There is discussion of ideation in Declan's POV

Declan Malone- The Poseidon Adventure D9M

Somehow, life went on. I woke up in the morning and the world was still going, whether or not I wanted it to. So I went about my day, moving about without any real enthusiasm or purpose. I could tell Nassor had his eye on me. It wasn't long before he pulled me aside.

"How you doing?" he asked, his tone level but his eyes fixated on me.

"Just doing," I shrugged.

"Having a hard time?" Nassor pressed. I was right by the door- he'd caught me while I was heading out to pretend I was training- but I didn't have the energy to move past him.

"It's fine," I said.

"You gonna hurt yourself?"

I looked up into Nassor's eyes, startled.

"Sorry, I know it's awkward," Nassor said, though from his demeanor I could tell he'd done it before. "They say it's best to just be open about it."

"I don't want to die," I said, relieved to feel that I meant it. "I just don't care if I'm alive," I admitted.

"That's pretty normal," Nassor said, almost casually. "It's bad and all, but it's pretty normal. On the horrible bright side, you're not alone."

"It's not your fault," Nassor continued, when I couldn't find anything to say. "It's not fair it was so early, but everyone loses their father eventually."

"He knows that now," I said. I took a shaky breath before I went on. "I was supposed to be the one who stayed."

"You can still be the one who came back," Nassor said, laying a hand on my arm.

"It's not the same," I said.

"It's the best you have," Nassor said. "What more can someone ask of a father?"

"Not to die." I pulled back away from him.

"Well, that ship sailed, didn't it?" I looked up at Nassor's bluntness. "You can't be perfect. That's just that. You want to save your son from everything, but you just can't. That isn't any parent's duty. Your duty is to make your son's life as good as you can, and that's never over. It's never too late to start trying again."

I hadn't felt so little in years. Of course I was going to think of it. No matter how old I got, if I found out one day that my dad somehow wasn't dead and we could be together again, it would never not be my dream. I hadn't stopped missing him, and I hadn't stopped trying to measure up to him. Micah had gone out without me, but I could still catch up to him. He had to have known this was possible. He must have dreamed about it just like I had. But unlike my father, I had a chance to make my son's dream come true.

Hosanna Rayle- Child's Play D9F

In my first private session, I killed someone in their sleep. Not really, of course, but I pretended to. The more I thought about it, the more it meant to me. My first inclination had been to attack, and to attack sneakily. I hadn't thought about honor or preserving my morals. More accurately, I had thought about those things, and I'd abandoned them. What really got to me, though, was that I'd been right. People won the Games by surviving. There wasn't room for anything else. If you clung to morality, the only outcome was death.

It wasn't a conclusion I'd come to by training. When I practiced, it was easy to pretend I wasn't really going to do to a person what I did to a dummy. Really I knew I intended to, but human brains were so good at thinking two things at once. I consoled myself by saying when the time came, surely I wouldn't kill someone in cold blood, while at the same time knowing the reason I practiced over and over was to drill into myself the nerve to do just that. No, I saw reality when I watched the tapes.

Figures flickered on the wall in front of me as I lay half-reclined on a couch that cost more than my house. I'd gone all the way back, all the way to the first Games. It was haunting, seeing where it all began. The Tributes looked so young, though most of them would have been dead by now even if they hadn't been reaped. Whole families of them must have been gone by now. For the outliers, at least, I was probably seeing the only surviving footage of them, and half of them were gone before the Games began. The symbolism of it wasn't lost on me. The Games didn't begin with the tributes turning on each other. The first twelve children to die in the Games were gunned down by Peacekeepers.

It took an hour for them to start killing. For one of them to start killing. I'd barely spoken to Orchard. I wouldn't even have recognized her from the girl I saw on the screen. I should ask her someday how it felt when she made the choice. She seemed happy when I saw her. It must have been worth it to her. But how was it to make that choice, to be the first person in the Games who decided to kill? If everyone had just refused, surely the Capitol would have had to do something else. They'd still kill us, but we wouldn't have been divided against each other. It wasn't Orchard's fault, not one bit, but it must have taken something from her to do it. It must have been the same thing it took from me.

