Her family never spoke to her about that, but Diana could tell that something had changed in how they saw her. Francine, at least, didn't seem to mind. When Diana had interrupted her girlfriend's rant about her cheating ex and how she couldn't stand cheating to ask nervously if rape counted, Francine had immediately answered in the negative and said that if Diana didn't want her to know, she wouldn't ask.

"But what if I want you to know?"

Francine shrugged. "Why do you want me to know? Is it going to make it easier for you to have someone who knows what you went through?"

"That too, but I was also thinking that some of the stuff they made me do might be nice, if done with someone I actually wanted to be with."

"Oh, Diana!" Francine leaned over and kissed her on the mouth lightly. "If that will make you happier, I will gladly try it."

Diana was self-aware enough by now to know Francine's reaction was significant. Really, what other reason did she need to be drawn to the woman? Francine studied computer science, and she understood Diana well and it was easy for them to talk about serious things, and she was so beautiful with her smooth dark-brown skin and perfect little braids and perfect broad figure and powerful arms that hugged her so tightly, and her voice was so nice, and she seemed to like Diana back just as much. Mutual familial approval (granted, Francine's family was awed by Diana's status) was a nice bonus.

"Alright. How big's your bathtub?"

"Not big enough. We'd be better off renting a hot tub at the bathhouse."

"Right. That person had a hot tub in her house."

Francine's eyes widened. "Diana…I don't care what the answer is, I'm just curious - did you do sex work before?"

"Not before. It was just now, when I was in the Capitol."

She quickly explained the situation, Francine becoming more and more confused. "That's not what I expected. I mean, I've seen Victors with important people, but I thought it was voluntary."

"No. It's kind of a repayment thing."

"Still, it's messed up. If Snow only knew-"

"He knows. It's just something he does for his friends."

"Unbelievable." She stared at her hands. "So, anyway, what was that about the hot tub? I know a place where we can buy some waterproof lube."

Being rich made Diana's sex life so much cooler. Not only could she wear sexy underwear for Francine, she could buy all sorts of things if she wanted to. Or even rent a hot tub. "How much does it cost to rent it?"

"Hey, Mom?" Diana pulled on her shoes as Mom also prepared to head out. "I'm going on a date."

"To where?"

"The bathhouse."

"Is your shower too small?"

"Well, yes." It's not like Mom didn't know what Diana did with her partners.

"Have fun."

"You're fine with it?"

"Why shouldn't I be?" Mom seemed to be sincerely surprised by the question.

"Because you've never been?"

"Francine sounds like a lovely woman. Far more respectable than those you've dragged in to meet us."

Really? "Come on, couldn't you have told me earlier to be a gold-digger?" she asked half-seriously. Diana had never told her family about her better-off partners, afraid they'd accuse her of being a prostitute.

"I don't mean that." Mom looked at her. "What I mean is that-"

"She's middle-class, that's what you mean. Couldn't you have said that earlier instead of pointing out the randomest things? You said you didn't like Nathaniel Koo's haircut! How does that make any sense? You could have just said you didn't want me to date- I don't know, an unskilled worker, or someone illiterate, or whatever."

"And what would you have done then?" Mom slung her umbrella over her back like it was a gun. When she straightened out, there was definitely something soldierly in her bearing. It hit Diana just how young Mom and Dad were. They weren't even forty yet, plenty of people that age went on to have one or two more children. No wonder they had never understood what to do with her.

"Well, I'd have known who to date and not date. It would have given me clear parameters. Do you know how much time I spent trying to figure out what you didn't like about Nathaniel Koo's haircut? I turned down a girl who asked me out because I was afraid you wouldn't like her for having red hair!"

Mom shook her head. "You are entirely too much like Dad."

"Anyway," Diana said. "I'm off."

In the run-up to Reaping Day, wildfires raged across the District. Diana refused to go foraging with her family for fear of a fire starting. Now that they were rich, they bought respirators to wear when outdoors and installed air filtration systems at home. No lung cancer for them. Back home, they had often spent weeks suffocating from the heavy smoke. How was there still anything left to burn? Shouldn't all of the country's forests become nothing but ashes by now?

Thankfully, Reaping Day dawned rainy. In Mom and Dad's time there had been one rainy Reaping, and it had apparently been a nightmare, but at least the fires would be extinguished now. The family had been asked to all show up together for the cameras, so they had to put on their rain jackets and rubber boots. Leonella wore a similar getup over her Saturday best. Diana, who actually needed to look a certain way on television, had to settle for an umbrella. She was extremely hungry, but the thought of eating made her feel sick, so she didn't. Rather inconveniently, she was on her period, but her flow was so much lighter now that she took ibuprofen (not to mention the total absence of pain), she couldn't bring herself to complain.

