Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

One of the only things he remembers from the day he won was the medic shining a flashlight in his eyes and asking if he knew where and who he was. He remembers Asenath, before she got her lips done the second time, crying and hugging Mags, who had been holding his hand from the second he was extracted. He remembers that was the first and only time Sligo ever said anything genuinely nice to him, smacked him on the back and said; ‘proud of you, kid’. The memories end with the blood under his fingernails that belonged to that girl from either 3, 6 or 9 who was the last one in the way. He doesn’t remember how he killed her, only that she was older than him and confident that she could take him out. She was wrong, he was faster. They collided a few times before she stopped moving and the cannon went off, and that’s where things start to blur together. 

Ptolemy’s Satis-Factory operates discreetly out of the 18th and 19th floors of an office building downtown, listed on the directory as a naturopathic service. It’s the only surviving bordello in the Capitol, has lasted at least 50 years, between various locations, evading some perfunctory laws, sanctions that nobody actually cared enough to enforce. At this point, it is legally registered as a high-end massage parlor, securely out of the financial realm of anybody who has any incentive to investigate it. 

Against his better judgment, he watches the reaping in 4 a few hours after checking in at Ptolemy’s and unpacking. It’s one of those reapings that is too bleak to get even the most detached, depraved or jaded spectators excited. The boy is just barely 12 from a dirt-poor family of eight and the girl is three months away from her 19th birthday, worked half to the bone already at an inland fish farm. He’s sweet and sanguine and maybe 80 pounds soaking wet and she’s a dead-eyed wage slave, pretty in a trashy sort of way with the kind of awkward lean muscle that collects on a slight build after a few years of hard labour.  He’s so young and she was so close to being out of the woods. From a logistical standpoint, it really could go either way. He’s cute and crying a lot and she’s strong and well-endowed with a passable face. Something has to work out, if anything to make up for their fucked-up luck. Behind them, Mags is staring at the little one with knit brows and gritted teeth, Sligo is so visibly hungover he can almost smell him through the screen and Asenath looks like she wants to die as she waits suspiciously for a volunteer. It’s nothing too out of the ordinary, but even after everything is said and done, he keeps waiting for someone to raise their hand, to shove that tiny boy out of harm’s way. It never comes, and District 4’s 70th Reaping ends, the transition music plays, and the image switches to Priapus Fenstermaker in the crowded marina outside the Justice Building, shoving a Capitol News microphone in Sligo’s indignant, sunburned face.

“Well, there you have it, folks! Your District 4 Tributes for the 70th Annual Hunger Games and, wow, is this ever interesting! I’m here with the victor of Year 42, Sligo Altomar! So, Sligo, tell us a little bit about this year’s contenders!”

He’s always considered Sligo Altomar to be something of a cautionary tale. He was an absolute menace when he won 28 years ago; a wiry 17 year old killing machine with jet black hair and a face that was just pretty enough to keep him from coming across as completely terrifying. He still holds the record for most confirmed kills after he picked off 7 kids in 3 days and switches between blazing pride and crippling remorse where that fact is concerned, depending on how much alcohol is in his system. Over the years, he’s kept the scrawny build but added a beer gut, bad skin and a five o’clock shadow that always seems to stay the exact same length despite never appearing to have been touched. He spends a lot of time on the water, so his skin is sun-damaged and the tattoos on his arms have faded to a dull shade of indigo. He’s like a walking PSA to warn everyone he comes into contact with about the dangers of an addictive personality with his awkward physique and tar-stained teeth. But at this point, he’s technically family. Not so much a father figure, more like some kind of weird, grimy uncle.

Dull-eyed and sweaty, Sligo clears his throat and leans in, not even bothering to act enthusiastic. “Ciaran Whelk and Annie Cresta. 12 and 18, both from Portside.” Sligo lights a cigarette, Priapus laughs nervously and fans the smoke away from his face with his free hand. Sligo gives the camera a dead-eyed stare for a few seconds before leaving.

“Well, there you have it, folks, and now over to District 5, where we-.”

He turns the TV off when he hears a knock at the door and Ptolemy’s grating voice.

“ Fiiinnick , are you decent?” Ptolemy doesn’t wait for an answer, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen in detail before, and when he opens the door he brings with him the smell of sweat, cigars and a thick, saccharine amberwood perfume. “I brought your schedule for the next week, doll. It’s so good to have you back so soon.” Ptolemy leans in and brushes his lips, silicone-swollen sausages covered in a sticky balm, against his temple. “You’re in for a busy one, Procula’s been blowing my line up and we both know Lady Livia doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I’m ready when she is.”

“Good. She’s been singularly impatient since your last visit. It’s Reaping Week, you know how she gets.” Ptolemy gives him another slimy kiss on the forehead. “And, my word, aren’t you looking delicious, just in time for debutante season. My golden boy.”

Ptolemy Notch is one of the most nauseating people he’s ever had the misfortune of interacting with. He doesn’t know how long he’s been a pimp, never even considered how one would get into that line of work, but it’s made him obscenely wealthy and launched him into the upper echelon of Capitol society. He’s one of those people who never had a chance at being attractive, his body seems to be made of uncooked dough piled haphazardly onto a thick, awkward frame, covered in scaly rosacea and patches of coarse flaxen hair. He compensates because he has the means to, slicks his receding hairline with gel and hides the pallid heap of his body under expensive suits and tasteless statement jewelry. He’s never gotten the impression that Ptolemy is operating on any sexual urge, in fact, if he had to guess he would assume that Ptolemy has very little libido whatsoever but instead likes to play with people, control them, strip their ego bare and kick it around until he gets bored and moves onto the next one. Every time their paths cross he remembers the sensation of those meaty fingers around his throat, feeling suffocated by a wall of moist flesh, fantasizing about a metal shaft in his hands and the squelch of prongs piercing organs. Ptolemy is always the one to break in the new assets.

Early in his tenure, his partnership as Ptolemy liked to call it, he had been easy to sway, to manipulate, to use. He was 15 the first time his responsibilities switched from what he thought to be press engagements and platonic conversation and morphed into something else entirely. District kids are usually easy to obtain and even easier to keep, Victors are a better investment but can be a bit more of a challenge. In his experience, watching his peers filter in and out, they tend to be newly emboldened with nationwide acclaim and financial stability. He was the same, refused vehemently the second Ptolemy came to him with the offer. That same week, his mother was found floating in the harbour, plucked silently from the Victor’s Village, her neck snapped, a white rose stuffed in her mouth. President Snow paid for the funeral and had him driven out the following day, sat him down in a room with Ptolemy and asked him again in a slow, stern voice, reminding him of what followed recalcitrance, and by that weekend he had a permanent suite in the Satis-Factory, a hazy room with excessive drapery, lit by dim red strips of neon, approximated sleaze for people with last names like Cardew and Whimsiwick and Ravinstill to feel like they were indulging in something feral, tenebrous, dangerous, which he assumed at the time that maybe they were. It didn’t take long to figure out that, while illegal, nothing anyone did to him at Ptolemy’s carried the slightest shadow of risk. They all had enough money to make it, or him, disappear if needed. People back home remembered Leyla Odair, saw him at the train station every month. They said nothing. 

He has been in the Capitol for six hours when Procula shows up, bringing with her the cloying scent of the morning’s bottle of wine and a litany of borderline-indecipherable grievances. He can’t say much for Procula Derringer, but at least she waited until he’d gone through puberty. She’s a lonely, boozy, spray-tanned mantis of a woman, complete with bug eyes and nervous, convulsive fingers that she keeps tipped with terrifying acrylic nails, perfect for raking young flesh. Her hair changes a lot, usually cycling back to a thinning blonde perm; long, tight ringlets defined with a thick, sappy gel which he assumes is intended to smell like lily-of-the-valley but with a distinct chemical acridity, urinelike when mixed with sex sweat and liquor. She’s an easy one; likes a slow, considerate fuck with lots of eye contact and small talk, and she tips generously. She has her regular rotation at Ptolemy’s, sometimes he’ll see her with Kale or Ren or Horemheb, but he is by far her favourite. She watches the Games obsessively, and she told him once that she has a thing for men from 4, that they have a ‘folksy inclination’, whatever the posca-drenched, botox-pumped fuck that means. When she said that, he wondered what she would do if she checked in one day and found Sligo, in all his sweaty, tattooed, drunk-uncle glory, waiting for her with a bottle of homebrew and a trauma-limp implement. Sometimes he looks at her and wonders where she went wrong in life, and sometimes it makes him feel vaguely sad. At the end of the day, all Procula really wants is intimacy, even if it’s not real, even if she’s shelling out a shameful amount of money to get pounded by barely-legal District kids while her contemporaries are doing all the things she resents them for. A recurring character is Andronica Dovecote. He has never met this woman, never seen her, never even heard of her outside of their two-hour long sessions, but she is the uncontested antagonist of Procula’s personal narrative.

“Babycaaaakes…” she wails, throwing the beaded curtain aside and collapsing on the bed, “-I’m finished.”

“What happened?” He feigns interest. He’s never been a good actor. 

“It’s that-.” she lights a cigarette and takes a long pull on it, sucking in her papery, powdered cheeks. “-that abominable Harrington woman. Look at this, look what that cockroach wrote about me-.” she pulls a new issue of The Lararium out of her purse. The First Lady is on the cover, glaring beady-eyed out from behind her meticulously arranged powder blue fringe, undercut by a headline so ass-kissingly sycophantic it borders on lewd. Procula flips it open and holds it at arm’s length, “-‘but one artistic decline I can assume we all saw coming was that of Procula Derringer’- and, look-.” she flips the page around, displaying the typo in question, Darynger . “-the illiterate wench, just wait until I get my hands on her. ‘-her uninspired Spring-Summer collection is indicative of the last gasps of a bygone era, and while one can appreciate the homage to the likes of Hadriana Ravinstill and Clytemnestra Moss, icons of their time’- and they were, they absolutely were and she wouldn’t know an icon if it bit her on that plastic nose of hers-. ‘-as is usually the case with Procula’s self-indulgent appeals to nostalgia -’.”

“If she’s so stupid-.” he cuts her off, kissing her hand the way that always gets her to tip nicely. “-why do you care what she writes? She’s obviously wrong.”

“Oh, sweet-pea.” she gives him a drunk, wet kiss right between the eyes. “Oh, you lovely sweet simple thing, you just don’t understand.” She taps the tip of his nose with one of her horrifying nails and grins, lipstick smudged on her teeth.

“Why not? Tell me.” he runs a dutiful hand up her inner thigh, she grins. 

“Because she- ahaaaa…” He hikes her dress up, she gives him a look that he knows she understands to be seductive but he finds repugnant. “-oh, you sneaky little- anyway, what you have to understand is that for whatever reason, Faustina Harrington- and you know something? I think her dunce of a husband- because of course she married a Whimsiwick, of course Anastatius went for the first fat cow to cross his path- but as I was saying-.” Her tangent is fragmented and boring. He forces her legs apart with his knees, eliciting a loud bark of laughter. She gives him that Procula look again, those watery, bloodshot, heavily-mascaraed bedroom eyes. “Oh, you little lech, you.” She motions towards the nightstand with her foot, the decanter she brought with her sweating in the heat of the room. “-have as much as you want. You deserve it.”

Over the duration of his partnership , it’s become easier to categorize clients, to understand where he fits into whichever hole, physical or metaphorical, they need him to fill. He’s become intimately acquainted with the events that led up to Procula being the way that she is, and they don’t seem to be particularly out of place. She grew up rich, struggled to find love and supplemented it with a career that was doomed to fail. Sometimes, circumstances of their interactions aside, he feels bad for her. She may not be his favourite person but he’s met people who are multitudes worse and multitudes happier. 

The First Lady shows up an hour after Procula, comes in without even bothering to knock, posca on her breath. Livia Snow has always made him feel vulnerable in the worst imaginable way, since the first time they met at the end of his victory tour. She’s not imposing necessarily, well into her 70s and always drowning in some heinous mess of tulle and velvet with small, lizardlike features, but there’s something about her that has always made him feel like he’s in imminent danger. She’s nearly exactly the same as she had been when she walked up to him to congratulate him on his win, saying she had been absolutely taken with him since the reaping, that he was the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. There’s something about her that reminds him of overripe fruit, a saccharine putrescence that leaks out of her pores and makes him sick. When he’s inside her, he tells himself that whatever makes her that way is far out of his reach, but sometimes he isn’t convinced and when she leaves he turns the shower on as hot as it can go and stays there until he can feel his heartbeat looming behind his eyes and it gets hard to breathe. 

“I don’t want any asinine small talk.” she announces as she enters. “You’ll fuck me and not open your mouth unless I specifically ask you to.” She tosses a bottle of cheap wine with a twist-top onto the bed as she begins to undress, arthritic fingers sliding belligerently through layers of silk. She pauses, turns back towards him. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“What did I say?” He opens the wine, making sure to drink the neck of the bottle before she turns around. “You’re a man now, I guess it’s to be expected.” She positions herself awkwardly on top of him. “What, you’re a big man now and I’m some old lady? Is that what this is?” She takes the wine from him, throws back a good centimeter. “Well, is it?!”

“Liv, of course not.” He runs his hand up her thigh, she stares at it like it’s some kind of insect. “I’m only 19. How can you be old if I’m still so young?”

“You’ll be 20 soon.” she hisses, bracing herself against his throat with one hand and stroking him clumsily with the other. “If you’re 20, what does that make me?”

“I won’t be 20 until November. And 20 is young, 20 is very young.”

“I miss the way you were. Sweet boy, sweet stupid little provincial boy. Look at you now, you’ve let yourself go, you look like some disgusting old man.” She runs a hand down his chest. “Drink.”

He does as she says. The wine is bottom-shelf swill that smells vaguely of hairspray and he has to steel himself to keep from choking, he has an inkling that she had an Avox pick it up on her way in, unconcerned about taste or quality knowing it was mostly for him. 

“I’m sorry, Liv. You’re right, I’ve let myself go. Sometimes when I don’t see you for a long time, I forget.” She scoffs, hooking her fingers under his collar. 

“Everything you are, you owe to me.”

“I know. I’m just so… young and stupid that I forget sometimes. I haven’t lived long enough to understand why I owe you so much.”

She gives him a long, suspicious look. “You’re just saying what you think I want to hear.”

