The Aperture Games Epilogue:

Smokeflower

By vifetoile

Disclaimer: I still don't own The Hunger Games or Portal. After all this time. Who would have thought?

This is the tenuous outline that I had planned for the continuation of The Aperture Games. I would have loved to give every character their due and plotline, but the Chell and Katniss plots are the most meaningful, to me. If you don't like it, then by all means make up your own. I am a big believer in Death of the Author. Anyone who does a crossover of The Hunger Games and Portal would kind of have to be.

Also, the map of Panem that I draw off of is that which fanfiction . net user aimmyarrowshigh created. You can find it here: aimmyarrowshigh dot livejournal plus a dot com. This means that the Aperture Science Enrichment Center is located somewhere in the middle of District Ten.

The title is Smokeflower, which refers to a particular type of flower that is found only in District Six and the edges of District Five. Smokeflowers are plants which only bloom after a wildfire has devastated the land; when the heat of the flame wakes up the seeds, and the ash nourishes the soil, then smokeflowers cover the land with bright orange, red, and yellow blossoms.

In the westernmost districts (Six and Five), smokeflowers are a symbol of hope, and of long-held promises that are fulfilled, because the seeds have been known to sleep in the soil for upwards of ten years, in some places. The symbol begins making a quiet revival, as mockingjays slowly fall out of favor with all but the most radical spirits.

Chell, under the name Katniss, spends an entire month in the Capitol with Haymitch and Wheatley, now dubbed Taysel. Snow has mapped out her itinerary carefully: every night she is passed from one party, banquet, gala, or art gallery opening to another. She's the star guest, and every day, after a few hours' sleep, she and Wheatley sit together on the couch in their deluxe Capitol apartment, and are "educated in the history of Panem" – by watching video footage of the Dark Days' War, and then of each of the Hunger Games, in chronological order. This combination leaves Chell too exhausted and anguished to think of stirring up any more trouble.

Even on her darkest days, though, Wheatley is capable of making her smile, and they stick close together. There's something almost desperate about how close Chell and Wheatley have become in such a short time: they depend on each other like the sole survivors of a shipwreck. Wheatley develops an appetite for human existence, and he learns to talk again, to Effie and Haymitch's everlasting chagrin. However, his prattle fits in perfectly well in the Capitol, especially as he develops a Capitol accent, which keeps people from recognizing his voice from the arena.

In District Thirteen, Coin takes advantage of the fact that the war has been delayed from her predictions. She begins to personally oversee Katniss' training as the Mockingjay. Joanna and Finnick train separately, and Wiress begins to master the vast complex array of technological data that controls Panem's communications. In between Katniss' physical training, Coin constantly plays mind games on her, to try and test where her loyalties lie: with Coin, or with herself? She never exactly hits on the truth: Katniss' loved ones are the ones she's really loyal to.

Coin also wants to sound out Katniss' feelings towards the woman replacing her in the Capitol's eyes. Katniss feels particularly betrayed by Chell, and wants to take her down. Coin likes this attitude.

After her month-long sojourn in the Capitol is up, Chell, Haymitch, and Wheatley return to District Twelve, with much pomp and circumstance at both ends of their journey. The prep team accompanies them, as does Portia, who by now is past mistress in the art of disguising Chell.

Katniss' family, Peeta's family, and Gale are all at the station, beaming and ready to greet "Katniss" as soon as she gets off the train. The crowd is jubilant. Prim runs to greet Katniss – but pauses halfway, looking at her again, really looking. Then she keeps running, and hugs Chell around the middle – knowing that the woman on the platform is a fake, but Haymitch is standing by and the Peacekeepers are around, and it won't do to out her "sister" then and there.

Gale realizes that "Katniss" is a fake, and doesn't move to greet her in any way. He stares at her, furious and confused, and only acknowledges her with chilly politeness. Then he makes his excuses and bows out.

Shortly after getting back to the Victor's Village, Prim leads "Katniss" out on a little walk through the woods, carefully avoiding the electric fence, just as Prim's sister taught her. When they're far away from surveillance, Prim says, in a low voice, "You aren't Katniss."

