Disclaimer: I still don't own The Hunger Games.
Note: About a week left before submissions close, and as of writing this, I have twice as many submissions for female spots as for male spots. If you sent me a submission for a female spot and would be open to switching genders, shoot me a PM and let me know.
Prologue
Can't Stop the Memories
Aramis Noble, 20
District One
Victor of the 53rd Hunger Games
"Remember when that was us?"
Aramis reached up and clapped Isaac on the back as the pair of them watched the trainees. "I don't think you were ever that small." Isaac had always been rather large for his age, which was what had drawn him to training for the Games in the first place. The academy recruiters were always looking for big, strong youngsters to begin training as early as they could. Isaac had been the one they were interested in; Aramis had simply tagged along because it had seemed like a fun way to spend time with his best friend after school.
That was how it had started, but everything had snowballed from there. He'd discovered he actually enjoyed training for its own sake, while Isaac had eventually realized that it wasn't for him. He'd kept up practicing with Aramis, but he'd never been a serious contender to be chosen to volunteer. So many of the hopeful trainees weren't. Only a handful made it through to the final selection, and only two could be chosen for the Games.
And he had been one of them.
Isaac lowered his voice. "Looks like we've got an audience."
Aramis nodded. Several of the youngsters had noticed them, and were watching with wide eyes as Aramis gave them a playful wave. He winked at Isaac, then ducked under the fence and approached the trainees. "Mind if I cut in, Gary?"
The look on Garrison Bort's face was priceless, but he couldn't exactly say no. Not to a Victor. He took a step back, and Aramis snatched up one of the wooden practice swords, twirling the hilt in his fingers. Fingers that Garrison had said would be too short and stubby to hold a sword properly, not to mention the fact that he would never have the same reach or stride as the other trainees. He'd thought he was humoring Isaac by letting his "little friend" join him for training. Now…
Now it didn't matter one bit what he thought. Aramis turned his attention to the children whose stares were still fixed on him. He could see a few of the ones he'd recruited personally. Beryl, who was currently holding a sword in one hand and a crutch in the other. Trey, whose one good eye was fixed on the weapon in Aramis' hand. Valentine, who was only shorter than Aramis because he was missing both his legs below the knees. Aramis twirled the sword in their direction. "Anyone fancy a round?"
The response was immediate. Several of the kids stepped forward, quickly forming a line behind Trey, who was watching Aramis eagerly. Hungrily. The boy was eleven – too young to be chosen this year. But six or seven years from now…
Aramis parried one blow, and then another, dancing around until he was on Trey's blind side, then sweeping the boy's legs out from under him. "Hey, that's not fair," one of the kids in the crowd complained as Trey scrambled to his feet. "He's got a bad eye."
Aramis nodded. "I know. And so will the other tributes. You don't think they'll try to take advantage of that?" He turned back to Trey. "Not much peripheral vision – that means you have to prioritize. You can either focus on me or my weapon. What do you think?"
He swung again. This time, Trey kept up with him a little longer, keeping his eye fixed on Aramis' hand. Smart. Good way to watch the person and the weapon at the same time. The boy certainly had potential…
By the time the bell rang and Aramis ducked back under the fence to join Isaac, he was sweating and breathing hard, but it was a good kind of exhausted. A satisfying kind. Isaac was smirking. "You're good with them."
Aramis said nothing. He was good with the kids – something he'd never really expected to be good at. He didn't have any siblings, and aside from Isaac, he hadn't had many friends at the academy – and certainly not any outside his own age group. The older trainees didn't really interact with the younger ones. Maybe that was a mistake.
If so, it wasn't the only mistake in how the training academy was designed. For years, they'd only been recruiting youngsters who seemed like good candidates. But the trouble was, you couldn't always tell eight or nine years in advance who would be a good Career and who wouldn't. He had won the Games. Isaac hadn't even come close to being picked. If someone had told them that ten years ago, they would both have laughed. But that didn't make it any less true.
So he was trying to make a difference. Recruit outside the box, so to speak. Some of the trainers didn't like the idea of wasting their time on recruits who were obviously never going to be chosen to volunteer, but he'd been quick to point out that most of the people they trained were never chosen to volunteer anyway. Only two were – two every year.
And a few years from now, who knew who that might be?
Sadira Summers, 19
District Seven
Victor of the 52nd Hunger Games
"Doesn't that bring back memories?"
Sadira looked up from the sapling she was planting. Casper was watching her curiously from his side of the garden between their houses. With the amount of space in Victors' Village, they could have spread apart more, but it was nice to have the other Victors nearby, and Casper and Hazel didn't seem to mind that she'd recently started filling the space between the houses with plants. Some trees, some flowers, a few bushes here and there. Fruits and vegetables. Anything to make the space seem more alive.
Sadira wiped her hands on her pants, succeeding in making them at least a little cleaner. "You mean because my arena was a garden?"
Casper cocked his head. "Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but … yes. I didn't exactly come back and recreate a candy factory in my backyard."
Sadira shrugged. "Fair enough. And yeah, I guess it does bring back some memories, but it wasn't exactly the plants in the arena that I was afraid of. It was the other tributes."
Well, the other tributes and the insect mutts, but she certainly wasn't going to admit that – not with several insects less than a foot away. The bugs still gave her the shivers, but these weren't the giant insects that had chased the tributes in the arena. Bees, butterflies, dragonflies – all of them had swarmed the tributes during the bloodbath, distracting the boy from Three long enough for her to land a fatal blow with an axe.
That had been her first kill. The first of five. She hadn't wanted to kill any more than anyone else did, but that was how the Games worked. Kill or die. And she hadn't wanted to die. In the heat of the moment, it really was that simple. She had fought. She had won. And she had come home. Now she had a chance to make it count.