Living in Centre meant relative proximity to the Reaping Field. They all piled into cars, as Diana had special parking spots reserved for them, and drove the hour to the vast empty space on the outskirts of the city usually used for concerts, soccer matches, and for local kids to run around. Since they had been asked to arrive very early for Diana's television appearance, crews were just finishing up getting the sections cordoned off. The smog hung in the air and made it hard to see.

"How are you feeling this morning?" a journalist asked Diana, shoving a microphone in her face.

Diana took off her respirator, tasting the smoke in her mouth. "Damp?"

The journalist laughed. "Are you worried about your younger sister?"

"As much as anyone else." The only case of close relatives going in had been several instances of Victors' children being Reaped, and Blake and Maria had explained that if Snow didn't demand she have kids, he'd leave them alone if she had any.

Blake and Maria were currently missing - off to shoot up, no doubt. Diana hoped that once the Games were over her family would be able to make more of an impact, now that they were settled in.

After some time, Leonella departed for the section for sixteen-year-old girls, the rest of the family went to the side, and Diana mounted the stage. She had to stand between Maria and the omnicorrupt District Mayor Ward, she of the superyacht and the special permit to leave the District and go up and down the Mississippi on said yacht because where else was there in Panem to take a superyacht. Besides the yacht, she had an indeterminate amount of luxurious apartments for every single distant relative, a palatial cottage or three, and her husband was always decked out in the most luxurious of clothing. A glance downward revealed that Ward's watch probably cost more than what Diana's entire family put together had earned in a year before, and her bracelets, gold studded with gems, were works of art. Rather ironic that the Capitol was presented on television as this super-rich place when Ward had orders of magnitude more money than Elly.

Speaking of. Elly was also there, his rainbow hair now pulled back into a ponytail. He sat in a chair, coughing every so often despite the mask he was wearing, and did his best to pretend to be interested, though the ceremony was supposed to have started half an hour ago.

One eternity later, Ward finally stepped up to the microphone and recited her speech in a tone of voice that clearly indicated she'd have rather been in her office receiving kickbacks. Diana tuned it out, scanning the crowd instead. Two of these children would be dead in a few weeks. No, far more than that would be dead, but only two would die on television.

"And now," Ward said, "let us commemorate our previous Victors. Luisa Moreno, fourteenth annual Hunger Games, may she rest in peace. Blake Young, Twenty-Fifth. Maria Popescu, Fifty-Third. Diana Cohen, Sixty-First." Despite the fact that all she had done was what had been expected of her - be the last one standing - Diana couldn't help but feel a stirring of pride, but she wasn't sure for what. Luck was hardly something to be proud of. And yet, did people not make their own luck? Yet another thing she would have to impress on her charges. Diana was sort of relieved that she'd be on her own and none of her mistakes would matter because the Tributes would die in any case, but that was also a horrible thing to think. She had done her best to go through this with her therapist and reached the conclusion that she would do her best, as was her duty, and not blame herself for factors she couldn't control.

Now if only she could actually do that.

"Happy Hunger Games!" Elly intoned. "Let us start with the young gentleman. Christian Freeman!" The name appeared on the screen, but nothing else. There was only one eligible boy with that name. "And now the young lady! Portia Lambert!" The projected ID card revealed that she was fourteen years old. Not good.

Diana, being herself, thought about the fact that Portia had been (probably unwittingly) named for a character from The Merchant of Venice, a play which Diana liked because she willingly misinterpreted its message. Then she wondered what it said about her that she could go on these flights from reality right when two children had been chosen to die.

A boy literally ran down the central path. Diana wondered why he was so eager. He mounted the stage and shouted "I volunteer as Tribute!" into the microphone. Somewhere in the crowd, Christian Freeman was very relieved.

The last volunteer from Six had been four years ago - as far as anyone could tell, the girl had seen no more purpose in her life and had decided to go out in a way that at least saved someone else.

"How lovely!" Elly chirped. "What's your name, volunteer?"

"John Keenan."

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"Well, John, we all thank you for your sacrifice."

A few minutes later, Portia ascended the steps and stood, jaw clenched, next to the boy.

"Alright everyone, let's have a round of applause for our Tributes!"

The round of applause was duly produced, the Treaty of Treason was recited, and everyone could go home now. Except for the Tributes - and Diana. Before she could blink, Blake and Maria were gone, and it was just her and Elly.

"There's a taxi waiting for us," he said. "Let's go."

The taxi driver grumbled about being made to wait nearly an hour but drove off. Diana would have blamed Capitolites for being late to everywhere had her family also not had that tendency. It seemed more like that everyone in the world ever was always late, and she was the only weirdo who arrived on time.

