The next morning, Diana woke up, realized where she was, and felt a relief the likes of which she had never experienced. Her throat felt a little bit scratchy, but she mostly was just still tired and very sore. The bedsheets felt nice on her aching feet and it was so nice to stretch out and be nice and warm. Feeling herself all over, Diana decided that she was definitely skinnier than before, but not catastrophically so. She was covered with small singe marks, but given everything, not so bad. Sometimes it took weeks to put Victors back together again, when the Games ended with a big fight. Diana was beginning to be willing to believe in a God now. Only a capricious all-powerful entity could throw her into the Games and then have them happen in a way she could survive.

Diana thought about it for a little bit longer and decided that wasn't really the case. There had been stranger victories. This could still be explained from the skeptical point of view, at least in her opinion. It suddenly hit her again that she could now think about things other than surviving, and it was a wave of relief all over again. Diana got up and limped to the bathroom.

Her face and hair looked singed and she looked like she hadn't slept in the past month, which was basically the case. Being able to use a real toilet was so nice. Back home, all they had were holes in the ground, a nightmare if you had bad knees or a bad back or were sick. Her infections looked nasty and hurt just as much. It was unfair that the most sensitive parts were right next to the dirtiest part. Since the tap had a pictogram next to it explaining that the water was drinkable, Diana gulped down several handfuls, hoping to rinse out the UTI.

Someone knocked on the door. Diana went to open it and came face-to-face with a tall woman with a clipboard. "Ah, you're already up. Good."

"Are you a doctor?" She had only gone to a doctor once before, when she was little and had pneumonia.

"I am. Why don't you sit down?"

Diana sat down on the bed, not caring that the movement made the hospital gown hike up and expose half her thighs. Someone else came in holding a tray of food and gave it to her. There were small portions of soup, oatmeal, and fruit sauce. That made sense. After eating a few energy bars every day for who knew how long, her stomach had probably shrunk.

"Well, the good news is that you'll make a full recovery, physically, at least. You're underweight and have inhaled quite a bit of smoke, so we'll keep you under observation for another day, and if you're not getting any worse, we'll let you recover at home."

Home. Diana had been so focused on surviving, it hadn't entered her mind that that meant going home. She focused on eating. The food was very good, the soup seemed to be mashed-up sweet potatoes with flavours that exploded in her mouth and the oatmeal was sweet.

"This cream is for your yeast infection. Apply twice a day. If it does not go away in seven days, go to a doctor."

That was cool that they were just giving it. "We can't afford that."

"You can now." The doctor smiled.

Oh, right, she could.

"And this is for your UTI."

A lengthy checkup ensued. Diana had gotten a brief one before the Games - it felt like eternity ago - but now, she got a bunch of X-rays and a TB skin test and a whole bunch of other tests and had to answer a long list of questions about her medical history. Old injuries (nothing more serious than a sprain), infectious diseases (plenty of those, but aside from getting the flu nearly every year, the worst had been bronchitis which ended in pneumonia), non-infectious diseases (none), parasitic infections (when she was little), STIs (she spent a ton of money on good condoms), legal substances (when hanging out with friends), illegal substances (why the hell would she have ever admitted to that had there been anything to admit?), mental illness (how was she supposed to know if she had never seen a psychiatrist?), neurodivergence (ditto), and her general family history, as if she knew it.

After that, the doctor removed her tracker. It was a short, thin rod not unlike the birth control implants Diana saw ads for sometimes (given their cost, you'd have thought they were made of solid gold), but maybe twice as long.

"Has anyone ever cut out their tracker before?" Diana wondered. The sticking-plaster was the colour of her skin. At the pharmacy back home, it was a crapshoot what colours you could get.

"I'm sure people have tried, but I don't think it ended well."

Right. That was obvious. The cameras would still be on you, and it wouldn't be too hard to track manually in the time it took for a mutt to kill the overly smart Tribute.

"Now, since we drew your blood previously, we know which vaccines you are missing and can work on getting you caught up. We'll start with the MMR vaccine."

"Doctor, I have that one." That was one of the basic ones. Diana had four vaccines - smallpox, polio, MMR, Tdap. She had been meaning to get vaccinated against hepatitis for a while but had always forgotten.

"You don't have antibodies against mumps. Maybe you didn't get the second dose, or maybe it just wore off. That happens sometimes." Diana proffered her right arm for stabbing. It'd hurt tomorrow, but she didn't like the thought of being vulnerable to mumps. "I'll draw up a schedule for you for the others, you can get them at any walk-in clinic." Strange to be able to afford things like that.

