She probably wanted to go home and nap. How long had it taken her to make the outfit? Even presuming several had been made in different sizes and a team had been altering the closest one since yesterday, that still had to be a lot of work.

Was it really yesterday that the Reaping had happened? It felt more like eternity.

"First off," Warner said, "I just want to thank you for your sacrifice. I have a cousin who died a few years ago fighting a band of terrorists - I know it's not easy. But the nation calls, whether we want it or not."

Diana wondered what that cousin had done to be dragged into a recruitment centre. Back home, the local Peacekeeper had joined up after her parents failed to make three mortgage payments in a row. "Thank you." She hated being here, hated knowing she was going the same way as so many of her family members. "I had relatives who fought in the Dark Days."

"I'm sure they're very proud of you."

Diana could only nod. The terror was back. They were dead, and so would she soon be.

"Now, why don't we eat some lunch while I figure out some last-minute things?"

"Sure. I haven't had anything since breakfast."

"How does noodle soup sound?"

"I'd like that."

"Is there anything you don't like?"

"Pork and seafood, but seaweed's okay." Mom had terrified her when she had been small with stories about people eating undercooked pork and ending up with worms crawling out of their butt, and Diana had seen the state of seafood at the market. Dried or pickled seaweed was fine, but seeing someone peddle nasty-looking fish had put her off it forever. Preserved fish was okay, too, but it was too hard to explain every time, so she usually just said she didn't like seafood. They couldn't afford to have it that much in any case.

"How about beef and vegetables in a beef broth?"

"Sure." There was this one butcher they went to who mentioned ahead of time when they were doing the killing, so you could get it very fresh. Usually, Diana's family ate meat once a week, on Sundays, their only day off. Grandpa was always grumbling about being forced to live by the Christian calendar.

Warner took out her phone and texted someone. "Now, let me think. You and the boy have similar skin colours, so we won't try anything contrasting. Your hair is magnificent, but it's too short to play around much with, we'll keep it as is. Do you mind taking off your bathrobe?"

It felt weird to be naked in such a context. All her clothes were made by her parents and Grandpa, and they allowed her to measure herself if she needed to be undressed for it.

"Lovely figure, just lovely." Warner jotted something down in her notebook. "We can work with this, draw every eye."

That made Diana feel really uncomfortable. Technically, she was still underage, if by less than a year, and she had grown up with old people on benches accusing anyone who dared wear short shorts of 'moral decay'. Now Warner wanted to make her look sexy so that random rich people could ogle her.

Her feelings must have appeared on her face, because Warner then asked, "Has nobody ever told you before that you're beautiful?"

"Of course, but it'd be really weird if your own family called you ugly, and if my partners were willing to date me, they had to think I was attractive."

Warner laughed. "Did you get around?"

"I guess." She wasn't one of those people who married the first person they ever dated.

The soup then arrived, but it wasn't just soup - there was also a little white bun with a bit of butter, seaweed salad, vegetable salad, a donut, and a glass of mineral water.

"Alright, why don't we eat now. Put your robe back on."

Diana ate the delicious meal as Warner wrote stuff down. The stylist then called someone on the phone, discussed makeup, and went back to writing. Finally, she got up and took the outfit from its hook and gave it to Diana. It was a sort of robe or wrap in metallic colouring.

"Let's get this on you."

First was the bottom layer - underpants, thin ankle-high socks, and strapless bra - and then the robe itself, which was way more complicated than it looked. Diana put it on with the stylist's help, as well as a pair of black running shoes, so she could stand comfortably. The other three then came back, did some last-minute adjustments, and did a bunch of stuff to her hair and face. Diana wondered how long it took to become a makeup artist. Was it something you got an apprenticeship in, or was it more informal? Did people apply to work with Tributes? Was it a matter of connections?