As the taxi made its way through the streets, Diana mentally rehearsed what she needed to say to her Tributes. She had written down an entire list in her notebook and now flipped through it, making sure there wasn't anything missing. She also tried to recall Adam's words about not blaming herself for things she couldn't control, but it was hard. The Tributes were her responsibility. How could she just shrug and move on when they died?

On the train, Diana and Elly went to the dining car. Elly focused on his phone - Diana couldn't blame him for doing his best to not get attached to the Tributes.

"Um, Elly? Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"How did you even get this job?"

Elly shrugged, not looking up from his phone. "I have a relative in the industry who got me a position after I finished highschool. I've always been good at playing nice, so I managed to make it up the ladder, and when this position opened, I got the nod."

Elly was quite attractive. Diana wondered how many of his bosses had forced him to sleep with them.

"Did you always like the Games?"

"They're not really something to be liked, in my opinion. Might as well like a crackdown on a terrorist cell. It's just…something that has to happen every so often. I wish the reasons it had to happen didn't exist, but they do, and so it has to happen."

Diana felt that way even though she knew there were over a hundred and fifty countries where there were no Hunger Games, so she couldn't blame Elly for thinking that way when he was probably barely aware of the world outside Panem.

The Tributes then arrived, John glaring and Portia looking terrified. John was dressed in extremely shabby clothes and his deep tan ended where his clothes began. He had wavy brown hair, no sign of facial hair whatsoever, brown eyes, and small scars on his hands. He was maybe a metre sixty at most and skinny to the point of being malnourished, as well as missing half his teeth.

Portia was also extremely pale, with curly dark-brown hair forming a small puff like Diana's had when it had been longer and brown eyes, and a bit taller than John. She was much better-fed than John and her clothes were a bit better than what Diana had worn to synagogue before. Perhaps she was middle-class, though from its lowest strata. Maybe still a schoolgirl, maybe already working in the family shop or as a clerk or a secretary, maybe a well-off farmer. Though if she had turned fourteen in this calendar year, then most likely, she would have been graduating middle school in bare weeks.

Diana suddenly couldn't bring herself to care who had been doing what. Adam called this emptiness emotional burnout.

"First of all, John, that was a very brave thing you did."

John huffed and crossed his arms. "I didn't do it to be brave."

Elly put on headphones.

"How about we eat first?" Diana had no idea how to reply to that.

Diana had heard from the others that the poor Tributes sometimes pounced uncontrollably on the food, but John simply put butter on a piece of bread and chewed on it even though it must have been the better part of a day since his last proper meal. Portia took some mashed turnips. Diana, now missing her emotions, could eat without feeling sick. She was now used to the luxury. An excellent steam bun with a vegetable filling, fresh crunchy vegetables with various dips, and wraps with black beans, rice, tofu, eggs, sweet potatoes, and fresh greens (had Snow personally eaten all the cows or what?) looked like nothing extraordinary to her. Even the mashed turnips with red lentils and herbs, divine compared to what she had grown up eating as mashed turnips, tasted normal by now.

"Seriously?" John demanded. "How can you just sit there and eat?"

"Would it help you if I didn't eat?"

"It would help us if you didn't treat this situation like it was normal!"

"But it is normal. Sixty-one boys before you, now it's you, and if you want to come back, you're going to have to toss all emotion aside and focus on that goal."

"Like you did?"

"Exactly."

John's mouth fell open. "You- you seriously think I'm going to let you turn me into a murderer?"

"Do you even know the definition of murder?" Diana knew this was a stupid argument to be having but she couldn't figure out a way to stop it.

"Oh, so now the rich and educated are going to tell me what to think. What are your parents, clerks?"

"My mother is a mechanic, my father is a lathe operator, and I was apprenticing as a boilermaker when I was Reaped." It felt like an eternity ago. "They were illiterate."

"Exactly," John said smugly. "You big-city types have no idea what it's like."

"Are you a farmhand?"

"I am indeed. You ever work for seventeen hours a day? Ever live under the same roof as three methheads?" The latter skill might have actually been useful for a Victor. Meth use was fairly common even in smaller towns, where some people made the switch from alcohol, spent all their wages on drugs, switched to cheaper synthetics, and died from one thing or another. Victors didn't have to worry about running out of money.

When Diana was a child, she had thought that people who used 'bath salts' were somehow consuming actual bath salts. She had already been out of school when she found out the difference between the crystals in the package buried in the courtyard and the crystals from the pharmacy.

"Is this relevant to your survival in the Hunger Games?" Diana's patience ran out as she realized she had gotten distracted. This was not the time to be discussing meth or mephedrone or whatever else. "The one thing I can guarantee you is that you won't have to fight methheads." Now that would have been quite a draw for the audience.

