By the time the Victory Tour came around, Diana still wasn't cured of her PTSD (and accepted she would probably never be 100% cured in any case), but she didn't snap at people anymore, so at least there was that. She was making progress on her GED, had given several interviews on national television without anything going catastrophically wrong, was pretty good at lifting weights and awful at running, and was feeling like she was settling into a pretty cozy routine. At everyone's prodding, she had even befriended some people from her gym and the computer cafe she went to, and they hung out together. They were intimidated by her status, but she was intimidated by their middle-class upbringings, so it evened out. Sometimes, when she was on a date or hanging out with her friends or family, she forgot about the Games entirely.

And now the Victory Tour. And what would, in all likelihood, come later. Blake and Maria had explained that this sort of sex slavery would probably not last for long in any case, because while she was fairly good-looking (at least her dates never complained), she wasn't the sort of Victor who ended up paraded in front of everyone in skimpy clothes. According to them, she lacked 'allure' (her exes would have disagreed) and gave off 'bad vibes' on top of that (her exes would have agreed). So it would mostly be the usual people who wanted to sleep with the newest Victor for the novelty of it and then forget all about her. First would be the biggest pockets, and then, over the years, demand would decrease and her price go down until hopefully, one year, they'd leave her alone.

Blake and Maria were confused by her lack of concern about the entire thing, and Diana was confused by their confusion. A while back, she had realized that the thought of pregnancy and the extreme vulnerability it entailed was horrifying and disgusting to her, and the thought had made her actually throw up. Diana had always thought she would give birth one day, but that had mostly been because that was the obvious way to have a child. As soon as she turned nineteen and could do such procedures at will, she got herself sterilized. She had had an entire speech prepared for the doctor about how she knew for sure she wanted to adopt, but the doctor hadn't even asked for a reason before signing off on the tubal ligation. Now, that fear seemed a little bit silly, but the more Diana thought about it, the more she wanted to adopt a toddler and skip over the baby stage, because being woken up at night was now unbearable. So there was that.

Aside from pregnancy, there was the risk of STDs, but Maria said they would be given stuff to prevent it, and physical violence, which would result in serious problems for the client if they actually caused damage, so they wouldn't risk anything serious. Diana knew there were people who might ask her to shit on them, but in the grand scheme of things, that wasn't really something to panic about. Blake and Maria seemed to think it somehow reflected badly on them that they did it, which Diana didn't get. It was just like with the Games - if you had to do it, it wasn't your fault and didn't make you a bad person. There were all sorts of stories about people who did sex work to pay for their relatives' hospital bills or whatever.

But honestly, Blake and Maria were weird people in general.

One day at dinner, Mom praised Diana for doing well in her studying. "I'm not surprised you're going so fast," she said. "You were always so smart, so curious! I never understood why you did badly at school."

That was because nobody liked being at school when they had friends who were already working and earning money, and Diana's curiosity had always gotten her stared at. "Mom, when I was six, I killed a dog to see what the organs looked like. That has nothing to do with learning the times tables." At least multiplication had been easy. The list of Victors - not so much.

"What?" Maria demanded, looking at Diana fearfully.

"What - what?" Grandpa asked, confused. "Back in my day, Nelly and I and all the other village kids played with the human bones left over in the woods from the Dark Days. I remember we made masks from the skulls."

"But why kill the dog?" Blake asked. He looked disgusted.

"It had bitten my friend the other day."

"But why kill it?"

"Who cares about some stray dog?" Mom asked. "The less of those there are, the better. Brr." Mom probably had PTSD from being mauled as a kid.

Diana wisely did not explain that at her age, Blake had been a 'wolf in human form', as the old people euphemistically said, and thus felt bad for his fellow vicious canines.

"You're messed up," Maria said confidently, as if she wasn't a friendless junkie who spent her time holed up in her house with a needle in her arm while Diana hung out at the computer cafe with her new friends and ate noodles. Fortunately, her family leapt to defend her normality, so she could focus on her divine-tasting matzo ball soup in peace.

Diana never told the therapist about that, of course, he already knew Blake and Maria were messed up. Instead, with the Tour due to start tomorrow, the conversation drifted towards the Games.

"I noticed something about the way you approach it," Adam said. "Do you mind if I share the observation?"

"Go ahead."

"You still refuse to admit that the Games hurt you because, in your mind, that would be tantamount to admitting that something wrong happened."

That was unpleasantly accurate. "But I did nothing wrong-"

"I am not saying that - far from it." Adam wrote something on his clipboard. "A soldier can fight for a noble cause and still end up severely traumatized. The human mind is simply not made to kill other humans, no matter how important the reason. Diana, it's okay to be hurt by something like this."

