Hunger Games: Fandom Style

Candles in the Dark

There was a special morgue where they prepared the fallen tributes. The night watch was preparing those who had fallen in the first bloodbath.
A junior worker jumped. "Sir! Sir, something in this one's pocket is moving!"
The senior worker rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous - Well, what do you know?"
Tinker Bell zipped out of Peter's pocket. She hovered over his face, tugging desperately at his hair, her bell like voice frantic.
The senior worker reached out and caught her. He held her up to his eyes. "Ah," he said quietly. He squeezed.
A quiet crack came after just a moment. Tink fell limp.
"Sir!"
"Orders, Duff. Best not to mess with anything strange from the districts. Just get rid of it and write it up in the report." He tossed him the limp body.
Duff caught it, looking slightly sick. He waited until Dr. Monroe had turned his back before gently laying the tiny corpse on top of her friend. He crossed her arms and closed her eyes as best he could. An echo of true joy, something he had never felt before tingled through him.
He dashed tears from his eyes. The light had been beautiful.
Now it was gone.

It rained the day Peter Pan flew for the last time. The wooden box he'd been laid in was thumped down on the landing pad with less care than a crate of scrap metal. The boys from the orphanage stood around it as Leonid Aster, with a great deal more care, pried the lid up.
Peter laid there quietly. So did Tink.
"He's not really dead, is he?" James asked, lip shaking. "He can't be, right? He can't die."
"He couldn't grow up," Leonid corrected quietly. "He couldn't grow old. There's a difference." He smoothed the boy's hair out of his face. "I'm sorry, Peter. We failed you for the last time."
He went pale as the second box was laid out. He didn't even have the strength to lift the lid. He just fell to his knees beside it and wept.
"He can't be dead," Ted said. "He just can't be."
Peter had been tired. Wearied. Wounded. He had been selfish, thoughtless, and reckless.
He had also been brave, loyal, and capable of imagining - and creating - more impossible things before breakfast than any grown up queen could possibly imagine. He had been the best and worst of every child. He had possessed that hint of magic everyone wanted to believe in.
He was dead now. And he had taken all of that - that last hope for innocence, that last thread of wonder and magic - with him.
The stars seemed darker without him.

Holly followed the trail of destruction out to the garden. At least he was outside. She wouldn't have to ask for an invitation.
"Hey, Mud Boy! There you are."
Artemis sat slumped against the house's wall. Tear stains streaked down his cheeks. He looked very, very young. There wasn't a trace of his usual smugness evident. Holly's heart broke a little for him.
"Artemis. You okay?"
He shook his head slowly. "Why did they have to die, Holly?"
"You know why."
"Why did I have to kill them?"
Holly knew the feeling. "Because both of our governments are made up of idiots." She slugged him on the arm. "Can't let it get us down, though, right? Got to keep going to step five hundred seventy-three of your evil plan."
He looked up at her. Well, down, really. "Evil?"
She winced. "Expression, kid. Didn't mean it." She looked at his tear streaked face. "Oh, kid."
She offered him her shoulder. He cried on it for a long, long time.

Hans' brothers hadn't volunteered. They hadn't wanted to.
They hadn't wanted to see the cheap wooden box be walked down Main Street either.
They took it up on their own shoulders.
It was raining that night.
That's why their faces were wet.
Surely.

John cried unashamedly. Mycroft stood with him at the funeral, and, to his surprise, caught himself tearing up. Mycroft hadn't really known Mary all that well.
But then, it wasn't her face he was seeing in the coffin.

Duncan didn't take his daughter's death well. The smashed object scattered around the living room were Alyss's first hint.
Finding him sobbing in his office was the second.
He looked up, snarling, when he heard footsteps, but cut off when he saw who it was. There was a reason Alyss had been the one to come instead of, say, Gilan. He would listen to her more readily.
"Sir?" She bit her lip. "Hor-Horace and some of the others wondered if it would be alright to-to come over. To remember her together."
Duncan looked at her for a moment, empty now that his wounded bear persona had been forced to fade away.
Then he nodded.
It was a long night. A hard night. They wept for the one who had forever escaped the Capital, and for Will, still in its grasp. They remembered the good times and the bad and the plain embarrassing. Alyss held Horace as he shook with sobs.
When the clock struck midnight, Alyss got up and looked out the window. It was so dark out there. Such a menacing, deep darkness, like the one that had swallowed Cassandra up in her final moments.
Alyss was a practical girl. She lit a candle.
One by one, they all did. They walked the streets of the district, rapping on doors, until candles beckoned from every window like tiny hearths for lost souls.

John's pace grew harder and faster the further he walked from the graveyard. No one stopped him when he walked into the Hob and snatched up the first bottle of liquor he could find. The seller probably though he intended to drown his troubles. John had a better idea.
He stalked through the darkness to the head Peacekeeper's house. He splattered it on the dry, ancient wood that held up one of the walls. It was only then he realized he'd forgotten a match.
Mycroft had a lighter. Sparks quickly grew into licking flames.
"We should yell fire," Mycroft suggested calmly. "It will put off suspicion."
John watched the flames. "He's not here tonight."
"Ah." Mycroft watched the hypnotically dancing flames. "In that case, let it burn."

The rain stopped. Finally. Anna lit a torch and set it in a holder by Hans' grave. She nearly set herself on fire doing it, but she managed.
"I don't like what you did," she said. "But you were too young to die."
Her tears reflected the light of the flames.

In the distance in District One, the Career training center blew up. Artemis watched it detachedly from his garden.
"I figured we wouldn't be needing it anymore."
A grin split Holly's face. "That's the spirit, Mud Boy."

The second star to the right went out.
A scientist would tell you that it had actually gone out a very long time ago, and that we're just now noticing it. There's probably some symbolism there if you care to hunt it down. It's enough that on that particular night, there was no more light from it for the earth to see.
James was the only one to notice it. It occurred to him, though, that there was always a second star to the right. It just wasn't always the same star.
A second star to the right was still there and you could follow it till morning. Neverland is always there. All that changes is the path to it.
A star fell across the sky. It landed in a bird's nest in a forest. A scientist will tell you that's not possible, but scientists are nearly always grown ups, so what do they know? They'll tell you it's not possible.
James will tell you that he saw four faeries flit across his path in brilliant, joyous light, and he'll swear they took the second star to the right with every intention of going till morning.

Duff will swear he saw it too.

They say it's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
For once, maybe that mysterious "they" got something right.