Trent Charr, 13, District Twelve, Cancer

Back when he was in the Capitol, his mentor had given Trent invaluable advice. "The best thing that you can learn in training is first aid." she told him, "Keeping yourself alive is good. But if you can learn how to keep others alive, no one will turn on you."

It seemed like solid advice. That was part of how Serena May Lenovius had won last year, after all. She'd been brought into the Career alliance because of her ability to heal the wounded and spent most of the Games protected and well-fed. So Trent had taken it to heart and learned everything he possibly could. He already had some experience, dealing with drunks and minor injuries back when he helped with the tavern. Which meant that with the basics down, he learned faster than the others at the station.

Yet he wasn't sure that any station could have prepared him for this.

Revalie sat to the side, her eyes fixated on the wall. She was still dripping wet, as any attempt to remove her soaked clothes was met with violence. Trent couldn't blame her. They were all boys and the only spare clothes they had were underwear sets that a sponsor had given them (proof that even when generous, the Capitol was cruel). But he worried about the continued contact with the water, even if it was only slight.

Consus wasn't better off, though at least they'd manage to get him dry. The issue was his wound. The weapon Revalie threw hadn't hit anything vital. But it had fallen off at some point in the pond, allowing the water to enter the wound. Consus fell in and out of consciousness all night, occasionally screaming or babbling nonsense. No one knew precisely what the hallucinogen was or how much he'd been exposed to. He'd survived drowning, but without proper medical care, it was difficult to say what would happen.

"We've been here too long." Nate said. It was becoming an old argument, starting at some point last evening. Now it was nearly noon and he was only getting louder.

"They're in no state to be moved." BV replied.

"Then leave them."

"What have you got against Revalie?"

"Nothing. But only one person wins, BV. I want to live. And I thought allying would improve my chances. Revalie's an enemy, in case you forgot. She attacked us. And I adore Consus, you know I do. But you heard what Trent said. It's possible we can't fix him. Unlike you, I didn't ask to be here. This isn't some…. some Summer camp for me. I'm not going to jeopardize my chances for survival."

The silence stretched on. Trent pretended to occupy himself with treating Consus, wiping around his shoulder wound with a rag. It probably wasn't terribly convincing, but no one was paying him much attention.

"Bee." BV finally spoke.

"What?" Nate asked.

"Call me Bee."

"Uh… ok." Nate said, confused, "Bee. My point still stands."

Bee looked over to Trent, who was pretending to be focused on treating Consus. "What do you think?"

What he thought was that it would have been better not to ask him. Sounding like he was a grown-up was getting really exhausting. And there was a slow stinging pain on his arm that he was having trouble trying to ignore. It wasn't from the fight, most likely. Things had been quick, but he didn't think anyone had hit him. It could have happened at any time since the bloodbath, but he doubted it was serious. Not as serious as the two older people he was trying to save. Or Bee looking at him as if he had the answers.

Something in him broke.

"My parents are dead. And the ladies are nice, but… I don't think they'd miss me. All I keep thinking is that I want to go home. But I don't actually have a home. There's nothing for me. I keep going, but I don't know why. I… "

Trent felt his eyes grow moist and stopped. He didn't want to cry.

Nate looked thoroughly bewildered. Trent supposed he couldn't blame him. No one was actually responding to his arguments. He had meant to, but it was difficult to keep everything in all of the time.

Bee was hugging him. Trent couldn't help it anymore, tears started flowing down his cheeks. Why was everything so hard? And what would be waiting for him if he won? It all felt so pointless, so overwhelming.

"I'm sorry." Nate said, his voice small, "Getting home is all I can think about, too."

Bee took a deep breath and Trent could see them visibly calm down, "It's difficult to sneak up on people in the arena. We can post someone as a lookout outside the cave. I want to stay with them as long as possible. Can you perhaps see the advantage of being with someone this devoted to helping their allies?"

Nate glanced between the two of them, conflict clear on his face. "I'm sorry," he said, then left the cave.

Bee released from the hug and looked at Trent, "Maybe you should go with him."

"What? Don't you need me to heal them?"

"You said yourself there's nothing more you can do. And I'm worried about Nate. It's the water, I think. Whatever he saw, it's been rattling around his head this whole time. And the more he pushes it away, the more likely it is that he'll be consumed by it."

"So you want me to leave you alone?"

Bee's eyes flashed. "I'm not alone. Consus and Revalie are here."

"It's a bad idea to split the party. And you're the one with the most combat experience. Do… do you not want me?" He hated how vulnerable he sounded.

