Olivine Martinez- Back to Normal D1F
Every time I saw Ava it blew me away. She had a life- a real life, outside of the Games. Days went by, and she was living. She made plans for the future. She met knew people and started projects and finished them. Her life went beyond training and thinking that maybe this time she'd win. She aged. Not much, with the Capitol's doctors hovering around looking for the slightest wrinkle, but... at least she changed. She moved differently than last time I'd seen her. She had different interests, though most of them were the same. She had a real, dynamic life.
The four of us were gathered in Ava's room, doing all those things teenaged girls liked to do. I wasn't sure, myself, since I'd spent all my teen years in the Academy. It was strange to me that the others thought I was the most formidable of us. I hadn't won, obviously, so clearly I had my weak points. And we'd all trained. Maybe I was a bit more fanatical, trying to earn some approval I now looked back at like a dimly-remembered dream, but we'd all trained. The others had just also found time to live. Marley was the most normal of us- the only one who had stories to share about old best friends who were by now married and middle-aged. Lottie was the partier of us. She didn't have one best friend, but she had a hundred okay friends. Ava's past was marked by her struggles, but she'd broken through them so well. She was a normal, well-adjusted woman now. And that left me all alone.
"Thaddeus Bole or Demetrius Jewel?" Marley asked. It was hard sometimes to find heartthrobs we all recognized, since we came from different decades, but it was mostly just Lottie. The rest of us were only a few years apart.
"Both," Lottie smirked. "There's plenty of me to go round."
"Thaddeus for. I do like blue eyes," Marley said.
"Guess I'll pick Demetrius then, to even it out," I said.
"I bet you just don't know which you want," Lottie teased. "Bet you've never even kissed."
"I have, too!"
"Your third-grade 'boyfriend'?" Lottie teased back.
"Him, yeah, but I did go to a dance once," I said. "It was during an academy break," I admitted when Lottie made a suspicious face.
"Oooooh, did you plan the whole wedding?" Marley asked. She crossed her legs and rolled over on the bed, knocking aside some cards we'd been playing with earlier. "I always wanted a super poofy dress."
"I never really thought about it. I always thought more about the part after."
Lottie shrieked and threw a pillow over her face.
"Not that part! The living together part. The whole life part," I said. "Like... after the Games. What would I do with my whole life? I always wondered about that."
"I always knew I didn't want kids," Lottie said. "Ew."
"I thought maybe I'd adopt. Or foster. I didn't want to be pregnant- ew- but maybe I could take care of some kid who needed me."
It was funny how serious everyone had gotten when I looked up. Even Lottie wasn't teasing anymore. I didn't usually talk about emotional things like this. It had always seemed harder for me than for the other girls. Something about the magic of a slumber party must have gotten it out of me. Maybe it was all the sugar.
"I think you would have been good at that," Ava said.
"What's it like, having a real life?" I asked. We all looked over at her expectantly.
"Not what I thought," she said. There was so much going on behind her eyes we couldn't know. Years and years of experiences and memories, while we were stuck in the same moment."Sad sometimes. Happy mostly. But it's a life. I'm thankful for that." her voice went soft. "I wish we all had one."
Marley Xander- Back to Normal D4F
It was all getting pretty heavy. Of course we were all happy for Ava, but could I really say I never wished it hadn't been me? If I could have flipped a switch and changed it so I won and Ava didn't, I wasn't sure I could say I wouldn't do it. I did want Ava to be happy, but friendship didn't go forever. I'd kill for Ava, but I wasn't sure I'd die for her. She probably wouldn't want me to. That wasn't how things worked for Careers. You lived on your own merits, or you died. We got stronger every year because the weakest of us didn't last. Giving your life to save someone only meant you thought they weren't strong enough to carry themselves. And when we made friends, it was within our own tier. The party girls were thick as thieves, but you'll notice we were all Careers. We weren't palling around with the outliers or the cute little underdogs. They had their friends. We had ours.
