Diana threw herself into her last year of university with a passion, trying to distract herself from the painful loss with something like a normal life. Adam cautioned her that she should not split herself in two, which was a good thing to keep in mind, but that wasn't what Diana was trying to do. She simply wanted her life to not be defined by two weeks in June, exactly as he had told her. There were other things. Like university. And friends. And family. And Francine.
So when Diana left her last university exam knowing that she would never study for another midterm again, she knew it was time to embark on a new journey that would fill her evenings and not let her turn into Blake and Maria.
"Let's get married," she told Francine as they ate celebratory lunch alone in the kitchen. "Have kids. All that stuff."
"I've been thinking about that, too," Francine said, wrap suspended in midair halfway to her face.
"So let's do it?" It felt completely surreal to be saying these words. "Get married, have kids?"
"Let's." Francine chewed on her wrap. "So how do we want to do this? I know you want a religious ceremony, but I really don't think it's feasible."
Not feasible for multiple reasons. Some of the strict congregations, the ones where everyone really paid attention to those obscure rules like not mixing certain types of fibres or not entering same-sex relations, would not have been willing to hold their ceremony for that reason, but while Rabbi Miller followed the 613 mitzvot scrupulously, he would be willing to oversee the marriage of Diana and Francine. The bigger issue would be Francine's total lack of desire to convert. Diana had already had multiple arguments on the issue of how their future children would be raised with Francine, Rabbi Miller, and her parents, and Francine was very opposed to raising children in a religion. Diana had explained a thousand times that she wasn't going to tell them what to think, but Francine still didn't get it.
"I think it's feasible," Diana said.
That evening, they had a more serious discussion on what was and was not feasible. "Look, Diana, you can't just marry in a religious ceremony and then have your children be brought up outside religion. That's disrespectful."
"But why not?" Diana paced back and forth as Francine sat on the bed. They still had not told anyone about their plans. "I just want my children to be aware of where I come from."
"Diana, I told you a billion times that I will not tell our children what to think-"
"And I told you a billion times that's not the point! The community saved me!"
"So you feel like you have to have our kids be part of it, in case they ever need help?"
"Exactly. There's people in the congregation who don't believe, they're just there for the community."
"I don't see how you can encourage a child to attend prayer sessions and then say it's just for the community."
Diana sighed, trying to figure out a way to phrase it. "Look, Francine. Either way they'll see us celebrating strange holidays." On top of convincing everyone to at least half-heartedly keep the Sabbath Grandpa had also announced his desire to keep a kosher kitchen, which with their finances was trivially easy. "They'll be curious, they'll be more drawn to it the more secretive I am. There's no hiding it. If they see that synagogue is just a bunch of aunts and uncles saying things in a weird language-"
"Why weird?" Francine asked. "I have nothing against them learning Hebrew. Maybe not the most useful skill, but it's certainly more productive than many pastimes."
"Alright, so aunts and uncles saying weird things in a language they half-understand. How about this? I go for services, the kids ask eventually, I take them, they are very bored and don't want to show up again." It hurt Diana to imagine her children not having any interest in the community, even for such a reason. She had refused to compromise ever since the idea of children had been floated, but now that they were actually going to go ahead with it, Adam's words forced Diana to concede that point. Yes, this was important for her, but it was also important for Francine - and given how Diana constantly pestered her girlfriend into doing what she wanted, she needed to be the one to take a step back here. "If you want, I can say that it's boring family things when they ask, I doubt they'll ask again after that."
"I'd be alright with that," Francine said. "More than alright. And if they show interest in religion when they're teenagers, I don't mind that, it's only when they're very little that I'm wary of telling them how to think." Their plan was to adopt a child between the ages of three and five once they got married, and two more later on.
"Either way we'll be telling them what to think - about society, themselves, so on."
"Yes, but in religion, where there really isn't an absolute truth easily available, I want them to make their own decisions."