But he should have known. No one had truly wanted him since his parents died. They said they did, but it all felt hollow. Gazes of pity for the poor orphan boy. Why would tributes in the Hunger Games be any different? Why would a Career from One have anything to do with him?

"You're right," Bee said suddenly, "I wasn't thinking properly."

Trent wanted to believe him, but his fragile feeling of security was already shattered, "I don't need your pity."

"This isn't pity, Trent. I was wallowing. Nate's lashing out, but maybe we do need to start prioritizing survival. But not by abandoning each other. We stick together. We fight back."

"How do we do that?"

Bee held out a hand. Trent took it. They walked a few feet until they were at the lip of the cave. As they walked, Trent searched for Nate but he was already gone.

"Earlier, you mentioned a medication that can help with overdoses." Bee said.

"Naloxone?"

"Naloxone!" Bee said, shouting up at the sky, "And water guns. Trust me, you'll want to see this."

Millie Oatbratten, 13, District Twelve, Cancer

It was difficult for Millie to adjust to the other two Careers being in the cornucopia. They weren't terrible to be around, precisely. Both of them were quiet and grim, keeping mostly to themselves. Ally tended to Solomon's wounds with silent efficiency, both of them communicating with each other effortlessly. As if whatever had happened while they were gone had bound them together.

Millie understood what that was like. Growing up in the basement like she did, she wasn't used to other people. Relationships were new to her, a strange bright shining thing that made little sense but she coveted it nonetheless. Woodrow had offered friendship to her before he died, and she still felt the ache of his absence. When the other Careers left, it was just her and Hades. A man who had seen her, who had sworn to protect her. While Millie had never had a brother, she imagined it must be something like this.

But now the island was no longer just theirs. Ally and Solomon returned to the cornucopia, bringing the reality of the Games with them. Solomon was injured, Nixie gone. The quiet peaceful hours where Millie could almost forget about death were over.

"Millie. How long until the next island makes impact?" Hades asked, fiddling with some liquids on a leather strap he placed across his chest.

A bandolier, he'd called it. And the liquids, poison. A slow death, attacking within a person rather than without. Two things unheard of in the basement. The more she found out about the world, the more she understood her mother. The only sensible thing to do was hide, wait it out, hope that the danger missed you.

"An hour, I think." She said, raising her voice as much as possible so the others could hear. It barely carried.

"Are they all going to shake as much?" Solomon asked, "I remember feeling us hit."

Hades shrugged and kept fiddling with his bandolier. "Probably not. The center is bigger now. More mass to absorb the energy. But we should probably tie down the weapons. Just in case."

Solomon laughed and Millie wondered if it was stress or if she had missed a joke.

"Well. Ally's doing a good job patching me up, but I'm not sure I'll be ready to run around for another three or four hours. So you two will have to go together."

Ally's head jerked up, "We can't both go. Someone has to protect the cornucopia."

"I'm not dead." he argued, "and I did fair enough with ranged weapons. Just give me a sling and I'll be able to hold people off."

"Is there some sort of virus in the arena that turns everyone into idiots?" Ally was so loud that Millie had to cup her ears.

Hades put a hand on Ally's shoulder, "He's still a career. And Millie will be with him. She's a natural scout, which should give them an advantage. Despite our central position, we don't have a stranglehold on the games yet. I need you to hunt with me."

Ally kicked the ground with her foot. "Fine. I guess I could use a win."

"How is killing people a win?" Millie asked.

The girl from Two suddenly became even more agitated. "Hades, why are we keeping her around? She's going to throttle our screen time."

Solomon waved off Ally's protests. "No one's going to want to watch me heal anyway. Go hunt. I'll field questions."

A silent moment passed between them, and Millie wondered what had happened to them. The last time she'd seen the careers, Ally seemed prepared to murder Solomon at the earliest opportunity. Now they seemed like family, stuck in unspoken conversation.

Ally didn't linger much longer. She nodded and headed out of the mouth of the cornucopia.

"Because it's a story," Solomon explained, "No one is quite sure how it will end, and there's luck involved. But the Hunger Games is a story. One of the best ways to survive is to make the Capitol want to see more of you. Ally has the best head for narrative out of everyone for Two, though she hides it well. So far, we haven't been doing well. We're hardly the shining competent Careers that people expect us to be. But a kill changes that. Our previous failures become an arc. She's afraid if we don't do something soon, people will give up on us."

Millie tried to process that, like she tried to process everything she learned in this distressing new world. Solomon acted as if this was a normal way to think about things, but to her it just seemed like another way to die. Vanishing inside of someone else's story, until you barely seemed like a person at all.