The doctor gave her some advice for her lungs and gave her real clothes, underwear and a simple shirt and trousers. In the trousers pocket was the siddur. How many people who had gotten their hands on it had realized its significance?

"Well, then," the doctor said, "you can go now. Your escort and mentors are waiting for you in your rooms. I'll walk you there."

It turned out that she was in a special wing of the Training Centre. It was surreal to be back there, surreal to be wearing clean clothes and lightweight running shoes and have the taste of apples and peaches still in her mouth. The Games now felt like a strange nightmare, but being free of them felt completely unreal and difficult for her to wrap her head around. Diana thought about the others. They were dead, and she was alive. It was impossible to imagine anything else - after all, the dead could not imagine.

On their floor, Elly was there and Young as well, but Popescu was missing.

"Where is she?" Diana demanded harsher than she had wanted. First the woman wrote her off, and now it was like she didn't care.

Young shrugged. "She's trying to come to terms with it."

Come to terms with fucking what? "Whatever," Diana snapped. She instantly regretted her tone. She was still very high-strung. "When's the ceremony?"

"This evening. Your stylist is working on an outfit for you," Elly said. "I must say, you impressed all of us. Sponsors were queueing around the block."

Sponsors had queued around the block because Diana had sung a song about wanting to go to Israel and be free of this dump, but whatever. "Why?" she asked, not knowing any better idea to continue the conversation.

"They were impressed with your ruthlessness."

"It was just luck. Anyone else would have done the same had a knife been dropped in their lap from the get-go."

Elly shook his head but said nothing.

"Seriously, just say what you think, I also want to know." What was wrong with her? "I'm sorry. I think I need to sleep more."

"No problem. I understand you're stressed."

"Understatement of the fucking century." Diana realized what she had said. "Ugh. I'll go take a nap."

When she was woken from the nap by Elly, some of the brain fog was gone. She didn't insult anyone as she was prepared for the ceremony, at least. Warner cut her hair way shorter than Diana had ever worn it, buzzing the sides and back and leaving the top a little longer. Leonella would want to shave herself bald now, she hated having hair and always got hers cut a little shorter than Diana's.

Warner explained that the haircut was military-short but didn't have the connotations of a shaved head or a buzz-cut. The clothes, too, were picked along those lines. An olive-green T-shirt, tan cargo shorts held up with a webbing belt, and black running shoes. She looked like one of those young Peacekeeper veterans who had been invalided out she saw on television sometimes. Heck, the better-off veterans back home dressed like this to go foraging and fishing, though they probably only wore makeup like this when hitting the bars on 'for those, who are over 65' nights.

"Why are you making me look androgynously middle-class?" Diana asked before thinking. "You can't even tell my gender with how loose the T-shirt is." Leonella was frequently mistaken for a boy because she wore baggy clothes and her haircut made her jaw look masculine.

"We really had no other option. Given your performance, the only alternative would have been the sexy killer, but you don't have what it takes to pull off the vamp look," Warner said as the prep team applied the light makeup. Enough to cover up the awful pimples she had from living without washing for so long, but not so much that it transformed her appearance.

"What do you mean, I'm not sexy?" Diana demanded and clapped a hand to her mouth. This was like being high on weed, she was just blurting things out.

"You are," Warner said placatingly, "but not in that way. Honestly, even the way you acted in the Arena would make it a tough sell. You were just too calm." Diana had felt anything but calm in the Arena. The emotions were gone, but she remembered feeling them.

"So what are you doing instead?"

"We will make you relatable. An ordinary young woman who did her duty like any other. Not someone who loves combat but someone who is willing to do what it takes. Veterans will see themselves in you and children will look up to you. An approachable hero, not a remote semi-deity."

That sounded insulting to veterans, Diana hadn't spent a year in a muddy hole being shot at, but she kept her mouth closed.

Flickerman must have been warned about her state, because instead of chatting like in some years, he had the movie start almost immediately. Diana watched full of morbid curiosity. The first half-hour was almost exclusively about her, and little wonder - there had been no final confrontation to build up to, so there were no other main characters in this story, only Diana, who was being portrayed as stoic, ruthless, and calculating. It was strange to see herself be shown in such a skewed way. They even left out the singing.