"I don't know," Diana said, wringing her hands. No matter how much they discussed the topic, she wasn't making any progress. "It just feels wrong. I feel like I'm not supposed to have problems."

Adam smiled. "With neighbours like yours, little wonder you are so afraid of having problems. Did you do as I suggested last time?"

He had told her to talk to veterans who had had to kill children in battle. "Yes."

"And?"

"They didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. It's just what you have to do in such situations."

"But that doesn't make it easy."

"It doesn't."

"So why do you feel like admitting you have troubles is bad?"

Diana shrugged. "I guess it's because of how they talk about it. If it's such a noble thing, how can it hurt so much? But on the other hand, the veterans also say that nobody ever mentions things like trauma. So I guess it's just that most people don't like thinking about how these things are actually really difficult."

"So how do you think you'll change your actions going forward?"

"I'll try to be honest with myself about my feelings."

"You'll try?"

"I'll do it."

It was a good thing that the Victory Tour began on a weekday. Leonella, who had recently stopped walking on eggshells around Diana in a rather stupid fight over a T-shirt, was at school, the adults were at work, Grandpa and Aunt Nelly were in the kitchen, and Sooty was hiding somewhere because she was terrified of strangers.

Elly, as he had mentioned last time, now had no beard. Instead, there was a tattooed vine going up his neck and to his ear. By now, Diana didn't become completely upset when she saw a bearded man, but sometimes she randomly thought of that one single sentence Rafael had said to her and it made her feel sad. Adam told her it was okay to feel sad when someone died even in such circumstances, so she tried to not beat herself up over it.

The stylist and the prep team had somewhat changed their styles but looked mostly like before. "You really need to look after yourself better," Warner chided as she studied Diana's hand. "What do you wash with?"

"Soap?"

Warner sighed.

Diana's skin was moisturized, her legs and underarms were shaved, her hair washed and trimmed even though she had gotten a haircut just two months ago, and she was dressed in all new clothes, a shirt, trousers, and sweater. Looking in the mirror, Diana noticed that she looked younger than her age, like Leonella always did. "I like it," she said, trying to be polite. "But you're not making me look attractive."

"Oh, we agreed that's not the image we want to achieve with you," Warner said, tossing back a handful of tiny braids. "You'll be adorably ruthless."

Diana's last partner had refused to continue their relationship past a one-night stand because she gave off 'creepy energy' - try as she might, Diana had no idea what the woman had disliked about her - and the man before her had called Diana 'an adult with the brain of a child'. Having Warner call her 'adorable' stung.

"That's nice," Diana said. She had by now made peace with how everyone thought she was 'ruthless'. There was nothing wrong with being ruthless when appropriate.

"I like your makeup selection. This eyeshadow would look good with your skin tone."

"That mostly belongs to my grandfather and great-aunt. I don't know anything besides lipstick and stabbing myself in the eye with the mascara brush."

"Oh, don't worry, it'll come with practice. Why don't we send you some books? Oh, and you have to get a good conditioner for your hair, I can give you some recommendations. You have such a lovely hair texture, but whatever you use leaves it limp and dull."

That 'whatever' was a bar of soap, and limpness was preferable to walking around with a mushroom cloud on her head once it grew out. "Uh-huh. That sounds nice." Diana did want to learn to look nice, but she had done just fine at attracting partners before, and it was hard enough to eat now, let alone make herself pretty.

There was a camera crew on hand to capture her waving goodbye to Grandpa, Aunt Nelly, and Sooty. Since Blake and Maria were very likely to disrupt any kind of organized proceeding, she had to go without them. She got into a taxi with Elly and they were off to the train station.

The Tour would take around two weeks, that much, Diana knew already. She'd go to all of the Districts in descending order skipping Six, then the Capitol, then back home. She had only seen glimpses of the other Districts on television and in books before, but as it turned out, she wouldn't actually get to see any of it.

In Twelve, she was taken to a small town square crowded with maybe five hundred or so people, the families of the Tributes standing on podiums of their own. Diana wondered if the boy's family, a ten-year-old sibling, a mother, and a grandfather, hated her for having gotten those energy bars and bottles of water that enabled her to outrun their boy. Did the girl's older brother hate her for killing his sister? Did they understand that she had been saved because she had had something to pull on sponsors' heartstrings nobody else had?

Elly had prepared several speeches that varied depending on if Diana had played a role in the death of the Tributes from that District. Here, she said that it had been pure luck it had been her to win that fight (even though she had attacked the girl from behind) and survive that deadly race, commended the courage of the Tributes, and the public part of the ceremony, thankfully, ended. There was some time remaining before dinner in the District mayor's house, so she was allowed to go talk to the District's sole living Victor so that he could 'welcome her to being a Victor', as Elly had it.