That’s my job . “I need you, Liv. I’m too young and stupid, I need you to take care of me.”

He drinks again, holds it in his mouth for a second like it’s too strong to swallow and looks up at her. Her face softens a bit, despite never having been soft to begin with. 

“I blame your mother.” she complains. “Making you think you had it all figured out. She set you up to fail and abandoned you, who could abandon a child like that?” There is sweat collecting under the collar. Livia shakes her head. “God knows what would have happened to you if not for me. You’d be bent over a park bench on Tugurium Row, strung out on God knows what.” She bends down, gives him a wet, musty kiss on the lips. “I saved you.”

“You did, Your FirstLadyness.” That insipid nickname gets a dull, drunk smile out of her, it always has. He hadn’t known exactly how to address her when they first met after his Victory Tour, everyone watching had thought it was cute at the time and now even just saying it out loud makes him want to hurl. “I love you.”

She runs a hand through his hair, picks up the wine and holds it to his lips. “I love you too, my sweet boy. I am the only person who will ever love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

Her FirstLadyness loses stamina around the fifteen minute mark of her appointment, makes him lay next to her, curled up under her arm like a child, and holds the bottle to his lips as she loops through each individual Reaping, focusing intensely on 1, 2, 4 and 11. This year, 1 is offering a stunning 17 year old girl who reminds him of a smaller, more delicate Enobaria and a 18 year old boy with steely eyes and a body like a tank. 2’s Lanistarium seems to be running on fumes judging by their two somewhat underwhelming volunteers; a lanky 16 year old girl with severe bone structure and a ravenous look in her eyes and a boy of the same age who seems more suited to schoolyard violence than anything else. Liv doesn’t give much commentary on 4 beyond an off-handed comment that this Ciaran Whelk kid reminds her a bit of him, which makes him sick. 11 reaps a gorgeous 16 year old girl and a 13 year old boy with obvious microcephaly, and by the time the screen shows the grim look on their escort’s face, Liv has rewound to 1, right to the spot where Citrine Singer’s hand shoots up to volunteer, then through to Annie Cresta elbowing through the section of 18 year olds, glancing desperately back at a trio of thick-limbed Lanistarium-trained girls who avoid eye contact. As Asenath urges the crowd passive-aggressively for a volunteer to take Ciaran’s place, Liv skips to 11, to the wails of Mose Rowe’s 18 year old sister. Eventually, she resigns herself to checking in one districts she doesn’t care about; the tiny black-haired girl from 5 who looks like she’s smiling to keep from crying, the dejected pair of 15 year olds from 7 and the rangy labourer from 12 who introduced himself with an ear-splitting riff on a broken harmonica. By the time she’s zeroed in on the girl from 6, a pretty freckled kid who doesn’t look like she’s been outside in weeks, the appointment is over and he wouldn’t be able to walk in a straight line if he tried.

“You’re late.” Mags informs him when he’s sobered up enough to make it to the train station, yanking him down into a vice-grip of a hug. The platform is in direct sunlight and for a second he feels like he’s about to keel over, the acrid taste of hours-old wine churning in his esophagus. 

“Sorry. Livia.” She gives him a somber, knowing look. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Mags shakes her head. “It’s okay, honey. Just-.” she leans in again. “Take the girl, alright? Sligo’s on the books this year and we decided we’re gonna work together with Ciaran. He needs… surrogate parents, if you know what I mean.”

“I figured. That’s fine. She can’t be any worse than Leucie.”

“Exactly. She’s older, she’s smart, and, hey, maybe getting to spend the last week of her life with you might take the edge off it a bit.” 

Mags elbows him and he forces a smile, glancing back over at this year’s batch of cannon fodder. The girl has her arm around the boy, who is a good foot shorter than her and starting to break down again, and Sligo is standing behind them with his hands in his pockets, eyeing a busty female Avox emptying a garbage can at the very end of the platform. Finally, Asenath disembarks the train in a knee-length red latex dress that squeaks when she moves. 

“Oh, finally-.” she announces when she sees him, stumbling a little as she steps onto the platform on eight-inch heels. “-Priapus is pissed, kid, he didn’t know you were going to be out of town. He had to interview that .” She jerks her head towards Sligo, who has begun to excavate his nails with a fishhook. 

There isn’t a single organic feature on Asenath Glass’s face besides, arguably, her teeth and eyes. Her nose was once aquiline, but has been chiseled down to a tiny, flat slope, her cheekbones have been pumped full of… something and her lips are grafted to Hell and back, so thick her speech comes out in a breathy, padded mumble. Her eyebrows are wispy,  microneedled slashes and her forehead has been meticulously ironed into a shiny, immovable dome. Her hair grows in loose curls, but she massacres it with chemicals biweekly to flatten it into glossy submission, dyes it half red and half black and marinates in spray tan. He wouldn’t go as far as to call her ugly, because she certainly isn’t, but whatever kind of pretty she is does nothing for him. She has been the escort for 4 for twelve years now, after her predecessor was given an entry-level Gamemaker position. He has no idea how old she is and doesn’t care to find out, but assumes maybe late thirties to mid forties. She has to have passed a certain age judging by the bones and veins in the backs of her hands, but that could also potentially be attributed to her achingly low BMI. When he met her for the first time, she’d scared him a little. He hadn’t known how to navigate the specific blend of sycophancy and rhapsodic patriotism that was her personality then, before she’d gotten attached to one too many dead children and become caustic and jaded.  The one thing he can say for her is that she’s reliable and not entirely unpleasant all the time. She can be judgmental, controlling and shrill, but there’s something genuine, something fundamentally good nestled under the layers upon layers of silicone. 

“Sorry, I had to do some favours for a friend.”

Asenath gives him a look. “Who? Why now?”

“Some promo for Flickerman’s show, Gloss and Augustus and I got roped into it for basically nothing. Sorry. Stupid move on my part.”

She waves a hand. “Whatever.” She leans in, “-you better do something to get these two pumped up. We got stuck at a tollbooth on the way here, they’ve been on that train for seven hours listening to Sligo flap his gums about his confirmed kills, I’m honestly shocked they didn’t jump on the tracks when they had the chance.”

Asenath leads him over to the tributes, who are still standing next to the train, staring at the ground. The girl is wearing the same  slightly ratty yellow dress she wore for the reaping, with her thick, chocolate brown hair in two braids threaded and tied off with white lace ribbons. She’s a wholesome, plain kind of pretty with wide green eyes and clear skin, but her nails are chewed raw and it looks like she’s taken kitchen scissors to her bangs recently. She stares at him for a second and forces a smile, squeezing the boy’s shoulder. He’s wearing a pale turquoise pin-striped suit that’s just slightly too small, one of those year-in-year-out Reaping outfits that his parents won’t replace until they have to cut him out of it, his left hand clamped around something in the pocket of the jacket. He almost can’t bring himself to look at him for too long, this gap-toothed, freckled shrimp of a kid who seems built for nothing more than tide pools and sunburns. 

“Annie. Nice to meet you.” she holds her hand out for him to shake, she has a firm grip, nothing less than he would expect from someone who spends her weeks hauling 90 pound troughs of dead fish from loading dock to assembly line. “-and this is Ciaran.” Ciaran sniffles and extends his hand nervously, and fuck, he’s so tiny … Annie brings a hand up to stroke his short, strawberry blonde hair. “Ciaran works on his dad’s boat when he’s not in school. He caught a salmon the size of my leg last summer, his dad showed me pictures.”

“Yeah?” He leans over to meet Ciaran’s eyeline, cursing his seemingly innate inability to converse comfortably with children. “I used to work on a crab boat with my mom sometimes when I was your age.”

Ciaran nods and keeps his eyes locked on the ground, shuffling a small chip of cement with the toe of his shoe. He can feel Mags, Asenath and Annie all staring at him, waiting for him to say something, but he can’t seem to make it happen. Instead, he directs his gaze towards Sligo, who is once again lighting up, watching the female Avox’s uniformed ass as she departs back into the station.

Last year’s tributes were a fresh-faced pair of Careers named Levi and Shantie, both 18 and both from the Peninsula. They were promising until they weren’t. He’s figured out how these things usually go. Tributes from the Flats, himself included, are usually sloppily trained by a vicarious parent or older sibling. The Southernmost section of 4 is a barren, sparsely populated stretch of land comprised primarily of cliffs, scrubby fields and the titular saltpans that stretch miles out into the ocean. Once the Whimsiwick fish farms began to churn out shellfish, it was only downhill from there, as the Flats are where the majority of 4’s shellfish exports are obtained and processed. Families from the Flats tend to be dirt-poor and angry about it, and they’ll do just about anything to get their dignity back. After his win, this attitude was solidified tenfold, and since then, he’s had a Tribute from the Flats every year with the exception of 69 and now 70, they have all died outside of the Final Five. 

Tributes from the Peninsula tend to get farther, their training is better and they come from slightly more money, so they’re usually less desperate to volunteer young. Levi, Shantie, Ridley from 66, Carrick from 67 and Keelyn from 68 were all over 16 and had been given at least some level of briefing on how to not die from exposure or infection, along with combat training, and grew up with the privilege of having the Lanistarium close by. He’s only been there once, right after he won, and he remembers being nauseous the entire time, half from the concussion, half from the hard-bodied 18 year olds staring him down with weapons in hand. He soon realized, after watching Ridley manage to accidentally shoot himself in the gut with an arrow on his third day in the arena, that they tend to be too confident for their own good. He feels bad for Mags, who grew up in the Peninsula back when it was still mostly seasonal fishing villages and still has family there, she knows how much stock they put in the Lanistarium and how misled the Careers tend to be. 

This year, for the first time since 62, both Tributes are from Portside, a fishing hub right in the middle of the coastline that houses the main WP compound on the Easternmost edge of the city limits. The Victor’s Village is just outside of the main town center and he’s never fully gotten used to it. It’s a busy, self-important place clustered around a vast pier where everyone always seems to be in everyone else’s business. Mom fucking hated it there. He hates that he knows vague scraps of information about the Tributes just from having remembered where he’s seen them before. He knows Ciaran’s father is the captain of a trawler with a crew of eight men that’s always moored outside the licensing office, where his wife works part time while the kids are at school. He knows Annie works at both the inland WP compound and at the free-range outpost in Pliny’s Inlet because he’s seen her boarding both respective buses at various times.  Sligo is from Portside and everyone knows him there. He can’t say much for Sligo, but at least he’s been generous with his winnings, generous enough to have successfully garnered a positive reputation in a place where even the tiniest slip-up can brand someone for life despite having been an intemperate dipsomaniac since his early 20s. 

Once his own victory had settled on the District, once the parcels had dried up and the festivities had ended, he realized that so had any favour he’d garnered in that impertinent nest of busybodies. The class division in Portside is stark, with menial wealth scattered randomly among people who usually come into it by accident. A mayoral ascent here, a fish farm promotion there, a smattering of lucrative salmon seasons that never last long, and three living Hunger Games victors, three dead. Those with money are stingy and suspicious, those without, jealous and exhausted. It’s not immensely unlike the Flats, but the attitude that comes with poverty in Portside is different. It could be the population density, could be the proximity to the Justice Building and, by extension, the Capitol, or maybe it could just be coincidence, but there’s a sense of entitlement that has always put him off, a grasping, groveling atmosphere.

When he finds her in her apartment before Remake, Annie still has the yellow dress on, but her hair is down, crimped into jagged waves by the braids and the humidity, the ribbons sitting in a tangle in her lap. She flinches a bit when he enters, looks him up and down and forces a smile.

“Hi.” he opens.

Her eyebrows twitch together slightly. “Hi.”

“You mind if-.” He glances towards the chair across from her. 

“Sure.” she crosses her legs, looks him up and down again with a slightly wider approximation of a smile.

“So, I guess, I’ll just get into it, uh… I’m really sorry about this.”

“Oh, it’s fine.” she lies. 

“A lot of the time, when people over 16 get Reaped, nobody volunteers because they think-.”

“It’s really fine.” Her smile goes from a grimace to a smirk. “Come on, man, lighten up. You know you’re breathing through your mouth, right?”

He clenches his teeth, suddenly overcome with nasal congestion. “Sorry.”

Annie shrugs. “All good.”

“So, just before we get into anything else, I have to fill out these intake forms, then you’ll go down to Remake with Asenath and Ciaran.”

“Oh, so you’re my mentor, then?”

“Yeah, Mags thought it was better if she helps Sligo with Ciaran, just because he’s so young. So, that reflects well on you, if Mags thinks you’ll be fine with just me-.”

“Why, do you suck as a mentor or something?”

Stop looking at me like that . “Well, I-, uh, the thing is that I’m just-.”

“Through the nose.”

“Sorry.”

“So, the forms?”

He fumbles the stack of papers as he lays them across the coffee table, Annie eyes them hesitantly.

“So basically, I just need to get all your basic information. Any, like, medical information will be later on, I just need things like full name, family information, address, you know.” In the pocket of his jacket, he finds a half-dead pen. “Okay, full name, Annie Cresta-.”

“Ančice.”

“How do you spell that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Just give it-, there’s a…” She leans across the table, writes A N Č I C E on the first line.

“That’s a nice name.”

“Thank you.”

“Address?”

“Harrington Place in Portside, Unit 430. Just me there, I know you’re about to ask me about my marital status. Why do they have that anyway? I mean, I guess some people get married young.”

“The first Tribute I mentored was married.”

“Shit, really?”

“Yeah.” Leucie was from the Flats, plain-faced and muscular, married at 16 to a 26 year old clam diver who convinced her she’d be able to win. She died in the Final 5 of dehydration. “Anyway, tell me about your family. You have any siblings?” She shakes her head. “Okay, no siblings… what about your parents?”

Annie’s lips thin. “Dead. For about five years now.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” She crosses her legs, knits her fingers together in her lap. “It was an accident. They were lobster trappers. My, uh… my dad… he really liked to build things, so at one point he got it in his head that he could build a boat.” Annie clenches her jaw. “He was very good at catching lobsters.”

“But not at building boats?” She shakes her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring that up. Shit, open mouth, insert foot.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“If it’s any consolation, my mom died four years ago, too, and I never met my dad. It was really hard. So I understand.”

Annie shrugs. “Yeah, it… yeah. Anyway, next question?”

“Employer.”

