Visenya Lloyd- Descent into Madness D9F
It was really horrible, what those people went through in the dark. Groping in the Bloodbath, waiting for a Career to find them. Crawling through tunnels so tight they couldn't fully breathe. Knowing monsters were there with them, feeling their footsteps and smelling their scent. Whatever happened to me now, I knew it wouldn't be like that. I never wanted to watch the tapes of it. If I watched the tapes, I would see it wasn't just those children in that cave. It was someone who looked so very much like me. It mustn't have been me. They couldn't be mine, those memories in my head. Some other girl, some girl who looked like me. It couldn't be me, because I couldn't have been strong enough to come through.
Toddward Howard- Swing Vote D9M
We all have bad things happen in our lives, and a lot of us wonder how we can go back to before the event, whatever it is. I didn't think I could do that, not anymore. After going through the Games, I was starting to see I had a new normal. Obviously, I didn't want to be a Gamemaker anymore. Not this Games. Couldn't it be time for something new? The Capitolites wanted bread and circuses. But every year there's a new idea- something innovative and like nothing before. People like me couldn't fight the Capitol on their own. Instead, we might have to give them something better. Give them a reason to give up the Games because there's a new game, and the old one just doesn't have the same sparkle. Something so entertaining, so unlike anything before, that they wouldn't want to play the Hunger Games anymore. How was this going to work out? I didn't know, but it always does.
Camille Igawa- Let the Good Times Roll D9F
Unfortunately it seemed that "kill the rich" had turned into "get killed by the rich" in my case. On the bright side, I now had a ton of emo cred for literally having died. If I ever got home, my goth friends would be so jealous. Wouldn't that be the ultimate punk: to literally claw out of my own grave to take vengeance on the despots who put me there? But first I had to win, of course. I wasn't feeling the best about that, since I'd already died once. But on the bright side, so had everyone else here. Honestly, my idea of "the bright side" was pretty warped lately.
Vulpes Kerr- No Way Down D9M
It was bullshit, what happened to me. Clearly, winning the Games had nothing to do with skill. It was about having enough people around you so shield you from your own risks. If the Careers hadn't been together I would have dominated the Games. But I couldn't sit around whining about how unfair something was, even if it was true. "Fair" doesn't win the Games. Being alive wins the Games. If I needed pawns with me to have a chance, then so be it. As much as it wasn't my first choice, this time around I would have allies. No one stronger than myself, of course, but people strong enough to get me to the end, where I belonged.
Declan Malone- The Poseidon Adventure
I lay motionless in the bed, back slumped as I stared at the sheets. It didn't matter anymore now. The worst thing that could have happened, the one thing I promised I would never let be, happened years ago. My son grew up fatherless. Over and over I'd seen it in my District. I'd seen how those children grew up wondering why they weren't valuable enough for their father to stay, why the only man they should have been able to trust to love them didn't care enough to even be in their life. It was true I died instead of abandoning Micah, but that wouldn't remove the pain and confusion. I knew what it was to try to turn from a boy to a man when there was no one to teach me how, when I had no idea what being a man even meant. It was so much easier to fall in with older boys who would tell you what they thought being a man was, when none of them had fathers either. My boy was an orphan, just like me, and I was afraid he'd grown up just like me.
Miller Thresher- 24 Years, 24 Tributes D9M
Eventually we'd have a new president, one who understood how unfairly I'd been treated. The one thing the Capitol got right was bringing me back over and over so I could live my fractured life where I belonged: in the luxury of the Capitol. Probably they'd shaft me again and tell me I'd lost, when obviously I should have won, but until then I would glory in the decadence all around me. Maybe this time I'd even get with one of the hot lady Tributes. If any of them deserved me, that is.
Jeanie Clay- Heart of Darkness D9F
Twenty-six years had gone by. It seared my soul, but not for the reasons people might expect. I'd known I would lose my family someday. In Nine, we lived day to day knowing this might be the day we lost someone to heatstroke, or malnutrition, or despair. No, I'd seen that coming a long, long time. I despaired because I'd been brought back, not by a new government writing old wrongs, but for the same old reasons. I'd thought, in my heart of hearts, that Panem wouldn't last another twenty-six years. Just as liberty is renewed by each generation, so is tyranny. In all the books I wasn't supposed to have read, I learned about how the Third Reich didn't even last twenty years. How the Soviets made it seventy before they collapsed on themselves. How so many of their enslaved lands managed to rescue themselves even before that. I thought by now we'd be free, that something would have given and that freedom would have poured out from a single crack. I thought we were better than this.
Dominique Rindelle- Over and Over D9F
What did they think was going to happen? I'd fought. I'd died. I'd fought again. I'd died again. I'd fought again. I'd died again. Did they think anything would ever be any different? That this time I'd go up against a hundred others and do what I'd never gotten close to doing? My only chance was after dozens of others had won, with a playing field so much smaller than this. That would be decades in the future, and only after twenty-three others had come in to replace every single Victor that escaped this cycle. It was never going to be different. I'd never stop trying, but I didn't understand why they kept letting me. What did they ever think was going to be different?
Hosanna Rayle- Child's Play D9F
No one ever escapes the Games. Like the man and the woman I saw so long ago, we reached the very edge, and then they pulled us back in. Victory was a lottery designed to keep us hoping so we'd keep working. They dangled it in front of us that we might win, that we might get out of here, knowing that so few of us would, and then only the ones the Capitol smiled on. And if we did, they acted like they owned us, like they'd done us a favor by not murdering us. There was no winning, not until all of this was over. Someday, someone greater than me would try to end this, and whether or not they succeeded, someday someone would. For someone smaller like me, all I could do was persevere until I finally got to see that day.