Despite having lived here my entire life, Victors' Village has never felt more foreign to me.

It's as if everyone here has been lying to me all my life, and now that I'm a member of their elusive club they finally dropped the act. For sixteen years they sold me a dream that turned out to be nothing but a nightmare. Maybe I just didn't want to believe it. Or I thought that I could beat it. After all, my parents never hid the little orange bottles that accompanied them back from every trip to the Capitol, but it still comes as a shock to me to find that I now need them too.

They send me back to Two with a three month supply of antihistamines to help me sleep at night. I'm torn between wanting to flush them all down the toilet just to prove that I don't need them, and begging for something much, much stronger.

The first night back, I sit cross-legged on the oversized bed in my new house and stare at the bottle of pills on my nightstand, willing myself not to need them despite how desperate I am for some uninterrupted sleep. Obviously I know that I should just take them - I'm physically exhausted and I can't seem to get my mind to shut the fuck up. It's not even the good stuff that my parents used to get. No, the doctor in the hospital gave me a whole lecture on how benzodiazepines are "habit-forming" and can be "bad for the baby." So it's really just a glorified Benadryl.

I should just take them, but I promised myself I wouldn't turn into my parents. And it's only my first night back. I will fall asleep eventually, I have to.

I curl up under the thick white comforter and nuzzle my head into the pillow, shutting my eyes forcefully. This is the nicest bed I have ever slept in and yet I've never felt more uncomfortable. I make a mental note to go visit my old bedroom tomorrow and grab some things that actually belong to me.

The house is empty, and the silence brings me back to the arena, to the nights spent sleeping with each hand on a different knife, always prepared for an attack. Every little creak in the night elicits a pulse of cortisol from my adrenal glands, and I find myself compulsively checking the house for threats. It takes me an hour and a half to admit that I need Cato, and another two to humble myself enough to walk down my stairs, out the door, and across the road to his house. I knock on his door before I can change my mind, and it swings open so quickly that I wonder if he was standing there waiting for me.

His hair is a little wild, like he's been tossing and turning in bed, and I can't help but notice the sigh of relief he emits when he pulls me in for a hug. "Took you long enough," he remarks.

I am immediately at ease in his arms. "The door works both ways you know - you could have come to me."

"But then I wouldn't get to see how good you look sleeping in my bed," he says with a smirk.

The air is thick with all the words left unsaid between us. It's the first time we've been truly alone, with no cameras watching or mentors lurking, in who knows how long. There is a certain comfort in knowing that what we do and say now is for no one but each other.

I don't know where to start.

We are having a baby together, a fact that despite my best efforts I can no longer ignore. If the piss stick in the arena wasn't enough, the biological evidence has started manifesting through intense waves of nausea and a hypersensitivity to the smell of pretty much everything.

We need to talk about the logistics of raising a kid together, but the current ambivalent state of our relationship complicates that conversation enormously. I feel closer to Cato than I've ever felt to anyone in my life, and yet I don't know some of the most basic things about him. Like, for example, what the hell happened to his parents before he moved into Victor's Village with his aunt all those years ago.

I open my mouth to ask, but his lips come crashing down onto mine before I can even get a sound out. I reciprocate instinctively - the response is automatic, involuntary even. My hands tangle themselves in his slightly matted hair, as his hands glide underneath my ass to hoist my body up as I wrap my legs tightly around his waist.

The energy between us is different than it was in the arena or even back in Two before our Games. The physical attraction is as strong as ever, but there is something else, something deeper, connecting us now. The way our tongues fight for dominance borders on animalistic, as our fingernails leave deep scratches under the surface of each other's skin in a desperate attempt to feel closer and closer.

My pants are halfway down my legs when the shrill ringing of a doorbell startles us both back to reality.

We lock eyes, halfway considering ignoring it to continue our consummation of the new house, but my curiosity is peaked. It's late - half past midnight according to the clock on the wall - so who the hell is showing up on Cato's doorstep unannounced?

