Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games.

Note: Thank you to Nautics and Platrium for Demeter and Uriel, respectively.

District Nine
When You're Happy

Basil Thatch, 22
Victor of the 48th Hunger Games

He was actually happy.

Basil smiled contentedly as he finished the last few sentences. "And then there was only the snow. After a while, it began to melt in the sun. The end." He gave Barlen's shoulder a squeeze, then unwrapped his arm from around the younger Victor's shoulders. "What did you think?"

"I liked the…" Barlen hesitated. "The part about the sun coming up?" he ventured, as if unsure whether he was remembering that right.

Basil nodded. "That's one of my favorite parts, too." He glanced down at the floor, where his three-year-old niece, Brooke, was still playing with some blocks. "And what did you think, kiddo?"

"Pigs!" Brooke giggled, standing up suddenly and knocking a few blocks to the floor.

Barlen picked them up patiently. "I liked the pigs, too." He glanced up at Basil and whispered, "There were pigs, right?"

Basil nodded and tucked the book back on the shelf. "There certainly were." He leaned down and booped Brooke on the nose. "All right, you. Let's get you back upstairs to daddy."

Brooke shook her head insistently. "Wanna stay!"

Basil shook his head. It was tempting. It was so tempting. The library was warm and comfortable and safe. He was happy here, and he didn't need to glance down at the smile on Barlen's face to know that he was happy here, too. But he did, anyway. Barlen had a nice smile – and it was a smile that he was seeing more often recently.

Barlen scooped Brooke up in his arms as he stood. "We have somewhere to be, don't we."

Basil nodded, glancing at the clock on the wall. "Yeah, the reaping starts in about twenty minutes."

For a split second, a look of panic crossed Barlen's face, but it faded as he caught sight of the words on his arm. You won the Hunger Games. He was safe from the Games now. But that didn't mean today was going to be a pleasant one. "They can't pick me this year," Barlen said quietly, and the words were almost a question.

Basil shook his head. "No. You're safe. You won. They can't pick you again."

"But there is someone … someone else I should be worried about."

Basil nodded. He wasn't sure how Barlen did it. He could never seem to remember who was still in the reaping bowl, but he knew he should be concerned about someone. Maybe it had just been the look on Basil's face.

He could lie, of course. Say there was nothing to worry about. Barlen would probably believe him. But he'd promised, five years ago, after Barlen had won the Games, that he would never lie to him. That he would tell the truth even if it would be harder for both of them. And for five years, he had kept that promise. "It's your sister," he answered. "Chita. She's sixteen this year. Her name is in the bowl five times. But only five times," he repeated. "And that's thanks to you. You won, so now she doesn't have to take tesserae. She's never had ner name in the bowl more than she absolutely has to. You did that for her."

Barlen nodded. That helped, Basil knew. It helped to remember that there were good things that came from winning the Games. Oh, there were also horrible things, of course. Terrible memories. Guilt. Nightmares. Panic at an odd movement out of the corner of his eye. But there were good things, too.

They were still alive, for a start.

Barlen glanced around the library. "Can we bring one with us?"

Basil raised an eyebrow. "To the reaping?"

"To the Capitol." Barlen hesitated. "That's where we're going after the reaping, right? We won, so we're mentors. That's why we're all dressed up, yeah?" he added, tugging at the sleeve of his shirt, which looked a bit tight now that Basil thought about it.

Basil nodded. "That's right." He cocked his head. "You remembered that, you know – that I won, too. That's not on your arm. That was you."

And there was that smile again. "I guess I did," Barlen agreed. "I guess you're pretty memorable."

Basil chuckled. "I guess we could probably bring one. Maybe two. How about you pick out a couple, huh?"

"You don't think anyone will mind?"

Basil shrugged. "They shouldn't. They're our books."

Our books. Technically, most of them were his. He'd pulled the strings, called in the favors, gone searching through old abandoned houses, scouring the attics and cellars and hidden nooks and crannies for books – any books he could find. President Brand had sent a few himself. The library had started small, but it was growing.