"What, you think I need your help?" John leaned back in his chair. "I'm going to show them that they don't own me. I won't kill anyone. I'll show them that you can win without turning into you."

By all rights, John shouldn't have even been eligible - the sort of farmhands who worked seventeen-hour days during harvest tended to live and die without ever coming into contact with government bureaucracy, which meant they were never officially registered. And yet he was. Had his parents wanted to claim tesserae? Have him treated at a paramedic-midwife station? John's face was fairly heavily pockmarked, so perhaps he had been hospitalized for his smallpox? In Diana's old circle, people had mostly been able to afford at least the most important vaccines, so she didn't know much about smallpox.

"Either let me tell you what you need to do or get out."

John got up and stormed from the table. Diana turned to Portia, who looked about to cry. "Alright," she said. "Let's get this straight. I would peg your odds of survival as equivalent to those of a sixteen-year-old." Which were not very high.

"Really?" Portia sniffed.

"How many of your peers are, what, a metre sixty?"

"Metre sixty-two."

"Exactly. You're as tall as an average rich woman. Maybe a hair less, but just a hair." Statistics weren't kept by income, not exactly, but they were kept by municipality, which meant that Diana knew how tall people were in the best-off Capitol municipalities. "How much do you weigh?"

"About forty-five kilos? Forty-six?"

Diana did some math in her notebook. Portia was a bit underweight, but given how she looked overall, that was probably just because her body hadn't caught up to her height yet. Despite being well-fed, she wasn't a likely candidate for being sent out in the chariot naked. "How much schooling do you have?"

"None." Diana was unable to conceal her incredulity. "My grandmother didn't let me," Portia explained apologetically. "She always said I don't need to know how to read and write because I'll take over the farm one day and my cousins will be my hired hands."

And now, she wouldn't. "So you work on the farm?"

"Yes. But that's not going to save me, is it? The boys are going to all be bigger than me, and the Careers are so well-trained."

"What, you think I was bigger than the boys?" Diana quipped. "There's a reason why half the Victors are girls. They replay the fights endlessly, but there's so much more than that. It's all about survival. You need to charm sponsors, get your hands on a knife one way or another so that you can pick off the weak, and keep yourself going. Like I did. Like Maria Popescu did. The biggest Career boy will be easy pickings for you and your knife after the Gamemakers unleash a bear on the pack for having it too easy. And going by how you look, working on the farm has made you strong, so that's an advantage."

"So what do I do?" Portia demanded desperately.

"One - charm everyone. At your size, I would recommend quiet confidence, but not arrogance, it'll make you look like you're overcompensating. You will have three days for training. Day 1 - look around the survival stations, they hint at the Arena and what it will have. So if there's nothing for keeping warm, assume it will be hot, things like that. I'll help you out there, draw up a list of what to do. The first-aid station should be your biggest priority." In hindsight, completely neglecting survival could have been very costly, but that was in the past, so Diana tried not to dwell on it. "Day 2 - learn to fight with a knife. This is very important. You must drill until you can confidently dispatch an unarmed person. Day 3 - continue with the knife, but spend some time on things like climbing and jumping. There's no time to improve, it's just so that you know your limits." Portia looked absolutely terrified. "Don't worry, I will remind you when it comes to it."

"Thank you," she said quietly. "But can't I just learn to survive and then hide?"

"First - three days isn't enough to truly learn survival. You can pick up something like starting a fire or keeping warm, but you need to already be skilled in finding food in that climate to do it reliably. And odds are, the climate won't exactly be familiar, though it shouldn't be too harsh, either. And second - you won't be allowed by the Gamemakers. Too boring. Which is why Careers so seldom win - they pick off Tribute after Tribute easy as anything, the audience gets bored, send in the bears, a non-Career wins. Remember that all One, Two, and Four want from their Tributes is to die in the place of someone else. They are literally trained to go meekly to their deaths. They don't have the same desire to live as you do." Portia still looked terrified. "I'm not saying you have to personally slaughter half the field. Remember Anneliese Gupta? Kill two at the Cornucopia, and not only will you be left alone, but sponsors will be interested in you. Kill one, and you'll later be provided with an opportunity for an easy kill, though that's riskier."

"Oh." Portia looked more confident now. Diana didn't tell her that her chances were still extremely low. "But what if I run into the pack?"

Diana shook her head. "Plan for eventualities in which you will be able to make decisions. If you run into them, you'll be dead, so no need to plan further."

Portia gulped. "Alright."

Diana checked her watch. "Recap should be starting in a few minutes. You want to eat something else before then?"