Chell says nothing, but nods in agreement. Prim asks where Katniss really is, and Chell says that, as far as she knows, Katniss died in the Arena after facing GLaDOS.

"But you can't be sure of death, down there," she finishes. "Believe me, I know." After a pause, she adds, "She may still be alive."

"Maybe." Prim answers. Prim shows Chell around the forest, finds a bow that Katniss carved – and puts it back. They return to District Twelve in silence.

Gale meets with Chell exactly once. He is cold and hostile towards her, thinking she's a Capitol plant. Chell gets very mad when he does, and asks if he's trying to get the whole District bombed. She explains, through clenched teeth, that if her ruse falls apart, Snow will not hesitate to retaliate. She and Gale part ways, with strong enmity but at least united in their hatred of Snow. After this, Gale disappears from District Twelve entirely. He and Peeta keep up a life in the wilderness between Districts Twelve and Eleven, with some help from families on both sides.

With Gale gone, Chell is grateful for the chance to live what is, mostly, a simple and straightforward life. She takes long walks under the trees and sky. She attempts to take up Katniss' "talent" of fashion design, but all of the figure drawings she attempts are unsettling fusions of people and machines. A little unsettling, to put it mildly, but Chell takes comfort in drawing them, and Wheatley asserts that he likes them. Chell much prefers to just talk to District Twelve people, and find out what they make of the world around them. She grows very fond of Prim, and her gentle steadiness.

In District Thirteen, Coin sends her invisible hoverplanes to scout around Panem, and to see if the idea of revolution is still strong. It is, but the symbol of the Mockingjay is beginning to lose its favor, and each larger region has their own symbols, and they each have a Victor to mourn.

Coin also sends scouts out to try and figure out a way into the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. It's slow going.

On one of these scouting trips, Katniss insists on going to District Eleven to talk with Seeder's and Rue's families. While there, their hoverplane is brought down – Peacekeepers have installed anti-invisibility shields around the two easternmost Districts, - and now they must wait for a District Thirteen ally to bring a portal gun, to allow them safe passage out. It is in hiding, then, that Katniss learns that Gale is a fugitive, and Peeta is still alive. At great personal risk, she meets with them.

Gale's life on the run has sharpened him, but he delights in it. He's not quite her companion of the woods anymore, but she is happy to see him and shares at once her doubts about Coin. Before Gale can advise her, Peeta is brought to meet them. In contrast to Gale, who has grown worldlier and more cunning, Peeta has grown softer and apparently more earnest. He says that he has had visions, and now knows his purpose in the greater game-board of the world, and his physical strength has been traded for spiritual wisdom.

In an aside, Gale tells Katniss that oxygen deprivation, or whatever the Gamemaker did to him, must have messed up what little brains he had left.

Either way, Peeta's powers of public speaking have been greatly improved, as he speaks with conviction and an otherworldly sense of purpose – that, plus the effect of seeing a man whom the entire country knows to be dead, around and walking, seems to have an effect on listeners.

Katniss sees at once that Coin would see Peeta as an asset, and she urges the two of them to stay hidden – and free – for a little while longer. She'll come and fetch them herself, when – and if – she judges that Coin will treat them fairly, and not as weapons. Katniss and her crew return to District Thirteen.

Months pass. As Chell holds up her end of the bargain, submitting to every television special Snow demands of her and playing her role perfectly, the packets of grain, oil, and presents continue to come for District Twelve's children and families. It comes time for the Victory Tour. Chell bids goodbye to Katniss' family, and once more plays the part of the diligent Victor, waving farewell to the people as the train pulls away.

First, a party in the Capitol. Wheatley drifts around, aimless once again, as none of the patient people of District Twelve are in sight, and Chell is taken up with every high something-or-other who wants a word in. That is, until Pandora Promachus, the new Head Gamemaker following Plutarch Heavensbee's mysterious flight – invites Wheatley to drinks with her crowd.

The tour begins in earnest, with a visit to Districts One and Two. As their loyalty is unquestioned, Chell is allowed to roam them next-to-unsupervised – and, like in District Twelve, she listens. She learns that miner's superstitions are very alike, whether in stone quarries or coal mines, and that folktales about birds and witches are the same between District One and Twelve.