“Whimsiwick Pisciculture. I haven’t been placed yet, but I’m interning in Free Range, Processing and Shellfish.”

“So you’re well-versed in fish?”

She laughs nervously. “Yeah, right. I’m honestly shocked I haven’t managed to burn the place to the ground. Saira’s been doing me a lot of favours.”

“Who’s Saira?”

“My mom’s best friend, and my boss, I guess. Basically when the boat went down, she was the closest thing I had to family, so I’ve been taking care of myself this whole time, but Saira helped me kind of… figure out how to be an adult, I guess.”

In the slot for family information, he writes ‘close with unrelated family friend’. Annie twists her ring around her finger, a gold band with a decently sized emerald.

“Is that your token?”

She smiles and holds up her hand. “My great-grandma’s engagement ring.” She smirks and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Stolen. Don’t write that down.”

He puts a finger to his lips in concurrence and places the forms aside. “So… how are you feeling?”

Annie bites her lip. “I was scared before. Now I don’t really know if I feel anything. I’m mostly worried about Ciaran, just because he’s so young. He’s so small.” She leans in. “I really thought somebody was going to volunteer. I knew nobody would for me, but he’s a Whelk , everyone loves his family. It’s kind of morbid, honestly.”

“Why didn’t you think anyone would volunteer for you?”

Annie’s expression is hard to place. “I’m guessing you don’t talk to a lot of people in Portside.”

“Not if I can help it.”

She laughs. “It’s not that people don’t like me. I mean, I don’t think it is, anyway. It’s just that it’s probably better if I’m not around anymore.”

“Don’t say that, I don’t think anybody thinks that.”

She tilts her head and goes back to fidgeting with the ring. “Well, you don’t talk to people in Portside.” She pauses. “Anyway. Is there anything else?”

“No, we’re done. The rest will be done with your prep team. So, Asenath will take you down there now with Ciaran.”

“Okay.” she stands up and crosses the room. “Well, thank you for… the intake…ing? The taking in? I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah.” His mouth feels dry. “Good luck.”

Annie turns back, halfway through turning the doorknob, her voice is barely a half a whisper. “Thank you.”

When he gets back to the common area, Mags is plucking a newly-lit cigarette out of Sligo’s hand and extinguishing it in the bar sink. She looks up at him and smiles that warm grandma smile that always takes the edge off this annual shitshow.

“Intake went well?”

“Perfect. Thanks for letting me take her. You’re right, it’s easier with someone who can kind of hold their own.”

“I figured it would be. We didn’t even get to Ciaran’s forms, poor thing was so worked up. I’ve been doing this a long time, kid, it’s never been as bad as just now.”

He turns to Sligo. “You better be nice to that kid.”

Sligo glares at him. “Actually, I was planning on drop-kicking him off the roof to build character. He’ll shoot back up, it’ll be fine- of course, I’m being nice to him, you limp-dicked-.”

“ HEY !” Mags cuts him off, “the two of you will not antagonize each other this week.” Sligo rolls his eyes, Mags takes her sandal off and smacks him on the arm with it. “I mean it! This could be the last week of these kids’ lives, they don’t need to spend it listening to two grown men sniping at each other like 5 year olds.” She stares between the two of them. “Alright. So, Finnick, tell us about Annie.”

He sits on the couch opposite Sligo, who eyes him with lazy disdain. “Honestly, with her, it could go either way. Her age is a definite advantage, she’s big enough to be strong but small enough to be fast. The one thing is, she… doesn’t seem very motivated. I got the impression that she’s scared, maybe trying to… come off like she’s not.”

“She looks promising.” Mags replies, “she’s not a Career, per se, but WP, that’s hard work. She’s obviously in good shape and she’s definitely not scared of blood.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Maybe we can prioritize teaching her how to fight and how to sell herself, she seems smart enough to handle the survival piece on her own.”

“I can't believe nobody volunteered for that baby.” Asenath shudders as she re-enters the common area, making for the bar like her life depends on it. She snatches up a decanter and sloshes a generous amount into a glass. “It really just makes me sick.”

“How were they when you sent them down?” Mags inquires.

“Annie’s great. Good sport. Feronia, on the other hand, practically had to pry Ciaran off me.” Asenath sits down heavily on the couch next to him, her eucalyptus perfume hits him in the face like a brick and he stifles a cough. She rattles the ice in her drink. “I’m gonna need, like, six of these.”

“I’m glad he’s with Feronia.” He adds, “she was mine. She was really nice, she’s good with the young ones.”

“Yeah, Ceto down at the Embassy thought so too, I think she made some calls.” 

“Did you happen to see who Annie’s stylist is? I remember Quinticilia dressed Shantie last year, she was really good.”

“Ugh, no such luck, kid.” Asenath gives him an amiable punch in the shoulder. “It’s a good thing she’s already pretty, she’s Procula’s this year.”

His mouth suddenly fills with the taste of stale posca and cigarettes. He’s known for a while that Procula has dressed Tributes in the past, but judging by her constant complaints about being supposedly underappreciated, he always assumed she hadn’t been asked back in years. There’s nothing in the arena that can possibly be worse than getting picked at by those centipede fingers, he hopes desperately that Annie has a strong stomach and a high tolerance for being manhandled.

“Asenath, that woman is a nightmare. Is it… too late to switch?”

“Let’s not worry about this right now.” Mags placates. “This Procula broad can’t be that bad.”

“You’d be surprised.” he interrupts.

Asenath laughs. “I’ll drink to that.”

Before he goes downstairs, he fills an empty water bottle with something clear and pungent from the sideboard that he’s seen Sligo getting into before. He can feel Liv’s wine beginning to leave his system, leaving a nauseating taste in his mouth and a weird ache in his stomach, and he doesn’t particularly relish the idea of slogging through the remainder of the night sober. He has just enough time to check in with Annie and Procula before hauling ass back to Ptolemy’s for an hour session with Apophis Pomander, a broadcasting magnate with erectile dysfunction and a penchant for bondage. It feels like too much effort for an hour, but Apophis tips munificently, and he figures it can’t hurt to plant the idea of sponsoring Annie in the head of a desperately horny, terminally single man with more money than he knows what to do with. 

He hates Remake, dreads going down there every year but now dreads it even more knowing that not only is this poor girl having to endure Procula on top of being marked for death, but he’s essentially going to be abandoning her for the rest of the night. Even if these appointments do end up benefiting her down the line, which he prays they will, he thinks about his own Games, how pissed and confused he would have been if it had been Mags leaving him to fend for himself on the first night. 

The door of the dressing room marked 4F is ajar but the curtain a few feet behind the door is drawn. Camarina Krieg, an entry-level aesthetician who he’s only ever met in passing, is assembling a few odds and ends in the hallway, her bag open on the floor. When she takes notice of him, she straightens up and smiles. 

“I’ll send Procula back down. She’s really outdone herself this year.” 

She shuffles past him, reeking of hairspray. He hears fabric rustling behind the curtain, and a pregnant pause before Annie addresses him.

“Finnick? Are you even allowed back here?”

“That depends, do you have clothes on?”

She pauses again, laughs nervously. “Define clothes.”

“The door was open, so…” Annie sighs loudly. “Anyway, I just wanted to stop by to tell you that I won’t be able to watch the parade but the reason why I can’t is because I have to go meet with someone who’s interested in sponsoring you.” 

His obvious lie seems to convince her. “Really? Are you sure? Isn’t it way too early?”

“I mean, yes, but I’m kind of a big deal around here.”

She laughs. “And so modest.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to come and say good luck, the parade is pretty much impossible to screw up, so just act like you’re happy to be there, smile, wave, you know the drill.” Behind the curtain, Annie sighs again, followed by a faint rattling noise. “Alright, what’s the damage, let’s see.”

“I’m just warning you, it’s bad.”

“I guarantee I’ve seen worse.”

A pair of heels clicks heavily towards the door and the curtain flies open to reveal Annie standing there with a look on her face that he can only describe as homicidal. He isn’t sure what he expected from someone as tacky as Procula. Annie has what appear to be two padded clamshells cupping her breasts, forcing them together. There’s a fringe of tiny metallic shells hanging from the top to around where her ribs end. The low-waisted, floor-length skirt has a slit up each leg and the material is a shiny tulle with a vexatious texture. Her hair is curled and sprayed and sculpted and rock-hard, pinned here and there with pearls and tiny shells. Her makeup is… a lot, almost exactly what Procula normally does to her own face but in shades of blue and green, and she has a scorching orange spray tan. 

“Wow. You-... that’s, uhh…you… look…”

“Horrifying.” she spits. 

“I know it’s a bit much, but it’s the parade, people have to be able to see you from far away.”

“They’ll be able to see these-. ”She grabs her chest, rattling the metallic fringe.  “-from space.” She pauses, smirks. “You’re mouth-breathing again.”

He grits his teeth. “A lot of people find Procula’s work to be…” He gestures vaguely, trying to think of one positive thing he’s heard about Procula in the time he’s known her. Garish? Derivative? Bad? “They like it. They wouldn’t hire her for the Games if they didn’t. She’s really popular.” 15 years ago . “You know, you kind of look like… Hadriana Ravinstill.”

Annie knits her laminated eyebrows. “Who the hell is Hadriana Ravinstill?”

“I don’t know.” Annie rolls her eyes, “I’m pretty sure that’s what Procula was going for. Whatever. You look nice. I think you look nice.”

Annie inspects her chest and arms. “She painted me orange.” 

“It’s just a spray tan. We get them every year, at least us from 4. Beach theme, you know.”

“Is that what this is?” she points to his arm, her face splits into a mocking grin. “You know, I was wondering why your hands are so pale compared to everything else…” she pauses, licks her thumb and goes to swipe it across his forehead. He intercepts her hand about an inch away and she laughs.

“Don’t do that. Just… go with it? Please? You know I don’t have any control over this.” That isn’t entirely true, he could fuck some sense into Procula but the idea alone makes him itch. 

Annie picks at a thorny corkscrew of hair at her temple, “my tits hurt.”

He takes the repurposed water bottle out of his pocket. “Here. For confidence. You’re old enough. Don’t tell anyone.” He hands it over, she sniffs it and cringes.

“I think Procula put that on my nails earlier.” She takes a hesitant sip, gags, and swallows, grimacing. 

“Better?” She shrugs, causing the fringe to rattle again. 

“Oh, there she is!” a shriek and the sound of stilettos on marble ricochets around the hallway. Procula is on Annie before he can process her arrival. “Isn’t she a vision?” She takes Annie’s painted face in her insect fingers, Annie stares at him with a grin on her mouth and murder in her eyes. “Hadriana reincarnated… And if you think she looks good now, just wait until the interview.” Procula gives him a raunchy look which reads more feral. “You won’t be able to control yourself.”

“Can’t wait.” Annie deadpans. Procula kisses Annie loudly and wetly on both cheeks before turning to him and leaning in.

“I’ve got something like that of my own.” she informs him in a nauseating, posca-scented purr, “I’ll show you tonight.”

As she clacks away, vibrating with self-satisfaction, Sligo turns the corner, bringing with him a boozy miasma. He stops in front of them, looks Annie up and down, his gaze settling squarely just below her collarbones. He makes eye contact with her and nods with a tight-lipped smile.

“Can I help you, Sligo?”

“Just enjoying the view.” He turns and heads in the direction of Ciaran’s green room. Annie watches him leave.

 “If I win, am I allowed to punch him, just once?”

I’ll have to look into that for both of us . 

Apophis keeps the TV on as background noise as they take turns tying each other up. It’s weird viewing for a hired dick appointment, kids being hauled to the killing floor in hideous get-ups, but he puts up with it, aware of his commitment to both institutions. When the camera zeroes in on the 4th chariot, he notices Annie’s arm locked around Ciaran’s waist to keep his tiny body from flying off. Knowing they have the same stylist, it’s obvious Ciaran’s outfit is a shameless rip-off of his own, if not simply recycled and reduced slightly in size, the scale-patterned loincloth and vest, the clunky rope necklace with an oversized gold fish hook, the slicked back hair and spray tan. They’re leaning into the young tribute thing again, and it doesn’t help that their eyes and hair are similar in colour, although Ciaran is two years younger than he’d been and already smaller than most 12 year olds. He suddenly can’t bear to look at Ciaran, directing his attention instead to 6, a pair of sexed-up train conductors, then on to 10, whose stylists have opted to cover their bodies strategically with raw beef, still dripping blood and spattering back on the pair from 11, who are wearing essentially the same thing comprised of various vegetables. 12 follows, decked out in vests and headlamps, and Apophis goes limp again with an exasperated sigh. 

“Maybe if we switch.” He offers, gunning for a good tip. Apophis obliges. Sliding his hands out of the weak knot binding them to the bedframe, he gets to work on his client’s ankles. 

“Which one’s yours again?”

“Annie from 4, blue outfit, brown hair.”

“Ahh…” Apophis watches the screen. “Shell Tits?”

Classy. “Yes. Shell Tits.”

Apophis nods, eyes on the screen, apparatus disengaged. “Yeah, she looks decent. From what I gather, 1 is looking good this year, 2 not so much. 8 and 12 aren’t looking so bad, and your girl seems like she might have an edge.”

“I’m cautiously optimistic.” He stands over Apophis, whose ankles are now fully immobilized and moves onto his hands and arms, lowering him into a prone position on the mattress with his knees, remembering how quickly degradation can bring these sessions to a satisfactory end. “Now shut your greasy mouth so I can tie you up, you pathetic sack of jizz.”

Apophis stares hungrily up at him. “How disgusting am I?”

“Repugnant.”

Apophis makes a face. “That’s… that’s a little verbose, if I’m being honest.”

“Because you’re a fucking idiot, that’s why.”

“Okay, better. What are you going to do to me?”

Get you hard as fast as I possibly can so I can be done with this absolute farce. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do with this worthless thing.”

“I need to be punished.”

He leans back. “You’re not worth the punishment.”

“Oh pleeease sir…” Apophis smirks, his hands fully immobilized at his sides. 

“Ugh, fine. I guess since you’re groveling like that, I have to. But I’m not going to enjoy it.”

Over the two years they’ve known each other, Apophis has always been very easy money. 