As if there was an absolute truth out there about the country - or rather, as if Francine would be comfortable telling their kids. Francine was a fairly passive person overall, she had always half-heartedly cheered out of pure laziness, so now that Diana had told her about the sinister side of the regime, she had drifted into a vague disapproval walled off by an indomitable 'But how else could it be?'
'Literally any other way' was Diana's reply, but Francine didn't see the point in actually hoping for it. Neither did Diana. Israel was Israel, and Panem was Panem. Maybe it was true that there were countries where people ate fruit every day. But in Diana's mind, it was perfectly natural that the rich ate meat and fruit every day, the decently-off ate rice and bread, and the poor ate corn and potatoes, and the mental image of a farmer eating fresh pears in January refused to form.
The family's reaction was predictable - cries of hurrah, hats being thrown in the air, Aunt Nelly rushing out to buy lace weight yarn for the wedding canopy, etc. Just as predictable was the ensuing interrogation. When did they want to get married, and where, and how many guests, and this, and that. Diana's list of demands was short. She wanted the civil ceremony, where the papers would be signed, to take five seconds and be witnessed only by the parents, for the religious ceremony to start and end on time, and to have the feast afterwards proceed without them because she'd be mentally wrung out by that point.
"But nobody will be there on time!" Mom said.
"I don't care. I don't want to have my marriage delayed because the guests couldn't be bothered to arrive on time."
"Diana, that's not how it works."
There had always been clashes with her family over that. Diana hated lateness in others and did not tolerate it in herself. If you were told the party starts at two, then arrive at two. If you promised to have the party start at two, have everything be ready instead of just starting to clean the apartment.
Diana was still irritated at how she had once shown up to a party before the host despite being only ten minutes early.
But to the others, it was different. Somehow, they could hear 'the party starts at two' and know that it would actually start closer to five, as was custom with upper-crust weddings all over the country.
Now hold on one second.
"Wait, wait," Diana said. "We need to keep in mind the possibility that we might have to get married in the Capitol."
Dad sat up a little bit straighter. "Will we still be able to attend?"
"We'll still have the religious ceremony here, it'll just be the signing. If it happens, which is doubtful, I'm just saying it now so that if it does happen you aren't completely shocked." Thanks to the four-year streak of Careers, Diana had been successfully forgotten by everyone who mattered. During the Victory Tour, Snow had called personally to tell her to keep a low profile and consign herself to irrelevance. That would be very difficult with her being the only Victor from Six to mentor, and thus the only one who could make appearances when the Tributes did well for a while, but she saw the greater point. Even if she appeared from time to time, she would not be in anyone's field of view, not be hired by client after client because all that had been interesting about her was her youth and fresh-facedness, and there were younger and more fresh-faced out there now.
"Well, I hope it doesn't, I want to witness it," Mom said. "So when do you want it to happen?"
"Shortly after the Games, to minimize the attention on us." Unless Six won, but that wasn't happening, Diana had to admit.
"Oh, that's still some time away, then," Grandpa said.
"Are you two sure you don't want to have an engagement party, or anything?" Raisa offered.
"No, no, it's alright." By now, Diana preferred to stay in and found going out to be too tiring. Especially since she didn't need to find partners anymore. Why waste money on taxi fare when you could drink beer in bed and cuddle and play on the computer?
"Alright. And congratulations again!"
This year, the warmth of May and the heat of June brought not the thoughts of 'huh, another Games soon' - or rather, not only them. Diana also had her wedding to look forward to, which she still could not wrap her head around. Was she seriously getting married? Planning on having children? Wasn't she too young, too incompetent? And what did Francine even see in her? Diana was annoying, whiny, and prone to falling into despair. In mid-June, she happened to see a recap of her own Games, and seeing herself kill the boy from Five - or rather, seeing him scream - had made her suddenly recall it with frightful clarity.