"Why would you let that happen?" She asked.

Solomon shrugged, "Everyone has different reasons. Money. Glory. But when it comes down to it, I think it all comes from the same desire. We have something we care about that matters more. Something we'd kill or die to protect."

Something they would kill or die to protect. Millie wondered if that was how her mother felt about her.

"My mother's dead," She said. It was the first time she'd said it out loud. Yet it felt better than she thought it would. Millie had been afraid that uttering it to someone would have a finality to it. As if speaking the words would truly make her gone. But that was the thing. Nothing could bring her back. Instead of sinking with grim reality, her words floated with the uplifting clarity of truth.

"She was my whole world." Millie continued, "There's nothing left for me to care about."

Solomon coughed violently, then looked down at his wounds. The bandages were beginning to seep red with blood. Now that Ally was gone, he seemed far less stable. In fact, he appeared on the brink of death.

"From the minute I was born, my life was set out for me. Heir to the Cavalier family. The perfect, obedient child. But all I cared about was my brother. I thought if I could win the Hunger Games, we could run away together. He'd quit drugs. Our parents wouldn't be able to touch us. It all seems terribly naive now. As if surviving all I've seen would give Judas less trauma. Like the Capitol would let us run away. If I think about it, it was always going to end up like this."

Millie realized that her truth was allowing him to come to terms with his own. He wasn't going to survive this. At some point, Solomon had decided that there was something in his life that he was willing to die for. But only in this moment did he realize that he was actually going to.

"If you truly have nothing left, fight it. Fight them," he said, "No matter what happens. Whether or not you survive this. Don't let them make you a character in their story. Create your own."

A cannon sounded, and Solomon Cavalier was gone.

Lustre Audemar-Miucca, 18, District One, Pisces

Lustre was starting to get paranoid.

"It's a fish." Carnation said, "We've eaten like ten of them."

"Have we had this particular type of fish before? Same color, same size?"

Carnation raised an eyebrow, "You think they're poisoning specific types of fish?"

"It's possible."

Instead of responding, Carnation took a large bite out of her portion of the fish, saliva dribbling down her chin.

They were still on what Lustre had dubbed Pisces island: a brittle, raised rock full of little tidepools. There was plenty to eat here, and no clear predators. While the two of them had almost died of thirst getting to this island, staying there seemed safe.

Lustre knew enough about the Hunger Games to know it was never safe.

"You're a career, Lustre." Carnation said, "And I'm the wildcard who stole my sister's glory. We're not going to be the type of Tributes the gamemakers are going to throw mutts or natural disasters at. Most likely they'll herd someone to us."

For a second, it felt like Amber, not Carnation, was talking to him. She was always so talented at calming him down, keeping him focused. What was he going to do now that she was gone? What was a falcon without a falconer?

Still a bird of prey. He had to remember that.

"So do you think we should go hunting?" he asked, taking a tentative bite of his fish.

"Not necessarily. We have fresh water. Food. Everything a Tribute needs. I knew hunters back in Seven. They said that lakes and rivers are the best places to find prey. Everything needs to drink."

He swallowed, still remembering the clawing thirst he had barely fought off. Lustre would do anything to make sure he never felt like that again. Most likely others would feel similarly.

"Well speak of the devil." Carnation said, pointing.

It was an old phrase, something Lustre didn't fully understand, but he followed her finger nonetheless. In the distance, a dark figure bobbed up and down with the gentle waves. A boat.

"Put the fire out." Lustre said, and Carnation quickly threw dirt over their makeshift fire pit. Hopefully whoever was in the boat hadn't seen the fire yet.

He didn't have to give Carnation any more orders. Slowly, as if following the same thought, they both started sneaking through the rocks and tide pools in the direction of the boat. When at the beach, they found a large upright rock and sat together behind it.

"On the count of three?" She asked. Lustre nodded.

"One…"

"Two…"

"Three!"

They both ran at the boat, weapons drawn. It bobbed up and down, neither sailing away nor approaching.

"Wait!" Lustre called, stopping before he had to get into the water. Carnation was less lucky, wading up to her knees before slowing down.

They both looked at the empty boat, gently floating in place about twenty feet from the island.

"Who got an anchor in these games?" Carnation asked, "Probably not a sponsor gift. That would be one heck of a waste of money."

Lustre was not as concerned about the anchor. "The real question is where are they now?"

Alarm filled Carnation's eyes as she turned around and ran back to their camp. Lustre followed, a little behind at first but gradually increasing in pace. Their supplies were at the camp, including the water purification tablets. The fish seemed clean enough that perhaps the tidepools were safe. But Lustre didn't want to risk it. He wouldn't go thirsty again. He simply wouldn't.