As always, every single death was at least shown on camera. Diana had gotten the first kill - the girl from Twelve had bled out without Career assistance. The boy from Two killed the boy from Nine with a knife to the stomach and chest. The boy from One killed the boy from Eleven with a spear through the back. The deaths were shown briefly, like always on television. The girl from One shot the girl from Eleven in the chest, her mouth opened in a silent scream, a cannon sounded (even though that death would have taken a while), and the image changed to the boy from Four slicing the boy from Seven with a machete. The girl from One shot the girl from Five through the thigh and finished her off with a knife, and the bloodbath ended. The boy from One gave the girl from Two a mercy death and the pack went hunting.

It felt strange to be able to see what had actually happened during the Games. That first afternoon, the girl from One shot the girl from Eight, who had been an easy target in a tree, and the boy from Three, who had been unable to outrun the pack. The next day was shown in snippets, and on the third day, the girl from Three, the boy from Ten, and Rafael all succumbed to dehydration. Their deaths were quiet. Rafael simply lay there on the forest floor, and all of a sudden, his heart wasn't beating anymore. Diana wondered why the Mentors hadn't sent him anything. Had they dismissed him as already dead when he ran away from the Cornucopia with nothing?

Fortunately, her fight with the boy from Five was shown briefly, as was the wolf attack on the pack, which injured most of the Careers, the girl from Four - to the point where the boy from Two gave her a mercy death. Then, more roaming around, the Careers not able to move efficiently (did Diana have a giant wolf to thank for her survival?), and then, the feast, where MREs, water, and matches had been laid out on the table. The boy from Eight hid in the Cornucopia and got the girl from One in the stomach, but the boy from Four killed him, and the boy from Two put the girl from One out of her misery. Diana's killing of the girl from Seven on day 10 was shown in full, because of how fast it had been. On days 12 and 14, the girls from Nine and Ten died of exposure early in the morning. Nothing exciting to show there, if you're an editor. And then two days of nothing, tense music, and smoke.

Diana could see her own blank face in the corner as the main screen showed her starting to run. Then, it split into five. The boy from Two, the nimble and fast one, had been seriously injured by the wolf and was the first to die, consumed by the flames, the screen now split into quarters. The boy from Four then pushed over the boy from One, who had also died, and died himself shortly afterwards, inhaling a lungful of smoke, stopping to cough, and being engulfed. It then came down to her and the boy from Twelve, the screen divided into two.

Diana felt anxious as she watched it. She could now see that she had won thanks to being in better physical shape. When the inferno had gone out of control, she had been able to run those hundred metres - in her memory, it was a marathon - faster. The boy with his total lack of supplies and occasional gift of a small water bottle had simply been too fatigued. Good thing those last deaths had not been shown, because Diana knew deaths from burning looked and sounded horrific. The terror on the face of the boy from Twelve when he saw the fire about to overtake him was bad enough.

So Rabbi Miller had been right. They had all been with her. They had literally saved her by making her strong enough to outlast the competition. The realization made her nearly burst into tears.

The kill counts on the bottom froze in their final tallies. Diana - three full kills, one partial. That put her above the girl from One with three fulls, the boy from Four with two full and one partial, the boy from Two with one full and two partial, the boy from One with one full and one partial, the girl from Four with one full, and the boy from Eight with one partial. The others had died from the Arena alone. Diana's kill count was perfectly ordinary for a Victor, but it felt strange to look at her hands and know that they had held the knife that ended four lives.

The movie ended and Snow came out to present her with her crown, Diana thinking about just how insanely lucky she was.

"Congratulations, Ms. Cohen," he said, and placed the crown on her head. Diana saw herself on one of the screens and paused. At home, they had a photo of Great-Grandpa Hillel receiving his Hero of Panem medal, wearing a clean uniform and laurel wreath lent to him for the occasion. In black-and-white, that wreath from the photo looked just like the one she was wearing now, even if hers was made from a lightweight black metal. Everyone said that Great-Grandpa had always insisted he was no hero, he had just gotten lucky. Diana had never understood that. Now, she did.

She glanced at her own image again. There she was, standing in front of the nation crowned with laurels. Despite herself, she stood at attention like they had been taught at elementary school, even if her civilian getup was no uniform. For a fraction of a second, she was proud of herself for fighting and winning.

"Thank you, Mr. President. It is my honour."

The next day, the final interview, and then she could go home. Diana attended a fancy dinner in her honour. Her Mentors were nowhere to be seen, but at least Elly was there. It was horribly overwhelming with all these people trying to take pictures with her or even talk to her, she was so relieved when it was over.