She begins to write down what she learns, and keeps her book hidden even from Wheatley – to his great annoyance. It becomes the first big rift between them, but Chell insists that she have some secrets, even from him. This brings up Wheatley's old fear of being useless and unwanted, which makes him put his hackles up.

In District Three, the massive machinery complexes and computers make Chell nervous, even sick to her stomach, and Wheatley, just to spite her, takes a terrific interest in electronics and their workings.

Meanwhile, in District Twelve, Katniss and an elite team move into the Victor's Village, and take Prim and Mrs. Everdeen with them to District Thirteen. Katniss at last feels some peace, with Prim at her side again.

Wheatley relents of his coldness towards Chell when they arrive at District Four, and he discovers that the ocean absolutely terrifies him. Chell helps him to manage his fear, for the time being, as the cold sea air stirs up memories in her that she can't fully grasp. The people of District Four are very welcoming, even if Annie Cresta is a bit alarming, with her constant assurances that Finnick is alive somewhere, and that Annie, too, was in the arena.

On they speed to District Five, where the Victor suspects Chell as a fraud. He is keen on investigating until a message from Snow reminds him that he has a wife and a daughter to lose if he displeases the Capitol.

Chell is glad to leave the stifling city of Five for the dry plains of Six – right up until she falls sick. She gets littlepox, a virus that is derived from chicken pox, which most residents of Panem contract when young – and most recover. But Chell has no antibodies for it, and gets very sick. Before long, Wheatley catches it, too. The Victory Tour grinds to a halt as District Six medics attend on Chell. In her fever, she begins to talk more freely than Snow would ever allow. Despite Peacekeeper threats, word of what she says starts to spread – that Katniss Everdeen is raving about help from underground, it wasn't always this way, there was fire and cake, and deep freezes, and Katniss is not her name, no, that is not her name.

Her illness coincides with a wildfire that burns through District Six, and brings smokeflowers to bloom once more. 'The Girl on Fire' becomes common parlance once more.

Perturbed, Snow has Chell sent on to District Seven as soon as her fever breaks. Wheatley, still ill, is returned to the Capitol.

The great forests and serene woods of District Seven suits Chell's current moods – the bout of fever has restored a large gap of her memory to her. It's jumbled up, like a hazy dream, but she can remember her parents, her old name, something of the world Before, and why she entered the Aperture Science laboratories when she wasn't an employee. (Both of her parents were, and they were taken hostage as test subjects when GLaDOS went crazy and took over the mainframe. Chell, then just a teenager, entered the laboratories to find them, and was claimed as a test subject herself.)

Now she takes time to herself, to think and be silent, and through Districts Seven and Eight she only goes through the motions of the Victor Tour, leading to some disappointment, especially with the revived 'Girl on Fire' buzz. With some threats, Snow reminds her of what she's meant to do, and on the next three districts she returns to form, smiling, waving, and once more listening to the people of Panem.

Wheatley, abuzz with talk of how cool Pandora Promachus is, rejoins her in Eleven, brightening up what was otherwise a very grim visit, as the residents of District Eleven mistrust her and fear retribution.

Finally comes District Twelve – and at first Chell and Wheatley are glad. That night, when Chell gives a speech in the town square – her Katniss mannerisms and accent perfect, her gratitude and relief sincere – the feeds are suddenly cut. No audio, no video. Then, flames fill the screens. Katniss Everdeen's voice – the real Katniss Everdeen – is heard singing, and her voice is heard in every television set in Panem. Then she appears on screen, in armor only Cinna could craft. Her voice, strident and commanding, fills the air: "That is not Katniss Everdeen. She's not District Twelve; the Capitol has given you a replacement of me so you'll forget your anger. But don't forget, Panem. Don't forget Rue, don't forget Peeta, don't forget me. I am Katniss Everdeen; I am the Mockingjay."

The Capitol gains control of the signal, but by then it's too late. A riot breaks out in Twelve, and out of nowhere, out of the very forest, District Thirteen troops appear and route the Peacekeepers. Chell leads her entourage in making for the train, terrified thinking of what Snow will do next. Only one of her entourage remains in District Twelve: Haymitch, who doesn't even say good-bye to Chell. All he says is a "See you later" to Effie, who is as surprised as anyone to find that Haymitch thought to say goodbye to her. Radio signals between Peacekeepers and the Capitol are utterly scrambled, and with riot on their hands, the Peacekeepers retreat.

