Kerry Selmosa- We All Fall Down D5M

Things were looking up. I had it on authority that the Arena was not going to be a graveyard this time. Ever since I'd gotten up I'd had this nagging feeling that since the last time I'd resurrected it hadn't been a graveyard, that they somehow thought that was break enough and this time we were going back. Sky didn't know what the Arena would be, but she hadn't heard any rumor at all of it being... that. So, not exactly authority, but pretty solid. I didn't think something like that would stay under wraps.

But what would it be, then? From what I could tell, there was a running theme throughout resurrection Games. Whether it was close or loose, they seemed to have some element of rebirth to them. The Career Games seemed to have their own thing going, but other than that, there was always something to do with death or rebirth. Reincarnation in the Indian Arena, literal zombies in the graveyard Games, and then the phoenix in the Mayan Games. I couldn't imagine there were too many options, so there was a good chance I'd be able to guess, especially if I had a few backups.

Death. Rebirth. I sat picking at my breakfast cinnamon roll, trying to think of anything that might match. Giant butterfly garden? Everyone knew butterflies were a symbol of rebirth. A church? Definitely not. Wouldn't want the people getting ideas about religion being permitted. A college? People like to say they "found themselves" in college. That was sort of a "rebirth", if you squinted. A hospital? A recycling plant?

Just off the top of my head, there was one thing most of those places had in common. I couldn't think of many other cultures that had resurrection prominently featured and hadn't been used, and the more I thought, the more I suspected we were looking at an indoor Arena. Indoor skills, then.

I'd forgotten how hard it was not to get distracted in the training room. My first thought was to climb to the roof of the Arena and live off rainwater and whatever food I could find. It was all I could do to sit through the assistant explaining a few simple bird traps before I found myself looking at the bolo station wondering if I could just shoot a bird out of the air with that. Then after I untangled my bolo for the twentieth time, I thought surely the agility station would prepare me for the running I'd have to do in enclosed spaces. So I flitted from one station to another, forcing myself to stay long enough at each to at least learn something. All throughout, I was looking for the one or maybe two people I wanted to ally with so I wouldn't get lost in the crowd. So far my best bet seemed to be one of the boys from Seven. The way he was launching up the climbing wall like no one's business, I knew he was just like me.

Valerie Lenn- We All Fall Down D2F

"Watch your side!"

I shoved sideways, knocking the sparring partner away from Jason. Since the training center opened, we'd been at the bladed weapons stations, practicing with each other like we were joined at the hip. It had been my idea, and I'd been gratified that Jason had agreed instead of making any comments about my prior deaths or anything like that. The way I saw it, no one had a chance of getting out of this alone. There were just too many people. But someone like the two of us had more than just alliance on our side. Blood went back thicker than friendship. We'd been raised together and hadn't been apart until I died. We knew each other like no one else here did. If we practiced, we could fight more than just together. We could fight as one.

Jason's foot moved out from under me just as mine came down. I hadn't even needed to say anything. I covered for his persistent inability to watch his flank, and he augmented me when I rushed in too boldly to protect myself if I didn't succeed immediately. Every Career knew that fighting two people was often easier than fighting one. Almost always, your opponents would get in each others' way, blocking shots if not actively impeding each other. Two Careers fighting as one would have little to fear from any two opponents, even other Careers, and could very well take down quite unbalanced numbers.

"Pause!" Jason stepped back and waved his hand.

"What? What's wrong?" I asked, breathing heavily.

"Just tired," Jason said. He walked over to the ringside bench and sat down.

"You can't get tired! We have to keep training!" I insisted.

"Come on, Val. We can't train forever. It's been an hour." Jason got a paper cup from the water machine by the bench and swallowed it in one gulp.

"We're wasting time," I said, ignoring the stitch in my side.

"We're just going to get exhausted, and then sloppy, and that's how injuries happen," Jason continued, unmoving. "We have all day."

"We have work to do. You're still not watching your flank," I pointed out.

"Yeah, and you're leaning to the right. You want shin splints? That's how you get them."

I folded my arms, expressing both my anger and my inability to say he was wrong.

"I'm getting better," I said. It was true I tended to favor one side once I got tired. Of course I'm tired! We've been... training for an hour.

Jason refilled his cup. "Right. And we'll keep getting better. If we rest sometimes."

Xzavier Thomas- Your Vote Matters D3M

Acee Hal had the sharp face of a leprechaun and the personality to match. She seemed more at home bent over some esoteric mix humans couldn't understand than she was doing anything normal people did. Yet here I was, listening to Acee Hal talk about conceiving and bearing me.

"So who's my dad?" She'd never been married. To free to tie down, I guess. Not by a husband and not by a son.

Acee steepled her fingers. "That's the fun part," she started. She looked to the side. "The really fun part," she said sotto voce.

"Not cool!" I threw a hand in front of my face, trying not to imagine my own conception.