Haymitch Abernathy had won the Fiftieth at sixteen years of age, which made him only nine years older than her at twenty-eight, but he looked closer to forty. They sat in a small side room on an overstuffed couch, the man taking a flask out of his pocket. "D'you want some?"

"What's that?" Diana asked as she scanned the room for emergency exits in case of fire. There was only one door and they were on the third floor, which made her feel uneasy.

Haymitch - he, like Blake and Maria, wanted her to call him by his first name - laughed. "Vodka."

"No thanks, I don't drink." Not anymore. Before, Diana had cheerfully gotten drunk and used drugs when partying at a friend's house, but now, the thought of wiping away her feelings was too dangerously tempting.

"Good. Don't start." There was an awkward pause in which Haymitch drank from his flask. "How have you been?"

"Alright, I guess. My family's really going out of their way to help me. I go to therapy, study for my GED so I can go to university and become a computer programmer."

"And do you know what you're going to have to do when you get to the Capitol?"

"Maria told me about having to have sex with important people."

Haymitch nodded. "Yeah. Good that you know. I tried to refuse the first time Snow asked. Came back to my family dead. I agreed the next time, but too late for them."

"Oh, no." It hadn't entered Diana's mind that something like that could happen - mostly because she couldn't imagine refusing a direct order. "But why?"

Haymitch laughed bitterly at that. "What, you think I know? This part of the operation's handled by one person, and we can't peek into his head. Just do what you ought to. Best for you that way."

Diana could do that. "I noticed that getting therapy made life way easier for me. Have you thought about that?"

"Nah. No therapists here, and I'm not talking to a Capitolite for a second longer than I have to."

"What? Why aren't there therapists here?"

Haymitch ran a hand over his head. "Because this small town, as you doubtless think of it being from a city of two hundred thousand and living now in a city of three million, is all of Twelve."

"But how?" It had never entered Diana's mind that something like that could exist. "What about the other Districts, then?"

"The other Districts are all normal-sized by your standards. We're the standout here. Long story. The administrative unit here that predated Twelve was formed to control coal mining in the area - right when fossil fuels began to run out in earnest and everyone switched to renewables. Mine after mine was closed, people moved away, but the District government found it profitable to keep it going. Then during the Dark Days even more people moved away because of the fighting - I think it was the Communists, the Loyalists, and the Autonomists here. Once the borders were sealed, that was that. We used to have some other towns but the last one has five people living in it, three elderly and two adolescents who are going to move here once their grandmother dies."

Diana supposed she shouldn't have been surprised. At school, they had been told that Twelve produced coal and that fossil fuels had long since been exhausted in the same breath. It had been easy for Diana to believe both at once, but of course there was a contradiction there.

"So how big is Twelve?"

"Ten thousand or so."

By Diana's standards, that was microscopic. Funny how a little town could be an entire District. "That explains why everyone looks mostly the same," she said. "Did you go through a bottleneck?" she deployed her GED biology.

"A what?"

"Almost everyone here has light eyes." The audience had been roughly split between those with extremely pale skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair, and those with light-tan skin, grey eyes, and black hair. Haymitch was an example of the latter. He was lighter than her but quite dark for someone with grey eyes. "I thought maybe everyone here is descended from a small population that happened to have light eyes. After all, even if a person with brown eyes was capable of having light-eyed children and had a spouse with light eyes, half of the kids would have brown eyes, so it's odd I only saw a couple of people with brown eyes in the crowd."

"I wouldn't know. I'm an alcoholic, not a biologist." Haymitch took another sip from his flask. "So, first stop of the Victory Tour. How are you holding up?"

"I keep on having dreams where I'm trying to run away from something but I'm somehow stuck."

"As nightmares go, not so bad. And Blake and Maria? How are they doing? I try to call them but no response."

Diana felt cold. "My family got cleaners to come over every week and my grandpa brings them food, but they don't eat much. We tried to get them to therapy but they refused. We try to involve them with things we're doing but they avoid us. And Blake said a while back that he's not coming to the next Games, and if he's not coming, there's no way Maria is coming." Diana had been trying to push that out of her mind, but now that she was on the Tour, she couldn't deny reality.

Haymitch smiled sadly. "You want mentoring advice? Just don't bother. If they have what it takes they'll survive in any case, and odds are, they don't. And I wouldn't wish this on someone, either."

"But that's the thing!" Diana hissed. "How can I sit there, alive, the Arena in my past, and tell a child who is about to die that death is the better option? There has to be something I can do to at least improve their chances of survival."

"Like getting rid of the Hunger Games?"