"Alright." Portia took a steam bun and a wrap. Diana reached for a slice of chocolate cake, but then her phone chimed. It was Dad asking if she was alright. Diana sighed, replied that she was very much alright (after all, she'd be going home after this, unlike Portia), and put the phone away.

"Fancy," the girl said, nodding at the phone.

"It is." Diana wished there was something she could say to calm Portia, but what could you say to a dying person? "Look, Portia, your odds aren't particularly high, but dwelling on it won't help. Just see the situation around you and make decisions. Don't die before death. I was convinced I'd die, all of my actions were to delay that a bit. And somehow I delayed it to - well, whenever I will die. The Games are all about luck, but people make their own luck, too."

"I'll try."

At the Tribute Parade, John and Portia looked nice but neither of them looked threatening. Diana noticed that in the place where Bradford should have been was now a small woman - she looked like a rural aunt - in the same uniform jacket (but far smaller), which hung open, as the woman was pregnant. She idly ran her hands along her stomach. The combination of the NCIA uniform and pregnancy was enough to give Diana whiplash, the secret police was always presented as being made up of people whose only love was the state and who had no true attachments. But if Bradford had been incompetent, why couldn't his successor have a family?

That evening, Snow called Diana and told her that someone would be renting her for the day tomorrow. Diana listened to the instructions mutely, and once Snow hung up, threw her cup of water directly at the wall, where it shattered.

She regretted it instantly. She couldn't afford to be violent. She didn't want to be like those people who beat their kids when they were upset about something. Diana told herself to stop reacting like that, but all she could feel was a sulky irritation at having had her plans changed.

"Ready for the first day of training?" she asked her Tributes the next morning. Elly had departed to visit family, which meant that Diana was all alone.

"Yeah," Portia said. "I'll look around the survival stations."

"Exactly. Try to remember even the smallest details of what was offered so that I can narrow down the Arena climate. But keep this in mind - it is very important - the plants section will not have everything. When the Arena is heavily forested, it is very frequent for one or two poisonous plants to be present that are not introduced in training, and sometimes they require professional knowledge to distinguish from the edible. So do not assume that this will give you the ability to survive independently. Attracting sponsors must be your main priority."

"And who told you that?" John asked insolently.

"The other Victors."

"Why would they help you?"

"Because like it or not, our duty is to give our Tributes the best chance they have."

"Duty my ass. Death is better than your duty."

Diana had only ever heard such sentiments implied at in whispers. "You, who are about to die, is telling this to me, who is going home in two weeks."

John's face seemed to fall for a fraction of a second, and Diana regretted shattering his illusions, but then the mask was back on. "It's better this way," he said stubbornly. "I'd rather die than be like those two junkies. How did they even win? The man looks like one of those ex-cons with TB that come by the estate sometimes. Even the secret-prison types with their brands look less dead."

Diana wasn't going to let Blake and Maria be insulted by someone who obviously knew nothing about them. "The man is Blake Young, Victor of the Twenty-Fifth Hunger Games, former menace of half of Centre and the killer of a bandit in favour." If the farm where John worked was close to prisons, he had to be familiar with criminal culture. And indeed, his eyes widened with shock.

"He killed a bandit in favour?"

"In the Games. She was from Three."

"She was an authority already at eighteen?"

Diana shrugged. She had frequently seen people with prison tattoos back home, both voluntary and the ones done at some secret prisons (she had seen brands on the face, prison number on the arm, and, most horrifyingly, number across the forehead - had she ever had any treasonous thoughts, that would have cured her of them), but she really didn't know much about that stuff. "She led some youth gang. In her interview, she said that anyone who killed her would have to deal with her 'family'. But obviously it's the Games, the regular rules don't apply. So Blake killed her in the Arena, and it was this entire thing. Bandits in favour from all over congregated on Centre to figure out what they were going to do. This was still the twenties, so it was still like in the old days. A cortege just like McCollum's pulls up, and out steps a criminal authority in a lilac suit hanging open to reveal an advanced pregnancy." That was eerily reminiscent of Talvian, the new NCIA head. Maybe showing off their pregnancies was just something powerful women did.

"Gang leaders get pregnant?" Portia asked.

"I guess some do." From what Diana had heard, in the criminal world, men never recognized paternity and women avoided becoming pregnant. "This was Digger herself, anyone who even thought of harming her while she was vulnerable would have had their entire family killed. I have a friend whose parents moved to my city at that time because the gangs started dividing things and the Peacekeepers refused to go into their neighbourhood because people were always shooting. Anyway, they saw how it happened. It was every bit the legendary bandit - giant gold chains on her neck, a different gem on every finger. The only incongruous part was the thin gold chains over her stomach. They had little charms on them - stars, hearts, cribs, stuff like that. Anyway, so Digger arrives, and everyone's terrified she's going to have her Threes kill a Victor." It was hard to imagine just how different things had been not that long ago. By now, the bandits in favour were all integrated with government structures. "Then more authorities arrived, and they had this meeting with Blake, and in the end they decided he was blameless, especially since he didn't live by the accords, he was just a middle-class thug. But people say they really did fear there would be war."