And now it was theirs. His and Barlen's, yes, but in a way, it belonged to the whole district. And Basil couldn't help feeling that that was right, somehow. That books should belong to everyone.

He had been rather surprised to find that other people agreed. After a few months, an old woman had approached him sheepishly with a few books that had been tucked away in her attic since before the rebellion, hidden away all this time. In the months that followed, a few others had done the same. And then in the last few weeks, there had been more, as if word had gotten out that, no, no one was going to get in trouble for having hidden away the books all this time.

None of them, of course, were anything that should have gotten them in trouble. Nothing rebellious. Nothing anti-Capitol. But immediately after the rebellion, people had been cautious of anything that could be stretched to look rebellious, and the Capitol had seen rebels in every corner, every shadow. But that wasn't what President Brand saw. That wasn't how he looked at the world, and slowly, the districts were starting to realize that.

Barlen selected a few books from the shelf seemingly at random. "Have we read these ones yet?"

Basil glanced at the covers. "This one, yes. I don't think we've read the other one yet." He cocked his head, watching Barlen curiously.

"What?" Barlen asked.

"Nothing."

"What?"

"Just…" Don't lie. "I was just wondering why you like listening to me read them so much if…"

"If I can't even remember whether we've read them before or not?" Barlen finished.

"Well … yeah."

"I remember bits and pieces. And…" He started, but then looked away.

"And?"

"And you have a nice voice," Barlen finished sheepishly. "I like listening to you. Happy?"

Basil blinked. Oh. "Yes, I think I am."

"What?"

"Happy." He slid an arm around Barlen's shoulders as the pair of them made their way up the stairs. "I think I'm happy."

Basil's brother Lance was waiting for them at the top of the stairs. "Cutting it a bit close, aren't you?" he asked.

Basil shrugged. "Bet you we still get there before Tobiah." That was a safe bet most years. Even Crispin and Eloise seemed to be cutting it closer, too, now that they weren't actually mentoring anymore. They could show up for the reaping and then just go back to their lives. They'd earned it, of course, and Basil would rather mentor with Barlen than any of the others. Still…

Still nothing, Basil told himself. They'd done their part. Now it was their turn – him and Barlen. Barlen handed Brooke off to her father, fiddled with his shirt for a moment, then took Basil's hand as they headed for the square.

As it turned out, they were actually the first of the Victors to make it to the stage, but it didn't take long for the others to arrive. Basil waved a little to the others as they made their way to the stage. "Hey, Crispin. Eloise. Tobiah." That helped Barlen, he knew – repeating the names as often as possible to make it easier for him to remember.

The five of them took their places onstage, and Basil couldn't help noticing that Crispin's eyes were fixed on the thirteen-year-old section. It was Cynthia's second year, and Robyn was sixteen, just like Chita. His oldest daughter, Sierra, meanwhile, had just turned twenty. Basil didn't know them all that well – certainly not as well as he knew Barlen's family – but he gave Crispin a nod as their escort, Gladys Howell, joined them onstage. "I'm sure they'll be fine," he whispered.

It was a lie, of course. None of them could be sure about whose name might come out of that bowl. But he hadn't made a promise not to lie to Crispin. Besides, was a lie really a lie if both of them knew it was a lie? Crispin nodded, but he knew as well as any of them that anyone could be picked. Victors' relatives had been picked before. It had been thirty years since a Victor's child had been reaped, but a few had volunteered. Jasper. Camden.

Of course, neither of Crispin's daughters was planning to volunteer. As far as he knew, District Nine had never had a volunteer. People here had more sense. More self-preservation. He certainly would never have volunteered for the Games. Yes, he'd won, but it wasn't something he would have chosen. It wasn't something any of them would have chosen.

Basil gave Barlen's hand a squeeze as Gladys made her way towards the first reaping bowl, reached in, and drew a slip. "Lavender Nettle!"