He’s choking back a mixture of lemon water and activated charcoal over the sink, trying to purge his bloodstream of alcohol and his mouth of Apophis when Ptolemy shows up around 11:45 with Bijou Shackelford a few paces behind him, small and pale and terrified. He would have recognized her anywhere; that bloodthirsty little demon-eyed Career who cut down everything with a pulse in her path last year and had the whole thing in the bag from the second she stepped off her platform, Flickerman used to call her The Tiny Terror and he was almost afraid to let Levi ally with her, which proved justified after she turned on him in the Final Five. He remembers her Victory Tour, remembers interviewing her when she stopped in 4 and feeling sick when they finally met in person and he saw just how small she was, how pretty, when he realized that every ounce of violence in her had already been spent and that now she was just an exhausted kid who had no idea what was coming. 

She has a whole family back in 1 , he remembers as she stands in the doorway, staring at him like she’s afraid he’s about to attack her, two parents, a grandma, two little sisters …

Now her waist-length golden-brown hair is greasy and she’s trying and failing to cover herself with her hands. Since her win, she’s turned 17, and for a second he thinks that must be some kind of silver lining before remembering that he was Ptolemy’s youngest victor and ninth-youngest overall. He’s got her in lavender lace that leaves exactly nothing to the imagination and the familiar heavy gold collar. She doesn’t look like she’s had a minute of sleep all week. 

“Isn’t she just precious?” Ptolemy smarms, running thick fingers through Bijou’s hair and down her back. “And those feet , I’ll have a line around the block by tomorrow.”

I hope your next asset has teeth between her legs. “She certainly is something.” 

Bijou gives him a long, sad look like she’s waiting for him to do something, to kill Ptolemy and grab her and jump out the window. She crosses her feet like she’s trying to hide them and he makes a point to stare Ptolemy right in the eyes. 

“I like the look of your girl this year. She’s a little old if she were to start next year and I can tell she’s a drinker, which you know I hate, but I’ll make an exception for those knockers any day.” He laughs, lips skinning back from stained veneers that need replacing soon. “Me, I’m rooting for 1, that Citrine’s a little vixen. May the odds, eh?” Ptolemy claps him on the shoulder. “Alright. Back to work. They aren’t gonna suck themselves!”

He guides Bijou back into the hall. She looks back desperately as they turn the corner, begging silently for him to get her out.

Chapter Text

Operating between a sectioned-off patch of ocean and a sprawling grey compound in the middle of a parched field 60-or-so miles inland, Whimsiwick Pisciculture employs a solid third of District 4, while farmed fish makes up just over half of all exports, having picked up significantly over the past couple decades. The sheer volume of living and dead bodies in the compound has nauseated her since the first day she clocked in at 13 on the Shellfish floor and Saira walked her through a labyrinth of meticulously reared bivalves that would spawn and live and die in a temperature-controlled brine of saltwater and growth hormone to be canned and shipped anonymously throughout the known world. Her first Whimsiwick scallop, seared in margarine and jarred garlic on a hot plate in the cafeteria and eaten over a kitchen sink while Saira filled out her paperwork, was gummy and metallic and the taste lingered in her mouth for the remainder of the day, one scrap of medicated muscle lodged behind her upper canine. When she left that day, she overheard one of the other interns mentioning a shrimp recall, something about contaminated water, an issue in the boiler room. The ambassador wasn’t happy, something about layoffs.

Monday through Wednesday, she is in the inlet in a dinghy with Theo and Saira, throwing pellets into the churn of halibut, salmon, cod and tilapia in their respective sections and watching for any problems. Thursday through Saturday, she is bussed inland to the compound to process, package and freeze dead fish in the miasmic assembly line, elbow deep in blood and bones against the omnipresent din of complaints from life-long open water fishermen who have long since abandoned the notion of generating an income off their own individual lines and lures. If someone from Shellfish is out sick, as an intern, she is sent to fill their place in the glowing maze that crowns the compound, to watch silent, exoskeletoned beings as they bubble and spawn and wait to become lifeless delicacies. That has been her life for the past five years and likely would have been the same for what would have remained of it. 

It takes twenty agonizing minutes to wash the gel out of her hair before she begins to scrub the plaque of makeup off her face, and when that escort woman with the weird lips hears the litany of profanity from out in the hall, she comes in to help, bringing with her the discordant mingling scents of artificial eucalyptus and clove cigarettes.

“You shouldn’t pull on your face like that.” The escort, Asenath, chides, soaking a cotton round in a floral-smelling purple liquid and holding it still against her eye. “Causes wrinkles.”

“Does it really matter at this point?”

“It will if you win.” She looks at the cotton round and holds it up to show her a glittery black-and-teal smear. “Look at that. You don’t want to sleep in that.”  Asenath soaks another cotton round and moves onto the other eye. “You’re very pretty, you have to preserve it.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I don’t have to. But I did. Tilt your head back.” Asenath moves onto the gel in her eyebrows. “God, Procula really did a number on you.”

“She’s insufferable.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice. If you win, you can fire her. Might do her some good to get knocked down a peg. Come here.” Asenath goes into the en-suite, wetting her hands and pumping some green sludge out of a bottle on the counter. “Close your eyes for me.”

Whatever’s on her hands is cold and smells like cucumber and mint. It feels good after a few seconds, a weird, gentle tingle. 

“Feels clean.” she quips stupidly, too exhausted to care. 

“That’s the idea.” Asenath runs a cloth under the tap and begins to remove the sludge. She follows it with something milky-pink under her eyes and a thick, scentless cream. “So you’re from Portside?”

“Born and raised. Same as Ciaran.”

“Mm. That’s where Sligo’s from. From what I gather, he grew up around the corner from Skipjack’s Speakeasy by the boat launch. Grandparents owned a trawler.”

“I guess you know your way around Portside.”

Asenath shrugs, the corners of her bloated lips turning down slightly. “Reapings and funerals, mostly. And if everything goes well, you or Ciaran’s Victory Tour.” 

She doesn’t know what to say to that. 

After Asenath gives her face a cursory spray with yet another fruity-scented substance from the bathroom counter, she follows her into the common area, where the decadent, greasy smell of heavily seasoned meat is hovering. Ciaran, still teary-eyed but seemingly in somewhat better spirits, is scampering back and forth along the length of the table. Mags is holding a wine glass across the table to Sligo, who is filling it generously, having already whittled away most of the bottle himself. Two scrawny boys who look to be in their late teens are standing against the far wall. Their hairless chests are greased and glistening in the low, warm light, their mouths covered by slotted metal masks. She can’t bring herself to look at them for too long, remembering some fucked up story she’d heard at work about Galene Prow’s cousin’s-friend’s-brother who’d been caught fishing without a license by the Coast Guard and wasn’t seen for six years until the 68th Games, when a camera panned around the crowd during one of Caesar Flickerman’s segments and they saw him in the back holding a tray of drinks. 

“Asenath figured you might be sick of fish.” Mags smiles as she takes the seat beside her. “We’ve got… steak, ribs… I’m not sure what that over there is, but it’s very good… Venison…”

“Tiny chickens!” Ciaran cuts in, holding up his plate to display the crisp corpse of a small bird surrounded by a few other beige foods, the typical diet of a 12 year old boy. 

“Quail.” Mags corrects. “We also have quail.”

“I don’t know where to start.” she forces a smile, “I mean, I would love some crab legs right about now but-.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Asenath claps a hand over her mouth then turns to the scrawny, greasy boys. She snaps her fingers at them, which makes Mags cringe. “Crab legs. Let’s go. Thank you.” They nod and make for the door, Sligo’s jaw is tight. Ciaran doesn’t seem to notice, taking a fork and knife to his tiny chicken. “Annie, I’m so sorry, I just figured because you work at a fish farm-.” She wrings her hands and goes over to the door, as if she doesn’t trust them to do as they’re told.

Blood rushes to her face. “No, it’s… It’s really fine, you didn’t have to-. I didn’t mean-.”

“It’s alright.” Mags placates. “They’re already on their way. Have a drink.”

She goes for red wine, familiar, and starts to fill her plate. Silence descends on the table again. She leans in and lowers her voice. “Mags, I really do feel bad. I don’t need them to go all the way downstairs for me.”

“Annie, it’s fine. They’re just… just think of them as waiters. And they’ll bring enough for everyone, it’ll be nice.” Mags gives her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Little taste of home, right?”

“Sure. Thanks.” she silences herself with a sip of wine, which is much more palatable than the bottom shelf swill back home, the kind that comes from corner store shelves in small bottles and is usually regretted the following day while trying not to puke all over the processing line. Mags smiles again, the candlelight reflecting warmly in her glasses before she turns to Sligo and gives him a sharp kick under the table, almost causing him to spill his wine.

“Go on.” She orders. Sligo answers with an annoyed look.

“Annie-.” he turns to her. “I’m sorry about earlier.” Mags gives him another look and he continues. “My behaviour was inappropriate and I regret what I said. About your…” his hand roves in the airspace above his chest. “...feminine parabolas.” 

She wonders distantly how many of those beefy Career girls’ knees he’s taken to his crotch over the years. “Apology accepted.”

Asenath returns from the doorway and takes a seat at the head of the table. “Don’t pay attention to him, he’s just a dirty old man with no manners.”

“We’re the same age, you prissy bitch.” Sligo shoots back. Ciaran claps a hand over his mouth and looks around the table in delighted shock. Mags looks like she’s fighting the urge to smack both of them. “Better lean back from that candle before your face melts off.”

“You’re soaked in alcohol and your hairline is fighting for its life, as far as open flame is concerned, I wouldn’t worry about my face.” She takes a sausage from a nearby platter, severs the tip of it and brings it delicately to her mouth as if to drive her point home. Sligo brings his glass to his lips and grumbles something she can’t make out save for the words ‘confirmed kills’ and ‘whore-bag’. Classy .

Mags is calm, like she deals with this every year. “Stick a sock in it, both of you, or it’ll be the two of you in the gym tomorrow.” Asenath and Sligo shoot each other a juvenile mutual glare and go back to their respective plates. Ciaran starts to look nervous at the mention of training, Mags notices and hastily changes the subject, glancing at the clock mounted on the wall. “Finnick better hurry up and get back here before Ciaran eats all the tiny chickens.”

“Where the hell is he anyway? I swear, that kid…” Asenath shakes her head. “If he’s off pounding some Games Groupie, I’ll smack him into next week.”

The metal-masked waiters come back into the room with a platter of steaming crab legs, okra, corn and lotus root covered in a thick red sauce. Sligo begins to clear a space at the end of the table and they set it down. It smells incredible, but she can’t get the guilt out of the back of her mind. She smiles up at the boys as they set it down.

“It was really sweet of you to bring this, thank you.” Maybe that was laying it on too thick, but she makes out two hesitant smiles behind their masks as they retreat back to where they were before. Ciaran wastes no time in jumping up and snapping off two legs with his bare hands, carrying them gleefully back to his plate and setting them on top of the quail. After she takes a hesitant portion for herself, Sligo passes the platter down to Mags and Asenath. She changes the subject. “So what are we doing tomorrow?”

“Training starts at 10, so I’ll take you both down there.” Sligo leads in, “if Finnick bothers to show up-.”

“He will.” Mags cuts him off, her tone bordering on defensive. 

“Do either of you have any idea what your strengths are? Ciaran, you can spearfish, right? Your dad told me he took you spearfishing a few times.”

Ciaran looks nervous. “Yeah. I didn’t catch anything.”

“Well, humans are bigger than fish.” Sligo tries to reassure him, but Ciaran blanches and stares down at his plate, running his fork through his portion of rice. “Annie, what about you?”

Just put me out of my misery. “A guy put his hand up my skirt at Skipjack’s a couple months ago. I broke his arm.” Mags and Asenath exchange a smile and Sligo chokes on a mouthful of wine, segueing into wet laughter.

“That’s more like it!”

“Beyond that, I can gut fish. I’m the third fastest on my line, after Carretta Haukea and Maris Winch.”

“You know Carretta Haukea?” Sligo pries, suddenly intrigued. “How’s she doing? We went out for a bit back in the day.”

She can’t picture someone like Sligo with someone as wholesome as Carretta, figures it must have been a long time ago. “She’s good. Her son’s starting in Free Range in a couple months.” Sligo nods, nostalgia twitching across his face as his mouth contorts to suck crabmeat from between two molars. “I’m good at swimming too, but I doubt that matters.”

“It could.” Mags offers. “Sligo, Finnick and Phoca all had bodies of water in their arenas. Phoca had a whole beach, they practically gift-wrapped those Games.”

“Ah, Phoca…” Sligo muses, raising his glass. “Rest her twisted soul.”

“That’s who they remind me of.” Asenath observes, tracking a finger between her and Ciaran. “Finnick and Phoca. I take that as a good sign.”

Mags bites her lip. “Let’s hope.”

Ciaran has been in bed for an hour or so by the time Finnick returns, looking disheveled and surrounded by the miasma of cigarettes and wine, trying to cover a painful-looking hickey on his neck with the collar of his shirt. She’s still picking at what remains of dinner, determined to finish everything, and Sligo is opening another bottle of wine while Mags pretends to be annoyed by his urging to have one more glass. 

“Look what the tide washed in.” Asenath slurs, picking at the last of a slice of passionfruit cheesecake. “You okay, kid? You look… pickled.”

“I’m fine.” Finnick takes Ciaran’s empty seat. “Who ordered crab legs?” She knows a sneaky drunk when she sees one, smiles and raises her hand silently before taking one last claw and a couple slices of lotus root and passing him the platter. “Good call.”

Asenath is staring at Finnick’s neck like he has a gunshot wound instead of a hickey, and she looks like she’s about to comment on it before Sligo lights a cigarette.

“Really? Inside?” Finnick glares at him. “People are eating.”

“ I’m not.” Sligo counters, leaning his chair back on two legs and blowing a plume of smoke up at the ceiling. 

“He’s right, we have a balcony for a reason.” Mags says flatly. Sligo stares at her. “Get.”

Sligo stands up reluctantly after a few awkward seconds, shooting an acrimonious look at his former protégé. He crosses the room to the sliding door that runs along the entirety of the common area and closes it a little too hard.

“Manchild.” Finnick snipes. Mags gives him a look.

“This is going to be a shitty year for him, son. I’m not excusing his… antics, but… you know what I mean.”

That shuts him up, he starts to dismantle a crab leg as silence descends back over the room. 