"What happened to the baby?" Portia wanted to know.

"Probably given to a wet nurse and then adopted out. My friend says people joked the baby would be born with McCollum already on their chest." People nowadays got Snow and McCollum tattooed on their chest. Legend had it that Peacekeepers would never shoot at the Presidents - though, of course, they could just shoot you in the head.

"That's crazy," John said. "Things like this don't happen today."

"Alright then. You should go to training now."

Once they left, Diana got ready for her client. Some of the other Victors had said that they were expected to be witty and charming, pleasant company for an evening. Diana was usually expected to act like an airheaded ditz who could talk only of arrays and if-else loops and debugging when she wasn't being expected to keep her mouth shut and do as bid, which basically meant acting like she always did. This time was different - the client, a man of around thirty who worked with the NCIA, wanted to spend the day and evening with her.

He had left instructions. He wanted to take her around his neighbourhood as if she was a proper date (presumably he could not get one ordinarily and his buddies had chipped in to rent her to make him feel better), which meant going incognito. Diana put on a cheap tracksuit and even cheaper sunglasses before heading out a side door where photographers appeared only rarely and a taxi was waiting.

Much to Diana's surprise, the taxi took her to a working-class market. Was this man perhaps very cheap, and lived in this area despite presumably having the kind of coworkers who could chip in to rent her? Or did he have debts? Was he an addict?

"Are you her?" a voice asked. A man dressed like a worker pushed his bike, bag of bags hanging from the crook of his elbow.

"Peter J?"

"Yeah." He looked around nervously. "Come on, I've got shopping I need to do."

How odd. Did he want to pretend for a day that he was in a relationship? Helping someone shop was certainly better than doing role-play, so Diana nodded and took him by the arm. He chained his bike to a rack and they were off.

The market was, well, a market. A group of pensioners were on the verge of throwing around fists over sugar that had gone on sale, more pensioners and people with small children were digging in a garbage bin, a long queue of mostly men stood before a kiosk that had a piece of paper claiming 'Razor blades here!' tacked to it, people of all ages with cloth bags haggled and bought and chatted.

"Are razor blades in deficit?" Diana asked.

"Oh, yes, but I have a contact I get them from." Peter sighed. "Last time it was pads, before that was cookpots. Ugh."

And this was her client? "So what do you do for work, if it's not classified?"

Peter shrugged. "Paperwork. I've got an entry-level position - only reason why I got you is because everyone was making fun of me for having never dated and somehow my boss' boss found out and this happened?"

So an entry-level position with the National Committee of Internal Affairs meant buying the cheapest buckwheat. Diana wasn't surprised.

"I'm surprised I wasn't requested-" Diana pointed upwards, the unspoken gesture signifying top leadership.

Peter giggled. "Nah, you're not short enough for Talvian. Her husband's as pocket-sized as her. And she's faithful to him anyway. You want to hear a joke?"

"Sure."

"Rumour has it that the post will soon start selling stamps depicting Talvian life-sized."

Talvian wasn't even that small by Diana's standards, but she still laughed.

Once Peter got all his groceries, they got on his bike and he took them to his home, which was nothing like what the television showed. A grey high-rise stood surrounded by other high-rises, between them patches of grass, garden plots, and rickety playgrounds. So this was where entry-level NCIA employees were issued apartments.

"That one's mine," Peter said proudly, pointing to one of the patches which had a stake labelled '305-b-3-903'. 305-b Carville Avenue, section 3, apartment 903. "I grow potatoes mostly. Once we get the groceries put away, we'll do a bit of work there. There's so many cucumbers this year, I'll be pickling them."

Grandpa and Aunt Nelly were also planning on preserving what grew on their land, but only out of inertia, not so that they'd have something to eat.

"That's very nice." After the luxury in which her average client lived, this was at least an interesting change.

"Did you have land back home?"

Diana didn't have the heart to tell him about her current dwelling. "We grew some stuff on the balcony."

"So do I!" Peter said excitedly. "I'll show you."

Before that they had to climb to the ninth floor, as the elevator would be out of service for the next week (that week had begun three months ago). On top of that there was no water. At all.