"Great news, it gets even more not cool," Acee continued. "If you really want to know that, we're going to have to look up a lot of old numbers."

"Never mind. I'll settle for what I have," I said. "So you found out about me, didn't know who the father was, and just dumped me?"

I wished Acee would look just a little more regretful. Instead she just looked like she was calling up a distant, faded memory. "What was I supposed to do?" she asked, and I was stirred by the uncertain note in her voice. "I was going to the Games. That's no place for a baby."

"You didn't even give me a name." I couldn't identify the emotion inside me. Sadness? Loss? Grief? Anger? It was some word that didn't exist but that meant all of them.

"I was sixteen." Acee had never seemed so human. She looked at me like we were equals. I realized all at once that she was looking at me, sixteen years old myself, and seeing her own face in the one that in some details resembled it. "I told myself it would be easier for both of us. I suppose it was just easier for me. And then I won, and I told myself you were surely gone, that someone had adopted a baby as cute as you. More time went by and I told myself more and more that it was too late. I knew one of those times, it would be true."

I stared at the table, not really wanting to look at her. I didn't see a stranger, now that I saw how I had her ears, and the same sharp corner to my jaw. I didn't see a mother, not the way a child looked at his mother and saw someone familiar. I saw something that now couldn't qualify as either.

"You thought I was a cute baby?" I didn't hold out my hand, but I looked her in the eye.

Her eyes shone back at me. "You were beautiful."

Timber Faldun- Wandering Souls D7M

I didn't want to be alone. It was stupid that it was my first thought about the Games, but it was just who I was. Some people were made to be alone. They loved being by themselves, with only their own thoughts. That was for them, but it wasn't for me. I wanted to share my life with someone else. I wanted to be someone that someone else would share their life with. I was my own person, but there was a part of me missing that I knew was with someone else. I didn't need someone else to complete me, but my life would not be complete without someone else in it.

It wouldn't last, not in the Games. On the contrary, romance here would only end in tragedy. But sometimes tragedy was worth what came before it. The way I saw it, I was almost certainly going to die. It was true whether or not I was with someone. If I had to die, and I ended up dying for someone I loved, or even just with them, it was the best death I knew.

Something kept holding me back, though. I kept seeing pretty girls- pretty wasn't the only thing I was looking for, but it was hard to know anything else about them on first glance- and right at the last moment I'd pull back. It was the footage of my Games. I didn't know until after I'd seen it that I shouldn't have watched it. Dahlia hadn't even looked for me. As she and the other alliance divided supplies, she'd walked past my body and hadn't even looked down. In one moment I learned I had never been anything to her at all. Every time I was about to go up to a girl, I wondered if they were like Dahlia.

That's just the risk, isn't it? It's the risk that comes with the potential reward. All the same, I couldn't get past it. I wandered over to the climbing wall to get some air and a birds-eye views.

"Watch out!"

I yanked my hand back just as I was about to grab one of the holds.

"That one's loose. I saw a girl almost fall off it."

I looked over at the voice and saw the girl. I knew two things about her: she had gray eyes, and she cared if I got hurt.

"Thanks," I said. "I'm Timber."

"I'm Elle."

Lily White- Into Thin Air D11F

People like me didn't win the Games. We were like ants running underfoot. People crushed us without even knowing we were there. Just like the first time, my only hope was that they didn't find me. I had to stay hidden, and I had to stay hidden for a long, long time.

"What's the longest-lasting food for the smallest size?" I asked the assistant at the nutrition station. "Like if I need to live a long time on the smallest amount of food?"

"Nuts to you." The assistant smiled at her little joke. "But seriously, your best bet is nuts."

"Any particular nut, or just any of them?" I asked. I tried to not obviously stare at her mouth while she spoke. It just wasn't every day I saw purple glittery lipstick. How does it not smear on her teeth? Does the Capitol have anti-smear lipstick technology? Why don't they use that kind of scientific progress to feed us?

"Peanuts are the most calorie-dense for the price," the assistant said. "Oil is also super high-calorie. It's the good kind of calorie, too, if you use olive oil."

I'd never heard of "good" or "bad" calories. In Eleven, there were either enough calories or not enough calories.

"What kind of things would you have to think about if you were going to be staying in the same spot for a long time? A very small spot?" I asked.

"You'd want to make sure there was sufficient air circulation, and you'd have to think about-" she delicately pursed her lips- "waste disposal. You might look into some meditation to keep from getting claustrophobic. It can also slow your metabolism, making your food last longer."

I had to smile when I heard that. In my area we thought of meditation as something rich Capitolites did because they thought somehow there was a way to breathe fancy, like they hadn't been breathing just fine since they were babies. The only people who used it in Eleven were sick people who had no other options they could afford and just wanted to maybe have a tiny bit less pain.

All right then. Guess I'll go learn to breathe fancy.