"Seriously, Elly, where are they?" Diana asked semi-gently when they sat in their living room, waiting to go for the interview. She wore a fancy dress today, dark-grey and loose in all the right places, and running shoes. Leonella would definitely want to wear this dress to her graduation ball - it covered Diana from neck to toes and didn't even highlight her figure. If that was the cost of the sleeves not being too tight, she'd take it. As it was, they were borderline uncomfortable.

Elly sighed. "They both see themselves in you, and they can't bear it."

What? "Alright, with Popescu that makes sense," Diana had to concede - their victories were very similar. It had to hurt to see someone do the thing that had destroyed you, especially when you were as unstable as her. "But Young? How in the world am I similar to Young? Far as I remember, he was only known as - well, the reason he was elected." Maybe best not to say that out loud.

"He saw how you acted with the boy from Five. It reminded him of himself."

"Anyone would have done that. It was him or me."

"And that's why he feels that way."

"I suppose. But I feel fine. Mostly. Certainly no desire to do drugs."

Elly chuckled. For the first time, Diana wondered what he thought of everything. How did someone even get this job? "Young was very badly injured and needed opiates for his chronic pain. And Popescu couldn't bear what she did."

"That's what I meant - I did the same thing, and I-" Diana had to admit that she felt awful. She didn't want to think about her knife sinking into flesh. "-I don't want to go out and get high."

"That's good," Elly said.

"Did you know your name is of Greek and Turkish origin?" Diana asked impulsively.

"I do. I was named for my great-grandfather. And your last name is of Central European origin, if I am not mistaken?"

Diana was of Ethiopian, Afghani, and German ancestry, as well as a bunch of other places, but she didn't want to share that. "It is," she said.

"That's nice. Let's go to the interview now, I think it's time."

The interview was, of course, loud and overwhelming. Flickerman began by giving her a gigantic plush pill millipede that looked just like the ones in the Arena, but much bigger.

"Aww," Diana said involuntarily. "It's so cute!" She clutched it against her chest. "Especially when there's only one of them."

Everyone obligingly laughed. "You think it's cute?" Flickerman asked.

"Very cute."

"Well, you've heard it, folks - Diana Cohen herself thinks they're cute." More laughter. "I'm afraid some of my friends disagree. One even complains about nightmares."

Diana hugged the toy tighter. She didn't care that she was acting like a child. "No. It's perfect. I want ten."

A brief back-and-forth later, Flickerman turned serious. "So, I think we're all dying to know - what were you thinking when you were Reaped?"

Nobody needed to tell her that she needed to make herself out to be way more impressive than she actually was, which to be fair was her immediate instinct in any case. "I immediately thought - there's no way I'm not coming back. I knew I would be willing to do anything at all to return."

You could hear a pin drop in the cavernous room. "Of course. If I may ask, did you know your District partner before?"

"No," Diana said, fidgeting with a pill millipede (pillipede?) leg. "He was a stranger. And in any case the rules of the Games are simple - one comes out. I couldn't go around befriending people I would soon have to kill."

"I must say, we were all so impressed when you took out Joline."

"Er, who's Joline?"

There was a chuckle at that.

"The girl from Two."

The memory of holding the knife washed over her, an unpleasant sticky sensation in her chest. Diana hugged the millipede tightly. "Oh. I didn't think of them by names. They were just their District numbers to me." Given the approving sounds from the crowd, Diana must have said the right thing. "In any case, it was a stroke of luck mostly - she happened to be distracted, I seized on the opportunity. In the Games, as in life, it's all about seizing any opportunity that comes your way."

"And you did. Such confidence, such cold-bloodedness - your veteran family members would have been very proud of you."

Diana felt her throat tighten and she had to hold back tears. "I thought about them sometimes. When I was scared, I knew they had been scared, too, but they had fought on despite that." The audience was silent. Diana impulsively continued speaking. "It's so crazy to think that when I was little, it was a simple fact that my great-grandfather came back, when he talked about his wounds, I never thought that he might have died. But in the Arena, I kept on thinking I might not come back - but I also couldn't imagine not coming back. So now I'm thinking about how lucky we all were that Great-Grandpa came back." Diana stopped at that, wishing she hadn't said anything. But what did it matter now? She could be weak, it wouldn't hurt her anymore. She looked down at the millipede, which had a cute little face. The happy little eyes made her feel even more emotional, so she looked at Flickerman's shoulder instead.

"Your great-grandfather was a very brave man, and I am glad your family got those decades with him."