I really had always wanted a poofy dress. It would have been the sunniest shade of blush pink. I'd always thought white wedding dresses were so boring. Besides, they were supposed to stand for virginity. How gross is that, bragging that you were ignorant about an important part of life? Funny how the groom didn't wear a white suit. It would have had layers and layers of fabric, like I was a flower with dozens of petals. I wanted it so big I could barely fit through the door.
Most of my friends wouldn't probably have pegged me as the marrying type. I did plan to sow my wild oats first. I had a lot of partying to get out before I was ready to stay with only one person forever. There was something lovely about that, though- loving one person so much you didn't even want anyone else anymore. I wanted someone to think of me that way. Even weirder, I wanted kids. After all the fighting and killing, I wanted to know I could make a life, too.
I would have named my daughter Tempest. It was my great-grandmother's name. I only knew her for five years before she died, but I still remembered her. She used to read to me at night. Whenever I thought about my daughter, I thought about how I'd read to her. It would be a cycle, like the coming and going of the tide. It didn't look like my family's cycle would continue now.
"Do you all ever think about what life would be like if we hadn't volunteered?"
Ava looked up from where she was painting her nails. Olivine flinched a little and looked away, like I'd said something profane.
"I do sometimes," she admitted.
"I think I would have been a PE teacher. I'd have been good at that," Lottie said.
"I don't know what I would have done," Olivine said. "I just know I would have been different." She smiled crookedly. I felt a pit in my stomach when I saw she was trying not to cry.
"Here we go, getting all soppy," I said. The joke was strained by the crack in my voice.
" Lottie looked around at all of us.
"What happens at the sleepover stays at the sleepover."
Lottie Parker- Res D2F
To me, it didn't matter if I didn't have a normal life. I had my little pieces of life. I got to see so much more than most people ever dreamed of. As I walked through the Games building, I could see how much had changed since the last time I'd been here. Striped hair was out, I noticed, while flared skirts were in. The computers were more advanced these days- when I first came around, the displays were still two-dimensional. I supposed you could make a holograph of anything now. I wondered why Capitolites even bothered to leave their homes.
Someone might have made a joke about how my wanderings took me to the kitchen. I'd have punched them halfway across the room, since half of this bulk was muscle. The other half was fat, not that there was any shame in that. No, Lottie Parker came in one size, and that was extra-large. If you had a problem with that, I'd point out the door. But anyway, I ended up in the kitchen because I was curious, not hungry. I'd come to have a lot of respect for Capitol cookery. If I ever got out of the Games, maybe I'd make that my talent.
"Anyone home?" I asked as I poked my head through the door.
"Can we help you?" an assistant-looking cook with orange eyes asked.
"No, no, can I help you?" I asked.
"What, like trying things out?" the assistant asked. We both stepped to the side as a harried chef darted out the door with a loaded tray.
"No, like with cooking. I dabble a little myself," I said, laying a hand on my chef.
"Oh, really? What do you make at home?" the assistant asked. She looked around for an emptier corner where we could set up.
"So glad you asked..."
The Capitol turned out to be less than impressed by my carb-loading specialty: the penne sandwich. The assistant, who turned out to be named Leticia, pronounced it "yummy", but the head chef declared it "pedestrian". I didn't see the problem with pedestrians? They preferred people to drive everywhere?
"So, what's it like being a Capitolite?" I asked as we bonded more over the baby goats and sheep in the petting zoo.
"It's a lot to live up to. We're supposed to be the very best," Leticia said.
"Ew, "living up" sucks. Just do whatever makes you happy," I said.
"I like cooking, but I don't think I'm good enough at it," Leticia said.
"'Good enough' sucks, too. Do you have fun?" I asked.
"Yeah," Leticia admitted.
"Then there you go," I said. "If you ever do get famous, name something after me, huh?"
When night came, Leticia and I said our goodbyes and went off to probably never meet again. That was life for a career Tribute (who was also a Career Tribute). I lived my life one little slice at a time. If I won, I'd go on to my glamorous life. If I died again, I'd come back and meet an entirely new Capitol. New friends, new moments, new things to see and experience. I didn't get one life, like most people. I got a million little ones.