"We'll have to run down to the pump," Peter said as he went around his tiny kitchen putting things away. "They said the full shutoff would be for 18 hours, so I filled up my bathtub and all of my pots expecting it to be three days or so, but it's been a week already. I've been washing at work this entire time."

At least Diana could speak the same language as Peter. "I get that," she said, and Peter smiled. "Where are your buckets?"

Hands stinging from hauling buckets up to the ninth floor, Diana stepped out onto the balcony - or rather, tried to, because there was no space. There was a large tarp covering up most of the maybe one and a half square metres, and the rest was pots of vegetables. Diana saw tomatoes, peppers, and zucchinis, as well as peas climbing the railings. Washlines were strung up above their heads, and under the tarp was a bicycle, several folded chairs, skis and poles, gardening tools, and empty jars.

"How about we grab a quick lunch before doing some yard work?" Peter asked. "Thank God it's the Games, I finally have time to really work on it."

Before, everyone had seen the Games as just that - an afternoon off, a day, a few days, depending on the job.

"Sure."

Lunch turned out to be macaroni 'with macaroni', as Aunt Raisa had it, livened up with only a bit of soy sauce. It felt strange to be chewing this after months of Aunt Sarah's countless new cheeses she impulse-bought at the store. Once the plates were washed, Diana helped Peter refill the tank in the toilet so that it would flush and they were walking downstairs, tools in hand. Her jogging didn't help her with stairs, so her legs were already exhausted.

"You want to hear another joke?" Peter asked.

"Sure."

"When Talvian wants to smell a flower, she gets a ladder."

Diana laughed obligingly.

"Just remembered another one. When Talvian was just starting at the NCIA, her first assignment was to infiltrate a highschool. But when Talvian claimed to be sixteen, nobody believed her and assumed she was actually twelve."

Diana laughed out loud. That happened to Leonella all the time.

"And we're here." Peter pushed open the heavy door and led her down a path. The patch of land turned out to be, well, a patch of land, like the ones she had seen before. Diana could make out the various vegetables growing. Potatoes, cucumbers, beets (though, of course, according to her biology textbooks, potatoes and beets were roots and a cucumber was a fruit). There was also dill, garlic, and horseradish, as well as a raspberry bush.

"Hey, how good are you at climbing trees?" Peter asked.

"Decent?"

"Can you get the cherries for me, then? The kids already got a bunch but you're taller than them. Just don't touch the really low-hanging ones, they're for the pensioners."

There were several fruit trees growing on land that didn't belong to anyone, and the cherries were ripe. Diana took a small bucket, hung it on the crook of her elbow, and reluctantly began to climb. The tree was easy, but Diana was terrified of slipping. She moved one way and the next, grabbing cherry after cherry, placing her feet with the utmost care. She filled the bucket, handed it over to Peter, and took another one.

"I'll have cherry jam this year!" Peter said, flapping his hands happily. "Thanks so much! I have a bad knee so I can't climb."

"You're welcome." As clients went, this barely deserved the name of trafficking, even the kind where people were kept enslaved at a farm to do the dirty work.

Peter paused and looked at her. "Wait, I can do anything with you, right?"

"Correct," Diana said nervously.

"Excellent." He leaned in closer, but not like someone leaning in for a kiss. "You'll never believe why Bradford got offed."

"Do tell."

"Someone tried to assassinate Snow."

For a second, Diana thought she had misheard. Assassinate Snow? That phrase made about as much sense to her as 'carbonated tree' or 'polonium potato'. "What?"

Peter giggled at her reaction and jumped up and down, flapping his hands. "I know! I couldn't believe it when I heard. But it's the truth. A clerk tried to blow him up with a bomb, but thankfully his car was bomb-proof."

"What the fuck?" Diana couldn't think of anything else to say. "What happened to them? Are they-" She made a chopping motion across her throat.

"Not until she gives them names."

Given that anyone would denounce anyone after half an hour in NCIA basements, the mysterious clerk still being alive meant Talvian sincerely believed there was an organization and that it did not consist of the clerk's coworkers/parents/adolescent children/whoever else she had incriminated by now. Diana had no idea how to interpret any of that. "Well, that's something."

"Just don't tell anyone!"

"Of course not," Diana lied.

After that, Diana helped him weed his vegetables and pick cucumbers. Sometimes she thought only a very evil person could hire her, but sometimes it was an absolutely normal person who thought nothing of having been given a human to do whatever to for a day and thought of her only as another pair of hands to pick cucumbers.

"Hey!" someone said next to Diana that evening. "I would like to sponsor Six."

Diana had gone to a function after finishing helping Peter with his chores. The naive man hadn't even touched her. "Thank you!" she said brightly. "Would you like to step aside to negotiate further?"