"Thank you." Mom and Dad must have blathered on about him for hours during the final eight interview. Great-Grandpa Hillel deserved having the entire nation know about him, he had been so amazing.

"Just as I am glad that your family will get many decades with such a brave, loyal, and upstanding woman like you."

Diana nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes and tried to blink them back.

"Now, when it was close to the end and it was down to the last five, what were you thinking?"

Relieved by the change in topic, Diana decided to be truthful. She had to clear her throat a few times before she was able to make words. "I thought to myself - there's no way I can stand up to the big boys, I'm going to have to be smart. My plan was to kill them in their sleep." In hindsight, that might have actually worked. It had worked a few times in the past, at least.

"And when the fire broke out? I think I saw you saying something."

As if trying to recall a dream, Diana remembered reciting the Shema. "Um, I'm afraid what I was saying is not fit to print."

Everyone laughed, so that was good.

"That is very understandable! Now, I must admit I was very intrigued by the list you had on your arm."

"It was just to not forget who was still alive." Her right arm was completely clean and bare now.

"I was thinking it would make a fine tattoo."

Diana wanted to throw up at the thought. "No. It served its purpose. It was there to remind me who was alive, not who was dead. Now that none of them are alive- well."

"I can tell that you're tired, so I'll ask one last question and let you go. What are you looking forward most to when you get home?"

"Honestly, I just want to sleep for a week."

Everyone laughed again, but Diana was in no mood to join in. She was so worn out, when she got back to her room, she didn't even bother to wash or brush her teeth, falling into bed immediately after undressing. She was asleep in minutes, pill millipede lying under the covers with her.

The trip back took much less time than the trip to the Capitol - Elly explained that due to the different distances, the trains arriving from close to the Capitol stopped overnight. Diana spent the trip staring out the window and hugging the pill millipede. Her Mentors, who now wanted her to call them Blake and Maria, tried to give her some advice.

"Just go with what they tell you," Blake said. Diana didn't think he was entirely sober.

"I know." She'd been doing that her entire life. Diana, go there, Diana, do this, Diana, button up your shirt before you give Grandpa a coronary.

Maria sighed. "Don't relax now. The worst is only beginning."

Diana seriously doubted that. No matter what may happen now, at least she wasn't running through the forest trying to stab people before they could stab her.

The train arrived. Despite the fact that they were in Centre, Diana was not surprised to see her family, as well as a crowd big enough for the District mayor's greeting party. Even Rabbi Simon and Rabbi Miller were there, but they hung back and did not approach. Cameras flashed as her family ran up to hug her.

"You're back," Leonella said. She was the same age as the boy from Eleven, Diana realized.

"I am." Diana shoved the pill millipede into her hands.

Leonella squealed at a pitch that should not have been humanly possible. "Aww, it's so cute! I love it!"

Diana was beginning to feel overwhelmed. Fortunately, after just a few seconds, they were bundled into a large car and taken to the Victors' Village, where their new home was.

"We're all relocating," Dad said. "Well, everyone who wanted to move, that is. House is plenty big enough for everyone. You'll see, it's massive."

"So who's going to be living with us?" In the car with her were Mom, Dad, Leonella, and Grandpa.

"Aunt Nelly, Cousin Sarah, and her children."

Aunt Nelly was Grandpa's sister - not the great-aunt who had been conscripted, Mom's aunt Leah had died in the war. Aunt Nelly lived with her daughter Sarah, Dad's cousin, and her three grandchildren, who were twenty-five, twenty-one, and nineteen. "Are all three of them coming?"

"They won't last long," Grandpa predicted. "Michael has been threatening to move out with coworkers for years now, and living with all of us will just make him hurry up."

Ten people living in one house. How big was the house?

"Oh, you'll see," Mom said. "There's nine bedrooms, so it's the perfect fit."

"But not in the way you think," Grandpa quipped.

"Come on, Dad, it was a slip of the mind-" Dad dropped his face in his hands.

"In fact, the proposition was that we return to the good old days before the Dark Days and have me share a room with Nelly."

Diana laughed. It was funny to think of Grandpa and Aunt Nelly as siblings just like her and Leonella. She realized that being with her family had made her forget all about the Games and felt a burst of gratitude towards them.

"So, um, what about work?" Diana asked, trying not to think about that.

"Oh, they found us all places in the area. Very nice of them."

Given what Diana had gone through for this, they better have.