“Ciaran asleep already?”

Mags nods. “Ate himself into a coma, thank God.” She shakes her head. “It’s just so…”

“Unfortunate.” Asenath offers.

“He’s fucked.” Finnick contributes decisively.

“He might pull a fast one on us.” She cuts in, trying to force positivity. “Kid knows his way around a boat.” She turns to Finnick. “You were young too. I mean, no offense, but nobody I know back home thought you’d make it, little shrimp from the Flats.”

He smiles stiffly. “You have a point.”

“Whatever happens, we can all sleep at night knowing we did our best.” Asenath insists, sounding like she’s trying and failing to convince herself. After a long, uncomfortable moment, they all reflexively raise their glasses. Asenath swallows hard and gives her a saccharine, swollen smile. “Here, Annie, you have the last crab leg.”

In the morning, her throat is dry and her eyes are drier. Bleak as everything is, she doesn’t feel like she could cry if she wanted to, even when she sees Ciaran standing at the window watching the cars pass on the street below, fascinated by the sheer volume of food that those silent waiters cart in at the crack of dawn, enamored with Finnick to an extent she can only describe as religious. She watches them get acquainted as she dissects a still-warm pastry dusted with icing sugar and filled with an almost-seminal blackberry preserve, the dark look on Finnick’s face, Ciaran’s detached fervor, as if he’s forgotten what he’s here to participate in.

The gymnasium is in the bowels of the Training Centre, as big as the lower Processing floor, give or take, it’s hard to tell with all the equipment. It smells like decades of pubescent sweat and cleaning products, blood worked into the fibers of mats and handles of weapons rusted by damp, nervous palms. The fluorescent strip lighting emits a high, mechanical death rattle and just below them, the walls are veined with windows, giving way to small viewing areas. In one, a janitor in a metal mask vacuums listlessly. Across the way from her, a portly man and a small, elderly woman smoke a cigar each and talk amongst themselves, covering their mouths with their hands as if they don’t want their lips to be read. 

They group up by District at the very back of the room, the lanky boy from 3 to her left and Ciaran to her right. Beside him, the tiny dark-haired girl from 5, who has by now abandoned her nervous grimace of a smile. A woman speaks for a long time, she doesn’t pay attention, just stares between Ciaran’s shoulderblades through the back of his spandex uniform, at her hands, at the boy from 1 at the front of the group, then back to the girl from 5, then the boy from 11. Eisen, Deena, Mose, she remembers from watching the Reapings on the way in. She remembers the biggest and the smallest, the ones who will go after Ciaran and the ones she’ll have to sweep out of the way. There are a few other names, a Hallie, a Jasmine, an Alder and a Flax, and she can’t put faces to them, so she looks over the group again and tries to figure out who they aren’t. She’s staring at the girl from 10, an unimposing 14 year old with a gap in her teeth and slightly undersized bifocals who notices her staring and covers her face with her hair, when Ciaran elbows her.

“How do we know if the arena has water?”

“We don’t.”

“But Mags said-.”

“She said it could , ideally it does, but it might not.”

The girl from 8, a wiry, steely-eyed blonde, shushes them. They both look back at her, Ciaran mumbles a ‘sorry’. She really doesn’t like the look on this girl’s face. Her partner seems pedestrian enough, but she has the jittery viciousness of an understimulated factory worker. Great. One day in and I’ve already managed to piss off one of the crazy ones . From the podium, the woman continues to drone about something she lost track of a long time ago, dehydration blends into daylight hours gives way a few sentences later to topography, and by the time the speech has circled back to water source , she has somehow tuned back out, imagining the boy from 1, Eisen , picking up the girl from 5, Deena , and snapping her little neck.

“Let’s split up for now.” she urges Ciaran as he trails her towards an archery range at the back of the room, “then tomorrow we can show each other what we were good at.”

“Like you do bowandarrows and I’ll go… over there?” He gestures towards a long table at the Southwesternmost corner, where the girl from 10 and the boy from 12 are observing something enclosed in the glass surface.

“Sure. And act confident, okay? For all they know, you could have come out of the Lanistarium.”

Ciaran gives her a confused look. “I mean, I guess…?”

“You started training at 10. You were so good they didn’t bother sending anybody up after you.” She can tell he’s not convinced by this fabricated backstory, doesn’t seem to be registering that she’s trying to hype him up. “You’re our secret weapon. Your lanista even said you were going to be the next Finnick. I’m just here because they need a girl.”

“I don’t have a lanis-.” she gives him a light smack to the bicep and he trails off, biting his lip. “Okay.”

“I’ll come find you later. Remember, you’re not scared.”

He gives her a tight-lipped, unconvinced smile and turns towards the opposite end of the room. She watches as he slowly crosses the room, debates between 10 and 12 and the long table and the expanse of various weapons. He weaves slowly between a rack of axes that the pair from 2 are inspecting and a pit lined with mats where the boy from 9 is talking to one of the trainers. 

She knows full well that she will be absolutely shit at archery, has never attempted it nor wanted to, but she remembers Finnick mentioning something after they’d both had a few too many about not giving one’s strengths away too early on. She tells herself that that’s why she’s doing this, not because she needs something to keep her hands busy while everyone else decides how they’re going to kill her. She’s familiar with the general concept of a knife, the mechanics involved in stabbing someone or something and she knows the general areas in which to hit someone with a heavy object. Worst case scenario, she remains bad at archery, best case, she doesn’t. 

Nearby, the pair from 7 are kneeling in a small pit of sand where a lanky man with a dish-soap-green buzzcut is showing them how to build a fire. The girl is lanky with long curly hair the colour of oxidizing butter. She has thin lips, a sharp chin and a nose like an electrical outlet, and her eyes are round and close-set with a perpetually alert expression. She’s maybe about 15 or 16 but doesn’t seem to have fully grown into herself yet, her hands are too wide for her frame and she keeps dropping her flint. She can’t remember her name, some hickish name pertaining to some kind of tree as people from 7 usually have, Acacia or Aspen or something like that. Her partner is a nervous-looking boy of about the same age with a slightly dumpy build, bovine eyes and mousy colouring, a patch of acne glowing sick-red between his eyebrows. She feels a bit sad as she sneaks glances at them in between arrows lodged in the outer rings of the target. There’s something about overhearing them bickering as they try to work together, the fact that they seem to know each other. The girl won’t stop chiding the boy in a hard, bossy voice like an overburdened older sister while he whines and rolls his eyes interchangeably. She wonders if one of them has decided to protect the other, which one of them is the Ciaran in the equation.  

She’s just about to give up on archery when the girl from 1 sidles up to her, leaning against the rack of bows but making no move to pick one up, looks her up and down before turning back to the rest of the gymnasium.

“Bush league.” She says, smirking. She’s an absolute knockout, thick black curls down to her waist and delicate features, her skin is a smooth, warm brown and her eyes are almost black. The arrow she’s picked up swings precariously away from the bowstring, she leans it back and lets it go before she speaks, it misses the target entirely and clatters off the steel wall. 

“Huh?”

The girl from 1 gestures around the room. “It’s gonna be too easy.”

“Oh. Sure.” She goes to reload but the girl blocks her, they’re about the same height but there’s something about the muscle definition on her shoulders and legs that’s just mildly intimidating. 

“I’m Citrine, by the way.”

Please go away. “Annie.”

“I know, I watched your Reaping.” Citrine glances over her shoulder at Ciaran, who is talking to the little boy from 11. “I’m a little… shocked nobody volunteered.”

“Yeah, it’s weird. My mentor didn’t want to talk about it, so I guess there’s a reason, but…” she shrugs. “What can you do?”

“At least he’ll make it easy for the rest of us.” Citrine remarks flippantly, “you should know, you are so pretty.”

You, on the other hand, are begging for a broken collarbone. “Thank you, so are you.”

“Sponsors are gonna be lining up. I mean, not that I’m too worried about Eisen and I. The Van Elsbergs are mentoring us. Cashmere’s the real deal.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard good things about Finnick.”

Citrine grins, fanning herself with her hand. “I’m so jealous. You’re a better woman than me, if I were you, I’d be pregnant by now.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

Citrine gives her a withering smile. As pretty as she is, there’s something off putting about her face, something mean, almost vulpine. They stare at each other for a long moment, Citrine’s teeth clenched just enough for it to be noticeable. 

In the sand pit, the kids from 7 have successfully managed to light a modest fire. The boy seems reasonably satisfied, but the girl is entirely too pleased with herself. She leaps up, thrusting her fist in the air and going into an awkward twirl. She manages to accidentally kick sand over the fire, putting it out as soon as it had begun to take. A few feet away, in front of a screen displaying a slideshow of edible plants, the pair from 3 are watching them and suppressing laughter. She stares at the dying embers for a long moment before her partner starts to laugh. She gives him a hard smack to the back of the head. Citrine watches her for a few seconds then scoffs.

“They found that one in some trailer park in the woods. She’s definitely no Willow.”

And you’re no Cashmere. “Hm. Sure.”

“Well, you know where to find me.” Citrine smiles that mean smile again, “I’ll see you around.”

“See you.” she forces out as Citrine departs back to Eisen, exchanging a few words before he looks over. There’s something about his eyes that she doesn’t like, they almost remind her of that bull shark the crew of Little Leilani caught a few years ago down by the Flats. Maris Winch had been going out with a guy on the crew and had shown everyone at work pictures. It was a solid tube of muscle, longer than a grown man with cruel teeth and still, black marbles for eyes. That’s what she keeps thinking about, like when she looks at Eisen he’s planning how he’s going to kill her and it will be just as easy for him as it would be for that shark. The pair from 1 look at her for a few seconds, then Eisen picks up an axe and whips it into the waiting target as if practicing specifically for her. Turning back to the range, the floor littered with limp, misaimed arrows, she prays he has some dormant allergy or something, that a rogue nut or fruit in one of their decadent breakfasts will take him out before they even make it into the arena. She’d really just rather not deal with him.

As she begins to collect the spent arrows, she hears the inward hrrrrmm of someone inhaling against a harmonica, followed by a few deliberate notes. The boy from 12 walks confidently over to the range, leaving two lanes between them. He watches her reload for a few seconds before she lowers the bow and stares back.

He smiles and raises his hands. “Don’t quit on my account.” 

She forces a cordial expression. “It’s harder when you’re staring at me like that.”

He raises a scrawny, muscled arm. “Dead.”

“What?”

“You’re dead. Standin’ still. I’d have got you by now.”

She imagines that being the only advice he retained from his mentor that wasn’t drowned out by that godforsaken harmonica he keeps pulling out. “Well, I’m not allowed to shoot you here, am I?”

He grins. “Shit. Looks like you couldn’t hit a mule’s ass with a banjo.” He laughs at whatever the hell has just come out of his mouth and takes a few steps towards her. “Lemme see that thing before you hurt yourself, dear.” Congratulations, you obnoxious bumpkin, I absolutely cannot wait to kill you now . Eager for him to fuck off, she hands the bow over. He picks up an arrow, fits it to the string, pulls it back and lets it go. It sinks decisively into the target a few inches away from the center. He lowers the bow and grins, handing it back. “Your stance is wrong.” 

She humors him, mirroring the way he’s standing. “Like this?”

“Almost, but you’re still kinda-.” He steps towards her, up against her back, pushing her legs into place with his own and placing his hands over hers on the bow. “Aim up. Y’ain’t splittin’ wood.” 

“Wrong district.” When she says that, he trails a hand up her arm to her shoulder, then around her waist. She lets him have it for a few seconds before dropping the bow and shoving him away. “Really? Right now? You’re a fucking pig.”

Leering, he leans in, backing her up against the rack, and she smells chewing tobacco and teenage boy. He’s honestly not bad looking, and maybe if he were a year or two older and not standing between Ciaran and home she might have given him a chance. “Better make hay while the sun shines." He holds up a hand for her to shake, the other one reaches behind her to hang up the bow. "Asa Cordovan, by the way."

"Annie Cresta. I'm not touching that."

"Asa!" His district partner, a gorgeous little mouse of a girl comes up behind him and smacks him on the arm. "Leave her alone!" The girl turns to her, pushing aside a curtain of shiny black hair. "Sorry about him. Trying to get in one last snag before he bites it, he's already been after Maizie, Jasmine and Cerise."

"Oh, don't worry. I've dealt with worse."

Asa shoots her a smirk and slinks off, raising his busted harmonica to his lips and squeaking out a few cacophonous notes as he embarks on another lap around the gym. His partner watches him go with an expression that could be anywhere between remorse and nostalgia. She really is beautiful; baby-faced with smooth brown skin, big doe eyes and delicate bone structure. 

“He’s right, though.” she chirps, staring at the floor. “Your form is terrible.”

“We don’t usually use arrows to catch fish.” Asa’s partner forces a smile. Pretty as she is, she has the awkwardly small frame of someone who didn’t eat nearly enough in her formative years, the ashen skin and underdeveloped teeth. She’s 16 or 17 but only slightly taller than Ciaran. “But if you show me how to shoot, I can show you how to make lures.”

That gets a tight-lipped smile out of her. “I ain’t the best shot, but I ain’t the worst.”

“You can’t be any worse than me.”

“I’m Awinita, by the way.”

“Annie.”

“I know.” Awinita loads the bow mechanically, like she’s mimicking someone she watched do it a long time ago. “We watched all the Reapings on the way in. You clean up nice.” She lets the arrow go, not an amazing shot but at least her form is passable and she’s not trying to get in anyone’s pants.

The girl from 7 abandons her partner to go inspect some javelins at the other end of the gym. He starts to rebuild the fire. 

The first time lanistas came South to recruit, she was in 5th grade, and Marlin Mahi’ai had been telling everyone all day that the second his parents signed the paperwork he’d be at the Lanistarium full-time, to which Char Bowline countered that he was full of shit. She watched them bicker for a while from the swingset; Marlin insisting that he was going to volunteer the second he turned 15 so he wouldn’t get stuck working on his dad’s trawler, prompting Char to call him an idiot for being willing to die instead of getting a job like everyone else in the world, to which Marlin told her he didn’t intend to die, and Char shot back that, considering his failure to climb the rope in PE earlier that week, she wouldn't hold her breath if she were him. He got so mad Drift Cisco had to hold him back and Char walked away laughing with Thalassa Murrel.  