The memories of killing had always been fuzzy and noiseless, emotion stripped away and only the vague knowledge of a knife sinking into flesh remaining. But as Diana watched the segment, she could suddenly hear the boy screaming desperately even though the footage, too, had its sounds muted, the boy's mouth open but no sounds audible. She could hear him screaming. He had begged for mercy, cursed her, sobbed in agony. She could feel his blood on her hands, warm and sticky. It had taken several stabs to get him to fall down, and he had screamed the entire time. How had she not noticed that?
And the girl from Twelve. She had gasped in shock, hands flying to the wound in her neck. The girl from Two had screamed when the knife had entered her back. The girl from Seven had begged her for mercy. Diana could hear the screams. Had she really not heard them then?
Adam's explanation was simple - she had noticed it, but her brain had later blocked it out. Diana wished she could block it out again, but that wasn't an option anymore. She spent over a week doing nothing, wandering from room to room to stare off into space like when she had just won the Games, her family and Francine dragging her to mealtimes and outside. Diana was glad on some level for the Games, because it gave her something she had to focus on. And this year, things would be different. Mentors would all sit in the same room - and Snow had decreed that more of them needed to show up.
As soon as Blake found out, he overdosed, and it was a miracle Raisa found him in time. He mostly recovered, but something was permanently gone from his mind. When before, he had been a fairly alert person even while high, now, he either couldn't or didn't want to voice complex thoughts. Maria got him into painting, and now he spent most of his time standing or sitting at an easel and drawing abstract designs that Diana didn't see much of anything in and that Aunt Nelly claimed spoke of loss.
"I'm sorry you have to put up with this," Diana said at the family dinner the evening before Reaping Day.
"Why?" Janet asked. Diana's cousin-in-law was pregnant again, so the four-year-old Yeon-Joo would soon have a sibling. Akash and Mina also had families of their own, but they had moved out. Soon enough only Leonella would be on her own. "It's hardly anything that needs putting up with."
"I'm glad you think so about having journalists coming to the house."
"Compared to what you go through, it's nothing."
"Compared to what the Tributes are going to go through-" Diana half-heartedly poked at her food. "I can't complain."
"You went through it yourself," Dad said softly.
"Yes, but I survived, so it doesn't count. Anyway, are you going to the Reaping tomorrow?"
Six's Tributes this year were both eighteen and both farmhands. Neither Daniel Oldman nor Sylvia Mendez had a sliver of a chance, which Blake and Maria made very clear by not even bothering to look at them.
"Don't worry." Lying to Tributes was as easy as breathing. "They did the same thing to me."
"Yeah, whatever," Sylvia said, more focused on the food. Some of the Tributes absolutely pounced on it, others ate moderately, still others couldn't stomach a bit. Only the ones in the middle category had ever done even halfway well. If they had no control over themselves now, they would not have it in the Arena.
These two pounced. The shock of being Reaped had rattled them, and their acute hunger from not having had anything to eat since yesterday combined with their chronic undernourishment to make them incapable of rational thought around an abundance of food. Most likely they would have always leapt at any food lying around, but the messy way they ate now betrayed a mental state altered by stress.
Once they were done, they were too full to focus on anything Diana said, so she said nothing, instead solving a programming problem on her fancy new smartphone the likes of which had been available to the rich in the rest of the world for a decade. They watched the recap, where nothing out of the ordinary happened, save perhaps for the fact that two twelve-year-olds were Reaped.
Finally, Sylvia and Daniel looked ready to listen, so she began her usual routine. "What sort of combat or survival skills do you have?"
They shrugged. "I can pick mushrooms?" Sylvia offered.
"Potentially useful, but be even more careful than you normally are. If there's a suspicious abundance of mushrooms, don't even try. Fifteen years or so back, they had what looked like edible mushrooms everywhere. All poisonous. The Victor needed a liver transplant." Sylvia gulped but nodded. "And you, Daniel?"
"No woods in our parts."
