Chapter Text
May 8th of HG 58 (the year of the 58th Hunger Games)
The Presidential Mansion
The Capitol, Panem
President Coriolanus Snow was talking on the telephone to Romulus Thread, who was the brand-new Head Peacekeeper in District Eight, when the president felt something icy-cold press against the inside of his left forearm. The strange thing was, his left forearm was inside a white shirt sleeve, which was inside a suit-coat sleeve, and nobody else was in the room. Meaning: There was no logical reason why Snow’s forearm should be feeling icy-cold.
As soon as the telephone call ended, Coriolanus took off his suit-coat and draped it on the back of his chair, he unbuttoned the left sleeve of his shirt, then he pulled his left shirtsleeve all the way up to the elbow.
He stared at what he saw.
If he did not know better, President Snow would think he now was seeing a tattoo of dark-green handwriting on his skin—but Snow knew that what he was seeing was no tattoo.
****
Coriolanus Snow hated most District people with a white-hot hatred, though he knew better than to show such hatred—it was bad politics.
Actually, Snow tolerated district people from District One and District Two, but this was because during the Dark Days, those two districts had joined the rebellion only partially and grudgingly.
During the Dark Days, District Four had been the third-to-last district to join the rebellion; so in theory, Snow nowadays should tolerate people from District Four as well. But Snow had been suspicious of District Four people since he had been nineteen. Snow had watched nineteen-year-old Mags Flanagan on hologram, and Coriolanus had been unable to shake the feeling, The Victor is up to something. But in the years since Snow became president of Panem, he was never able to prove a thing against Mags.
As for people from District Three, Districts Five through Twelve, and District Thirteen, Snow hated all of them. Snow hated those districts’ people because during the Dark Days, those districts had heavily favored the rebels—
—the rebels who had killed Coriolanus Snow’s mother and father before little Cory was even five years old.
Coriolanus had never been friends with a district man, and Coriolanus had never fallen in love with a district woman. Nor could he imagine either event happening to him in his remaining years. Yet if his brand-new soulmark was to be believed, now Snow not only had a soulmate who was sixty-two years younger than he was, but she was also District.
****
Coriolanus Snow did not have many memories of his parents, because he had been too young when they had died.
His most vivid memory of his father had been little Cory often asking his mother, “When will Daddy be home?” (The elder Snow had worked late a lot.) Then when Julius Snow had been at home, often he had been holding a record/play minibox and talking to it, rather than giving attention to his young son. But Cory had admired his father, because all the adults who knew Julius Snow well, spoke admiringly of him. Cordelia Snow had clearly loved her husband, and this fact had given little Cory many good feelings.
Coriolanus Snow’s few memories of his mother Cordelia were all happy ones. The most vivid memory that the president now had about his mother was—How ironic!—a discussion about soulmates and soulmarks—
****
Cordelia Snow had just toweled off her son after his bath. This was when Cory asked, “Mommy, do you have a soulmark?”
“Yes, Cory, it’s on my back. You can’t see it unless I wear a swimsuit.”
“And Daddy has a soulmark too?”
“Uh-huh, on the back of his left hand. The writing’s really small. He got it on the day I was born, when he was two years old. Your Grammy says that getting the soulmark made Julius cry.”
“Why? Does it hurt?”
“Your father says he doesn’t remember quite what happened, only that he didn’t like it at the time. But I’ve heard it said that getting the soulmark feels like someone presses a rubber stamp against your skin, except the rubber stamp is made of cold, cold, cold ice. Supposedly even if you’re asleep, the cold will wake you up when you get your soulmark.”
“Is that what your soulmark felt like? Very cold?”
“I’m younger than your father, so I was born with my soulmark. It’s never felt cold.”
“Can it see it, Mommy? Your soulmark?”
His mother looked at Cory for ten seconds or so, then she said, “Okay.” She sat on the bathroom floor with her back turned to her son, she unbuttoned her blouse, then the blouse dropped from her neck to the back of her waist. Cory saw on his mother’s right shoulder, words written in his father’s handwriting, colored royal blue.
Cory pouted. “I can’t read the words, Mommy! What do they say?”
Cordelia pulled her blouse back up. As she was refastening the buttons, she answered, “The words are, ‘May I share this table?’ Your father said those words to me in the Student Center at Capitol University, and they were the first words he ever spoke to me.”
“And what does Daddy’s soulmark say?”
As Cordelia stood up, she said, “His soulmark-words are in pink, in my girlish handwriting. His words say”—she laughed—“ ‘Um, WHAT did you just say?’ Because those words, the stupidest words I’ve ever said to anybody, were the first words I said to your father.” Cory’s mother laughed again.
“Do I have a soulmark, Mommy? Could you look, please?”
“Well, I can tell you for sure that you weren’t born with one. But you’re four years old—maybe you have one now and somehow you didn’t feel it come.”
Cory’s mother took the towel that had been draped around Cory’s shoulders, and hung the towel on the towel rack.
Cory’s mother looked over every square centimeter of the boy’s now-naked skin, then she draped the towel on her son again. “Nothing to see, just as I thought. But I still have to check your hair and the bottoms of your feet. Sit on the floor.”
To an impatient four-year-old boy, his mother checking his hair took way too long—she was being very patient and thorough.
At last she announced, “There’s no soulmark in your hair.”
She then said, “Now I have to check the bottoms of your feet. Hold them up to me.”
Cory faced his mother, lay on his back on the tiled bathroom floor, and lifted his feet off the floor. He figured that his mother would simply look at the bottoms of his feet.
But instead, his mother wrapped an arm around his feet, capturing them, then she began tickling the soles of his feet. Grinning, she explained, “I’m trying to see a soulmark, and I’m trying to feel a soulmark. I don’t want to miss feeling it, so I have to keep trying.”
“Mommy, you’re tickling me! Stop,” Cory said, even as he laughed and laughed.
****
Four months after this tickling session, rebels had murdered Cory’s parents just because they lived in Panem’s grand capital city. This was when Cory’s happy childhood had ended.
District people had murdered Coriolanus Snow’s parents, and now Coriolanus Snow was supposed to believe that the love of his life was a 62-years-younger District girl? Impossible!