Was that a joke? A test of her political reliability? Was he already drunk? "Very funny," she said coldly.

Haymitch studied her carefully. "Look, if you actually want to play out this combination by the rules, you'll have to ask the Careers, they're masters at it. But I doubt you'll last five years that way. If you make them your responsibility, you will hurt when they die. I only started drinking when I lost my first." He sighed. "I tell myself they had no chances in any case. Like the boy last year. I'm not even getting into the girl, I thought she was Career bait, but I didn't expect someone from Six to be so methodical. I don't know why sponsors were drawn to you, and from all over the country to boot, but I had no way of matching it. Was that song of yours some kind of code?"

"When I got to the train, Blake and Maria wrote me off completely," Diana said in a small voice, hugging her knees with her arms. "But before that, in the Justice Building, a rabbi - a religious official in my religion - came to visit. He gave me advice. Told me to appeal to our community. I don't know how it's like in Twelve, but in Six, nobody knows of the Tributes, they're not connected to them in any way, I was just yet another girl who wasn't their daughter and there's that, life goes on. But I had something to yank on the nerves of one community, at least, and faith is a bigger deal to people than something like job or social role. So I sang the national anthem of Israel at the interview. My rabbi says some of the footage was smuggled out, including that, and there were massive protests all over the country. It was knowing there were people with me that made me so willing to do whatever it took."

"You will never have an opportunity like that. Something so spread out but that forms such strong bonds that they contribute large sums of money - I know that when there are devout Tributes money is collected for them at churches, but it's something people are long used to by now. With you, it was also the shock of it happening for the first time to someone they cared about."

"That's true," Diana said, "but I'm not just going to give up. To me, not doing my best feels like having a part in killing them."

"You already do, but I see your point. All I can say is that I didn't last two years that way. Are you sincerely religious yourself?"

"No. It sounds nice, but I just can't believe that there's an omnipotent power out there overseeing all of this. I mean, I can believe it, but I see no reason to actually do so."

"We do have a couple of Victors who seek solace in religion, but I suppose that's not an option for you. Good thing you have your family. It's easy enough to drift into being like Blake and Maria or I when you're all alone."

"When did Twelve's first Victor die?"

"Oh, long before my time. We were mentored by one of the Victors from Four, and the moment I won, he went home and has barely left his house since."

"Do you know when she died?" Diana asked out of idle curiosity.

"Went missing without trace shortly after her victory. Most people think she died trying to defect."

"To where?"

"To Thirteen, but I don't think they know that part. If they know, they don't say it."

"Of course they don't. We don't talk about other countries much." If not for her depression, Diana would have been shocked at hearing Haymitch say such things, but as it was, she felt only a dull sense of things not being as expected. It was a bit strange to be talking about other countries with someone she didn't know well. "Um, so do you know more about the other Victor?"

"My contact who's in touch with them says she never got to Thirteen. And we should really get going to the banquet."

They went. The banquet was like how Diana imagined a small-town New Year's banquet at the mayor's house. There were maybe a hundred people in an improvised banquet hall in the Justice Building, which thankfully was on the first floor, so she could jump out the window if it came to it. Weirdly enough, most of them looked the same way - pale, blonde, blue-eyed. Diana had vaguely heard that in some isolated places the way you looked determined social standing, but it was strange to see it with her own eyes.

The existence of hierarchies Diana had thought died sometime around the seventh decade of the Cataclysm Wars aside, the banquet was nice enough. It wasn't loud, though a bit too crowded for her liking - she sat on the mayor's left at the head of the table, with Haymitch at the mayor's other hand. The mayor looked to be sick, and Diana could see that the real authority in the room rested with her son-in-law, as her daughter was too ill for the job.

The food was great. It was all laid out on the table, so Diana could only marvel at the dishes. There were three types of bread - little rolls made from a fine whole wheat flour, corn flatbread, and slices of rye bread. Diana tried one of the rolls, since she had never had anything like that. It tasted great and had a pleasant texture. The centrepiece of the table was a roasted deer the Head Peacekeeper had personally shot, which was weird given that she was bragging about how well she enforced the ban on hunting. Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. Diana wasn't sure why hunting was banned and also didn't care, because she was too busy ladling herself some kind of bean dish with potatoes and pickled vegetables. It was as good as anything from the Capitol. Did they send special cooks for the banquet like they sent journalists?

She then had some of the deer, which was perfectly cooked and covered in a delicious glaze. Some of the guests were already drunk by now. Diana drank only mineral water and focused on the food. The roasted squash was familiar, the salads different from what she was used to. By the time dessert was carried in and Diana dug into small pieces of various pies, she was among the few still caring about the food. The mayor had needed to go lie down, Haymitch was sleeping with his face in a plate of salad, people were arguing about things she knew nothing about, and it was too hot and stuffy in the room. Diana slunk off to the kitchen to ask for recipes. She really wanted to have some of these dishes regularly.