“You wouldn’t do it, would you?” she’d asked Teesha later that night as they sat on her bedroom floor, looking through a beat-up volume about pinnipeds for their long-procrastinated science diagnostic. 

“Train up North or volunteer?”

“Either one.”

Teesha considered the question, sketching a cute but stupid-looking seal in the corner of their posterboard. “I don’t think so. I don’t want to hurt anyone. And I think I’d be too scared. Plus I wouldn’t want to leave you and Pearl and my parents.”

“What if you knew you’d win?”

“Well, that’s it, though. There’s no way to know.”

“If you did know.”

Teesha laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe, if I knew 100% that I’d come home in one piece, sure. What about you?”

“If I knew, yes. If I didn’t, no. Unless something bad happened here and I didn’t want to live anymore.”

That earned her a hard smack in the shoulder. “Ančice Kari Cresta, don’t say things like that.”

“Well, it’s true. Let’s say if-.”

“Don’t ever talk like that. Talking about things like that invites them. You’ll never have to do anything like that. There are enough meathead Career girls to volunteer for you if, God forbid, your name ever gets called. And if they didn’t, I would.”

“Teesh, don’t .”

“Of course I would. You’d do the same for me, right?”

By that point, they were both ready to change the subject. She remembers digging her fingers into the edge of the threadbare throw blanket that hung over Teesha’s bedroom window in place of proper curtains. “Obviously.” 

Looking back on it, she can’t help but find a sick humour in the fact that, for all her protestations, Teesha had managed to turn 19 that past May. 

As they make their way upstairs, Feronia pulls Ciaran aside for another fitting, so she proceeds upstairs alone. At a complete loss for what to order but feeling like she should eat something expensive while she still can, she orders another platter of crab legs and demolishes it alone in her room as she rewatches the Reapings in each district. She can’t stop rewatching Asenath calling her up, suddenly fixated on the fact that she’s never seen what the back of her head looks like, then suddenly viscerally angry at Saira for letting her go up there with that jagged, lopsided part in her hair and that one loose piece hanging down to the middle of her back. If I ever get back there, I’ll show her this exact clip and ask her what the hell she was thinking . The thought feels good at first, as Ciaran minces up the steps and stands beside her, his resolve crumbling the second he looks out at the crowd, but then it doesn’t. Saira’s not a hairstylist, she was probably exhausted from work, I’m lucky she even did my hair at all, I’m lucky for everything Saira has done for me. I’m lucky anyone at all in Portside even gives me a second thought after my parents kicked it and Teesha moved North . That thought takes the last bit of spite out of her, and she lets the tears spill down her face and neck and soak the collar of her shirt as she peels the rest of the crab legs and watches the kids from 5, the tiny grinning girl and the stone-faced boy who locks eyes with someone in the crowd and mouths something that could be an apology. Suddenly embarrassed, she turns the TV off and wipes her hands on the bedskirt. 

“This is hell.” she whispers to herself, sinuses thick. “I’m in hell.”

In the common area, she hears a door slam, giving way to a few voices that slowly ascend in volume. She can pick out Asenath’s shrill cadence immediately, and she doesn’t sound happy. Two male voices, presumably Finnick and Sligo, start to fight each other for the last word, until Asenath is joined by another female voice, presumably Mags, and a long gap of silence follows, before Sligo cuts in with a;

“That’s a fucked up thing to ask, kid. You don’t put that on someone. You have no right.”

“I never thought I’d agree with Sligo but… he has a point.” Asenath adds. “I mean, how would you feel if-.”

“Annie and I talked about it.” Finnick cuts her off, defensive. “She said she was worried about Ciaran.”

“Well, anyone would be, but it’s just not fair to put that on her. She’s not Lanistarium-trained, she didn’t volunteer, she’s not a fucking body guard, she’s a kid who doesn’t want to be here.”

“She’s 18, she can make her own decisions.”

“Alright, then. So if I go in there and ask Annie myself if she explicitly agreed to die so Ciaran can win, she’ll say you and she agreed to that?” Silence follows. Trying to be as quiet as possible, she cracks the door to her room an inch or so and sits behind the wall. “That’s what I thought.”

“Well, not in so many words, but we-.”

“Sligo’s right.” says Mags. “Now, how you train Annie is entirely up to you, but as Ciaran’s mentors, that’s not the angle we’re taking. I know they’ve allied already, but… you know. That could change, and if it does, it does. There’s always next year.”

“You have no right.” Sligo repeats. “Absolutely-.”

“Fuck, man, I get it!”

“Sligo, leave him alone.” Mags chides. “Feronia will be up with Ciaran any minute. You two just better hope Annie didn’t overhear any of that. She’s in a hard enough position being here at all, that kid doesn’t need any more stress.”

She shuts the door and tries to look casual as footsteps begin to sound down the short hallway. There is a gentle knock on the door as she kicks the platter of empty crab shells underneath the bed, sauce lapping up over the edge and spattering the turquoise carpet. At the door, Mags and Asenath are wearing sheepish, concerned expressions, she finds herself forcing a grin in return.

“Hi. Did you need me for something?”

“No, not at all, just checking in.” Asenath mollifies, glancing past her at a handful of forgotten crab shells in front of the TV. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. I’m just… I just wanted… some time alone.”

Mags smiles. “Oh, of course, hon. You’ve been downstairs all day, take all the time you need. We’ll just be in the other room if you need anything, okay?”

“Yeah, for sure. Thank you.”

“And you’re sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah.” she leans further into the forced smile. “I’m just working on some… letters. For people back home, in case… you know.”

Mags nods. “Of course. Well, you know where to find us.”

“Thanks.” They don’t move for a second. “Okay, well-.”

“Right.” Mags pulls Asenath back from the door, allowing it to swing shut. 

When they’re good and gone, she turns the shower on as hot as she can stand and sits in the fetal position underneath the stifling lavender deluge. She stays there, thinking of lobster shells turning from brown to insensate red, until her vision begins to go blurry around the edges and her skin is tight and dry. She peels herself off the tile floor and rubs a circle in the steamed-up mirror to glower at herself, the reddened skin on her forehead and under her eyes, her wet hair clinging to her neck and shoulders, that one particle of eyeliner on her right eye that has managed to stay on overnight. 

Not bothering to put clothes on, she orders a platter of oysters and a bottle of wine, some expensive red she doesn’t recognize, the grapes are grown in climate-controlled greenhouses in 11 and, once ripe, shipped to 1 to be processed and aged. She can tell by the label that under any other circumstances she never would have come across it, gold leaf lettering on a burgundy field spelling out Fleming Luxury Vineyards and segueing into grape vines that loop around a Capitol seal. It’s jarring how quickly it arrives, and the poor waiter averts his eyes towards the ceiling when she meets him at the door. She hands him the platter of crab shells and he gives her an awkward, silent nod before departing. She drinks the neck of the bottle and considers calling him back up so she can give him one of the oysters, but some base instinct tells her not to, and she returns to the Reapings, watching the pair from 7 stand on stage. Briar Bains is the name she couldn’t remember, announced to deafening silence by a woman dressed collarbone-to-ankle in a fuschia material that resembles dog hair, followed by Alder Groves. As the tributes move together to shake hands, there is a commotion in the crowd and the escort cranes her neck to observe something in the distance before the cameras cut altogether. In 8, Chantilly Pick, the scary girl who shushed her, and Merino Cross are called up, again, without a single volunteer. In 9, a lanky, decently-dressed man, who could actually have a shot at being attractive if he didn’t have so much makeup on, calls up Maizie Hillier and Flax Allard. 

The oysters are good, but she can tell they’re farmed. They must not bring out the wild-caught ones for the cannon fodder , she considers, drowning the next one in hot sauce and horseradish. She knows the wine is objectively good, but is so used to corner store swill that she doesn’t have anything to compare it to.

She’s on what she assumes to be the equivalent of her second glass, a good five inches taken out of the bottle, when Asa and Awinita’s Reaping comes up. If there’s one thing she can take away from watching all these Reapings, it’s that she can at least be thankful she lives somewhere that isn’t a complete dump. Maybe it’s because almost all of 4’s exports come from the middle of the ocean, so the industry can’t tear up the land the way it does in other districts. Even with the fish farms and salt plants, the ocean will always be too big, too incomprehensible to be irreversibly fucked up by a species as pathetic as humans. They tried, hundreds of years ago, and the sea just rose up and ate them, didn’t discriminate between buildings or coastlines or flesh. We take the fish and the salt and the whale and seal oil and the seaweed within reason, some people hold onto religion, some people to high ground, and you hope that the water stays below where sand meets grass or at least that the storm sirens go off in time. 

She drinks until she doesn’t have the energy to think about Eisen and his shark eyes, or Briar and Alder in the sand pit. By the time another two inches are gone from the bottle, she can’t bring herself to care about Citrine and her false flattery or Asa’s prurience. By the time she falls asleep, she has finally managed, at least for the time being, to forget about Ciaran.

Chapter Text

He’d only been home for a month after the tour when Liv sent a letter saying she wanted him back, and Mom had laid it out on the kitchen table, reading it over and over like she was trying to  figure out a way to acknowledge the sinking feeling in her stomach. He’d sat with her as she picked through it, rationalizing it, convincing herself that it was just part of their new life.

Dear Ms Odair- which meant she knew there was no husband or father in the equation- I am writing to you with a formal request for your son’s presence in the Capitol from March 10th to 20th. As you know, your son has been extremely influential to our great nation since his victory. As First Lady, I have the privilege of overseeing many such historic events, and I would like, if I may, to extend Finnick’s Victory Tour with a series of press engagements and opportunities to potentially augment any financial compensation your family has received. Having been lucky enough to visit your beautiful District years ago, I am acutely aware of the circumstances that have unfortunately plagued your family in the past. Your precious boy’s victory has cast our annual pageantry in a new, more positive light, and for that the country is most grateful. Please forgive me if I have overstepped in any way. The truth is that you and your son have moved me more than any other Victor I have had the pleasure of knowing, and I have taken a specific interest in doing everything in my power to match the unique gift that is his courage, his patriotism, his youth and his beauty. If I may, I have come to consider him as something of a protege, and I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to give back to the both of you in my own special way. Please consider, any travel expenses will be compensated.

Warm regards,
Livia Cardew-Snow, First Lady of Panem.

“It’s your choice.” Mom offered. “If you want to be done with all this, that’s your decision. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want.”

He stared at the paper for a long time, the thick, slightly embossed cardstock, the wax seal. “I think she’s going to pay us.”

“Finn, it’s not about money anymore. We’re set up for life. If you think going back there would be… bad for you, you’re not going.” her lips tightened. 

“What do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Well, I don’t know what I want. You pick.”

Mom took a deep breath, knit her fingers together and brought her folded hands up to her mouth. “I think it has the potential to be really good for us. But at the same time, the kid on the Victory Tour was not my kid. I don’t like what that place does to your head. I don’t like seeing you all nervous.”

“I won’t be nervous.”

He replayed that answer in his mind on the train while Mom and Asenath drank expensive wine in the compartment with the big windows. He thought about it on the long crawl through 1, along the bridge that ran too tightly between stacks of apartment buildings, thought about it as they reached the edge of the Capitol, and spun it around frantically in his head late that first night, when Liv locked the door of that spare bedroom at the very back of the mansion, turned back to him and smiled.

“I have a gift for you.” Liv smiled. “It’s a very special gift, but it’s a secret gift. I’m not supposed to give things like this away. But I think you’re mature enough to be trusted with something like this. You can’t tell anyone, not even your mother.”

“And I won’t get in trouble?”

She smiled. “Not if you keep it quiet.” He watched her from the edge of the rug as she stepped towards him, leading him over to a loveseat in the corner of the room. “Sit here.” She wound an arm around his waist, the angular beads sewn onto the sleeves of her dress snagging on the fibers of the dinner jacket Feronia had cranked out at the last minute. “You’re shaking, my love.”

“I’m just cold.” He lied.

“I’m sorry. It’s colder here than in 4 this time of year, you must not be used to it. I know what you need.” Liv crossed the room to a small bar cart on the opposite wall and picked up a bottle of wine that he knew at a glance was expensive. “This will make you feel better.”

She sat down beside him, held out the wine, and he stared down the thin tunnel of the neck of the bottle. “Oh, no. I’m not allowed. I’m not 18 yet.”

Liv made a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “You sweet thing. My husband makes the laws in this country, you know. You’re not just a regular 15 year old, you’re a Victor. You’re already exempt from school and work, I think this is another one of those rules you’re allowed to break. You know, because you’re special.” She held it up to his lips, and it tasted the way Sligo smelled the day they met. “Besides, it’s good for you. Ask anyone, during the war, we drank it so we wouldn’t get sick. It’s cold here, I don’t want you to get sick.”

He remembers the wine tasting like vinegar, remembers remarking on it, mentioning battered haddock that Mags bought him from a kiosk in Portside staffed by a pretty woman with brown eyes and a pierced lip. When he said that, he turned his head to take the room in; the white wallpaper decorated with green vines and gold roses, the massive canopy bed, the pristine, perfectly matched furniture. When he looked back, Liv’s dress was on the floor and she was holding a small gift box.

“Open it. I’ll show you how to use it.”

Every time he’s had this dream since he was about 17, it ends with him vomiting wine across those white silk sheets, Liv’s backhand catching him in the cheekbone and throwing him against the canopy, the fiery shriek of pain in his stomach. When he wakes up, every time, his hand goes to his face and feels frigid sweat. 

The only difference is that tonight, he doesn’t wake up alone.

In the dark, he can only hear the sound of Ciaran’s bare feet on the floor, sweaty skin sticking to cold tile. For a second he pretends he can’t, until the barely audible breaths at the edge of the room become ragged. Ciaran flinches when the light comes on, stares at him with watery eyes for a few seconds before they start to speak over each other.

“Ciaran, it’s late and-.”

“I couldn’t-.” he waits a few seconds. “I couldn’t sleep. I went looking for Annie but she wasn’t there.” he looks down at the floor. 

I can’t tell you to leave now. “Okay. What did you need?” 

“Can I just stay here for a while?” 

They stare at each other for just a few seconds too long. Something about the light makes Ciaran look even younger, his hands clasped together around his token, the standard-issue grey sweatshirt they gave him hanging to his mid-thighs and off his shoulder. Iit looks like he’s been crying alone in his room for hours. 

