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epilogue,       to live is to die

    EVEN AFTER almost three years, the sound of the waves and the saltwater would take Jupiter back to the Quarter Quell. The taste of blood had faded over the years, and she had learnt to appreciate it as the tipping point before everything had exploded. When the rebellion had ended, and the world began to heal, Jupiter had taken much longer than she wanted to be able to swim again. Finnick had been patient with her, and eventually things had started to go back to normal.

    The small house by the beach, in what used to be District 4, was the place Jupiter called home. A far cry from the cold and empty house she had lived in for years in the mountains. Some days she missed them, mostly days she wanted to feel closer to her father. She missed the snow and the autumn colours, but sometimes Finnick would surprise her, and they would take the train just to visit the places Jupiter had as a child.

    Jupiter liked the new normal– something she had once only visited in dreams, had become the monotony she had once dreaded. She welcomed it now, knowing what was around the next corner wouldn't hurt her, or humiliate her, or stain her with blood.

    The final days before Coin's death played in her mind often. The mission into the Capitol, Jupiter hesitating deep in the sewers, because for a moment she swore she had seen a human face staring at her from the mutts. Finnick had almost died for her and her weakness, and she had dragged him out covered in blood and water. Stitching him up on the floor of Tigress' basement, fighting to keep her hands steady, knowing she was only capable of rebelling because of him.

    "You don't have to do this," Finnick had told her before they left. The mission into the heart of the Capitol was as good as a death sentence, but she had volunteered alongside him anyway.

    "Yes, I do," Jupiter had said firmly. "If I'm going to be a weapon, I may as well do it well."

    Finnick had only nodded and pressed his forehead to hers. He still had the scars from the creatures beneath the city, across his chest and arms, even a small one on his chin that Jupiter liked to kiss.

    In the wake of the Quarter Quell, Snow had purged as many Victors as he could get his hands on. Somehow, District 12 had the most living– Haymitch, Katniss and Peeta. Jupiter wondered if Peeta even counted after being so severely torn apart, but everytime she spoke to Katniss, he seemed to be more and more like his old self. Jupiter knew he would never be the same soft and diplomatic boy he had been when she had first met him in the Capitol, but maybe he was more like the other Victors now after all.

    Jupiter and Enobaria were the remaining representatives for District 2, the only thing the Academy had to show for their efforts. Jupiter didn't trust her District partner, who had been found in the Capitol along with their other hostages, and taken out of pity. Jupiter had, for a long time, believed the older woman had taken a plea deal to survive but be punished.

    And after Enobaria's confession, she believed it even more.

    "Your brother," Enobaria had said abruptly during one of the many days in District 13. She had sported an ugly bruise on her jawline, and she had been bound to a hospital bed by tubes and fluids.

    Jupiter, who had been visiting Johanna and Fawn in the infirmary, had looked across with narrowed eyes. "What?" she asked.

    "Your brother paid me," Enobaria responded, eyes hooded. "He said on the off-chance you were called– I would stay quiet. I don't know if it's possible to rig the Reaping, but that's all I know."

    Jupiter had gone very quiet and left soon after. She had stayed quiet, and Finnick, who had slowly grown more reserved in the underground bunker of District 13, had pestered her for an answer.

    "What would you have done?" Jupiter finally asked Finnick in their room that night. "If I hadn't been Reaped, what would you have done?"

    "Rescued you," Finnick responded simply. "What does it matter? We're here. We made it."

    Jupiter had kept quiet. They were a long way from home or safe, but she supposed they were better off now. They had the chance to be better off. She would never thank her brother for anything, but maybe her being a part of the Quarter Quell had put her in the best position possible. A chance for redemption from the blood she had spilled, and the vicious cycle she had been a part of. Ending the Hunger Games would have made her father proud, it was what he would have done if he could have.

    When the rebellion was over, Jupiter had gotten a metal saturn pendant, which dangled slightly longer than the pearl she never took off. It was different from her tattoos, the physical display of the cycle she was a part of, the family she had. Those were more private, the sort of thing her and few others saw. But she wore her father's namesake with pride.

    She was Saturnus Marrow's daughter, and it meant more than being a Victor.