Once they were done, she was unrecognizable, with heavy makeup around her eyes making her look completely different. The stylist hadn't lied, the wrap was draped in a way that showed off her best features. It was far more revealing than anything she had ever worn, leaving her arms and shoulders completely bare, emphasizing her chest and hips, leaving her stomach bare (Diana had never considered her stomach particularly noteworthy, but apparently it was), wrapping around her legs, and falling down in waves to cover her feet, eliminating the need for nice shoes. In a few days, her upper-class peers would dress like this for their graduation balls. In a few years, Grandpa would do his best making something (far more chaste) for Leonella, but his creations could never match this. Few got to wear high fashion. Only rich people and Tributes.

Diana took a few steps forwards and backwards, making sure she could walk. It fit surprisingly well, and she looked great. Back home, everyone at the club would have been falling over her.

"It looks great, but what does it have to do with Six?"

"It's the colour of steel." That made sense. "Is there anything in your old clothes you would like to take as your token?"

"Yes," Diana said. She had been wondering if she should speak up about that. "The little book in my skirt pocket."

"Alright, let's go," the stylist said. Diana was led to a basement of sorts where the others were just starting to congregate. She got onto the correct chariot and waited. Rafael appeared shortly afterwards, dressed and made up identically (except that his wrap covered more of him - did his stylist deem him unappealing?) and missing his beard.

"They made me shave," he complained. "I look awful like this. Why did they do this?"

Diana didn't want to talk to someone who had to die for her to live. She ignored him, and he said nothing afterwards.

A few minutes later, they were off. Once again, there was a large cheering crowd assembled. It was similar to how once, they had all been gathered to cheer for the capture of a group of terrorists - they were supposed to be happy someone was going to die. At least with terrorists it made sense. Diana was officially here to expiate the nation's sins through noble combat and heroic death. Shouldn't it have been more solemn, or something?

Diana wished she could beam like the boy from Two, but her mouth didn't do that, so she moved the corners of her lips in a small smile, looked at the crowd, and waved. She tried to be flirty, but that was hard when the person wasn't right in front of her. Any little thing to make them like her. She wasn't as scared now, it was impossible to stay scared for long. She just stood there, acutely aware that only one of them was going to survive, and it was probably not going to be her, but she'd be damned if she gave up now.

Absurdly, she noted to herself that out of the non-Careers, she was probably the most uncovered, and wondered if Grandpa was having that coronary he had always promised to have when Diana wanted to go out dressed in something that didn't comply with his standards. Mom had constantly warned her about serial rapists sure to be lurking everywhere (Diana had never seen any), and Dad and Leonella, who inhabited a separate universe most of the time, only scratched their heads, unable to understand why Diana wanted to go out instead of drinking chicory and watching television.

Diana forced herself to stop thinking about her family and focus on her competition. On one of the massive screens, she could see that the boy from Ten was sitting on the shoulders of his female counterpart. Much to her own surprise, all Diana felt was a cold, haughty disdain.

Oh, you think you can upstage the rest of us? I'll show you! I'm the one who will get the sponsors, I'm the one who will have people from all over the nation cheering for me, I'm the one who stands more than a snowball's chance in hell! Why don't you cry over each other's deaths!

Diana recognized the irrationality of her thoughts, but did not try to chase them away. All the veterans said that you could not think of your enemy as human.

After the parade, Diana, Rafael, and Elly took the elevator with the delegations from One and Twelve. The Ones were talking in Spanish to their escort, a short and whip-slender man with his hair in little braids, and their Mentors, whom Diana sort of recognized. They wore knee-length skirts that went well with their skin, silvery for the girl and black for the boy, the girl also had jewelled pasties covering her nipples, their short hair had frosted tips, and they had designs drawn on their skin with that same silvery and black colours and gems that had to be fake. Diana couldn't appreciate the sight, because seeing their muscular bodies reminded her of how much stronger they were than her. The Twelves were silent, wore jumpsuits and headlamps (the boy's stylist had dropped the ball here, Diana knew that in some places, miners worked naked or nearly naked and he definitely had the physique to not look too shabby uncovered) and looked as scared as Rafael. Once the Ones departed, none of them said anything.