They managed to arrive at the camp before the tribute could leave. Lustre didn't remember his name, but felt like he was one of the upper or mid districts. Three maybe? Yes, he was the non-career from Three. Not that it really mattered- he was raiding their camp. He looked up at them, a piece of stolen grilled fish falling from his mouth.

Carnation acted first. She swung at him, and the boy fell backwards. He grasped for something that Lustre didn't quite see, but he discounted it. The tribute was on the ground. This was an opportunity. He stabbed downward with his sword. The boy rolled, then tossed whatever he grabbed in Lustre's direction.

Embers. It was the remains of their campfire.

Lustre stumbled back, shrieking in pain as the coals made contact with his eyes. The battle continued without him. He could hear grunts and the occasional sound of Carnation's axe hitting against stone. But he couldn't see them. Try as he may, no matter how many times he blinked, he couldn't get anything to focus. Everything just looked like shades of light and dark.

He looked in front of him, two rapidly moving blurs in front of him. One was an ally, the other his target. But it was difficult to determine which was which.

Lustre took a breath and closed his eyes. He was letting his emotions get the better of him. Again. He tried to think of his memories of Amber, what she would tell him in this moment. He was the chosen career for One, he could almost hear her say, he had trained for this.

It was true. He thought back on his vigorous training with Amber after he was chosen as tribute, before the mini quell twist was announced. They would spar in different environments, attempting to mimic possible arena conditions. On one such occasion, they'd fought blindfolded. The weapons were wooden, but he still remembered the bruises. He also remembered how he had adapted. Learned to rely on sound, on touch, even on smell, to anticipate his opponent. Perhaps he was blinded for the moment, but he wasn't helpless.

He kept his eyes closed and listened. When he focused like this, he could hear Carnation's breathing. Feel the way the boy scrambled, artless and improvised but somehow still beating them. And then, finally, he found an opening.

There was a wet squelch as his sword struck true.

"Took you long enough." Carnation grumbled.

"I'll explain later."

Except he never got to. The boy blur got up suddenly and rammed into the Carnation blur, causing her to fall into a tide pool with a muffled shriek. The boy ran.

For a moment, Lustre thought about following him. But what could he do, really? His sight hadn't come back, and Carnation wasn't climbing back out. Was she hurt?

There was an agonized burbling sound below him and Lustre knew she was. So he chose her. He scrambled down the jagged rocks, much slower than he would have liked, and kept going until he could see the ghost of her form.

"Carnation. Carnation talk to me."

She didn't. The only answer was another choked gurgle. He held out his hand and she took it. At some point she must have noticed that he was blinded, because she placed his hand on top of her neck. He could feel both the gash and the blood gushing out of it. Carnation must have cut it on one of the rocks.

"Please," she choked out. It was a miracle she managed to articulate any words given the damage to her throat. But Lustre understood what she meant.

If only he had been faster. Or dodged the boy when he threw ash in his eyes. Perhaps there would be other options. But now there was only one.

"You were an excellent ally." Lustre said, but the sentence wasn't for her. He hoped that Carnation's father was watching. That he could see what his obsession had done to his brave, competent daughter. Eclipse Banyon was the real murderer.

But Lustre was the weapon. He refused to let her suffer, so he fumbled for his sword, positioned it over her heart, and pushed.

AN: Well that was a chapter, wasn't it? I feel like the narrative has reached the top of the hill and we're just gonna roll down until the finale. From this point on, every single tribute has been considered for the top five, and most of them were almost victors. Seriously, this cast is so excellent. I'm going to take a minute to thank my wonderful submitters, who are just… amazing. This story wouldn't be half as incredible without your tributes.

Which does lead us to eulogies

16th- Solomon Cavalier. This guy's death scene was not on my outline. But when I was typing it, the moment was so raw and so heartbreaking that I knew this was how he went. There was something really beautiful in the way he faced death so directly. He admits that he's not sure if his plan would have worked, but I believe in the end he never regretted his dedication to people who needed him. It was sad to see him go, but damn he went well.

15th- Carnation Banyon. Fun fact, both Solstice and Carnation were submitted for tributes. But I got the idea that Carnation literally took Solstice's place and it was too good not to use. I absolutely adored this character and her incredibly complicated feelings about her family. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but dysfunctional families has become a bit of a theme in these games, and Carnation was no exception. I'm glad that she was able to find people who cared about her without any strings attached. And she will be truly, honestly missed.