After the banquet finally ended, they were back on the train and headed for Eleven. It was quite warm there. Diana sat in just a sweater as she stared out the window, watching towns and farms flash by. A few times she saw a city, but the stations were on the outskirts, so she didn't get to see much. Eleven was definitely more agrarian than Six, but Diana couldn't tell anything more than that.

Here, it would be easier, as both of the Tributes had died in the bloodbath without her participation. Diana read out some lines about honour and sacrifice to an audience that looked more bored than anything and that was that. The only noteworthy thing was that there was nobody standing on the podium under the image of the boy.

After the ceremony, she was pulled aside by one of the Victors. Chaff Kielce was in his thirties and looked exhausted, and Diana wondered if she would be the one who always had to talk to the newest Victor.

Fortunately, Chaff didn't have much to say to her. He asked a few questions about how she was holding up and fell silent. Diana didn't know much about the man aside from his Games, which he had won by carefully hiding when possible and fighting with a spear when he couldn't.

"Why don't you have a prosthetic?" Diana asked to fill the silence before remembering that was an impolite question to ask.

Chaff shrugged. "Doctors decided I'd have higher functionality if I learned to use my stump, since it was lost above the elbow."

"Do you?"

"I guess I do."

The banquet was the same as in Twelve. Food-great, company-awful. This was like a New Year's party from hell. Dignitaries made toast after toast until it was a miracle anyone was coherent enough to pay attention to the delicacies on the table. Diana had to force herself to try the fried fish, but it tasted great, as did everything else. She hadn't given any thought to kashrut, but everyone went out of their way to point out the dishes with no pork products, which was nice of them. Diana's neighbour Seeder James, the Victor of the Twenty-Sixth, stuck to mineral water and kept up a monologue about the history of soul food for the entire banquet, which was far more interesting than the District mayor's recent business deal or a Peacekeeper general loudly complaining about how he made it clear he wanted to be bribed with food but people kept on offering sex instead. Diana ended up with more recipes to put in her notebook.

In Ten, Diana got to meet Kevin Dobrev. The Victor of the Forty-Ninth walked with a cane as the result of being nearly killed by a mutt when the Gamemakers had despaired of getting him and the other surviving Tribute to the same place.

"As long as you keep your head down, they won't mind the anticlimax," he said, clearly speaking from experience. "With you, there was also the drama of the race, so it's not like it was completely boring. Are you holding up alright?"

"As well as I can under the circumstances." Was everyone going to ask that?

"That's good. Take it one day at a time."

At the banquet, Diana got to try a really tasty beef stew, so that was nice.

Next up was Nine, where Junie Tract, the Victor of the Fifty-Eighth, gave her a crash course on high Capitol society. "I only had a total of five clients. They'll forget about you soon enough."

Junie had won by charming sponsors with her good looks and using that to get away from the Cornucopia immediately and have the supplies and weapons brought to her instead. Yes, her face was ugly now thanks to the massive damage she had incurred in one of the fights, but she still looked pretty good. If that pattern held, Diana would be forgotten by next year.

At the banquet, the main topic of discussion was a maniac who had killed and dismembered over forty young people from rich backgrounds he had picked up in upscale nightclubs - Mom's greatest nightmare.

"A true child of Oh-my-hand," a Peacekeeper general muttered a few spots down from her. You weren't supposed to call District capitals by their old names, but the general was drunk already. Nine's Centre had used to be called Omaha.

"Don't worry," Rudolf Wang, Victor of the Forty-Fourth, whispered to Diana. "If Centre was really so dangerous, all the rich people wouldn't be living here."

"Me, I'm surprised the Peacekeepers were so lax while the rich were dying," Junie said. "You'd think they'd care."

"Nah," Rudolf replied. "If you're rich, they'll promise you the world, but you'll still get nothing in the end. They're too lazy to work."

Diana was surprised they were speaking like this in the open but said nothing.

In the next District, the Victor she got to meet had a different perspective on life. Woof Kuznetsov was sixty-two but still 'enjoyed' some popularity. "It's just that they demand different things," he said tiredly. "Back when they first implemented it, all I had to do was have sex. Now I've got clients who want the dating experience. It's a nightmare."

In the footage of his Games, the Sixteenth, he had been extremely attractive. Back then, the entire thing with sponsor gifts had just been starting out, to his advantage. Even now, he looked like the lead singer of one of those bands that played for an audience of 'those who are over fifty' Aunt Nelly had photos of in her room. "How do you deal with it?"

