A/N: Ladies and gentlemen, we have at long last reached the final chapter of Blood on Stone!

District 11

Victor's Village

October 26th, 106 PDD

1832 hours

Anvil Wolfe's POV:

I stare down at my open palm. The rough, calloused skin is covered by a thin layer of grime. I roll a silver coin between my fingers, feeling the cool metal bite into my flesh, so very real. As the years have passed, the line between nightmare and waking life has blurred. Far too often I have awoken screaming from a nightmare only to discover that I have not truly awoken, that I have only crossed from one dark land to another, that the figure comforting me is not one of my young adopted sisters but one of the ninety-five children I entered the arena with six years ago.

Most often it is Woody. I remember all too clearly my last day in the arena, the day I found the eleven-year-old trapped under a hulking slab of rock, writhing in pain, his terrified eyes fixed on the street behind him crumbling into an abyss of destruction. And then he had seen me. I could not have been more than a smoky, mace-wielding figure wading through the destruction towards him, but he saw me and pleaded for one final respite.

"Please," the child had begged. "Before it takes us. Please."

And I had complied. I will never be able to forget the sickening crunch that filled the air as my mace slammed into his face, the following scream cut off by the blast of a distant cannon.

In my nightmares it is not he but I who lies helpless. He approaches me, swinging a mace at his side, a horrible smile on his youthful face. I beg for him to let me rest, such less a brave request than what he pleaded of me that last day in the arena.

There are days when I cannot look at a soul, whether they be a hardened worker in the fields or one of the little girls my parents adopted after I won my Games. Today is one of those days. I hand my silver coin to the merchant and accept the loaf of bread he hands me in return, keeping my eyes carefully fixed on the table between us.

"It's an honor, sir," someone says, their voice cutting through the veil I had so carefully drawn around myself.

I dart a glance up. The merchant is smiling at me. I see now that he is younger than myself, not older than seventeen or eighteen. "Pardon?" I say, not much caring if I come off as rude.

The merchant grins up at me. "It's not every day I get a victor at my stall. I just started here. It's an honor, Mr. Wolfe."

I nod stiffly. I am about to turn away when I catch his eye, quite by accident. I do not know how it happens. I have never known, nor do I wish to. But in just a moment's time a fog enters my mind, and the market blurs out of focus, save the face of the young vendor. Except no longer is he the dark-skinned teenager I had glanced at mere moments before.

A tall boy with light hair and blue eyes stands across from me, his muscular arms folded across his chest. In a leather scabbard at his side hangs a sword. He glares at me, his eyes filled with hatred.

Sage.

From deep in my mind a voice screams at me to hold my ground and fight. I have beaten him once before, and I will beat him again. Another voice tells me to run, to run and run until I have left him behind, and Woody, and each of the ninety-three other children who have tormented me so these last six years. There is a third voice too, softer than the others, that tells me it is not real, that Sage is dead, that I am imagining him.

But I am not imagining him, I know that. I could not be.

I scramble backwards, my heart pounding. Sage comes after me. I turn to run, but find myself facing the brick wall of a building. I have nowhere to run. I turn back, prepared to fight, but it is not Sage approaching me but the young merchant.

"Mr. Wolfe?" he asks, looking bemused and nervous. "Are you all right?"

I close my eyes and breathe in the familiar scent of the market. Fruits and grains and other foods, merchants and barterers, along with the faint but distinctive sweet smell that graces the district every year during the harvest. And I say, "I'm fine."

When I leave the market, I find myself turning onto the dirt trail heading north to Zone D, where I lived for the first sixteen years of my life. Each zone has a central village with a small trading post, a few small stores and services, and a school, so I hadn't often needed to travel to Zone B, the center of the district. But once each week since I was a young boy I would take as many coins as we could spare and make the twenty minute trek to the central market. This road is well trodden.

I halt in my tracks when I see the sign. I should not be here. Zone D is of the past. Somewhere down this road is the rickety old cottage I lived before my Games. Perhaps another family has moved in. Or perhaps it still stands empty, a lonesome relic of my childhood.

Victor's Village is at the very edge of Zone B. I take my time getting there, meandering west of the marketplace and looping behind the mayor's residence. I can afford to take my time. My family is no longer starving. Sometimes I feel guilty for wishing I was never chosen, for they have benefited greatly from it.

I am quite certain my parents did not expect me to survive. When I returned from the Games they admitted to me that they had thought of adopting a child. I had not let my survival ruin their plans, and they followed their wishes. A few months after I returned, just over six years ago, they brought home two small lumps swaddled in blankets. Ajemima and Dayla, they called them.

When I open the door to my house in Victor's Village, it is Dayla who meets me first. She crashes into me, knocking the bags from my hands, a little six-year-old blur, her wavy nutmeg brown hair streaming out behind her. I sweep her up in my arms, smiling at the small ginger-haired girl moving up silently behind her.

I look into Dayla's solemn gray eyes. "You two haven't been giving Ma and Pa a hard time, have you?"

"No!" Dayla promises. "We've been watching things on the television."

"Oh, have you?" I raise my eyebrows. "What have you been watching, may I ask?"

Dayla squirms free of my grip. "I'll show you!" She grabs my wrist and pulls me into the living room. She pulls me down onto the couch and climbs up onto my lap. "It's from your Quell year!"

Caesar Flickerman is on the screen. On the seat beside him is a teenage girl with ginger hair similar to that gracing Ajemima's head. My muscles tense. I know her.