    Fawn had gone back to District 10 and the farmland she missed so much. Jupiter believed that Johanna had eventually moved in with her, which seemed like a bad idea. Fawn had seven older brothers, but maybe the chaos suited Johanna (probably). The pair both deserved peace after the abuse they had suffered at the Capitol's hand. Neither had been a part of the final assault on the Capitol.

    Cassia Marrow had been found alive in a shelter in District 2. Jupiter, counting herself lucky for still having a family at all, had embraced her tightly and let her back into her life. Somewhere between the characteristic quietness, and the shellshocked look in her eye, Jupiter had pieced it together that Mars had never returned home. She had received a letter eventually, as things calmed down, that confirmed he had perished in combat.

    It was an odd feeling. She didn't mourn him, but she didn't know if he deserved to die. He had been conscripted in a war he had no idea was happening, a District citizen marched to die for the Capitol. But in the end, he had gotten the glory and fight he had always hated his sister for getting, and had become a part of the cycle that had claimed each member of their family.

    He had gotten what he wanted. Jupiter didn't care anymore.

    Cassia was still quiet, but she avoided the TV. She made a small effort to talk to Finnick, and get to know him. She started to bake, a skill Jupiter hadn't even known she had. With nowhere else to go, Cassia had stayed with the pair for a while. Jupiter sometimes didn't notice her, but found that as time went on, she noticed when she wasn't there. Things really had changed. And they continued to.

    "Your father was a customer," Cassia had said abruptly, one day.

    A year had passed since President Coin had been executed.

    "I used to work with Julius– his father owned the bakery before he did. We were just kids. Your father said he wanted to support local businesses, instead of the sponsors that called him daily. But nobody needed bread as often as he did." Cassia had smiled, in a way that lit up her face.

    "He had a crush on me, and Julius pushed me to accept it. Saturnus was sort of a celebrity, but I agreed to a date. He took me near the mountains, near the Victors Village, a place I had never been. He showed me the beautiful parts of District 2."

    But then her eyes, as golden as her daughter's, had turned sad.

    "Your father was a consequence of the Games. He heard voices, he was crushed by guilt. He would wake from nightmares decades later, of kids he had killed, of things he had done to survive in a world he couldn't change. The Games never ended just because he had won. I know that. I never wanted... you and Mars to be sent to the Academy. But it was expected– you were legacy."

    "Your brother– I saw the worst in him. He was what District 2 wanted. He was everything your father wouldn't want from a son. But you– you were everything."

    "The day your father killed himself– I knew. The Games never ended. To volunteer was to die. To survive, was to die. It never left you. In the end, he wasn't a Victor at all. He had lost, no matter what happened." Her mother had started crying.

    "I shut down. I couldn't... I couldn't take it. I watched Mars use violence for control, and I watched you Reaped. I wanted so much better for you. Your father wanted so much better for you. Your father loved you. I wish, everyday, that he was here– and that he could see it got better."

    Jupiter crouched down to her mother's level, wringing her hands in her lap. She had never heard her mother say so much, and especially not since her father had passed. They had been quiet for a while, in the small house by the water. Jupiter had gotten her answer on how her parents had met, on where her mother had learnt to bake, and why Julius – who was nothing but a body six feet under – was so fond of her.

    "Ma," Jupiter said softly. "I forgive you."

    Her mother had cried some more.

    It was the most words Cassia had said to Jupiter in a decade. She was quieter after that, but never quite slipped back into the quiet she had been for Jupiter growing up. She had moved into her own small place in what used to be District 4 soon after. Jupiter had never imagined her mother wanting to live anywhere else, but she seemed happy. Maybe a part of her loved to be away from the place that carried only painful memories.

    And, slowly, things moved on. Wounds inflicted by the Capitol and the Games began to scar, and new things grew in its path. A new normal was born, and Jupiter learnt what life was without the violence and Snow's thumb. She learnt what Finnick looked like without the parties and the escapades, and she loved him even more than before. And among it all, Jupiter learnt what she was, without the knife.

    Jupiter Marrow had been sixteen when she had been chosen to volunteer for the 68th Hunger Games, a legacy child expected to uphold her father's success and do better on a name he had damaged.

    On that day, she was almost twenty-seven.