I can't even hide my surprise when he opens the door to an obviously intoxicated Adelina slouched over on his front porch. Her eyes narrow slightly as they settle on my figure, and I feel like an asshole. I completely forgot about his fucking girlfriend.

She doesn't look entirely shocked to see me here, but she is noticeably hurt by it. She looks different than I remember, maybe smaller? She had always seemed so larger than life standing next to Cato, but in the dim light of his porch, I notice that she is only a little bit taller than me. Even with her hair in a messy bun and a scowl on her face, she is irrefutably gorgeous. It's not hard to tell what Cato saw in her.

"Adelina, what are you doing here?" he asks. There is concern lacing his tone that I might find sweet if it was directed towards literally anyone else but her. Instead, I feel a growing ache in my chest that I can only describe as...possessiveness?

Her doe eyes fill with tears at the sound of his voice, her anger quickly dissipating and being replaced with other, less useful emotions. She shakes her head, "I don't know. I guess I was still hanging onto the hope that it was all an act between you two."

I know I should feel guilty, but I don't. I sincerely did not mean to steal her boyfriend. Until very recently, my only intention was to kill him.

"I'm really sorry," Cato says to her, and even though she won't believe him, I can tell that he means it. I wasn't part of his plan, and he certainly wasn't part of mine.

"I can fuck off if you guys want a minute alone," I blurt out.

Cato stifles a laugh, but Adelina rolls her eyes. "You two deserve each other. I can't believe I didn't see it before," she says as she shakes her head, her upper lip curled in disdain.

"I'm sorry, too," I offer with as much sincerity as I can muster. Truthfully, I don't regret a thing that's happened between me and Cato, but I do feel bad that Adelina got caught in our crossfire. She was never anything but nice to me.

She laughs callously. "You're not sorry. Neither of you are."

I stand there awkwardly with my arms folded across my chest, desperately wishing I had sucked it up and stayed at my own place tonight. Verbal confrontations were far from my area of expertise. If there was going to be a fight, I preferred it to involve weapons of some sort.

"You aren't good people, I hope you know that," she adds. "Hell, you weren't even good tributes. You could have at least done the district a favor and died instead of making us share a crown with Twelve."

My hands ball themselves into fists so tightly that I'm sure I draw blood. I want to hit her. I want to hit her so badly, but I know that that's exactly what she wants, too. She would love to go around the district telling people I got in a fist fight with her over Cato, and I won't give her that satisfaction.

She has obviously struck a nerve with him as well because he all but slams the door in her face after spouting, "We're done here."

"She's right," I mutter once I'm sure she's no longer out there to hear me.

Cato sighs, leaning his back against the door. "She's just pissed, Clove. No one thinks that."

"I think that, Cato, so I'm sure other people do too."

He runs a hand through his hair, his jaw clenched. "You did it to save my life. I would be dead right now if it weren't for you."

"I could say the same thing about you, you know. You singlehandedly kept me alive that last week."

It's the first time that I have outwardly acknowledged all that he did for me in the arena after Thresh nearly killed me. When I was in the hospital, the doctors claimed it was the worst brain injury they'd ever seen anyone survive, that I almost definitely would have bled out except for the fact that I was pregnant. Something about the body making more clotting factors during pregnancy. So not only did he keep me alive afterwards, but his weak pull-out game turned out to be the only reason I survived in the first place. In a fucked up way, it made me feel a little better about the impulsive decision I made to slit my throat at the end. I had owed him, and we were even now. Not that we were exactly keeping score anymore.

I catch him staring at me, and he must forget for a moment how well we communicate with our eyes because he is looking at me like he loves me. I make a strategic decision not to comment on it, because I'm pretty sure my eyes are saying I love him, too.

The first rays of sunshine are peeking through the curtains into Cato's bedroom, illuminating our faces in a hazy morning glow, when I say in a tired voice, "Do you think we'll ever be able to sleep again?"

My head is on his chest, our legs intertwined. He toys with the edges of my hair, twirling it repeatedly and mindlessly around his fingertips. "No," he replies with half-hearted chuckle.

He knows better than to mention the pills. I'm pretty sure he got some too, but there is no sign of them on his nightstand if so. Maybe he flushed them.