"Her name's Edelweiss," Dayla says cheerfully. "It's a type of herb, you know. It's not native here, but they say you can find some up north. The other day we were watching one of the Games from the fifties, and they were talking about it. Maybe I'll be a plant-studier one day. How does that sound, Anvil?"

But I am not listening. My eyes are fixed on the television screen across the room, on the ginger haired girl talking to Caesar. She looks so familiar, so horribly familiar. It's Edel, that much I know, but her familiarity runs even deeper than that. It cannot have been a full six years since I have last seen her in flesh.

But perhaps it is not even that. Horror seizes me as a possibility occurs to me. My eyes slide to the little girl sitting on the couch on my right. Ajemima meets my gaze with curious blue eyes. With her nimble fingers she is uncertainly twisting a lock of that familiar dark ginger hair. A strained breath of air slips past my lips as they form my adoptive sister's name. No. No, no no. It can't be. Edel was only seven, maybe eight months pregnant. She died before the baby got even a glimpse of the world.

But my panicked reasoning does not stand a chance against my instincts. Perhaps this is why I have never shown recovery from my experiences at the same degree as many of my fellow victors. Every glimpse of Ajemima rouses my unconscious, reminding me of those bloody three weeks, blood dotting the stones of each of the cold, gray streets stretching into the distance for as far as the eye can see.

And Dayla? My focus shifts to the little girl on my lap. Who else has the Capitol torn from their nest and thrust into ours?

Dayla squirms around to face me, concern on her small face. "Anvil?" she asks uncertainly. "What's wrong?"

And I do not know how to answer her. Even if there were words, my face is slack with horror.

Edel's interview concludes. The eighteen-year-old, swollen with new life, stands and shakes Caesar's hand. The camera dips down and zooms in as she walks slowly from the stage. The crowd's response is deafening. A small hand reaches for the remote and turns the volume down several notches.

The scene twirls out of view as if on a playing card. It is replaced by the interview selection page. On the first page are the eight tributes from District One. The girls are listed first, four teenagers whose faces I know far too well. Below them are the four boys. The first two are younger. The first is ten years old, I know, and the second is at the very bottom of the age range, at five years of age.

Second to last is Sage, the huge blond Career who torments me each time I manage to coax myself into a restless sleep. Any other day I would have shut my eyes tight and forced myself to think of my chores, the orchards, anything else. But today I cannot tear my eyes from his face. There is something about him I had nearly forgotten, something lurking in the back of my memory. Something about him. Something about my sister. I cannot put a finger on it. But I must know.

Much to my own surprise, I find myself fumbling for the remote and clicking down until Sage's face is framed by a silvery box. I hesitate then, my finger on the button that will bring it all back. I should not do this. If I do, if I revisit this night, my nightmares will abound tenfold. Let Dayla remain who she is, an orphaned Capitol child my parents adopted when they thought they had lost both of their two sons to the Games. Surely it is not worth it. Leave Dayla and Ajemima to the television. Go help prepare dinner. Distance yourself.

I bring my finger down hard.

The next three minutes are agonizing. I listen with bated breath as the cursed Career smiles winningly and brags to the audience about his upcoming victory. Nothing rocks the memory free from the deep recesses of my mind. It lurks in the darkness still, an infuriating itch at the back of my conscious. When the interview ends, I skip on to the Games and flip furiously through the days. I scan the first week, then the second. Nothing. Day fifteen, day sixteen, day seventeen. Nothing.

And then I reach the eight family interviews. My own is at the bottom, the second to last, followed only by Naya's. I am careful to avoid the face of Woody, who is before me. My eyes linger on my own face, then shift up to the top. Sage is first. This time I do not hesitate.

Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith stand in a bright room. Across from them are a man and a woman, and three teenagers. Caesar speaks to Sage's parents first, and then addresses the female who sits on the right of the couch. Diamond, Sage's sister. Just as Edel was, she is pregnant. But it isn't until the interview is nearing its end that Caesar brings up her swollen stomach.

"Seven months," Diamond says, her voice soft and sad. "I don't know the gender. People like to guess, but there's no good way to know if you can't afford a test. It's rather large for seven months, actually. We're beginning to suspect it may be more than one. If it's a boy I'll call him Sage."

And it was not a boy, or if it was twins we were given the female. A single glance at Dayla tells me all that I had feared. If she is not Diamond's, then Diamond's own children could not have resembled her more. For the first time I begin to truly recognize the familiar features on Dayla's face. The shape of her jaw, of her nose, all so distantly similar to those of the arrogant Career who fell to his death that last day in the arena. How had I not seen it before?

I turn off the television and close my eyes, pulling away from the small, warm body still on my lap. It's the PTSD, I tell myself. It's making me delusional. I'm not in my right mind. I'm being silly. Of course Dayla isn't the daughter of the sister of an eighteen-year-old I killed six years ago. And it's unreasonable to even contemplate the possibility that sweet Ajemima might be even distantly related to the girl from District Five. Unreasonable, all of it. Breathe in, breathe out. Open your eyes and you'll realize how silly you're being.

But when I open my eyes, nothing has changed. Dayla has twisted around on my lap to stare at me, concern in her eyes. Ajemima's hand is on my shoulder, and she too is gazing at me, worried.

"Anvil?" Dayla asks. "Are you all right?"

I do not meet their eyes. I stare down at the woolen carpet beneath my feet, a carpet that Mother and Arman wove so many years ago. It has stayed with us throughout the years, and it will remain forever. I feel its rough texture beneath my feet and breath in the sweet scent of my little sisters. And I say, "I'm fine."