He sits on the end of the bed and motions Ciaran over, who crosses the floor hesitantly before perching on the very edge of the mattress, staring at the opposite wall. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Ciaran gives him a long, desperate look before his lower lip starts to twitch and he leans forward, bringing his knees up to his chest and folding his arms to hide his face. He tries to think of what Mags would do in this scenario, tries to remember what his own training week was like. He remembers being scared but never like this, at least never showing it so openly. Portsiders are so fucking soft, he imagines Mom saying, you never complain, you never have. 

“Please don’t make me kill Annie.” Ciaran begs finally. 

He puts a hand between Ciaran’s shoulderblades, he can feel a spine that’s still growing, the gentle thrum of small lungs, a pulse of new blood. 

“Ciaran, you know I can’t promise anything. But I think from a logistical standpoint, the chances of you having to kill Annie are relatively low.” 

“I won’t do it. I won’t hurt her even a little bit.” Ciaran looks up at him, so intensely he feels sick, praying that Annie feels the same way but at the same time that she doesn’t. “I don’t think I can kill anyone.”

Depending on how things go, you won’t have to. “I can help you with that, okay?”

Ciaran rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. “I don’t want to.”

“You have to. I don’t like it anymore than you do but that’s just the way things are. Would it help if you slept here tonight?”

Ciaran perks up a bit. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I don’t mind.” he lies. “Just, please make an effort to actually sleep. If you thought today was a lot, tomorrow is worse.”

Ciaran nods slowly and looks up at him with a forced smile. “Thank you.”

“Any time.” 

Ciaran crawls into bed beside him, bringing with him that sticky warmth of a child who has been crying for hours. His body locks up as Ciaran lays down, pulls the sheets up and turns to face away from him, his breathing leveling out. Deep in his body he feels that sick, rotten fruit aura, feels it slithering through his veins, feels it dripping out of his palms onto the pristine bleached cotton. By the time he identifies it, understands it, Ciaran is asleep and he can’t bear to be in the same room as him anymore.

The common area is empty, and Sligo has apparently had the restraint to not drink the place dry in one night. The Avoxes have cleared dinner away and a pair of Asenath’s shoes is abandoned by the fireplace. He pours a couple shots of whiskey over ice and waters it down, drinks it faster than he probably should have and lets it burn as it drips slowly through him, gripping the edge of the kitchen counter.

“I won’t be nervous.” he tells the empty room. It answers with the dull, tinny hum of electricity, shoes crossing the floor upstairs, the yelp of a siren on the street below.

The night is unseasonably cold when he gets up to the roof, the city is lit up in oscillating shades of red to magenta to pink to white back to red. Someone is standing near the edge of the roof with their back to him, their long brown hair clipped up and their svelte build shrouded in shapeless grey cotton. They’re staring downward and to the right, he can make out the sharp nose, the slightly rounded jaw, the self-cut bangs.

Annie turns around and gives him a long, suspicious look followed by a forced smile, then goes back to staring out over the Capitol’s west end. 

“There’s-” she remarks when he reaches her, motioning in the airspace over the edge of the roof. “It’s, like, a…” By the singe marks on her knees and left shoulder, he can tell she has already tried to jump off, and he can tell immediately that she’s been drinking but knows better than to say anything. If he had to endure all this shit at 18, at an age where he could grasp the entirety of it, he would have been drunk the entire time too. 

“Yeah.” He stares down at the sparkling boil of traffic. “How long have you been up here?”

She shrugs. “A while. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Ciaran was looking for you.” 

She makes an awkward, regretful face. “Yeah, I figured. You’re going to think I’m such a callous bitch but I just… can’t right now. Like, what the fuck am I supposed to say to him?”

“If it’s any consolation, he’s currently asleep in my bed and I’m here, so that probably doesn’t reflect well on me either.”

Annie looks at him and smiles. “That’s nice of you to let him sleep there.”

“Well, I mean, what else was I supposed to do?” 

She sighs and knits her fingers together, a few long seconds pass before she speaks again. “The day before I got reaped I told Saira I’d ‘kill for a week off’.” She runs a hand through her hair, “God, my life is a sick joke.”

“Yeah, that’s… well, think of it this way, if everything shakes out in your favour you’ll never have to work again.”

“That’s true.” she turns to him and exhales heavily. “But I’m not really that worried about myself. For me, it’s about Ciaran.”

“Annie, I don’t know what you heard but-.”

“Yeah, you do. And I agree. Look, I work with his aunt. His parents have six kids and no money, his dad barely ever gets off the water and his mom is completely overextended. I don’t have any family, I’m stuck in a dead-end job, I’m not leaving anyone or anything behind. But Ciaran is. I don’t know. I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to do something.”

That’s easy to say now. “That’s really selfless of you.”

She shrugs again. “I guess it’s just one of the last things I have control over. You know, Ciaran has a little girlfriend back home. Her name is Maia.” She looks at him and smiles bitterly. “He saved his allowance for a month to buy her flowers on her birthday, doesn’t that just make you want to set yourself on fire?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“He’s such a sweet kid. The thought of anyone hurting him just…” Annie forces a choked-up laugh. “I guess you could say it makes me want to kill someone.”

“That’s…”

“Convenient.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, we’ll see.” She looks back out over the city before turning to him again. “On a lighter note, what the fuck is that?”

She points an invasive index finger at the hickey Procula left on his collarbone two days prior. 

“That is… none of your business.”

Annie smirks. “My dad used to call that a Portside Engagement Ring. So what’s her name?”

“There is no ‘her’.”

“Him? Them? Someone did that.”

He tries to pull the collar of his shirt up, knowing it won’t do anything. “It’s… complicated. You know what, if you win, I’ll tell you.”

She gives him a wary look, followed by a hesitant smile. “I look forward to finding out.”

For a second, there is only the dull sound of traffic on the street below, the wind, the dull clink of wind chimes. Annie pulls an empty oyster shell out of the pocket of her sweats, holds it up to her eyeline and tosses it off the roof. It falls about three feet or so before launching back and flying over their heads. Annie makes no effort to see where it’s landed.

“So, do you really not have anybody back home?” He pries, against his better judgment.

“I mean, there’s Saira. Or do you mean…?” she points at the hickey again and smirks. “Yeah, not anymore. I’d say that ship has sailed but it was more like a fiery wreck.” She stares downward. “Theo Lotyde, you know him?”

Weirdly enough, he’s heard the name before, the last name at least. He remembers a Delphine Lotyde who used to get drunk with Mom in the brief time she was alive in Portside but can’t recall any mention of a son. The name Theo sounds almost familiar, but it’s nobody he’s met face-to-face.

“He sounds like a dick.” 

Annie laughs. “No, it… yeah, he is. But I don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“I mean, if you win, he’s gonna feel like an idiot, probably come crawling back.”

“And if I lose, he’ll be hung up on me until he bites it too, and whichever busted Portside whore he ends up marrying will resent my pathetic, forever-18-year-old ghost. That’s what you get for porking the antagonist of my high school career for two months while we were supposed to be exclusive.” Annie produces another oyster shell, throws it into the forcefield and cringes. “Yech. Forget I said anything.”

“I hate him already.”

Annie forces a bitter laugh. “Well, if I don’t make it, I’ll expect you to deliver the… strongly-worded letter that I wrote a couple hours ago.”

“If it comes to that…” He tries to give her a reassuring look, but from the expression he gets in return, he can tell it’s fallen flat. Annie shakes her head and gives the skyline one last wistful look before turning back towards the stairwell.

“Thanks.” her voice breaks a bit. “See you in the morning.”

For whatever reason he can’t bring himself to speak, just waves fruitlessly at her as she turns the corner and departs inside. He feels almost irritated for some reason, irritated that she would dump all that information then just leave, irritated that she’s been hitting the sauce when her district has a reputation to uphold, irritated that she seems content to lay down and die. The irritation is followed by a nauseous roil of guilt in his stomach, guilt over not discussing things further with her regarding Ciaran, over the fact that she agreed to his admittedly half-baked plan solely after having overheard the fallout, over the fact that he has zero grounds to be irritated by any complacence on her part. That’s why she was drinking, you fucking idiot. 

Something in the back of his mind possesses him to search around the roof for the discarded oyster shells. He finds what he assumes to be the initial two, but then comes across a third and fourth by the stairwell, then a fifth and sixth. He collects them in his pocket before retreating downstairs, making a point to avoid the elevator.

Lachesis Wheeler is one of the new batch of escorts the Gamemakers’ Guild brought on after the strike last year, a slight, pasty woman with waist-length green hair dyed with a patchy damask pattern who has been saddled with District 11. She’s currently sitting on the landing of the 11th  floor, her head in her hands, Seeder is sitting across from her and Asenath is standing over her stroking her hair. He watches them for a while from the space between the 12th and 11th landings, not in the mood to get pulled into the interaction. 

“-so fucking unfair.” Lachesis sobs, Seeder nods in agreement and looks up at Asenath. “I mean, how the fuck am I supposed to be okay with sending him in there to get eaten alive?” 

“It’ll get easier.” Asenath tries to reassure her, but she just starts crying harder. 

“That’s why we have to make this a good week for him.” Seeder says quietly, “and we will. It’s just out of our hands.”

“I can’t do this. I’m not cut out for this.” 

“I didn’t think I was either. You just…” Asenath gestures vaguely. “You learn how to deal with it. If the Guild didn’t believe in you, they wouldn’t have hired you.”

“They shouldn’t have.” Lachesis snipes. 

Seeder sighs. “Don’t worry too much about it. I’m his mentor, I know what I’m doing. This is a hard batch for your first year, just be gentle with yourself.”

“You know, you’re right.” Lachesis sniffles wetly, tilts her head back and wipes at her streaming green eyeliner. “I need a stiff drink.”

Seeder stands up and offers Lachesis her hand. “Let’s go get you one.”

The morning that follows is one of those reluctant, raw-eyed mornings, but at least Ciaran wakes up early and vacates the bedroom before they have to face each other. He has a vague sense of regret in the pit of his stomach, anger on Ciaran’s part maybe, that everyone is leaning so heavily into the whole Youngest Victor racket. It’s more than this kid can handle, obviously, he’s not stupid enough to think he can win and Annie isn’t twisted enough to try to convince him. 

He can’t bring himself to make eye contact with Annie, who doesn’t seem like she can bring herself to make eye contact with him either. Instead, she’s opting to stare down into her tea, only breaking her trance to humor Ciaran’s fascination with the height of the building or the food he’s never seen before or any number of luxurious, alien things that Portside never prepared him for. Today, it keeps circling back to elevators and persimmons.

After five years and a concussion, he barely remembers his own private session, just that he hadn’t known where to start when he walked in and it ended with a score of 9, which was better than he’d expected.  He can’t, however, blame the concussion for Annie’s obvious lack of preparation.

“I have to go downtown today.” He announces, looking over at Mags, whose mouth tightens in understanding. “Sponsorship thing, it’s pretty important. I’ll be gone for a while, but I expect an update on how things went when I get back.”

“Sure.” Annie forces out, gnawing on the edge of a pastry like she isn’t sure what to do with her hands. On the other side of the room, Sligo is holding up his palms for Ciaran to throw punches at, feigning pain when he lands a good one. 

“Are you calling a car?” Asenath cuts in, “do you mind if I come with you? I need to pick up some dry cleaning and get this nail fixed. That new girl Vibenia hired is an absolute menace. Look at this!”

She brandishes her left ring finger, the acrylic nail of which is leaning to the left.

“Sorry, Asenath.” He tries to cook up a suitable lie, Asenath’s hand still hovering in his eyeline. “There’s barely room for me, the Van Elsbergs have a fitting and they said I could-.”

“Why wouldn’t they just have the fitting here?” Asenath prods. “Hesperia can’t be that busy.”

Mags cuts in. “New designer, doesn’t have a suite yet, they’re probably waiting for Procula or Anatolia to retire before they formally bring her on. Apparently there’s nepotism involved. Didn’t you say her dad had some friends in the Guild?”

“Right.” He nods dumbly at Asenath for a while, who eyes him suspiciously. “I mean, that’s all I know. It’s not my fitting.”

Asenath’s brow furrows as much as is still possible. He isn’t massively concerned, knows Cashmere and Gloss have both been at this long enough to just go with it if Asenath questions them. It’s become an unspoken rule over the years for assets of Ptolemy’s to leave escorts out of it; they aren’t at a financial place where they’re likely to become a customer and they tend to be unpredictable with their level of attachment to Victors. He knows Asenath is aware of Ptolemy as an uninvolved bettor and has always found him nauseating, he can’t imagine the scene she’d make if she found out and doesn’t want to imagine it. The only uninvolved party he’s ever told was Mags, and even then it was nothing she hadn’t heard before. 

When he arrives, Ptolemy’s niece-turned-receptionist Hedylogia is at her usual post behind the desk in conversation with someone over the phone, she gives him a shy wave as he walks in and scans his card. As he passes, he catches a quick excerpt of the conversation.

“-I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed, sir. Miss Shackelford is a delectable lover and an enthralling conversationalist-.” He can recognize a sales pitch straight off one of Ptolemy’s cue cards anywhere. “Once you’ve had her, you won’t be able to stay away.”

He knows the low hum of the car idling outside is Liv arriving, can feel her presence coating him with that horrible rotten fruit feeling as she enters the building. He lays in the low, red light for a while, shutting out the daylight and steeling himself for whatever she’s going to want to do. For some reason he just can’t handle it today, something about the feeling of Ciaran’s little heartbeat under his hand, the charred patches on Annie’s clothes, the way her face went stony when she talked about that guy from back home… what was his name again? Somebody Lotyde? The whiskey he drank last night is still slithering around in his gut and he wants nothing more than to be off a pill or two in one of those air-conditioned media rooms in Flickerman’s studio, where big-shot Gamemakers bring assets to hang on their arms for a few hours, take a few pictures and give the press a few one-liners, the farthest those appointments ever go is sometimes the occasional office blow-job. He knows Rennette Metzger, that woman from 10 who won a year or two before Enobaria, is probably there with that Tier 4 who likes to tangle his fingers up in her thick red curls, suspects that Gloss is there with that dumpy studio exec who has a standing appointment with him every month. He hasn’t taken one of those appointments after what happened with Laryssa Ring.