A wave of sadness rushes over me, and I'm tempted to cry. Another horrible side effect of the pregnancy. Or maybe just a side effect of nearly dying and then finding out you have to share your victory at not dying with District Twelve. Either way, the intense sadness is disorienting.

Cato notices the sudden shift in my mood almost immediately. "What's wrong?"

What isn't wrong, I want to say. "It's just not what I expected. We're just supposed to come back home and go about our lives as usual and pretend everything is normal and fine after what we've seen? After what we've done?"

I will myself not to cry in front of him. I know it's stupid - he has seen me much worse - but I don't want him to feel like he has to comfort me.

"At least we have each other," he offers. "I can't imagine going through this alone."

"I just want to be normal again. I miss feeling like myself."

"I bet they have a pill for that," he jokes, the corners of his lips turning up just slightly.

"Oh I'm sure they do. We can probably find them in my parents' medicine cabinet," I laugh. It feels good to laugh.

"Have you talked to them since we got back?" he asks, serious again.

"My parents? They didn't even bother to show up at the Train Station. I'm sure my mother will have nothing but critical words for me, given everything that's happened."

He shrugs. "You never know, she may be more understanding than you'd expect."

I trace my finger along the tan skin of his abdomen, contemplating this. "Would you want to come with me to see them tomorrow?" I ask, holding my breath. Maybe if Cato is there they will take it easy on me. I don't have the energy right now to fight with them over decisions I made in the arena.

He grins, raising his eyebrows suggestively. "Are you asking me to meet the parents already?"

"Oh, shut up! You've met my parents dozens of times."

"That was before I knocked up their daughter a couple weeks before her Hunger Games," he laughs. "Your dad isn't gonna try to kill me, is he?"

I smirk at the mental picture of Cato and my father in a fist fight. "If he does, you could definitely take him."

"I'll make you a deal," Cato starts. "I will accompany you to see your parents tomorrow morning if you'll come with me to my sister's for dinner tomorrow night."

I want to groan, but I refrain. I have nothing against Cato's sisters - they are all total badasses from what I remember at the Academy - but it sounds like a lot of social interaction, and I am tired.

He must be able to sense my reluctance (or maybe it's the scowl on my face that gives me away), because he adds, "It will be good to get our minds off things for a couple hours. If we just stay locked up in this house, we're gonna drive ourselves crazy."

I can't argue with him about that. It's just that my idea of getting my mind off things usually involves throwing knives or going for a run or other solitary activities. "You're right," I begrudgingly agree. "I'll go."

The smile that appears on his face is so cute, I don't even regret saying it.

Late the next morning, Cato and I decide to make the short walk from his house in Victors Village down to my parents'. It is an absolutely beautiful day by any standard - the sky is perfectly blue as the sun shines down and warms our skin from the slight chill in the mountain air. There are kids playing on the perfectly manicured lawns of several former victors' houses, and they all stop to stare in admiration when they notice Cato and I walking by.

"So how soon do you think they'll let us start teaching at the Academy?" I quip.

"I want to start as soon as possible," Cato responds. "But they'll probably make us wait at least a little while for some of the hype to die down, so that we aren't a distraction."

"I feel like the victors normally show up sometime after the Victory Tour but before the next Reaping," I try to remember.

"That seems like a lifetime away," he grumbles. "I would start tomorrow if they'd let me."

I nod my head in agreement, wondering how on earth we're going to pass the time every day until then. It was almost unsettling to have my entire future ahead of me. I mean, sure, I'd imagined what life would be like as a victor countless times, but to actually be living it was completely different. What did victors do all day if they weren't teaching at the Academy? Thanks to the monthly stipends, we would never have to work another day in our lives, but I didn't exactly have many hobbies outside the realm of training to win the Games.

It only takes a few minutes for us to arrive at and knock on the door of the house I grew up in. We stand there for about twenty seconds, but when I don't hear any footsteps moving through the house, I knock again, harder this time. It is met with more silence. I grab Cato's wrist to check the time - according to his watch, it's 11:47, which is much later than my parents usually ever sleep.