"No big deal. Plants are a tricky thing. A while back there were nightlock bushes - it's a type of poisonous wild berry- mixed with the blueberries, and two died. Well, that's never in training, at least some poisonous plants will be missing. You need to not just recognize the edible ones, but remember every little bit about them, the bark texture and the appearance of the leaf and whatever. Which is why even in a lush Arena, supplies are important. Do you know your height and weight?"
They shook their heads no. Sylvia was a metre fifty or maybe a bit less, and Daniel was a metre sixty or so, and they were both quite skinny.
"Well, I can tell you're fairly small compared to an average urbanite, and especially compared to the Careers. Which is why you will need to operate by stealth. An extremely important thing - do not, under any circumstances, show off survival skills during your individual evaluations, that will cause the Gamemakers to not leave any supplies close to you, as it is interesting for them to see people figuring it out on their own." Diana had figured that out a few years ago. "Show off combat skills instead, and they will leave weapons. But do pay very close attention to the survival stations, because that will hint at what the Arena will look like."
"Do you really think we can survive?" Daniel demanded.
Of course not.
"Of course. I did it, after all. So did Young and Popescu."
"But how did you do it?" Sylvia asked.
Right, they had no televisions. "Young was chosen in the Twenty-Fifth and he was simply the toughest of the lot."
"Oh, right, that one," Sylvia said. "Old people say they didn't even ask them on the latifundia. Some rich people in Centre voted in some bandits from Centre and that was that."
"Well, yes. Popescu won by grabbing some supplies and a knife, winning all the fights she got into, and only colliding with the Careers when they were much weakened. And I did something similar, but the Games were cut short by the Gamemakers igniting the forest and me being the fastest to run away from the inferno."
"Oh."
"Look. Yes, it is all luck - luck to have an Arena where you stand a chance, luck to not be cut down by the Careers on the third day, luck to win all of your fights. But people make their own luck, too. The more you pay attention to the survival stations, the more confidently I'll be able to tell you what the Arena will be like and give you advice. The more you train with the knife, the higher the odds of getting out of a fight, even a knife-on-knife fight, without damage. The more you listen to my advice, the higher the odds of evading the Careers."
Last year's two had listened to her advice, though it hadn't done them any good. This year, Daniel looked focused, but Sylvia looked confused. If she did not regain control soon, she would never regain it at all.
It was certainly interesting to see more of the Victors, but that was a charitable description. One had to bring in the blind Jose Pilar who was currently mourning his husband. From Two, the sixty-six-year-old Jasper Coni was dragged in out of comfortable retirement - at least they hadn't forced Malachi Hope to come, too. Beetee was only able to force two of his fellow Victors to come in - Wiress Ling, who was afraid of crowds and had a speech disorder due to falling down and hitting her head while drunk, and Lucretia Evans, who was sixty-five and kept on telling everyone she just wanted to go home to her family.
From Four, Diana got to truly meet Mags Flanagan, the fifth-oldest living Victor, and Emmanuel Marin, the fourth-oldest and more outspoken about his parents having come from Romania than Diana felt safe. It was all 'Moldova is actually Romania' and 'the Hungarians are trying to steal our culture' with him when he wasn't singing nationalist songs or insulting Jews, Muslims, and Romani, which was a really weird thing for someone who had never even lived in Romania to do. Five brought in all three of its Victors - Annaliese Gupta came as always in the company of the middle-aged Richard Smith, who was known to be an alcoholic but looked fairly decent for someone with that affliction, and Margaret Smith, who had won two years after Annaliese but looked twenty years older because of her addiction.
Diana knew what the other Victors thought about her. Out of the sole mentors, she was the youngest and the most willing to play by the book and do everything for her Tributes, which meant they pitied her. Now, seeing the state Blake and Maria were in, they pitied her even more. Diana told everyone a thousand times it was Grandpa, Aunt Nelly, and Raisa who really busied themselves with the two, but they still felt bad for her. Blake and Maria were thought of highly enough to at least share information with, but any time anyone wanted to ask Six something, they went to Diana even if Blake and Maria, who were quite a bit older, were standing literally next to her.