The rooms Diana and Rafael had were even fancier than the train. "Leave your clothes in the bathroom," Elly said. "Someone will come by to pick them up."

Diana gladly went to shower. It felt so fantastic that she had a bathroom all to her own and didn't have to share the moldy shower with the entire corridor. There were a bunch of buttons and levers with pictograms on them that made no sense. But then again, not very many people back home were literate. Mom and Dad couldn't read more than numbers and store names and had to fall back on 'the one with the yellow sign' half the time, anyway.

There was an array of little bottles along one of the walls, each with pictograms in case someone had never seen shampoo before. On the train, Diana had used a bar of soap for everything like always, but now, she tried out the actual hair products, feeling like a rich person. When she stepped out, she wrapped herself in a soft towel and used an electric dryer that blew hot air at her head. Fancy. In her room, she found a bunch of basic clothing in her size. It all felt off. Everything she had worn before had been made for her (the perks of being the eldest), and now that she wasn't growing anymore, fit her just right, with the correct amount of looseness where she liked it. Aside from the underpants, this was all too tight or too weird or too something else. Diana eventually settled on a bra on an elastic, a sleeveless T-shirt, and loose trackies, as well as slippers.

In the main room, there was nobody except Elly. "The boy's gone to sleep. Since there's so few of us, we're not having dinner together. Just order something if you want. There's a thing in your room on the table - just talk into the microphone."

Diana was tired, but she was definitely very hungry. "That sounds good."

Elly smiled and picked up his book. Diana went to her room and found the contraption. "Um, hello," she said into the microphone. This was as bad as talking on the phone when one of Mom's ten thousand friends called while she was out.

"Hello," a voice said. "What would you like?" The man spoke like no Capitolite she had ever heard. Diana slapped her forehead - of course rich Capitolites didn't talk like the workers.

"Um, um-" What did she want? Shit. She should have planned this out. "Once at the wedding of one of my cousins there were these vegetable rolls wrapped in rice paper, and a sweet-and-sour sauce," she stuttered out with difficulty.

"Would you like anything besides vegetables in the roll? Mushrooms-"

"Yeah, mushrooms would be great."

"What kind?"

"Whatever's already ready."

"Does black fungus sound good?"

What? That sounded like something you found under a leaking sink. "Sure."

"Anything else?"

Diana was too tired. "No."

"How many would you like?"

"How big are they?"

"About fifteen centimetres long and three in diameter."

Diana really wanted to make an inappropriate joke. "I'll take one. And the sauce."

"Sounds good, give us a few minutes."

As promised, the roll arrived just minutes later. Diana had barely had the time to explore her room and turn all the lamps on and off. "Thank you!"

"You're welcome."

Diana ate the delicious roll, brushed her teeth, and got ready for bed.

A/N: Jews currently make up ~2% of the population of the USA and a fraction of a percent of Mexicans (I headcanon Panem as being in roughly those boundaries), so I think a figure of 1% for Panem makes sense. Since Jews nowadays tend to be urban and financially better-off than average (researchers argue about why Jews were so socially ascendant in the 19th-20th centuries), they're going to be underrepresented among Tributes. Counting Diana's year, there have been 1,488 (lol) Tributes, of whom ~5-10 would have considered themselves Jewish in some way, but they either did not mention it or they mentioned it so blatantly, it was cut from the program and not aired.

I, too, inhabit a parallel universe and would rather drink chicory and watch TV than go out.

The gooseberry-like berry is just a red gooseberry. I'm not sure if it's a hybrid or just a variant. Black fungus is also known as tree ear.

The story is not BSS-compliant, though I may draw on certain elements from that book that fit with my pre-existing headcanons. If there are inconsistencies with my other works that is either a mistake on my part or a change I made deliberately but never got around to fixing the older work. Feel free to point out any errors.

The story is complete and will update weekly. All comments are welcome.