"That's weird," I mumble to myself and try the door handle.

The knob turns in my hand and the door creaks open. I look back at Cato before I step over the threshold, and he shrugs. It's not like we're breaking and entering. I technically live here.

"Mom? Dad?" I call out. "Is anybody home?"

They hardly ever leave the house, so I'm surprised to find the whole first floor empty. The kitchen island where I ate breakfast every morning before heading to the Academy, the plush sofas where we would sit and watch the Games together late at night, the stairs that I would tiptoe up whenever I got home extra late from training. All of it is untouched, almost exactly as I left it.

"Maybe they went out to get groceries," Cato says.

I shake my head and head up the stairs in the direction of their bedroom. "I doubt it. They normally get everything they need delivered."

Cato follows me, the stairs creaking slightly under his weight. "They must be sleeping in then."

I knock on the door to their bedroom tentatively. "It's Clove," I say to the door. "Wake up!"

When there is still no response, I go ahead and swing it open without permission. The cold air in the room hits me like a brick wall, and all the hairs on my body stick straight up.

There, in the middle of their lavish bedroom, are the bodies of my mother and father hanging from the ceiling fan.

I stumble backwards out of the room and into Cato's arms, a scream stuck in my throat. My ears are ringing and the walls start tilting and my vision is getting darker and darker until I suddenly feel nothing at all.

When I come to, I'm seated on the front steps of my childhood home. Cato has a protective arm wrapped around me and a cold rag pressed to my forehead.

"Is it real?" I ask, panic in my tone. I start looking around frantically, trying to discern whether I am in a nightmare or not. It feels so real, but then again they always do.

"I'm so sorry," Cato manages to say.

So it is real. This is really happening. I try to stand back up, to go back inside and check their pulses, but the world starts spinning again. They killed themselves? Were they that disappointed in me? I'll be the first one to admit that the circumstances of my victory were less than ideal, but a win was a fucking win.

I'm relieved to see Enobaria running down the road towards us, Brutus following closely behind her. "I sent a neighborhood kid to get them," Cato explains, and I love him for it. "I'm so sorry," he repeats. "I'm so sorry, Clove."

"Where are they?" Brutus says frantically when he makes it to the porch where we are seated.

"In the bedroom," Cato answers for me.

Brutus takes off through the open front door, his footsteps up the stairs echoing through the house and into the front yard.

Enobaria stays outside with us, kneeling down in front of me and placing her hands on my shoulders. "It's going to be okay," she says to me, her brown eyes boring into mine. She is strong, unwavering, as tough as I always remembered. I feel the complete opposite.

I hear the wail of a siren in the distance, and I know that it is headed here to collect the bodies of my dead parents. There is no saving them.

I choke back a sob. "My parents are dead," I say in disbelief. There is a dull ache in my chest where I know my heart is, and it makes me want to rip it out. My family was never very good at expressing our feelings, but I loved my parents.

"Get her out of here," I hear Brutus' voice as he returns to the front porch. "Cato and I can handle this. Take her over to your house, E."

I turn around to protest, to tell them that I'm not a kid anymore, but I freeze when I see two white roses dangling from Brutus' hand. He sighs. "Your parents didn't kill themselves, Clove. The Capitol did."

"You're telling me you really think the Capitol staged their suicides?"

I am laying on Enobaria's couch with my head in her lap, my eyes puffy from crying. I have been desperately trying to wrap my head around why the Capitol would want to kill my parents, but I just can't. It doesn't make any sense to me. They were Victors. They were beloved in the Capitol.

"I'm certain of it," Enobaria responds, her voice barely above a whisper.

"How can you be so sure?" I ask.

"Because I've seen it before," she states. "When they did it to me."

"The Capitol killed your parents, too?!" I nearly shout, and she shushes me, her paranoid eyes glancing in the direction of the front door.

"Not my parents. My best friend."

I stare at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation that she is obviously reluctant to give.