From Seven, it was Blight as usual, but now with Martin Chen, who lived with family in much the same way as Diana and thus was extremely unhappy about being torn away from that and reminded of the Games. Diana wondered when someone else would finally win from Six and she'd get to stop doing everything herself.
From Eight, Woof Kuznetsov was now in the company of two younger counterparts - Eve Chapman was over fifty and Rajesh Kelly was approaching it. Eight had had three Victors in the thirties, quite the streak. Nine was represented by all five of its living Victors, not just the youngest Alexander Red. Ten had three - Giselle Hopkins and Kevin Dobrev, but also the seventy-eight-year-old Jorge Vargas, the third-oldest living Victor who was constantly on the verge of tears and wanted to go home to his wife and grandchildren, of which he had a small army. From Eleven, Seeder James and John Brown had dragged in Chaff Kielce, the surly alcoholic, and Cassidy Petersen, who was nearly eighty and very obviously in the last stages of dying from her addiction. And from Twelve, Haymitch came on his own like always.
Diana wasn't sure what she felt more strongly - relief that she wasn't alone like the mentor from Twelve, irritation that when it came to it, she was just as alone like him, or envy at the Victors who even with this command from Snow had not needed to come because there were plenty of others to pick up the slack. Yes, those who had stayed behind were generally in such a psychological state that even Snow agreed it was best they didn't come, but Diana was still annoyed. But on the other hand, it was nice to talk face-to-face with people she had spent a few years now talking to only on the phone.
Rudolf Wang managed to corner Diana as she was walking back from the bathroom. "Hey," he said, trying to appear casual. "Um, you know I write songs, right?"
Barely. "Yes." Rudolf was one of those Victors forgotten after five years.
"Well, I wrote this one, and I think that given your connections you might like it?" Despite being more than fifteen years older than her, he seemed desperate for her approval. Diana took the proffered piece of paper and read.
The artist Spring, after a long disease, takes the stage again,
Fluttering lightly to the eaves of the buildings now thawing and damp,
Reads a ballet of a nightmarish love and a beautiful treason,
Dances a poem of insidious heroes and faithful destroyers.
The applause of the streets has painted the city a verdant green,
This prayer has cascaded an avalanche of warmth from the skies,
The never-ending encore of the squares has flowered the galleries of the lovers,
In the much-mended jackets of facades the houses have crammed into the back rows.
Artist Spring, artist Spring
Let us keep living, let us keep singing
Until spring.
The sun-president fiddles with glasses in the emperor's balcony
Mutters darkly about upset nerves, not helped by the heat
Raises by the chins the smiles of the passerby
And, waving, announces the opening of the sixty-sixth theatre season.
Artist Spring, artist Spring
Let us keep living, let us keep singing
Until spring.
Wow. This was simultaneously so blatant that every cell in Diana's body wanted to rip the paper to pieces and flush it down the toilet and so subtle that it took her a while to figure out what Rudolf was getting at. The first stanza especially made perfect sense after reading the third. Of course spring was the perfect allegory when the tyrant was literally named Snow. Diana was especially drawn in by the lines about heroic treason and faithful destroyers. In this kind of regime, everything was topsy-turvy.
"I like this song. It's a fun song about spring."
"Oh." Rudolf looked sad. Diana knew that ever since he had met his best friend, he had been seriously working on kicking his opioid addiction. Now if only Diana could force Blake and Maria to meet someone who would motivate them to do the same thing. "Do you, er, get it?"
"What else is there to get? It's not a cipher, it's a song."
Rudolf shrugged and took the paper from her.