"I just want to make it mean something." She picked up a shovel. "If I come back and just … spend all day sitting around in my house, then what did I win for? I just thought maybe I could do something good for the district."
Casper nodded. He'd probably seen her from time to time around the district, heading from one project to another, helping out where she could. Patching a roof here, mending a fence there, bringing food to a child whose parents were ill, doing little things to make life a little more bearable. But this … maybe this didn't have to be a little thing.
"So you're … what? Turning the empty space here into a community garden?"
Sadira flinched. There was something in his voice. Skepticism, maybe? Or maybe just worry? "Do you think that's allowed?" She hadn't even thought to ask. Wouldn't really have known who to ask.
Casper shook his head. "If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said no. Peacekeepers are sometimes picky about who can even come into Victors' Village. Using it as a way to give food to the district … I don't think they'd have been too keen on that."
"But…?"
"But things are a bit different now. The Victors helping retake Thirteen – that changes everything. Changes how people see us."
Sadira shook her head. "But we weren't even part of that."
"And who knows that? Eldred. The other Victors. That's it. For all anyone else knows, we were in on the plan, and just happened to not be the person District Thirteen chose to make contact with. If there was ever a time when you could go ahead with something like this and the Peacekeepers would just assume you had the Capitol's blessing … this is it."
Sadira grinned, only freezing for a moment as a butterfly landed on her arm. It was just a butterfly. It wasn't poisonous. The way it tickled her with its tongue wasn't going to paralyze her. After a moment, she shook her arm gently, and it flew over to one of the flowers. Only then did she realize she'd been holding her breath.
Okay, so maybe it did bring back memories. But there didn't seem to be any way of avoiding that. Well, any healthy way of avoiding that. Some of the Victors drank, or used morphling, or just hid in their houses and did their best to ignore the entire district – the entire world. But what was the point of winning if they weren't going to live?
Sadira gripped her shovel tightly and drove it into the soft earth. Her Games had lasted eight days. Even if you counted the pre-Games ceremonies and training, that was still only a little more than two weeks. Half a month. That was all. If she let those few weeks determine what she did for the rest of her life, then those twenty-three other tributes had died for nothing.
And that was something she couldn't live with.
Barlen Rimmonn, 18
District Nine
Victor of the 50th Hunger Games
Sometimes the memories just came flooding back.
Barlen's eyes flew open as his hand gripped the knife in his pocket. There was a dim light, but not the eerie candlelight from his memories. The light was coming from a lamp by the bedside table. "Bad dream?" a voice from the other bed asked sleepily.
"Bad memories." They were already fading, but he remembered a face. "There was a girl in the tunnels. There was blood." Barlen looked down at his arm. You won the Hunger Games. "I killed her, didn't I."
"Yes."
"What was her name?"
Basil only hesitated a moment before answering. "Klaudia. She was from District Eight. She was trying to kill you."
Of course she was. That was how the Hunger Games worked. Kill or be killed. And he had survived. Barlen took a shaky breath, running his fingers over the names tattooed on his arm. Klaudia's name wasn't there. The names weren't the people he had killed. They were the names of the people who had helped him survive. Leo. Mariska. Vashti.
And then his name. Barlen. In the end, after all of the others were dead, he had still survived. He owed them his life, but at the end of the Games, he had been able to survive without them. He had made it home. He had saved his own life.
And they were all dead.
Barlen slowly loosened his grip on the knife. "I don't think I'm going to be able to get back to sleep," he admitted, glancing at the clock. It was almost four in the morning. A bit early to be getting up, but…
Basil was already out of bed. "I have just the thing. How about we head downstairs?"
"What's downstairs?"
Basil cocked his head. "You don't remember, do you."
"No."
"Well, you're going to enjoy it. Come on."
He took Barlen's hand and led him down the stairs and into a small room lined with shelves. On the shelves were–
"Books," Barlen realized. "You made a library."
Basil nodded. "Not as big as I'd like, but it's a start. It was a favor from President Brand, for helping out with his little … project. He's a bit more lax about the whole books thing than some of the other presidents have been."
"His project," Barlen repeated. "You mean District Thirteen." He remembered that. It was all people seemed to be talking about. "Were you part of that?"
"Not directly. I volunteered, back when he was organizing the thing, but then you won, and … well, I didn't want to risk not being able to be here. But I helped out here and there, spreading a rumor or two, pretending to try to hush things up." He shrugged. "Enough to be useful, I guess." He nodded towards one of the shelves. "Go on. Pick one."
Barlen hesitated. He'd never been a very big reader. He had a tendency to forget what he'd just read and get stuck reading the same page over and over again. "Could you … could you read me one?"
Basil wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Of course. Take your pick."
Barlen glanced at the shelves, thumbed through a few of the books, and finally handed one to Basil, who smiled. "Good choice."
There was something in his tone – something familiar. "We've done this before, haven't we."
Basil nodded. "You picked this one last week." He ran his fingers along the spine of the book. "I don't mind, though. Just a bit … jealous."
Barlen cocked his head. "Jealous?"
"Yeah. Do you know how many times I've wished I could go back and read a good book again like it was the first time? No idea what's going to happen next? Every twist and turn a surprise?" He settled down on a sofa and motioned for Barlen to join him. "It must be nice."
Barlen smiled as he took a seat next to Basil. He'd never thought about it like that. Or maybe he had. "You sure you don't mind?"
Basil chuckled. "I'm sure. It's a good one. Besides, I enjoy irony." He opened the book and cleared his throat. "This is a story about memory."
Barlen raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?"
Basil lowered the book a little so that Barlen could see. "Nope, that's how it starts. See?" He ruffled Barlen's hair as the pair of them leaned back on the couch. Then he began again.
"This is a story about memory. And this much can be remembered…"
"I can't stop the memories even when I try."