The Victors' Village was something like the richest neighbourhood in her home city, with one major difference - instead of being smack downtown five minutes' walk from the offices the factory managers worked in, they were surrounded by a park that cut them off from the rest of the city completely. There was no public transit closer than half an hour's walk away. There were already three cars parked on the giant driveway (including the antediluvian rust bucket on wheels Great-Grandpa Hillel had received from the government after the Dark Days when it had been new and didn't take ten tries to start), but only Mom had a licence, so it would take time before they could get around easily. The dirty-grey box with a carpeted interior looked odd next to two sleek, new models in beautiful shades of grey, one matte, one almost shiny, that most definitely did not have any carpets, only fine leather. Diana couldn't wait to turn nineteen so she could learn to drive. A bunch of her friends could drive, but Mom was too scared of her being punished for driving without a licence, so she had threatened her with the Peacekeepers every time she mentioned being in a car until she had agreed to wait.

Despite the ludicrously expensive cars (one Victor was certainly less than thousands of decorated veterans, so they could afford to really go all-out) there were major differences between this and a rich neighbourhood. Rich neighbourhoods in the middle of the day were full of life - small children playing in spacious lawns, stay-at-home parents meeting up for a midday walk or going about their errands together, servants going to and from work. This place was a ghost town. Twenty houses stood in a four-by-five grid, the only three inhabited ones clustered in one corner. It was obvious which one was hers - Aunt Nelly had already occupied the porch and was knitting.

"There you are!" Aunt Nelly got up and went to hug Diana. Diana tolerated the hug, clutching the pill millipede for dear life. "Oh, I'm so happy to see you again!"

"You don't even know how happy I am," Diana said, much harsher than she had intended. "No. Er. Sorry."

"It's okay." Aunt Nelly patted her on the cheek. "You've been under a lot of stress. We understand if you get a bit snappish."

The question Diana hadn't dared think before finally surfaced. "Did you watch it all?"

"Oh, no," Dad said. "We couldn't bear it. We'd even turn away if the Games were on in a public place. Rabbi Simon had to give us updates."

No wonder they were being so calm. They had no idea what had actually gone down. No wonder Great-Grandpa had refused to speak about killing. Diana tried not to think about it.

"Let's go inside?" Grandpa offered.

Inside, Aunt Sarah was directing workers as they did some sort of repairs. Diana was subjected to yet another emotional greeting cut short by the appearance of a small black cat. "We have a cat now?"

"Mina wanted one." That was Diana's youngest cousin.

"Seriously? And nobody thought to warn me?"

"How would we have done that?"

Why was she so upset over an adorable cat? "What's its name?"

"She's called Sooty."

"That's not very creative." Sooty was currently perched on the arm of a very expensive couch. She had bright-blue eyes and a fluffy tail.

"Diana, why don't you go rest up. Your room's on the second floor. First on the left when you go up the stairs."

The room turned out to be the size of their old apartment. There was a bed the size of which Diana associated with the sort of cheapest motels where five people slept on the same mattress, a chest of drawers that turned out to contain her old clothes, and a desk with a computer. Diana was very surprised to see that, she had never heard of someone having a computer in their home. She wanted to see how it worked but she was already exhausted. Why was she so tired all the time?

Yawning, Diana deposited the pill millipede on top of the chest of drawers. She then took her siddur out of her pocket. The little book was slightly singed but still intact. She said afternoon prayers and went to sleep, but she had a nightmare about trying to run away from something with a backpack that weighed down on her and made it impossible to go fast. She woke up in the middle of the night feeling like crap and struggled to go back to sleep, the pill millipede watching over her in the dim light.

For the next few days, Diana had nothing to do. When everyone left for work in the mornings, she went with Grandpa and Aunt Nelly, who were now officially retired, to carry their bags for them as they shopped. Grandpa had always been the one doing the bulk of the work around the apartment, and he was very happy now to have Diana to carry heavy things, Nelly to bicker with, and machines like vacuum cleaners and washing machines to do everything for him. They bought and ate food they had never been able to afford before. Diana could wake up when she wanted, eat as much chocolate as she wanted, and didn't have to work. But she was constantly tired and unhappy and she didn't know why.

Now, it made sense to her why Blake and Maria spent most of their time getting high together. Blake's family had most likely refused to live with him for obvious reasons, and whatever the reason why Maria was also alone, it meant that she didn't have nine people plus a cat constantly forcing her to join them or do something instead of thinking about the Games. Diana spent her time learning how to program the computer from a manual helpfully left for her in her desk, knitting with Grandpa and Aunt Nelly, and hanging out with her cousins, though it was very difficult to talk to them.