Slowly, the fourteen-year-old section parted around a tall, wiry girl in a plain tan dress, white stockings, and black flats. For a moment, she stared, gaping at the stage. Once the Peacekeepers started moving towards her, however, she took a few steps in the right direction.

Basil felt Barlen's hand relax a little as Lavender joined them onstage. Chita was safe for another year. Crispin's daughters were safe. Lavender, meanwhile, was still staring blankly at the crowd, clenching and unclenching her fists, trying to keep herself from crying. Gladys quickly reached into the second bowl and drew a name. "Uriel Xia!"

Barlen's hand tensed again as the thirteen-year-old section parted around a small boy in a golden yellow polo shirt, black dress pants, and leather shoes. A gasp rang through the crowd, and then the boy started shouting. "Wait! What? No, that can't be right! It can't be me! Wait!"

But the Peacekeepers didn't wait. Two of them quickly strode forward and took the boy by the arms, dragging him towards the stage even as he continued protesting. "Wait! Please, wait!"

The Peacekeepers dumped the boy onstage, but he quickly scrambled to his feet. He was short and thin, with brown skin, short dark hair, and dark eyes that were brimming with tears. "Wait! Please, help! Help!"

Just as Gladys turned back to the microphone, however, another voice cut through the crowd. "Wait! I volunteer! I volunteer!"

The crowd made way as a girl in a rose-pink dress and brown flats raced towards the stage. "Wait, please!" she gasped as she made her way up the stairs. "Please. I volunteer."

Lavender rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Nice try, dummy. You can't volunteer to take his place. You'd have to volunteer for me and go with him." Basil felt Barlen's hand leave his, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the younger Victor jotting something in his notebook.

The other girl's expression hardened. "I'm not a dummy. And that's what I'm doing."

Genuine shock crossed the other girl's face. "What?"

"Get out of here, Lavender."

Uriel shook his head. "Wait. Demeter, that's not what I meant. I–"

The girl, apparently Demeter, took a step closer to Uriel. "Too late, Uri."

As Lavender hurried off the stage, Gladys took a step towards the girl. "My, my, isn't that something. And what's your name, young lady?"

"Demeter Moire," the girl answered quietly. She was a little taller than the boy and stockier, with light tan skin, straight, silky black hair, and dark eyes.

If Gladys was expecting something more – maybe something about how proud she was to be District Nine's first volunteer or how she was certain one of them was going to be coming home – she didn't get it. The girl fell silent, as if the full realization of what she'd just done was finally hitting her. She held out her hand to Uriel, who shook it silently. Then the cameras clicked off, and the pair were led away.

Basil turned to Barlen. "Got a question?"

Barlen looked confused for a moment, but then glanced back down at his notebook. "Yeah. Why couldn't she just volunteer for him?"

Basil shrugged. "That's the rules. One boy and one girl."

"Why?"

Basil cocked his head. "Not sure, really, now that you mention it. That's just how it's always been."

Barlen's forehead wrinkled. "During my Games … I thought … Wasn't my district partner a boy?"

"One of them was," Basil agreed. "There were three of you. Quarter Quells are a little bit different."

"But not this year."

"Right."

"What'd she say her name was?"

"Demeter. Demeter Moire." Basil hesitated. Why did that name sound familiar? He hadn't heard it, but he could've sworn he'd seen it written down somewhere – and recently, too. But he couldn't place it, and asking Barlen wasn't going to be any help, so he waited for Barlen to finish writing down the name in his notebook, along with copying down Uriel's name from the slip Gladys had handed him. "Look like they'll probably be working together in any case," he observed once Barlen had finished. "But which one would you like officially?"

Barlen glanced down at his notebook, then back up at Basil. "I'll take Uriel, if that's all right."

Basil nodded. "Fine with me." He turned to congratulate Crispin on making it through another year, but the older Victors were already gone. He shook his head. "Looks like it's just you and me."

Barlen tucked his notebook back in his pocket. "Guess they couldn't wait to get back home and out of these clothes, huh?" He tugged uncomfortably at his shirt.

