Ferrari Benz- Into Thin Air D6F

Titian was watching me. I couldn't always see him (though sometimes I could- he would straight up lurk around the Games building glaring ominously at me) I knew he was waiting for his chance. You see, Titian Qin hated my guts. He had good reason, as far as someone like Titian understood "good". You see, I puked on his shoes. In my defense, it was because he made me eat a rat. In his defense, he had no defense. He was just a horrible person. I'd wondered sometimes if Titian was born like that or if something in the world made him like that. Either one was ghoulish so I tended not to dwell on it.

The boy in front of me wasn't Titian. Maybe he was just some normal kid, by Capitol standards. I'd hear him out before I passed judgment.

"You're Ferrari, right?" the kid asked, glancing over his shoulder in a most suspicious way. Or maybe I was just paranoid. Likely both, to be honest.

"The one and only," I said. "Except Ferrari Taylor from third grade, but she left school the next year." God, that was a horrible year. I hated sharing my name.

"Is it true about all those things the Capitol did to you?" the kid asked, wide-eyed.

I mentally rolled my eyes. "What? Mean things? Why would the Capitol do that?" I would have thought Titian would coach his spies a bit better, but maybe this kid was just especially thick.

"Like the long walk and that stuff?" the kid pressed. Kid, even the way you said it... He said it devoid of any emotional attachment, like it was just two random words he had written on the back of his hand. If he knew anything about what he was saying, if he'd seen even a glimpse of it... that wouldn't be how it would roll off his tongue.

"I did a lot of walking, I guess. It wasn't that bad." I didn't remember that, remember? That was the secret Games. So I kept a straight face even if my heart rate shot up right at the words. I didn't remember it with the horror the rest of us did, sure, but even if I had, Titian didn't need to know.

The kid glanced around uncertainly. It seemed I was going off-script.

"No, I don't remember anything inappropriate. Just nice, wholesome Hunger Games," I said. "So why don't you run along."

Moments later, I opened the door to my room. The metallic smell hit me and I steeled myself as my stomach flopped once. I sighed and looked down at my bed. The rat was in one piece, which was nicer than it could have been Guess Titian got grossed out. So the dead rat on my pillow was in one piece, lying in the center of a small pink stain on the cloth. I looked at it dead-eyed, a little upset but mostly just plain done. The worst thing I could do to Titian, who was no doubt watching the cameras, wasn't to strike back. It was bored indifference.

"Ew, a dead rat," I said mildly. I got some toilet paper from my bathroom and scooped it into the garbage can outside the bedroom. "Wonder how that got there. Gross."

Joseph Carpenter- Wandering Souls D2M

Was it wrong for me to be here? I knew murder was wrong. Most people believed that- it seemed to generally be common sense- but I specifically subscribed to a religion that said that. Maybe it was getting killed myself that did it, but I was starting to think it wasn't very nice, what I was doing. But it was too late now, wasn't it? Right or wrong, I wanted to get home.

It was easier that there weren't any really young people here, but it just seemed like it made the youngest of us look younger than they were. Gabriel, for example. I thought of myself as a good person, but killing a deaf kid? One who weighed half what I did? But it was just as gross to think someone was worth more because of a disability. Surely all of us who could hear also wanted to live.

I'm so alone. It hit me all at once. Why I kept wandering the training room, watching the others and thinking about their lives. Why I didn't seem to have a plan or motivation or really any thought of the future. Why I just wanted to cry all the time and it felt so stupid since I had no idea why. I wanted to be with someone. Anyone. I just wanted to be alongside someone else. To matter in someone's life.

So I wanted an ally. From such a crushingly metaphysical problem, it was one tangible step. I wanted an ally, and I really had no idea who. Someone else lonely, I guess. I didn't really care if they were a Career or not. If they were a Career, I had a better chance to get out of here. If they weren't, I could tell myself I was doing a good deed. The kernel of guilt that was starting to fester in me at being here by choice would have something to latch onto.

I think I'd like someone fun. It was a silly thing to be concerned about, and it wasn't my only criterion, but I wanted someone lighthearted. I used to be a carefree sort of guy. I could remember how easily I used to go through life, even though I couldn't remember how exactly I did it. Maybe I just needed someone to bring out my goofy side again. I could imagine us in the arena, fooling around and talking about stupid silly things in between killing people and probably getting killed.

It would be like being with Bella again. As soon as I thought about it, I couldn't deny it. Bella had been a huge jokester. I was smiling even remembering her. And I hadn't been able to save her. I'd had nothing to do with her death, but I would never stop imagining that somehow I'd found out what was about to happen, that I'd saved her just in time. If I had an ally, it would be like another chance. It wouldn't be, not really. But it could be some little piece of her- some piece of my old life, before I got all mopey. Or at least I wouldn't be so lonely anymore. I couldn't have my old life back. That wasn't possible. But I could not be lonely.

Oaken Mushroom- No Way Down D7M

"So, what does the wise mentor have for me?" I was joking, but it was weird. Clair was my sister, first of all, and secondly, she'd barely lasted longer in the Games than me, technically speaking. We'd been together from the start and the only difference between us I could see was she was a little more brutal than I was.

Clair smiled, but it was thin and melted in an instant. She turned her head away from me.

"Yeah," she said, almost whispery. She turned to look at me with a sad smile. "I think you should train with someone else."

I laughed, more to signal my confusion than anything else. "What, you don't want to train me."