Two days later, when they've returned to the Capitol, Chell hears that District Eleven has also been claimed by District Thirteen troops. Shock and agitation rattle the country.

President Coin issues a formal declaration, claiming Districts Eleven and Twelve for Thirteen, and threatening that the war, delayed for a scant seventy-six years, is here at last. When she shows footage of Finnick Odair, alive and well with a portal gun, Chell realizes how Coin gained such a military advantage – she used four portal guns, from Katniss, Finnick, Joanna, and Wiress to transport weaponry and troops swiftly, one tech that the Capitol cannot hope to match.

When Chell returns to the Capitol, Snow places her under house arrest at once. He keeps up the façade that she is Katniss Everdeen, and is therefore making a show for the Capitol elite, that this Victor is authentic and still under his control. She becomes a mouthpiece to the Capitol, speaking less and less if there isn't a camera fixed on her. Wheatley, spending more time with Capitol cronies, begins to grow brusque and superior towards her, never realizing that he is the leverage for whose sake she plays along.

So, the eastern Districts begin to rally again under the symbol of the Mockingjay, and the Capitol and its loyal districts promote Chell's face and voice as the true victor. But the suspicious Victor of District Five rallies his District in taking an unusual third side – that the Quell Victor is not Katniss Everdeen, but she is, as a matter of fact, the Victor they want to support. Soon District Six joins its neighbor, and where Katniss Everdeen was bound up with the rallying cry "Mockingjay!", the Quell Victor is called "Smokeflower."

In District Eleven, Katniss finds Gale and Peeta and says that she fulfilled her promise – not by bringing them to District Thirteen, but by bringing District Thirteen to them. Katniss hopes that leading the successful taking of District Twelve means that Coin will respect her wishes to leave Peeta out of the spotlight. However, after the other Victors in District Thirteen have outed themselves as living, Peeta is brought to the nation's attention as the star of the snow. He becomes a part of the propaganda machine, almost happily, where his spiritualist speeches reach the whole awestruck nation.

The messages that District Thirteen put out claim to reveal the "truth" of what happened in the Quarter Quell arena, and most of them decry Chell and describe her in the worst possible terms. Now Chell feels that it is Katniss who betrayed her and continues to betray her, when Katniss should know the kind of pressures Chell is living under.

Behind the scenes, romantic drama begins to play out in Thirteen. Although Katniss continues her training under Coin, where the woman begins to treat Katniss more and more like a little protégé of her own (to Haymitch's disgruntlement), she wants to help Peeta recover. She sees what happened to him as damage. Peeta has genuinely lost sight of what's real and what's not in his and Katniss' relationship, and is convinced that she really is his wife and carrying their baby. Katniss tries to reconnect him to reality via art and baking. His skills as an orator continue to grow, and soon he prompts a religious awakening in the Mockingjay faction, which irritates Coin.

Soon Panem is divided into what appears to be a three-way civil conflict: in the east, those who rally behind the Mockingjay and seek to overturn the Capitol, slowly seizing more land along the way, focusing on reclaiming the central part of District Ten, for undisclosed reasons. In the west, the Smokeflower movement prompts a revival of studying the world and culture from before the dark Days – ancient vaults are broken into, lost films and computer files are brought to light. And in the Captiol and loyal Districts, the story is put out that the other Katniss Everdeen is a fabrication by District Thirteen, likely a mutt even, while the Capitol will prevail. It always does.

And to prove that the Capitol will prevail, Snow orders an act which had fallen out of favor after the first Quell: Reapings are scheduled not a week in advance of the Games, but in a month. And the Capitol will still demand twenty-four tributes for the seventy-sixth game, and "Katniss" will mentor at least two of them.

Those Districts that are divided in loyalties suddenly find themselves receiving lots of goodies from the Capitol – usually jewelry and trinkets from District One, very little useful, as grain from District Eleven and meat from Ten are now scarce. Still, the attempt to win over loyal support in the days leading up to the Reaping is palpable. It's one of the first times in recent memory that the Capitol has attempted kindness.