Basil chuckled. "Looks like you've outgrown that one, too." In the last few years, Barlen had sprouted up like a weed, and didn't seem to show any signs of stopping. "We'll have to get you a whole new wardrobe again soon, but that can wait until–" He stopped.

Wardrobe.

That was it.

"What?" Barlen asked, watching his expression.

"We have to go back and get something before we head to the train," Basil answered vaguely. "Something I found in an old house while I was out looking for books." Something he'd found in the back of a wardrobe. Not a usual place to keep books, certainly, but he'd been surprised sometimes by where people would hide things they didn't want the Peacekeepers to find. But this hadn't been a book. It was a letter.

A letter addressed to his tribute.

Uriel Xia, 13

This wasn't what he'd meant.

Uriel paced back and forth across the floor of the room while his parent, Emperor, watched silently. "I didn't mean for her to volunteer!" Uriel insisted. "I was just scared. I wanted someone to help me, but … but I didn't mean for it to be her. I never actually expected her to volunteer to go with me. I would never have asked her to do that!"

Emperor quickly pulled Uriel to their side and into a hug. "Of course not, my little prince. Of course you wouldn't have. But she made her choice. She must have had a good reason for it. Maybe she just wanted to help you survive."

"But that means she's going to die!" Uriel was shouting now, but he didn't care. If anyone had a good reason to shout, it was someone who'd just been chosen for a fight to the death – and whose best friend had insisted on going with them. "And I don't want her to die. I don't want any of this. Can't you … do something?"

Deep down, he knew the answer. For the first time since they'd adopted him, Emperor looked powerless as they shook their head. "I'm afraid not. You know I would if I could."

Uriel's heart sank. They would, he knew. Of course they would. Emperor would do anything for him. He was their only child, their little prince, their pride and joy. They'd always said so, and they'd always been supportive of anything Uriel wanted to do. Singing, songwriting, poetry – anything he'd wanted. Anything that would bring a little light and joy to the district.

But none of that would be useful in the Games. Oh, it would probably make the audience smile, but you couldn't kill a tribute with poetry. Singing wasn't a weapon. If you were staring up at a Career and started singing, the most that would happen was they might laugh at you before they chopped your head off.

Uriel's stomach churned. He hated that thought. He hated thinking like that. He didn't want to think about dying. About fighting. About the Games. He just wanted things to be the way they were. His life was good. Emperor was good. Demeter was so good, she'd volunteered for the Games just because he'd asked for help. He didn't want things to change.

He just wanted to be happy.

Uriel buried his face in Emperor's shoulder. "It's not fair," he whispered. "It was only two slips. It shouldn't have been me. And it shouldn't have been her. It shouldn't have–"

He didn't finish the last thought. Because that was a dangerous thought. It shouldn't have been anyone. The Games shouldn't exist. But thinking like that, he knew, was even more dangerous than the Games themselves. The Games would only get you killed. Thoughts like that – rebellious thoughts – would get your entire family executed along with you. Maybe their new president wasn't as harsh as the ones before him, but there was still no place for rebellion. Not in District Nine. They knew better. He knew better.

But the thought wouldn't go away. If it was someone else in the Games – if it was Lavender and some other boy instead of Demeter and him – that would just mean that someone else would be in this same room, saying goodbye to the people who loved them instead. The room would be the same. The festivities would be the same. The tribute parade, the interviews, all the lights and spectacle and show – it would all be the same. The Games would be the same. They were always the same.

Only the players changed.

And he was a player now. It didn't matter to them that he didn't want to be. Who cared how a pawn felt? Who thought to ask a playing card how it felt about being discarded? When he and Demeter played checkers, had they ever once thought about how it must feel for the pieces – to be moved and jumped and taken from the board, then dumped back into the box, only to be taken out again and used once more, playing the same game over and over again?

Emperor cocked his head. "You should write that down."

"What?"

"You were mumbling – about game pieces and how they feel. It sounded poetic. You could do something with that."