While some of the others had a lot of the pressure taken off them by working as a larger team, Blake and Maria were hardly in any shape to talk to sponsors and appear on television. Maria did make a few appearances, but Blake either wouldn't or couldn't do anything. Diana's biggest worry was him overdosing again, and this time, dying. She told her family to hire someone to look after them, but that would only be a partial solution.
They had already lived for a very long time, by addict standards. They had a home they couldn't get kicked out of, funds that were basically unlimited by the standards of their purchases and thus could always order take-out, which meant they had been half-decently nourished before Diana got there, and bought expensive drugs from reliable dealers, so it was very unlikely they'd get a batch adulterated with fentanyl and OD from that. They could afford to get healthcare, which they did when they had acute problems, and were not at risk of violence. But even with all of that, Blake had been on heroin for more than forty years. Even given that his addiction had started mild and ramped up when he had Maria and then Diana to push all of his duties on, that was still a very long time, and a lot of luck that he had not overdosed before.
Diana simply didn't understand why Blake refused to seek help. Obviously this wasn't the sort of thing you could understand from the outside, but it still seemed to Diana that if she had felt she was becoming reliant on prescription painkillers, she would have told Adam. Though who knew. Maybe she'd have slipped into addiction without noticing, cut everyone off, and lived like that.
Either way, Diana was alone. Well, there was also Venus, but she had never made any claims about actually caring about her job and constantly muttered about wanting a promotion. Diana did have Elly to set up her calendar and manage her appointments and Venus did teach the Tributes how to act during the interview, but beyond that, Diana may as well have been on her own. The only person she could really talk to was Francine.
"Are you doing alright?" her fianceé asked.
Whether or not the phones were tapped was a mystery for the ages. Was the NCIA capable of it? Without a doubt. Had the resources for spying on Diana all been spent on Talvian's new car? Very likely. Still, given how Snow micromanaged the Victors in every aspect of their lives, it was likely that spying on their calls had top priority.
"As alright as I could be given the circumstances. So much to do, so little time." Diana was so experienced at this by now, she played this combination of lies and half-truths and truths instinctively, making decisions on the fly and not being able to say later why she had said this but not that. Francine did it as if she had been born to it and had not required any practice, because she was normal.
"Well, I hope it all goes smoothly."
"So do I. How's Sooty?"
"She'll have a degree in computer science any time now." Grandpa, Aunt Nelly, and Raisa had gotten into programming lately to keep their minds sharp. It was rather odd how they could struggle with things Diana found elementary - of course they had grown up not needing to think in these ways, but it was still surprising that basics could elude them - but the way they problem-solved and found crazy solutions once they had the basic building blocks down was nothing short of stunning. And Sooty, of course, spent her time napping on top of the computers.
"Good for her."
"Oh, and by the way, crazy thing. You know the stray cat we've seen a couple of times by the house? Well, he's come around again, and your father let him into the house, so now it looks like he's ours. So when you get back, Sooty will have Orange to hang out with."
"Good thing Sooty's like me, otherwise we'd also soon have had five kittens to hang out with."
Francine laughed. Diana was glad she had gotten her tubes tied, because the thought of pregnancy and the vulnerability it entailed still made her feel ill. "That's true. We're going to get him fixed and all that, but it'll take some time."
The newly named Orange was a small, lithe creature, painfully skinny and with the most heart-rending little 'mew' any of them had ever heard (especially Aunt Raisa, who had spent the past few months leaving food out for him - no wonder he had decided to stay!) "Well, that's great. I look forward to seeing Orange when I get back."
"Do you know when you'll be back this year?"
"As soon as Six is out."
It probably said a lot about Diana that at this point, she looked forward to the deaths of her Tributes, because it meant going home.
"Hey, Diana?" Emmanuel asked her as she got some fresh air on the roof.
"Yes?" Diana said warily. The older man disliked her because of the crucifixion of Christ, which made even less sense than most of her life.
"You're in contact with abroad, aren't you? Your sort seems the type."
Diana didn't have the energy to argue with someone who was older than Grandpa. "I am."