"There were...certain things the Capitol expected of me after I became a victor. Alterations they wanted to make to my body, for example, that I refused at first. My best friend had been planning to volunteer the year after me, and I felt like I had to warn her about what she would be getting into. I told her everything, and the next week..." Enobaria's voice trails off.

If it were anybody other than Enobaria saying this to me, I wouldn't believe them. But I know her, and I know she would never lie about something like this.

"So if you don't do what they want, they just...kill your family?"

She nods somberly. "I really wish we didn't have to have this conversation, but you need to know who you're dealing with here."

"What the hell did I do wrong already? We just got home yesterday, for fuck's sake!"

There is a pained expression on her face, like she is trying to find the right words for what she has to say to me. Am I a complete fucking moron? What am I missing here?

"You survived, Clove. That's what you did wrong," she explains.

"They could have just let me die!" I protest. "If that's really why they killed my parents, then they should be hanging my surgeon, too."

She is shaking her head. "You really don't get it, do you? You were the Victor. They had to keep you alive. Cato and Katniss and Peeta may not have been entirely dead yet, but it was obvious to everyone that you had won. Nobody expected them to actually save the other three, but they were reeling from your act of defiance and they needed to remind the districts that they were in complete control, that whether anyone lived or died was always up to them."

I am gnawing on my thumb nail, my gaze fixated on a crooked picture frame hanging on the wall across from me. I was hardly any more of a Victor than the three of them. If I had won, it would have been by default. Or at least that's what it would have felt like. Flinging a knife into Katniss Everdeen's neck with ease was hardly the kind of showdown I expected to precede my victory.

"Do you know why they reap a boy and a girl from each district?" Enobaria asks suddenly.

"Equality of the sexes?" I shrug.

"Think about it, Clove," she urges. "Why not reap only one child from every district? It would be just as effective at instilling fear - after all, everyone at risk of being reaped would still be at risk of being reaped. Or if you're going to reap two from each district, why not allow them to win together? It would provide for a much more entertaining show if they did it that way, but they don't. Why not?"

I stare at her blankly. My parents are dead and she's talking to me about the rules of the Games that I truthfully never even thought to question.

She finishes, "They reap two kids from every district but only allow one to come home so that even the winning district still suffers a loss."

It hits me suddenly, everything becoming so crystal clear that I can't believe I didn't see it before. They were never going to let two of us win. I've gone over in my head a thousand times how Cato and I could have possibly avoided the stalemate with Twelve that led to them reversing the rule change, but the fact is that even if we had managed to make it to the final two, Claudius Templesmith still would have come onto that speaker and told us one more person had to die. When I slit my throat, I took away some of the Capitol's power and restored it to the districts. And now they are making me pay for it.

Enobaria watches as I piece everything together, a knowing look on her face. It's not pity in her eyes, but something sadder.

"They're going to kill this baby one day, aren't they?" I ask suddenly, tears springing to my eyes. "Snow all but spelled it out for us at the hospital. No matter how hard we try to prepare it for the arena, they are going to make sure it dies in there."

"Clove, why do you think your parents and I always pushed you so hard to be the best? Even under normal circumstances, the children of victors are at an exponentially higher risk of being reaped."

Another dagger pierces through my ribcage and lodges itself in my heart. All this time, I had interpreted my parents' coldness towards me as a shortcoming on their part (or subconsciously, maybe even on my part). But they were just trying to protect me in the best way they knew how. They made sure I wasn't soft, knowing there was no place for that in the Games.

"You have to help me, Enobaria," I plead with her, desperation evident in my voice. "I don't know how to handle all this. My parents, they would have known what to do. How am I supposed to-"

"You're one of us now, Clove. The Victors, we take care of each other. You are going to get through this and I will be here for you every step of the way. The Capitol is going to fuck with you, that's inevitable, but you have me and Cato and a whole network of other victors to bear it with you. It won't feel this overwhelming forever."

If a single tear trickles out of her eye and down her cheek, we don't mention it.

When Cato and I lay facing each other in bed that night, it feels like we have collectively aged about a decade. Brutus definitely had a very similar conversation with him while I was at Enobaria's because there is a sort of unspoken, mutual understanding between us. We are scared of the Capitol.