On the new Reaping Day, District Four rebels, with the aid of District Thirteen, and led by Finnick Odair. The Peacekeepers are driven out by the very Careers they would have reaped, and District Four joins the Mockingjay faction.

(That night, a celebration is held, and Finnick and Annie are married with great joy.)

The Smokeflower faction does not have the might to resist the Capitol – but their processes are delayed when District Six rebels sabotage the train tracks. Five and Six tributes are therefore preserved from the Games.

In retribution, double the tributes are taken from Districts Nine, Eight, Ten, and Three. District Seven is left alone, as it is so divided that the Capitol wishes to not influence it negatively. More volunteers are "encouraged" to come from District Two.

The Training Center stands empty; the tributes are kept around the Capitol in randomly selected apartments, virtual prisoners. There is no training footage. The aired footage is the most brutal selections and highlights from Hunger Games past.

Chell now has to face the challenge of mentoring six tributes – because many mentors have either defected to a rival faction, or were killed in the Quell. There's also, of course, the trouble that Chell herself has no experience of a proper Game, or sponsors. The tributes she mentors range from trusting her completely to challenging her authority – and to their surprise, she allows them to question and doubt her. They become the first real human connection she's made in a long time. Still, when they question her about the Smokeflower or Mockingjay faction, she insists that she wants nothing to do with any of that, nothing whatsoever.

In the month leading up to the Games, Coin sends the elite team of District Thirteen – including Katniss – on a mission to infiltrate the Aperture Science Enrichment Center, and see what they can use there of Aperture tech. Katniss leads the way, reluctant but no longer so afraid of the darkness and the underground spaces.

To the team's surprise, GLaDOS is operational and awake. She won't say how. She says that she can spare some time between monitoring her new "test subjects" – robots cobbled together from spare parts, with portal guns grafted to their arms.

Katniss speaks on Coin's behalf, offering a larger enrichment center, and all the test subjects she could want, and even power over Panem, if GLaDOS will help President Coin. But GLaDOS refuses. She says she's not interested in the same deal twice. Katniss then leads Plan B – seizing the Aperture Science Enrichment Center in the name of District Thirteen and declaring it a military outpost.

GLaDOS does not take kindly to it, so the elite team hightails it out of there and leaves guards posted at the known entrances to the Center, while Katniss returns to District Thirteen. Reluctantly, she tells Coin what she knows of Aperture Science's practice of uploading brains and fragments of brains into machinery. Coin is very interested in this.

Meanwhile, back at the Capitol, one night shortly before the seventy-sixth Game, Chell receives a message. It's coded and encrypted, but she's good at puzzles. When she cracks the code, it says, "Remember that we were allies. Remember Mimi, Craig, Kevin, and Rick. Wheatley is one of them now. We will stop the Games. Join us. Please. KE."

Chell doesn't know whether to trust this message, and doesn't respond. She hasn't responded to the messages sent to her by the Smokeflower faction, begging her to run away to the Capitol and join them. She never responds.

One week before the Games themselves start, Chell is sitting in her apartment, reviewing a list of her tributes' strengths and weaknesses, when Wheatley drops in unannounced. Sashays in, rather, proud and resplendent in long, purple robes. He gleefully informs her that Pandora Promachus has seen his marvelous potential, and has trained him up, pulled a few strings, and made him a Gamemaker. Isn't that terrific?

He blathers on, ignorant to Chell's shock, sadness, and then coldness towards him. It feels inevitable, somehow – Wheatley got it into his head that Chell had forgotten him (she hadn't, how could she, but she had so much else to do) and then, just give him a little power and he'll be as biddable as a puppet on a string. Now, he has a taste of a Gamemaker's power and it rules him. He sees District children the way that the Capitol sees them – as fun little players, as tough warriors, as sweet victims, not as people. She should have imagined it would play out this way.

She tries to reason with him, but he maintains that she was just jealous, she had always been trying to tear him down, he didn't need her anyway.