Emmanuel sagged slightly, one arm on the concrete wall that was about chest-high for both of them. "Can you help me? I hear people talk about writing to relatives who left, but I have no idea how to do it. Everyone acts like it's obvious and I'm the only idiot who doesn't get it."
Diana could relate to that. She gave him some of her contacts.
"Thank you." He looked out at the city for a few seconds. "My parents told me so much about Romania, I sometimes feel like I'm from Oradea myself, even though I was born in Panem. I feel like I know the culture, the customs, and the jokes - but if I ever did go there, would I be nothing more than a time capsule speaking in an accent not heard for fifty years? Would I be like a time traveller who jumped a century forward? Or just a clueless foreigner?"
Diana felt like that too, sometimes. If she ended up in Israel somehow, would she even know what to do there? "Your idea of Romania might be completely wrong."
"It might." Emmanuel cleaned his glasses. "It might. But I have nothing else of it. Only what my parents told me."
"Do you speak the language?"
"With my family. My siblings are all gone by now, but I have a granddaughter who only speaks Romanian at home. I can't imagine why. Who does she think she's going to talk to in it, once I'm gone?"
"Romanians?"
Emmanuel raised his hand as if to gesture, looked at it, and dropped it. "I can't imagine leaving. But it's different for the young. Maybe she could leave. See our home for herself. 165 Mihai Eminescu Street, apartment 47 - unless the building's gone by now. Cheresig, where my parents were born. Unless those damn Hungarians invaded again."
A lot could happen in eighty years. "That'd be nice."
"It would be." Emmanuel cleaned his glasses again and looked down to where people hurried along, unaware that there had once been two engineers named Mihai Marin and Alina Mitu who hadn't realized that Panem could not be trusted with its promises.
Diana kept half an eye on the proceedings, taking note of anything that could help her Tributes, but they were completely unobservant and couldn't tell her much about training. The most Diana could estimate was that supplies would probably be lacking. The main intrigue was the taciturnity of the girl from Ten who had joined the Career pack. While the girl was definitely a prime candidate for that with her grappling experience that netted her a ten, her silence had a simple explanation - despite her English name, she was a monolingual Spanish speaker from a very remote village registered when she needed treatment at the paramedic-midwife station. That happened all the time, but the odds had not been in this girl's favour. She was stuck being mentored by One because they had the only fluent Spanish-speakers in their delegation.
Agate was a genius, though. She effortlessly transformed 'lost and confused' into 'mysterious and dangerous'. In the lush Arena equipped only with giant spiked maces (at least this year, food was cheap), the girl proved herself to be a worthy part of the pack, though Diana was home after the second day and watched Shelley Weldrick beat the boy from Two dead with a metal water bottle (the maces were too heavy for all but the Career boys, someone was getting fired for that) from her couch, like the rest of Panem. She had her own life to plan now.
The wedding went off without a hitch. Documents were signed, the ceremony started promptly (most of the guests were late regardless), and Diana and Francine were now Mrs. and Mrs. Cohen. As Diana put on her kerchief the next day, she couldn't believe she had gotten so lucky. She shouldn't have been alive, and yet, here she was, twenty-three years old, a married woman, tucking stray strands of hair under a bright-orange kerchief. Perhaps this was the work of a capricious power somewhere out there, taking away with one hand and giving with the other. Diana tried not to dwell on it. She had what she had, no need to drive herself into an anxiety attack over contemplating how she could have easily not been here at all. Just keep moving forward from here.
A/N: It's me, I'm the one who showed up to a party before the host. In my defense, I was only ten minutes early.
Wang's song is based on the DDT song 'Актриса весна' (Actress Spring). This is the third DDT song I'm parodying in my fics - I am indeed a fan. DDT (ДДТ) is a Russian, formerly Soviet, rock band founded in 1980, making it only a few years younger than my parents, which is weird to think about.