Woof shrugged. "I don't even know myself. I just keep on breathing, I guess."

Diana had worried that Seven would be difficult, but everyone seemed to recognize that the girl had already been almost dead. "Nobody here blames you," Blight said. His name was actually Paul Katz (when he had been Reaped for the Fifty-Fifth, the community had scrambled to find out if he was Jewish, which he either was not or had no idea he was), but in his interview, he had joked about his family calling him a 'little blighter', and it stuck.

"Who do they blame, then?" Diana asked half-seriously. Blight had won his Games by allying with the Careers and winning the final fight.

Blight spread out his hands. "Who do you blame for a natural disaster that strikes some other town over there?"

Nobody, of course (or God), and odds are you don't even pause for a second to think about it.

Six was skipped, and the very awkward Five was next. Killing in the confusion of the bloodbath was one thing, but Diana had killed the boy methodically. She muttered something about how he had fought nobly and that was that.

"How do you like Five so far?" Annaliese Gupta asked after the public ceremony.

All Diana had gotten to see was the main square of the main city. "Looks normal."

"I suppose it does, at that." Annaliese had killed two at the Cornucopia and spent the rest of the Games hiding, with the Career pack forgetting about her and killing each other. Diana didn't want to imagine how the last one standing had felt, slowly dying of blood loss with no way to hunt down the adversary she must have known was still out there.

Four turned out to be extremely warm, to the point where she had to wear short sleeves. Diana was by now feeling completely wrung out. Four hadn't had a Victor in a very long time despite consistently making it into the top eight. The last one had won the Thirty-Fourth and died of complications of his wounds seven years later, so it was the Victor of the Twenty-Seventh, Gareth Myraan, who met her.

"I am warning you now," he said. "You caught lightning in a bottle with those sponsors of yours. You will never be able to replicate that."

Which, of course, meant that in resource-low Arenas, her Tributes would have to either go to the Cornucopia or die of dehydration. "I know."

"Nobody will blame you if you give up after a while. If Blake and Maria board that train at all, it'll be a miracle. Haymitch does it alone, and if he's still alive by forty, I'll be surprised."

"But I have to," Diana said. "There's nobody else who can do it for me."

"There isn't. But I will tell you now that it is extremely difficult."

In Three, Diana met someone who was basically in her position. Bernard-Thomas 'Call me Beetee, everyone calls me Beetee' Latier had technically been mentored in his Games the same way Diana had been mentored. The two older Victors were both shut-ins with addictions to alcohol, and the younger one was just as dysfunctional. And Beetee himself had won in a somewhat similar fashion as Diana, impressing Gamemakers with his skills in training so that they would provide him with what he needed. Having been from a decently well-off family, he had been taking various advanced courses while apprenticing as an electrician, allowing him to set up an electrical trap with some wire and odds and ends. Plus he also liked programming, which drew Diana towards him even more.

"Programming's a good choice," he said, twirling his glasses in his hands. In the Thirty-Seventh Games, he had worn Gamemaker-issued special shatterproof lenses on an elastic. Now he wore expensive frames. "I find it relaxing. The problems I need to solve are so different from what I deal with in general life."

"How do you do it alone?"

"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm two people. Usually, I'm Beetee the computer engineer. But then the Games start and I'm Beetee who watches farmers and sweatshop workers die." He sighed. "The more energy you put in, the more it'll hurt when they die, but if you don't put in any, you'll feel guilty. Well, you'll feel guilty in any case, but if you spent days coming up with ideas and analyzing the field, it won't hurt so much. It'll just hurt to have gotten attached. Because that's the thing - even when one day Six wins again, there will still be one casket coming home."

"But we'll do our duty."

"That we will."

The last two would be difficult. In Two, Brutus Donaldson, the Victor of the Forty-Seventh, still couldn't quite grasp her killing of the girl from Two. "It always happens every year. We can simulate death as much as we want, but it's not the real thing. They get distracted, and that one second is enough." He paused, knitting needles clacking away. "I realized you had potential the moment you stabbed Twelve. Doing something like that takes focus, and it's the disoriented ones who never win. And when you got my girl - I thought to myself, if she can pull it off just two or three more times and the pack goes its usual route, she might very easily be a dark horse Victor."

Diana wasn't sure what to think of that, so she just nodded. Brutus took her to meet Malachi Hope, who had won the very first Hunger Games. Back then the Games had been a brief messy fight in a literal soccer field strewn with weapons. In the chaos, Malachi, who at fifteen years and three months at time of victory remained the youngest person to walk out of the Arena, had somehow managed to avoid becoming seriously injured and then picked off the survivors.