    If she closed her eyes and thought about it, she could imagine they were in the old Victor's Village of District 4, where she had slipped away to many times. The waves crashed outside just the same, and the salt crusted in her hair just the same, and Finnick would throw her in just the same.

    But things could not be more different, and the more time that passed between Hunger Games and Jupiter, the more grateful she was that Finnick had loved her enough to save her.

    "Hey," Jupiter greeted as she padded into the kitchen, dressed for the day, hair pinned back lazily. Finnick glanced up from a book and smiled. "I'm meeting ma in town."

    Finnick knew what she meant, as he closed the book and got up. "Will you be long?" he asked gently.

    "No, I don't think so."

    "I'll make dinner."

    "Okay."

    She had tried to thank him once, for the effort he had gone to to include her in the plan and get her out. He had told her it was nothing, and he knew she would do the same for him. He had taken to using "because I love you" as his excuse for everything. Jupiter pretended to scoff at it, but the words never lost their warmth. She knew what he meant, bunkered down in District 13 for months, holding a false engagement party for the rebels to release propaganda, sobbing on the floor of the basement covered in his blood.

    They had always done what was necessary to survive, and at some point they had simply become a part of each other. Jupiter could never pinpoint exactly when she had decided she loved him, just as he had said on the hovercraft all those years ago. It may have been when he had given her the pearl, or listened to her without complaint, or maybe even when he had offered a tour of the hall when she was on her Victory Tour.

    "I love you," Jupiter said as she headed for the door.

    Finnick smiled, as if he didn't hear the words everyday. "I love you too."

    Jupiter kissed him goodbye before she left.

    She headed towards the sea with her mother, who stood waiting on the corner with the paper bag held to her chest.

    Each year, like clockwork, they sprinkled bread crumbs to honour her father's death. His grave had been destroyed in the war, but Jupiter felt that was okay. His bones were heavy with the things he had done, the things he hated.

    Jupiter found she preferred to scatter the bread to the sea, watch the fish nibble at the crumbs and make ripples on the surface of the water, the sun catching the water and glinting. Jupiter believed that was a much better cycle than anything she had ever had before.

END.

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and, with that, jupiter's story is complete. i hope everyone has a good 2025 and a slay holiday!

i never had solid plans to take this story into mockingjay, and after getting stuck around ch14, i decided to make it a catching fire standalone. jupiter's arc and journey is over, and writing it feels like a chore and dragging it on, so this epilogue exists as a small summary, some peace, and tying up loose ends. there were a lot of metaphors, side plots and character moments i wanted to wrap up or bring full circle in this, but with this being a short story, it was a bit of a challenge to put it all together, but i hope this was a good bit of closure :)

this story is different in many ways to my fics, in that it has significantly and consistently shorter chapters, a more concise and simple writing style, and the relationship she has with finnick is mostly established. but it has been very fun to write, and thank you to everyone who read along!

i find that now is a good time to mention that this story is a relatively new idea to me, that i did legit think of while drinking wine and rewatching catching fire with my hometown friend, and it stuck. i originally had an old old thg fic, that was actually fawn and her storyline of being a butcher's daughter, so she is here as a fun little add-on. also, she and johanna are very gay, but history will say they were best friends (maybe i'll write her fic/pov one day, maybe not)

this story was very very inspired by the line in tbosas where gaul explains to snow why she sent him into the arena: that the games expose human nature- and jupiter represents that. i also found the ideas of the career pack very interesting, and exploring how the violence reflects differently on the children and victors. jupiter and her connection to cycles repeating, and her relationship with her father, are also key. again, lots of ideas and metaphors, not enough time. maybe in the future i'll go back and edit this thoroughly, but for now, i'm happy where this story stands.

this is my second story to be completed on my profile. it's a small achievement as this is a short and concise book, but it's still very nice to have under my belt. that, and i wrote it all within a year, and mostly in one month as my nanowrimo project. at the beginning of november, i was writing chapter 13, and by the end, i had finished it. half the book done in one month, around 60k words straight.

with all that said, 89k total words and less than a year later, river styx is complete. thank you for reading and i hope to see you in another story soon, or not

either way, that's me for now, cheers <3