The man nodded, so they slipped away into a corridor that probably existed specifically for backroom deals. "Here you go." He gave her a cheque for a substantial sum of money. "This is more than I can give. But I have to." He sighed. "I'm Jewish."

"That's nice." Diana didn't know how to react. Joy at meeting another one, relief at knowing he wasn't trying to buy her, and the blanket of dull exhaustion smothering everything. And the awareness that some clerk of all people had tried to assassinate Snow. "Do you speak Hebrew?"

The man shook his head. "No. I don't do anything. I just heard people sing that song once when I was little, so I recognized it. My parents told me that a long time ago, our ancestors were being taken to be murdered, and they sang it. Hearing you reminded me of it. I couldn't bear to see someone go to their death singing that song again. So I gave everything I had."

"Thank you very much. Were you the person in the crowd?"

"Yeah." He chuckled. "It was a shock. Sometimes I feel like my family are the only Jews, because of how separated from everything we are."

"I am very glad for your support," Diana said, and went back to the function.

When Diana was told that George Chaterhan wanted to see her, she could only shrug. It was still training, and being in the presence of the country's richest family could only help her Tributes. So she took the taxi to the hospital where George was recovering from a stroke. The hospital was so exactly like on the television, it was surreal. No wonder rich people lived to ninety.

"There you are," a young woman said. "Let me ask if he wants to see you."

"Who are you?"

"Minnie Griffith. I'm Chaterhan's cousin twice removed."

Griffith, like the mayor of Ten? The elites really were one giant family.

Griffith stuck her head into a room for a few seconds. "He's awake." She leaned back and closed the door. "Come in."

Diana came in and had to stop herself from expressing her shock. George looked dead, half-sitting in bed under a blanket. His face was drawn and skeletal and his hands shook as he tried to move balls from one bowl to another.

"Who's that?" he snapped in a weak, scratchy voice.

"Grandpa, that is Diana Cohen, the Victor from Six," Antonius explained. Aside from him, seven other family members, including Alexandra Chaterhan herself, sat in comfortable chairs in the spacious room. Even dying was more comfortable for the rich. Her relatives had all died at home, looked after only by exhausted family members who lacked the qualifications to wash an adult who had no idea where or who they were.

"What did she win?"

"The Hunger Games."

George put the ball down. "What? I thought McCollum hasn't decided yet?" He looked around the room with a foggy gaze. Eventually, he settled on looking at Antonius. "Bob, have you signed the anti-Hunger Games petition? It's an outrage, how they're splitting the country. You'd think the Capitol wasn't Panem at all! Why did we fight to preserve the nation, huh?"

"Grandpa, I am Antonius. Toni. Your grandson." The young man's voice was thick.

George ignored him and looked around the room. He froze when he saw Chaterhan. "Sandy!" he said happily, sitting up. She leaned in closer, and his face suddenly fell. "Sandy…why are you so old?"

Antonius took out a handkerchief and tried to wipe away his tears. Chaterhan was crying, too, and the others sat frozen like statues. "My poor old man," she whispered, taking his hand in both of hers and kissing it. "Oh, my Georgy…"

"You can leave," Griffith whispered to Diana.

"But-"

"He doesn't know who you are. Look, I'll pass along the money he promised, and if he gets better, he'll invite you again."

Diana nodded and slipped out of the room.

George Chaterhan lived on for six more years, but he never invited her - or, according to rumour, recognized anyone except his wife.

A/N: Diana's mother did not like Nate's haircut because it was a stereotypically 'thuggish' one.

Ibuprofen does make you bleed less. No idea if it also helps with other types of bleeding, like chronic nosebleeds.

I, too, like The Merchant of Venice because I willingly misinterpret its message. I read the play as a tragicomedy, where Shylock is a tragic hero brought low by his fatal flaw of sinking to the level of his oppressors.

I am as well the only weirdo who arrives on time.

Mashed potatoes with lentils are delicious. Toss some red lentils and potatoes into an instant pot, season generously, once it's done, mash it all together.

'The Leaders on the chest' is a tattoo from Soviet gang culture. The Leaders there are, of course, Lenin and Stalin.

The joke about the life-size postage stamps is from a book about Austria in the 1920s and 30s - originally, it was made about Engelbert Dollfuss, who was dictator from 1932 to 1934, when he was assassinated by Nazis. Dollfuss, who was from a poor peasant family, was 1.52m tall (a hair less than 5ft), but still managed to fight in WW1 even though the minimum height was 1.54m (5'1). As someone not exactly blessed in the height department, it's kind of cool to read about someone so undersized wielding great power.

The person who tried to assassinate Snow with a bomb is inspired by Georg Elser, who tried to kill Hitler in 1939.