"It was all pure luck," Malachi said. "It always is. Always. What you do for your Tributes and what they can do gives them the potential to survive if there is luck. Luck always comes first. It's what you do with the chance that decides it."

Diana's victory could not have happened had the Arena been supplied with water, or completely barren, or if the pack had not been attacked by a wolf, or if the girl from Two had managed to kill that boy just five seconds faster, or if the boy from Five had been supplied enough to make him capable of fighting her off. "I know."

The final District before the Capitol was One. For the last time, Diana was pulled aside - this time, by Jose Pilar, the Victor of the Twentieth. In his final fight, the last two standing had both been rendered unconscious, Pilar by a blow to the head and the other one from blood loss. Pilar had survived. He had made a substantial recovery, with the only lasting consequence being blindness.

"How did the tour go?" he asked.

"Exhausting," Diana said. The Districts had all blurred together by now.

"Anything noteworthy?"

"No."

"Well, that's good. Stay strong. You'll be home soon."

That was what Diana told herself as the train went to the Capitol. Farms, villages, and small towns flashed by, and soon they were pulling into the city proper. Elly explained the itinerary to her - first a meeting with Snow one-on-one, and then a massive party in her honour where she would need to mingle and sound out potential sponsors for next year. Diana had already gotten some practice in talking to important people in the Districts, though not with such high stakes, as it was impolite in the highest to directly tell a person to support a Tribute not from their District.

The prep team made her up with especial ferocity, sticking her into an elegant suit and trimming her hair again. Apparently people with her hair texture, if they wanted to wear short hair, needed a trim once every two weeks, or once a month at most, not twice a year.

Elly went with her in a taxi to the president's residence, where she had to wait for twenty minutes, according to her very expensive watch, outside the office. Finally, someone appeared and told her to go in, which she did. Snow was already sitting at an opulent table, smiling at her.

"Our newest Victor," he said. "Please, do sit down." Diana sat. "How did you find the Tour to be?"

"It was good."

"That is good. Now, the reason I have invited you here is no simple social call. Have either of your fellow Victors, incompetent as they are, explained to you a Victor's…other duties?"

Diana nodded. "I will be expected to repay the gifts they paid for with my body."

Snow tilted his head slightly. "I would not have phrased it that way, but yes, something along those lines. Do you have any questions?"

Not any that could be asked of Snow, of course. Up close, he looked like, well, an older man, balding and with grey hair and beard. The unnatural smoothness of his pale skin made it clear that he was very rich, but there was nothing in the face to say that this was the president. "No. My duties are clear to me."

"Excellent!" He smiled. "Miss Cohen, I think we are going to get along splendidly."

Diana wanted to beat her head against the table.

At the actual banquet, which was like all the previous ones put into one giant room, it was all Diana could do to not hide under the dessert table and eat chocolate. She had to talk to person after person, and that drained her batteries like nothing else. A few people even groped her, which completely freaked her out. When she had been an apprentice boilermaker nobody had ever treated her like that, but now that she was a national celebrity, people thought they could assault her whenever they wanted. Worse was the music. It wasn't bad or anything, but the sound combined with the crowding made her feel like screaming.

Elly pointed out oligarchs and functionaries; Diana knew she'd never remember most of the names. Some she already knew from the television. Up close, the outfit of Publius Dovek, the new Minister of Internal Affairs and Snow's right hand, was even more insane than on the screen. The man himself looked eerily like Grandpa did nowadays when he went out to meet up with a friend, amazingly fancy makeup and the remnants of his hair an obviously artificial black. But even Grandpa's earrings weren't so elaborate. Diana's own earrings were small hoops of solid gold. Mom and Dad had gotten her ears pierced as an involuntary sixth birthday present, and she had hated wearing the little studs and the holes in her ears after she took them out in her teens, but now, why not be a little bit fancy?

"How nice to meet our newest Victor!" Dovek was not very tall for a man, narrow-framed, and a little bit overweight, but the way he stood and gesticulated made him fill up the room.

"It is an honour to meet you, too, Mr. Minister."

That repeated at least fifty more times until Diana felt exhausted. She had the unpleasant feeling that one of the violinists was stalking her, or maybe the way the big man towered over everyone made him constantly in her field of view.

At least the food was great. There were more dishes than she could ever try, but she tried a bit of whatever looked good, and it was all delicious as expected. Diana looked forward to coming home and sharing the recipes with her family. Aunt Nelly had gotten into pastry-making recently, she'd love trying all these different desserts.

As the night wore on, Diana felt more and more exhausted until she was sitting on a little couch in a corner staring into space and not talking to anyone. When Elly said it was time to leave, she wanted to cry from relief.