We don't say it out loud, but I'm certain it's the only thing on both our minds: if they could do this to my parents, two of their very own beloved Victors, then nobody else we love is safe either.

He has a hand placed protectively over my stomach, his thumb tracing circles around my bellybutton. "Do you think it's a boy or a girl?" he wonders out loud.

The thought brings a smile to my lips. "I think it's a boy. And I hope he gets my hair and your eyes."

"And neither of our personalities," he laughs, adding, "but I think it's a girl."

"Really?" I'm surprised. "Why?"

"Girls run in my family. I'm the only boy, remember?" he says.

"Tell me about your sisters," I respond with a smile. Although we grew up on the same street, I had very limited interactions with Cato's two older sisters beyond the usual banter between kids who lived in Victor's Village.

The corners of his lips curl up into a smile as he thinks about them. "Well, Salem is the oldest. She's tough as hell but also one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. She married a Peacekeeper about five-ish years ago and stays home taking care of their kids. Right before I left for the Games, she told me she was pregnant with their third baby, and that I had to come home alive so that she wouldn't have to name the baby after me. And then there's Luna, the middle child. She's only a couple years older than me, but she loves to boss me around. She has a temper like me, but she's also fucking hilarious. We used to get into so much trouble together back when we were little because we loved playing pranks on people."

It warms my heart to see how much he cares about them, but it also terrifies me to think that the Capitol could take that away from him at any moment. It almost makes me wish that we could just pack up everything we own and everyone we love and run away together, somewhere the Capitol couldn't find us, couldn't hurt us.

My fantasies are once again interrupted by the shrill ringing of the doorbell. You've got to be fucking kidding me, I think to myself.

"Please tell Adelina that she can fuck right off," I say to Cato as he swing his legs out from under the covers.

"I'm gonna tell her a lot worse than that," he says, and he is pissed. "She's got some fucking nerve coming back here again tonight after what you've been through today."

My body is exhausted, but I can't resist the idea of watching Cato rip Adelina a new one, so I follow him down the stairs to the front door. He swings it open, his mouth already open to start yelling, but it isn't Adelina on the front porch.

"Aunt Lyme? What are you doing here so late?"

The woman pulls Cato into a protective hug. "I came as soon as I heard about Baron and Robin. I was so worried about you guys. How is Clove?"

"I'm holding up," I say, making my way over to the door where she is standing.

"I'm so sorry," she says.

I have heard those three words so many times today, but coming from her they provide me with a unique comfort. Lyme is to Enobaria what Enobaria has been to me, so I've always had a massive amount of respect for her. She is an absolute force of a woman.

Lyme steps fully into the foyer of Cato's new house and shuts the door behind her. "We need to talk," she says in a voice so low that I can only hear her by reading her lips.

I open my mouth to respond, but she places a finger to her lips to tell me to keep my voice down. I'm confused, but I comply. "What's going on?" I whisper.

"You two need to be very careful in the coming days and months. They're going to be watching you both, and I highly recommend you watch what comes out of your mouth regarding the Capitol, even if you think you're alone."

"Are you saying our house is bugged?" Cato asks, his voice barely audible.

"I don't know for sure," she responds. "But for years after my Games, Snow knew things about me that I'd never told another soul. So if you two have...important...things that need to be said, I recommend you do that thing I saw in the arena and use your eyes to say it."

The use of the word important strikes me because I know what she really means and so does Cato. She means treasonous. Things like what I was thinking earlier about wanting to run away. I'm so glad I kept that to myself and didn't say it out loud to Cato. Who knows what they might do to us if they knew I was thinking like that.

"I'm here for you both for whatever you need," Lyme says, and she is back to talking in a regular tone of voice now, letting us know the previous conversation is over at least for now.

It's comforting to me that she showed up like this, so worried about us. It is a testament to what Enobaria told me earlier about victors taking care of each other. I may have lost my only blood relatives today, but I can't help but feel like my family has expanded. They won't be able to heal the wounds that Capitol has inflicted on me, but maybe they can help to ease the pain.