I saw the tears in her eyes. "I want you to come back," she said. "And I don't want you thinking about me. This one has to be you. Train with Loki." her voice gained strength. "He has things to teach you. I wish I did, but I don't. Go with him and don't think about me." She was shaking as she pulled away from me across the table.

I sat there for some time. I tried to think of something, and the moments stretched on as I came up empty. We'd been so carefree during our Games, as carefree as Tributes could be, anyway. We'd had each other, at least. That had been the one thing we could depend on. It was the one safe, certain thing in my life. Now she wanted to cut that off, and I sat there in silence, because she was right.

Loki wasn't like Clair. I could see it just by looking at him, even if I hadn't known his story. Most people in Seven didn't like him, and I could see why. I didn't really hold his victory against him, but the effect was heightened by just his... being. He had not just the looks, but the aura of a snake. A snake, or some bird that would peck out the eyes so you couldn't stop him from going for the kill. He had the steely, darting look of someone who'd lived his entire life knowing everyone was out to get him and who had lived this long by getting them first. I could see why Clair wanted me to be like him.

"Do you see what happens when you try to come out clean?" Loki asked.

"Isn't there anything too far?" I asked.

"No."

Felix Veaux- In Your Hands D10M

Tillo came and saw me on my first day back. We sat there looking at each other, both of us pushing down the nausea at all that had changed. I barely recognized her. We'd been apart longer than I'd been alive. In the six decades of her life, I was a matter of weeks. Weeks that meant so much to us, that would last forever for us, but that were only weeks in the end. Someday we were going to have to admit that.

"It's been a long, long time," I said, looking at Tillo where she sat in the sterile gray visiting chair next to my bed. In another time she might have climbed in with me. Things were different now. Tillo's hair was flecked with gray. Her face was like my mother's more than my lover's. I didn't see her in her eyes. I saw someone I didn't know, looking back with nostalgia on someone who hadn't changed at all.

"So, pick it up right where we left off, am I right?" I said with an empty smile. She didn't smile, but she didn't need to. I knew she had never been much of a smiler. She wasn't as much of a talker as I was, either, so I did most of the lifting.

"It was lovely, what we had, wasn't it?" I asked. Neither of us even needed to acknowledge the tense I'd used. "But time does go on, doesn't it? And we can't stop that." I'd been holding her hand loosely on the bed sheets beside me. I felt the new thinness to her skin, how it slid under me with wrinkles I hadn't known before. She curled her fingers underneath me, pressing on me gently.

"And people move on," I said. I knew Tillo was ready to slide her hand out from under mine, and that she was holding back for me. So I slid my hand off hers. The harsh light glared on her skin, its blue tone setting off her eyes beautifully. I would have liked to have grown old with her. I was glad for the chance to see it secondhand. We'd never know if we might have drifted apart, if we might have fallen out of love, if we might have regretted everything and stayed together only because we were trying to convince each other loved conquered all. We didn't have memories together. We only had what might have been. I think it might have been beautiful.

"He can come in if he wants," I said of my son. "Or if he wants, it's fine it he has nothing to say. I have nothing to give him. I hope he lives a happy life. If you tell him anything from me, tell him he doesn't owe me anything."

Jeanie Clay- Heart of Darkness D9F

Someone like me had to win. I didn't fool myself I was the great savior who would bring this nation out of darkness, but I knew I would try. Every revolution started against impossible odds. Almost all of them failed, but some of them didn't. Sometimes it took a hundred tries- a hundred would-be renegated dying in the attempt and proving that the spirit wasn't dead- before someone made it. Even if I was one of those failures who never got anything past perhaps a footnote in a history book, as long as someone was trying, we were moving in the right direction. Sometimes people didn't have to believe it would happen for them. They just had to refuse to stop trying.

I couldn't change a nation. For now, my rebellion was simply refusing to believe I couldn't win. I was going all-in. I hadn't even visited the plants station. I still remembered the ones I'd learned from last time. If they weren't enough, I couldn't foresee every possibility. I had to choose what I thought was important and keep moving forward. No, I'd barely left the sword station. I'd learned a thousand ways to lose, and that was the start of learning just one single way to win. I was surrounded by Careers and other Tributes who were twice as prepared as I was. If I wanted to survive, I would need to kill. It didn't matter if I only had a week. A week was what I had and I was going to make it enough. Tributes had done it before me and Tributes would do it after me.

Once in a while, I thought about the books. The old building I'd found must have been destroyed by now, whether or not anyone had found the books in the attic. They were all gone now, all the relics I'd once had. I cursed myself for not staying up a little later, not working a little faster, so I could have read more of them when I had the chance. So often I'd picked silly ones. Some of them probably weren't even forbidden. They'd just been forgotten in the dusty old room. But some of them... some of them had been priceless. I still remembered reading the old legal code once. It was torn up, like someone had ripped the cover off and tried to make it look like just random garbage. Most of it had crumbled away or gotten nibbled on by mice. The one thing that stuck out to me was that it used to be protected that people were allowed to demonstrate in public if they didn't like what the government was doing. I couldn't even wrap my head around it, just being able to go out in the streets and say the Capitol did something wrong. I couldn't imagine what that country must have looked like.

Those books were gone now. Someone had destroyed them, and the rest of us had let them. If someone like me changed this country someday, they would still be gone. Those books would never, ever be back. I'd write more like them if I could, but I'd never been able to get my thoughts on a page like that. The best I could do, the best I could possibly hope for, was that someday someone like me would change us into what we used to be, and that someone else would write new ones.