The ceremony in Six, by contrast, was simplicity itself (even if the District Minister of Resources nearly threw up on her nice shoes after emptying a half-litre, a dubious achievement for a woman who had to weigh fifty kilos at most), and then Diana could finally go home, where her cousin Michael had a surprise for everyone.

"Guess what?" he said. "I'm getting married!"

"Oh, really?" Grandpa asked. "But so am I!"

Aunt Nelly nearly dropped her cup. She recovered and put it down, shaking her head. "And it only took me twenty years to prod you out of your shell," she grumbled.

"Really, Auntie?" Mom said. "Michael, congratulations! Father, congratulations! We're so happy for you!"

"Yeah, congrats, Grandpa," Diana said. It was impossible to dwell on the Tour for long when surrounded by her family doing their usual thing. With Michael, she knew he had been engaged for a while, but Grandpa had always been secretive about his personal life. Diana knew he had a girlfriend, but that was it.

"Er, Grandpa, who are you marrying?" Leonella asked.

Nine pairs of eyes stared at her. "I'm marrying my girlfriend?" Grandpa said faintly. "You know, Raisa? I've been meeting her for years and now she's gotten a permit to move here?"

"Aunt Raisa? Really? I thought you were friends," Leonella said.

Everyone looked weird at Leonella, even Sooty.

"Whatever," Diana cut in. "Congrats to you both. Michael, are you going to move out?"

"We can't decide. On one hand, this place might end up very crowded, but on the other, we're not using your stipend to buy an apartment and we can't afford anything decent otherwise." Michael's fiancee worked construction in the same crew as him.

"On that note," Mina said, "some of my friends suggested I room with them when I go to university." Mina was the quickest of them when it came to their GEDs and had already been accepted for university next year, to study systems engineering.

"Well, that's still some time away," Sarah said.

"So is Michael having kids, presumably." Michael nodded.

"That's all very nice," Aunt Nelly said.

"I think I'll move out once I'm in university," Akash said. "Ten years from now, or maybe twenty." Her cousin really wanted something higher-paying than his construction job, but he had always been slow to learn, and in an academic setting, he struggled even more.

Sooty approached Sarah and demanded scritches. The blue-eyed void had a tendency to lie in the darkest corners and then suddenly open her eyes, making whoever was passing by jump. She was still tiny - maybe she had been the runt of the litter.

"Diana, how was the Tour?" Leonella asked. "We saw you on television a few times."

"It was alright. I got a bunch of recipes I want to try. But I'm very happy to be back."

"Recipes? That sounds nice," Mom said. "Now, how about a round of cards?"

"Let's play skat," Grandpa offered.

"Absolutely not," Aunt Nelly said.

"But I'm getting married!"

"Fine, fine."

Diana was gently prodded into playing skat with Grandpa and Mom. Grandpa destroyed them as always, the pile of cardboard tokens they played for moving steadily towards him until Mom gave up and went to pour herself a cup of tea. Diana didn't mind losing. She sat around the large table in the living room with her family, feeling a coziness and security she had never felt before in her life. No stress over bills, no cockroaches falling from the ceiling, a fridge stuffed with food. No waking up early and dragging herself to work. No barely-stifled knowledge that if she ran into a maniac at the club, the Peacekeepers wouldn't even think twice about her.

"Does anyone want the last bit of cake?" Aunt Sarah called out from the kitchen.

"I'll take it," Diana volunteered.

Cake, leisure, everyone being in the same room at once. Diana finally understood what Adam had been getting at this entire time. Maybe she would never be truly free of the Games. But they would not poison the good things in her life. Especially when they were the reason she had them.

A/N: The killing of stray animals is not an effective way to combat dog attacks, because all it does is get rid of the easier-to-catch individuals and gives more room for the sneakier ones to reproduce. Catching, sterilizing, and releasing is far more effective.

I considered having each District described in detail, but that would have required me to spend hours researching USA and Mexican cuisine for the sake of a 20K chapter with George R. R. Martin-level descriptions of food, so I kept it concise.

The Latin proverb Diana thinks of means 'What is allowed for Jupiter is not allowed for a bull.'

The serial killer in Nine is inspired by the general jokes about St. Petersburg and dismemberment. Probably the most famous case was when Oleg Sokolov murdered his grad student and girlfriend, Anastasiya Yeshchenko. He tried to throw her body into the river Moika but fell in, so he had to be rescued, and then a pair of arms were discovered in his backpack. Oops. Sometimes I forget that St. Petersburg is considered the cultural capital of Russia, because I associate it only with the comically incompetent and corrupt mayor, the total lack of maintenance, and dismemberment.