The nightmares continued. They had an odd blurred quality to them. Sometimes Diana was running away from something but she was moving slowly, as if through pitch. Other times, she dreamt she was trying to climb a tree and get away from the boy from Five but her arms weren't listening. It was strange that she dreamt of that when she had managed to kill him.

Diana knocked on Mom and Dad's door, glancing around the corridor to make sure nobody else was there.

"Yes?" Dad said.

Diana went inside, pill millipede in one hand. Mom and Dad were going through a box of stuff. "Hey. I, um, wanted to talk to you?"

Mom patted an empty part of the bed. Diana sat down, twisting her fingers. "About what?"

"I just wanted to say thank you. For making me stay in school. I saw the others - they were so tired, even though they were my age." So much was determined by the conditions in which you grew up. Had her family not been able to afford anthelmintics, Diana would have also been stunted and chronically ill. Hell, she was sickly already, severe parasitic infections would have finished her off.

"We did what we could to give you an advantage," Dad said, fidgeting with a coil of wire. "I am glad you feel it worked."

"It did." Diana passed him the pill millipede.

"Heh. I like the little guy." He smiled widely. "Now everyone's going to want one. Leonella already got herself a little wooden one."

Mom patted the toy on the head. "Good millipede. What are we going to call it?"

"Vicky. Because they're the real Victor," Diana said half-seriously.

Mom hugged her so tightly, Diana thought she was going to suffocate. "We're so glad you're back," she whispered. "So glad. We thought you'd never return."

"We had people donating for your funeral." Dad was crying now. "They didn't think you could do it. Neither did we. We mentally buried you. When we heard the fireworks, it was like the day of your birth all over again."

Diana didn't have the faintest idea what to say. She settled for hugging her parents back, struggling to get the pressure right. When she let go, she picked up Vicky and fidgeted with one of the thirty-four legs. In her imagination, the pill millipede waved at her.

"The millipedes were cute," she said.

"They would have eaten you alive had you begun crushing them," Dad said blankly.

Not surprising. "Why would I crush something so cute?" Dad smiled. "Were they mutts?"

"Oh, yes," Mom said. "Leonella told us all about that." Even less surprising. Diana was happy Leonella had been able to be her usual Games-fan self despite everything. "I was so relieved to find out they're mutts, I thought for a second they're in the forests all over the place."

Mom was terrified of chipmunks (one had startled her once twelve years ago) and those were harmless. "There are a few mutts that aren't sterile," Diana said and wished she hadn't.

"What? Which ones are those?"

"Mockingjays?" Dad suggested.

"Dad, that's a hybrid."

"Yes, but they're the only ones that pulled that off. Most others died out. I think there's a couple of poisonous plants? I think it's unfair that mutt crops are sterile and farmers have to buy seeds from the IGR every year while the lethal stuff does fine."

"I guess tracker jackers aren't any different from giant hornets," Mom conceded.

"That's because the stuff you see is actually giant hornets. Leonella told me a few months ago." It felt more like an eternity ago. "Tracker jackers are sterile, you only see them in the Games. It's just that giant hornets are also really nasty, so people get mixed up."

"Oh, really?" Dad sounded surprised, or rather as surprised as he could sound.

"Yeah. Her teacher said so."

"Well, that's good to know. Either way I don't want to step on a hive!"

On the weekend, Diana was put through a hell she would have struggled to deal with before everything, and especially now. First they all, as a family, went for their checkups. Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Aunt Nelly were pronounced shortsighted and got glasses.

"Look, Dave!" Aunt Nelly said to Grandpa. "The leaves on the trees! I see them all!"

Diana and Leonella were taken to the gynecologist for the first time in their lives. As could be expected, the doctor, a middle-aged woman with a disapproving glare, judged Diana for having too many partners, judged Leonella having no partners, and applied so much pressure when palpating, it left bruises.

"I'm good," Diana told her family. "The medications worked."

"I'm also good," Leonella said. "But the doctor stabbed me really hard with the speculum and made fun of me for not dating."

"That's normal," Mom said. "Doctors will always find a way to disapprove of you."

"Alright." Leonella didn't seem to be upset. "Where are we going now?"

Then they went to the dentist, who removed half of Mom's teeth because they were completely rotten, told her to come next week for new ones (even Diana knew implants cost a staggering sum) and made Diana spend hours in the chair as they filled in holes. This was worse than the gynecologist. The next day, Warner showed up full of enthusiasm about buying Diana a new wardrobe. Diana's mouth had barely recovered from the dentist and her mind was in no state to go anywhere.