Chell closes her mouth, and at once she files Wheatley under 'enemy.' He snaps at her and demands "Well? Say something!" but she refuses. She won't give him the satisfaction. He storms out. Chell does let herself grieve, not yet, because it would tear her apart, and now she needs to be whole. Snow has lost his leverage – and that meant that at last, Chell can act.

She continues to mentor her tributes, up until the night of the Interviews. Then, she takes every cent of money she's earned as a "Victor," and divides it up into the sponsor's funds for the tributes – all twenty-four of them, evenly shared. She gives her book of Panem folklore to Effie (who may not be as understanding as Portia, but still trustworthy), and then – she vanishes.

The next day, as Game prep is underway, word hits the Capitol that "Katniss Everdeen" Is missing. The tributes are taken to the arena, the same one that saw 74 previous Games. Wheatley, in Gamemaker Central, worries incessantly about Chell. He panics, and has a crisis of conscience. Right when the countdown to enter the launching tubes begins, Wheatley snaps. He punches the Gamemaker in charge of the microphone, takes it over, and yells into the PA, "Run! Run! Or – just stay put, whatever you like! Just don't enter those tubes!" He has no plan, and things might have gone very badly from there (with Peacekeepers holding the tributes from leaving their launch rooms, the Games countdown beginning, and Snow and fellow Gamemakers getting pretty irritated, to put it mildly), when, like a bunch of big damn heroes, District Thirteen arrives.

Mockingjay troops break into the infrastructure surrounding the arena, and free one tribute after another – taking them into District Thirteen custody, of course. The Gamemakers are also arrested, with Wheatley being the only one to give up without a fight.

Meanwhile, footage cuts to Katniss Everdeen, infiltrating deep into the Capitol, with bows ready to destroy President Snow, surrounded by heavily armored robot bodyguards – and Peeta, and Gale. With them, Katniss wields one of District Thirteen's precious portal guns, and what appears to be a small talking radio, about the size and shape of a potato.

Snow shields himself in his mansion as the Capitol, for the first time in many a long year, goes into lockdown mode. Troops of the Mockingjay faction flood the city, each led by a separate Victor.

But Katniss' team, despite their loudly stated goals, do not head for Snow's mansion. They make for the largest radio and communications tower in the Capitol. There, they plug in the talking potato, and…

The talking potato is in fact storage for an artificial intelligence, which promptly takes over the Capitol's communication lines and computer networks. But the voice on the potato is not GLaDOS, not Caroline, not even Wheatley – but President Alma Coin, who uploaded herself into a computer, putting her own comatose body in the care of District Thirteen's medics. She declares sovereignty of the Capitol – the ultimate coup. Thus begins the Battle of the Capitol, which is not a perfect nomenclature. Troops of District Thirteen attempt to seize the still-divided Districts, but the people there fight back, particularly Districts One and Two, as they demand to see their own tributes returned to them.

It's Katniss' job to guard this tower, and to make sure that COinDOS' connection to the mainframe stays secure (the name COinDOS, by the way, was Joanna's idea). As the hours go on, five, then ten, then twenty-four, then thirty-six, it's Katniss' job to keep the COinDOS mainframe from going completely ballistic, and launching nuclear strikes against the uncooperative districts. It becomes a battle of Katniss' willpower against Coin's, as Coin is now immortal and tireless, but Katniss still remembers her humanity.

Two days into this fighting, Chell makes it safely into District Five. She had a detour on the way – breaking into a laboratory in the Capitol and stealing back the red-and-black portal gun that she had with her when she left the Quell Arena, and then sneaking into the basement of the abandoned Training Center – but once she arrives, she makes it clear that she needs airtime, stat. Is it a full moon tonight? So much the better.

A Smokeflower broadcast barely interrupts the carnage, until Chell's face and voice appears on the screen. She wears orange and white, and a smokeflower is in her hair and her portal gun in her hands. She says, "I am Chell Serafin. And I'm going to make a statement."

She lifts up her portal gun and fires an orange portal into the sky. For an instant, disbelieving laughter bubbles up around the nation –

Then, cut to the moon, where the portal lands.

And then cut to the Training Center.

No camera sees the blue portal secured in the basement of the Training Center, but cameras six miles away see the building implode on itself as the vacuum of space opens up below the Center, and obliterates it to rubble before Chell cancels both portals, and the howling winds around the Capitol fall still.