Uriel blinked. He hadn't realized he'd said any of that out loud. "You think so, your highness?"

Emperor nodded. "Absolutely. You can do anything you set your mind to, remember?"

Uriel shook his head. "Okay, but I don't think I'm going to be killing any tributes with poetry."

"Did I say you should kill tributes with it?"

"No, but … that's what the Games are about, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

Uriel fell silent. Of course it was. The Games were about killing. Except … no. No, that wasn't quite right. The Games were made up of killing. What they were about … that was different. That was bigger. He looked up at Emperor, who smiled. "There you go. I think you've got it." Uriel nodded.

Maybe he did.

Demeter Moire, 14

Maybe she had made the right choice after all.

Demeter leaned back against the wall as the door shut behind her foster family. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but she'd expected something. Some sort of reaction. Some acknowledgement, at least, of the fact that she was probably going to die. But they'd all been just as stiff as ever. Distant. Cold. Why had they adopted her in the first place if they didn't even care that she was going to be gone?

She'd wondered that before sometimes – why they'd taken her in. Not that she wanted to go back to the orphanage, of course – especially now that Uri wasn't there. They'd been adopted around the same time. She'd hoped, back then, that being adopted would change everything. That once she had a family, the teasing and bullying would stop. That her family would be there for her, stand up for her, the way that Emperor always did for Uri.

But her family wasn't like that. Her foster mother and father were almost never around, and said so little when they were. She didn't even know what they did when they weren't at the house. They certainly didn't seem the type to go around partying. They must have some sort of jobs, because there was always plenty of money, but exactly what they did was a mystery.

She'd asked her foster sister Pashmina a few times, shortly after she'd been adopted, but Pashmina was never interested in talking. She was only interested in training – in training Demeter to fight. Not with weapons, of course – Nine wasn't a Career district, and weapons were strictly regulated anywhere that didn't have the Capitol's explicit permission. Besides, Pashmina had never given her the impression that the training was for anything in particular – and certainly not for the Hunger Games. She knew how to defend herself without a weapon, but she'd never really thought about when she might use it. As far as she was concerned, it was just an excuse for Pashmina to try to hurt her as much as possible, until she learned how to stop her from doing it.

Demeter closed her eyes. No, her foster family wouldn't miss her – and she certainly wasn't going to miss them. So maybe this was better for everyone. It was certainly better for Lavender. Demeter clenched her fists. The fact that she'd had to volunteer for Lavender of all people in order to help Uri … that just didn't seem fair. Dummy. That was what Lavender had called her – what so many of the kids in the orphanage had called her. Just because she struggled to read, just because the words never seemed to stay put on the page, they seemed to think that meant she couldn't be good at anything.

Uri had never thought like that. He'd stood up for her back at the orphanage, and she'd always been there to help him, to get him out of whatever trouble he always seemed to find himself in. And there always seemed to be something. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before he found himself in a situation like this – something that was too big for her to rescue him from.

But that hadn't stopped her from trying. She hadn't even thought about it – not really. He had been onstage, calling for help, and she … she had wanted to help him. She had always wanted to help him. To stand up for him the way he'd stood up for her. To protect him. But she couldn't protect him from this.

Unless she could.

But only if she died. On some level, she'd known that when she'd volunteered. It would be different, of course, if she could have volunteered in his place. There wouldn't have even been a question that that was the right choice. Of the two of them, after all, who would have a better chance in the Games? Someone who actually knew how to defend themself, or someone who would rather sit around on a rooftop and write poetry? They both knew the answer to that.

Demeter shook her head, and for a moment, she could imagine the two of them sitting on that rooftop, swinging their legs over the side, looking up at the stars and just … just being. Not having to do anything or say anything or interact with anyone else. Just the two of them. Being with him made her happy. Uri made people happy, and that was worth protecting. That was worth fighting for.

Maybe it was even worth dying for.

"The only time you're afraid is when you're happy. You just don't expect it to last."