Jacquard Crock- No Way Down D8M

I didn't hold out much hope for Makara's plan. I'd tried getting in shape dozens of times. Every time I tapered off after I saw just how long it took, and how slowly progress came. I didn't mean to give up. It was just so discouraging. When I first started to doubt, I'd tell myself it was just part of the process, that I'd get through the bottleneck eventually and start seeing results. But that was the thing. It wasn't that the results came slowly. It was that for so long, there was no change at all. I'd do the same tiny exercise routine I'd set up for myself, and it wouldn't even get any easier. I'd drag myself through the steps and spend the rest of the day miserable because I knew I'd just have to do it again tomorrow.

"So where are you at when it comes to working out?" Makara asked as we stood at the start of the track.

"Level zero," I said. Thinking of what she probably thought of as "easy", I added, "Whatever you think I can do, it's lower than that."

"Oh, good. Then you don't have bad habits," Makara said, and smiled. She stood on the starting line of the track and looked over its length. "Think you can run around it once?" she asked.

I gauged how long the track was and how flabby I was. "Really slowly," I said.

"That's okay. It's good to start slow, so you don't hurt yourself," Makara said.

"That's it? Just one lap?" I asked, looking suspiciously at the weights and equipment Makara had brought to put along the track.

"I got some good news for you. When I first started training, my trainer had no idea how strong she was. She used to always say we'd go on an "easy" run, and then we'd run for like three miles and I'd die every time. I almost quit, I sucked so bad. The good thing is, I learned that you gotta meet people where they are. If you say you're at level zero, we're going to start at level zero, and by your definition."

"Just one lap," I said, edging closer to the starting line.

"As slow as you need," Makara repeated. "There is no too slow. If you get to the end, you did it."

I can do that. I started out at a slow jog, slower than I thought I would need in order to finish. I expected to slow down before the halfway mark, but I found that at such a snail-like pace I had no trouble until almost at the end, and by then I was so excited to finish that I threw in a tiny sprint.

"That's right," Makara cheered as I shuffled over the finish line. "You're on the board. The hardest lap is always the first. It's all downhill from here." And as long as we kept up this pace, I thought she was right.

Jason Lenn- Into Thin Air D2M

I took a leisurely breakfast before training, lingering at the table with Valerie. It was almost a show at this point. All the Careers knew what they needed to know to win. We were all just waiting for our Games- the one where things lined up for us. At our level, it was so often a tiny bit of luck that set the Victor apart from the others.

"What are you going to practice today?" I asked Valerie.

She prodded her grapefruit halfheartedly with a spoon, welling its juices up. "Maybe some boring stuff like shelter-making. I dunno," she said.

"You wanna play hooky?" I asked.

"I could be convinced," she replied.

'I just think, the Games are coming soon and we'll have to be serious all the time. We have a few days here, so let's enjoy them. Just hanging out," I said.
Valerie looked back at me with a mournful smile. "It's true, isn't it?" She didn't say the things I'd left out. We only had a few days where we were guaranteed the other was alive. In the arena, either of us could be gone in a flash. Before we even saw the other, they could be gone. Or there were worse things. We wouldn't be the first if we turned on each other. I'd even seen twins go into the Games. Some things were stronger than love. If this was all we had, I wanted it to matter.

"There's a petting zoo," Valerie said timidly, watching for my reaction.

"I was too scared to go since I thought I'd feel dumb," I said, smiling. If there was another person feeling dumb with me, it wasn't dumb at all.

"I don't like it."

"It's not gonna spit," I reassured Valerie as she stood pressed against the fence, her arms bunched into fists at her chest. She was looking at a very soft-looking but somewhat off-putting llama. We'd heard of llamas, but neither of us had seen one. Tell the truth, I'd never seen anything more exotic than a raccoon.

"They spit, though," Valerie said.

"They wouldn't pick this one if it was spitty," I said. "They probably took the spit out."

"It might bite me," Valerie said. The llama regarded her placidly. It moved its jaws, chewing on that stuff they eat and then throw up to chew more.

"They only let the nice ones in," I insisted, trying not to laugh at her squeamish apprehension.

Valerie squealed a little as she darted out her hand and patted the llama's back, her eyes squeezed shut. The llama didn't move, so Valerie left her hand there, petting the llama after she was sure it wouldn't get her.

"It's so soft," she said wonderingly, opening her eyes.

"Really?" I reached over to the llama's side. "Oh my gosh, you're right."