"Can we please eat first?" Leonella begged.

Warner took them to an expensive restaurant and treated them to baked fish and fresh salad.

"Do I have to buy clothes?" Diana asked. "I always wore what my family made."

"How many shirts do you own?"

"Three, counting my good one." That was the normal order of things.

"How many pairs of trousers?"

"One."

"How many sweaters?"

"Zero, Mom's been promising me a new one for several months now but hasn't even cast on yet." Her old one had been hopelessly frayed.

Mom raised an eyebrow. "Well, now that you find yourself with the time-"

"How about we go to the fabric and yarn stores?" Warner asked brightly. "But we do need to buy shoes and hats. And Leonella, your shirt is far too small."

Leonella shrugged. It wasn't too small yet, at least by their standards, but rich people had different ones. They bought little kids clothes that would only fit for less than a year and tossed it into the charity box once it was too small without batting an eye.

Once they finished eating, Warner took them to an upscale clothing store for shoes. There were only two types of ready-made clothes - low-quality ones that fit everyone badly and were fairly affordable, and super-expensive ones. Shoes had a more diverse spectrum of cost and quality, since you couldn't slap together some shoes on your great-grandma's sewing machine. Diana made a beeline for the high heels and was very disappointed to discover that they felt like sticking her foot in a vise. Even the nice flats hurt her toes and rubbed painfully against the back of her foot. Reluctantly, Diana had to give up.

"Have you found something?" Mom asked.

"No, they're all uncomfortable."

"Diana, you need something nice to wear."

"Not my fault the nice shoes pinch," she defended herself. "I'd love to get them, but they don't fit me."

"We are not leaving the store until you have five pairs of shoes!"

Who needed five pairs of shoes? "I could get new workboots."

"That doesn't count!"

Eventually, in addition to the running shoes she was already wearing, Diana got more solid shoes that would be great for foraging, warm boots for winter, rubber boots for rain, and flip-flops, which were technically shoes. She really did want to get high-heeled shoes, but they were so unbearably uncomfortable, she had to give up. Maybe she could get custom ones. She sat on a bench, watching the rest of her family stock up.

"Alright, we're done!"

One minor diversion when Dad saw the bill later, they were off to the expensive yarn store. There, Diana felt like a much more meaningful participant as she picked out amazingly soft hanks of yarn and books of patterns, and the family unanimously agreed to buy a large kit that contained all the different sizes of crochet hooks and knitting needles.

"Look! A pattern for a pill millipede!" Leonella grabbed the envelope and put it in her basket. "I should use jumbo yarn and make a really massive one."

"Do it," Diana egged her on.

"That sweater looks interesting." The only thing Aunt Nelly could read were pictorial knitting patterns. "Dave, what do you think?" she asked Grandpa.

"What colours are you thinking? Something bright should work with this kind of pattern."

"Ooh, look at these socks! I need them."

The purchases were loaded into a taxi and sent off, and it was time for the penultimate stop of today. Fabric.

Diana had been at the fabric store many times, watching her relatives ask for two metres of this and a metre of that and a cone of black thread, but never had she seen anything like this. There were bolts of the most luxurious cloths, fine cottons and sturdy wools and delicate silks and even a waterproof fabric that Aunt Sarah announced would be perfect for rain clothes. Diana could only shake her head at suddenly being rich enough for dedicated rain clothes.

"How are we going to have the time for all of this?" Akash asked.

"We?" Grandpa said. "That's what tailors are for. Stylist Warren has kindly given us some recommendations."

"Are the tailors going to knit me new socks, too?" Akash snarked.

"You're a big boy, you can make your own socks." Aunt Sarah had drifted over to the embroidery and cross-stitch patterns. "Hmm, I like this pattern. It should look nice on a decorative pillowcase. We really should look in a way that befits our new status."

"Mom, are you saying Diana fought so that we could have decorative pillowcases? Like Great-Grandpa fought for the Rust Bucket?"

Aunt Sarah twisted Akash's ear, but both of them were giggling.

A/N: I can attest from personal experience that if you're a woman wearing a baggy enough T-shirt, people will misgender you (and especially if you, like Leonella, don't like having hair and have it cut very short). Once I was in a public bathroom and someone screeched at me that this was the women's bathroom. I was like 'yeah, it better be?' Fortunately the pitch of my voice made her calm down.