Chell declares that whoever strikes next will get the next attack

It's a bluff. Katniss sees through it. You can't open a portal just anywhere. But Katniss hides a smile at Chell's audacity, and declares a truce, in the moment when everyone else is too thunderstruck to act. The Capitol follows. Medics of District Six and mediators of District Five arrive swiftly, to tend to those already wounded, and to attempt a real peace treaty.

Meanwhile, Katniss and Wiress take COinDOS offline. Katniss only trusts herself with keeping the COinDOS receptacle (the potato) safe. While Snow is in custody, and Coin is neutralized, the two most dangerous players in the war are off the table.

No one is optimistic about this peace treaty, and tensions are very high when Katniss and Chell walk into negotiations and lay eyes on one another for the first time in a year. The first condition which Chell sets is the immediate return of all tributes to their families. Katniss agrees to this at once… and things are off to a decent start.

Slowly, laboriously, trying to staunch bitterness and blood between Districts and Capitol people, a treaty emerges. No more Games, representation of all Districts, resources to be shared between Districts evenly.

Of course, as this is Panem, a blood sacrifice must be paid. Katniss publicly executes President Snow, an arrow to the throat. The Gamemakers are also executed, but Chell asks for Wheatley to be spared. He pleads to be returned to his little core body as a fitting punishment – and when he sees Chell face to face again, he thinks she's forgiven him. But it turns out the most he gets is a second chance. He and Chell start over – no desperation, no leverage.

Katniss is left with COinDOS in a potato battery, and is left to decide what to do with her. If Coin is returned to her body, Katniss knows she'll become a tyrant as despotic as Snow. She's gotten to know Coin very well. COinDOS tells Katniss that she has no authority to judge – and Katniss responds, "Maybe I don't, but I don't think there is an authority high enough." Katniss puts out the word that Coin died, and keeps COinDOS in storage, while Coin's body is put into cryogenic storage. Perhaps, one day, she'll judge that Coin is safe again.

Time passes. Katniss focuses on rebuilding District Twelve, almost to the exclusion of the other Districts. She's glad, though, to no longer be the Mockingjay, and to have Prim at her side. Peeta continues his slow healing, and Gale takes to wandering Panem, to help in whatever way he can – though he stops by District Seven quite frequently. Haymitch, meanwhile, finds some peace, and argues a lot with Effie for many years. Plutarch is frequently seen in District Twelve, boasting that if it had been up to him, then this whole rebellion would have been cleaned up a lot sooner – and it wouldn't have been as messy!

GLaDOS and the tech of Aperture Science is used to help rebuild Panem. A Parliament and a fair government is set up. Chell puts herself in charge of distributing and managing Aperture Science tech, and still doesn't entirely trust GLaDOS. Wheatley helps, slowly gaining back the grace he had lost. But she's glad to see remnants of the world Before the Dark Days coming to light.

It takes many months, but Katniss and Chell become able to talk to one another again. Chell shows Katniss her book of Panem folklore, and Katniss understands why Chell took on her name and identity. Slowly, their friendship repairs itself, as they repair the nation of Panem, and bring it into a new age – hopefully – of peace.

- The End -

And… that's it.

Alternate (silly) ending idea was to have Coin and Snow both uploaded into computer programs, and forced to work for GLaDOS as Co-op Testing Bots for the rest of eternity. Actually I originally came up with that idea for Beetee and Wiress, but wrote it off as too cruel. I don't have the stomach for violence.

Thank you so much for reading. This has been quite a roller-coaster ride; wasn't always sure I would make it to the end, or that the story would be worth it. It's you, the readers, who kept me going on this story, when I was determined not to make it a dead end fic like so many others. So thank you, for reading, for reviewing, and for supporting me.

Thanks are also due to the creators of Portal, and the Portal fandom on Tumblr for bringing me even more into the fandom than I was already; and to Suzanne Collins and the entire team responsible for publishing The Hunger Games.

And so, readers, farewell. Enjoy Catching Fire (in theaters Nov. 22nd! The canonical version of 'The Aperture Games'!), and may the portals be ever in your favor.