She had been one of the better ones. He’d been 17, she’d been 43, a Tier 2, and she’d taken an interest in him after observing Dorian and Keelyn’s training sessions. She was tall and thin, naturally fair-complected but baked brown from years in a tanning bed, and she dyed her hair the colour of wilted peonies. She had taken her clearance card for the Guild’s main offices and crushed up two blue pills, divided them into long, even lines and handed him a tiny glass straw. 

“These things are bo-ring.” she’d warned, half-laughing, as he bent over the line, not knowing what to do next. “This’ll liven it up. Here, like this.” She demonstrated, sucking the powder up through her nose, tossing her head back and gasping. He’d followed her lead and instantly regretted it as cold fire ricocheted around his sinuses. She’d laughed and told him it was cute when he gagged. 

He doesn’t remember much of that day between the smell of Laryssa’s perfume and that one point where he’d leaned too far in towards one of the news anchors and the microphone bounced stupidly off his upper lip as he slurred something to the effect of things looking good for 4 that year, but a good chunk of it was unintelligible or beeped out. He came to later that evening on the couch in the common area of the 4th floor with Sligo glowering down at him.

“You threw up in the elevator.” was the extent of his welcome back to the land of the living, and he watched Dorian and Keelyn enter the arena through a headache so severe he kept borrowing Asenath’s compact to make sure his eyes weren’t bleeding. 

The Lararium that came out the following week was the second-worst part of it. Some dickhead reporter had decided that the one thing Willow Charlebois’s Victory issue was missing was a picture of him mid-bender, stumbling through the hallway of the Training Centre with a blown-pupiled but otherwise composed Laryssa half-carrying him. His hair was a mess, his shirt untucked and his shoes untied, but the kicker was the smear of honey-coloured foundation from his cheekbone to his lower lip where he’d been sucking on her face and neck. The worst part, by far, was the clip that aired during the final recap right after Lillian’s boy took Dorian’s butterfly knife to the liver, wherein Laryssa had been talking about some new developments the Guild had been working on for the following year’s arena and he had accidentally called her ‘Mom’. 

“You look even more beautiful than usual today.” he greets Liv as she storms in, tossing her purse onto the adjacent chair, followed by her blazer. 

“How so?” she snaps, thrusting a room-temperature bottle of wine into his hand. 

“I can’t put my finger on it.” he opens the wine and forces a smile. “But if I don’t take you right now, I might-.”

“Oh, shut up, will you? I’m under a lot of stress right now, I don’t need you running your mouth.”

“What’s on your mind…?” he trails off awkwardly, unable to remember which disgusting nickname she’s been taking a liking to lately. Liv shoots him a glare.

“Oh, just my royal dunce of a husband, that 19 year old whore he’s been fucking-.” she spits out that last word so forcefully the front lock of her hair trembles. “I hope my mother is spinning in her grave when she sees what she’s done to me. Marrying a Cardew to a Snow, what a farce. I’d be better off with some ape from the Districts.” She takes a flask out of her purse and throws back a shot. Great. So this pisswater wine is all for me. “I’d marry you if I could.”

“Oh, Liv…” He tries to feign adoration, despite the fact that he’d sooner castrate himself with an oyster knife. “I can’t even imagine-.”

“I’d protect you.” she gets on top of him, smelling so strongly of roses and cigarettes that he has to suppress his gag reflex. “My precious boy.” her expression shifts from prurient to resentful. “You used to be such a pristine little thing, now look at you, all used up. I keep asking Ptolemy, he keeps saying no. I touch more money in a week than that man ever has or ever will, I keep telling him to just let me write the check and he keeps saying no. All manner of people touching you… it’s aged you.” Liv gives him a long, unimpressed look. “Drink.”

Willow Charlebois had been in the media room at the beginning of Bijou’s Games on the arm of a man who resembled one of those crossbred pit bull-hyena mutts that had ripped their way through his predecessors the year Gloss won. He remembers watching her and feeling nauseous when he took in how beautiful she was. She’s a tiny little thing from a logging town on 7’s Northeasternmost border at the mouth of Creed River, and Ptolemy has been wearing her out since she first crossed the threshold of the Satis-Factory at barely 18, composed and solemn. Her stylist had her all in pale yellow that brought out the warm undertone of her sandy-brown skin and her date had a meaty hand clamped hard around her left buttock, scrunching up the buttery silk and triggering the tiniest grimace on her glazed lips. He watched her and remembered hearing her sob through the wall while Cashmere told her in a measured yet grim voice that she had too many siblings to start trying to say no, then to hold a bag of frozen peas between her legs, then that it would get easier. He remembered watching her Victory interview as Mags phoned Keelyn’s family with her condolences.

A deluge of freezing water jolts him out of the warm, stygian murk of alcohol-induced slumber and he comes to slumped against the bathroom wall with Ptolemy standing over him, holding an empty pint glass. Fuck. 

The clock on the nightstand, which he has to crane his neck painfully to make out, reads 8:43. The nearby toilet bowl is painted with cold vomit the colour of red wine that was not there when he checked in. Between him and Ptolemy is the lip of a bathtub, which his legs are hanging over, and a pushed-aside shower curtain. Liv is gone, the bottle of wine is on the edge of the sink, and Ptolemy has murder in his eyes.

"Boudica Sickle-." he begins, playing up his disappointment with a passive-aggressive sigh, "-is a beloved friend and longtime customer of mine. I booked her with you because I consider you to be one of my most... bespoke assets." He lowers his voice slightly. "That, and she likes to be tied up. So imagine my despondence when dear Boudica requests a refund because someone-." he raises a greasy eyebrow, "-was too shit-faced to do his job."

"Ptolemy, just listen-." he tries to stand up but the room is rotating and his entire lower body has gone numb. "Just give me a second-." He slides indelicately out of the bathtub and finds his footing, a sensation not unlike TV static crackles up his left leg, threatening to yank it out from under him. 

"Oh, I'm all ears." Ptolemy sits on the bed and stares at him. 

"I had an appointment with Liv, and she-." he bites back a wave of nausea, brandishing the wine bottle to drive his point home. A pitiful dreg rolls around in the bottom of it, taunting his low tolerance. He knows he’s babbling but can’t stop once he gets started. “Ptolemy, Liv requested that I drink this, and of course I wasn’t going to say no, but then I didn’t have enough time-.”

"I'm mildly disgusted that you're trying to blame a sweet old woman for your own indiscretion, much less our own beloved First Lady! Honestly, I-."

"I'm not blaming anyone, it's just bad timing.” He limps out of the bathroom, half-numb and bent out of shape and still somewhat inebriated. “If you just tell your friend to rebook-.”

"Too late for that, she's in service with Gloss now and from what I heard in the hallway he's giving her the pounding of a lifetime." Ptolemy leans forward and feigns sympathy. “I’m disappointed in you, doll. I expected better, especially during the busy season. I’ll let you off with a warning for now, but you know me, you know I’m not one for second chances and neither is the President.”

“I’m sorry.”

Ptolemy shakes his head. “Apology accepted, but watch yourself.” He gets up and starts to leave. “Honestly, I thought dear Leyla taught you better than that.” He runs a hand through his rock-hard hair. “Gloss is terrible at bondage. I’m never going to hear the end of this.”

Ptolemy turns slowly, gives him a half-disappointed, half-indulgent look and closes the door. He stares at the door for a while, the room still spinning, a migraine beginning to set in. In one last desperate attempt to regain some control of the situation, he summons the last shred of strength in his body and whips the wine bottle at the door, causing it to explode over the entrance to the suite, pieces of glass scattering across the floor. Ptolemy has Avoxes to clean, he won’t be back for another three days. Outside, the sun is setting over the Capitol, bringing on a milky, overcast evening. He stares back at the window, feeling petulant and chaotic and smaller than a pea crab. The private session scores will be public soon, and he feels even worse when he realizes that he and Annie never really figured anything out for that. Thinking about her makes it all feel even worse. Assets should be exempt from mentoring, every Victor who works for Ptolemy has said time and time again that it’s not fair to anyone involved.

Through the groan of his migraine, he can hear a soft sobbing noise down the hall, undercut with the susurrus of hushed conversation. A sharp yelp breaks the quiet, making him flinch, and the voices increase very slightly in volume.

“Sorry, sweetie.” says a deep female voice with a slight lisp, “Falia, you mind-.”

“Yeah, of course.” The hinge of a nearby door squeaks, and when he cracks the door he can see Falia, a roadsider- Ptolemy’s funny little euphemism for kidnapping- from 10 who showed up a year or so ago, step into the hall in a bathrobe. He steps into the hallway just in time to intercept her. 

“Hey, what happened?”

Falia bites her lip. “It’s that new girl. The new Victor. Some guy came in and just…” she shudders. “Enobaria’s gonna report him.”

“Hold still for just a second-.” says Enobaria in the other room, “-I need to take a picture so I can show Ptolemy.”

“Why?” Bijou whimpers. 

“It’s just so we have proof of what happened. Then he won’t be allowed to come back.”

Camera shutter. Camera shutter. Then a long, agonized exhale.

“You’re sure?”

“They say ‘anything goes’, but even Ptolemy has certain lines you can’t cross, he can’t have damaged assets. And if you see that freak in here again, you come straight to me. I’ll deal with him.”

Falia knits her fingers together. “I’m just on my way down to get some more antiseptic. You need anything? You…” she leans in, “you smell like a distillery.”

“Courtesy of Her FirstLadyness.”

“Ew.” Falia shudders. “I am… beyond thankful she doesn’t swing my way. Anyway, I’ll be back.”

He knocks hesitantly on the doorframe. Bijou whimpers again.

“It’s okay. I’ll get rid of them.”

The door unlocks and opens a crack, Enobaria looks him up and down and cringes. “Fuck me running, what the hell happened to you? Is that a hickey or did you get shot?”

“Liv’s in heat. Do you want me to call Cashmere?”

“She’s just downstairs looking at the security tapes.” Enobaria steps into the hallway and closes the door behind her. “Did you see anything? Did you see who came in? It was her second client, she said he wasn’t very big, brown hair, mustache, weird eyes. It was around 4 or so, she doesn’t remember exactly, but can you blame her? Poor kid’s scared shitless.”

“I’ve been in there since 3-ish. It’s a long story.”

“Are you done for the night?”

“I have to get back to the Tribute Center.”

“Right. Shit, am I glad I’m not mentoring this year, this batch sucks. I mean, I guess I kind of have to root for 2 but let’s just say I wouldn’t be pissed if either of yours won. 12 and 18, what a raw deal.”

“Well, I’m working on it. Anyway, let her know where I am in case she needs anything.”

“Yeah, I will. Thanks, kid.” she starts back inside, turning back at the last second and giving him a vicious, gold-veneered smirk. “And, for the love of God, brush your teeth, you stink like drain cleaner.”

When he gets outside, Willow is smoking under one of the awnings that hangs off the side of the building, attention turned down the street. 

“No cabs out tonight.” she remarks as the automatic door swishes shut behind him. 

“I called a car, just get in with me, we’re going to the same place.”

Willow smiles, tossing her spent cigarette into the gutter. “Thanks. You’re mentoring this year, right?”

“Yeah, our girl.”

“I’ve got the boy. Alder Groves.” Willow’s hand tightens around the strap of her bag. “Ugh, Finn, he’s so sweet. He’s just an overall wonderful kid. It’s gonna hurt like hell.”

Ciaran has a little girlfriend back home. Her name is Maia. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“I know he’s probably gonna score relatively low. He’s smaller, he’s kind of nervous. It’s funny, he kind of reminds me of Beetee, you know? And I was trying to take the edge off it by thinking to myself that if he wins, they’re gonna be, like-.” she crosses her fingers. “But then I just keep coming back to the fact that he has a snowball’s chance in Hell, if I’m being realistic.”

He remembers watching Alder at the Reaping in 7, a doughy, sweet-faced 15 year old with mousy colouring and patchy acne. “Well, maybe, he’ll surprise you.”

Willow stares at the pavement. “How’s your girl? She seems… kind of promising, honestly. Maybe it’s just her age, you know, she’s pretty much an adult. And, you know, she kills things for a living.”

“She kills fish for a living. And she doesn’t even really kill them, I think she mostly just cuts them up.”

Willow shrugs. “Knows how to use a knife.”   

“Let’s hope.” Their car begins to turn the corner towards them. “You had clients today?”

“Just that guy from the Department of Energy. He was in and out, just wanted to be sucked off before he got home to his ‘bitch wife’, as he so lovingly calls her. I should have been gone an hour or so ago, but Kale needed a hand with some laundry and Enobaria wanted to get a quote from me about that guy who came in and messed Bijou up.”

“Yeah, she asked me about that too. Did you see him?”

Willow waves to the driver as the car pulls up in front of them. “Well-.” she circles around the car and opens the door, sliding into the backseat. “I was checking in, so I’m behind the desk with Hedylogia and this guy comes and says he’s here to see Bijou. So Hedylogia pulls him up in the system, he has all the documentation saying he doesn’t have any diseases, he’s kind of cracking jokes back and forth with her, I just figure he’s a normal, horny guy looking to nail a cute Victor. He had short brown hair, about 5’9, mustache, dressed nice, so I figure he might be a Gamemaker or a politician. Didn’t think much of him. He goes upstairs with Hedylogia, and that was it. Didn’t even catch his name.”

“Weird. He just walked right in and…” he shudders. “People are fucked.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Willow leans back against the leather bench of the car and exhales heavily, closing her eyes. “Ugh, I just can’t wait for these Games to be over.” The driver turns onto the bridge that overlooks the Capitol’s downtown. The city is lit up under the darkening sky, all red and gold for the Games. Willow zeroes in on one billboard in the distance. “Oh, five minutes until they announce the scores.” she turns to him, “We won’t be back in time. Ugh, I wanted to be with Alder when we saw them.”

He leans forward to address the driver, a middle-aged male Avox with greying auburn hair. “Would you mind turning on the radio?”

The man nods curtly and turns the dial up, Caesar Flickerman’s voice gradually increases in volume throughout the car.

“-really stiff competition this year, if you ask me, but don’t take my word for it. I’ve got Head Gamemaker Orestes Blanche in the studio right now, believe it or not, and, I gotta say, Year 70 is shaping up to be a crazy one!”

“It sure is, Caesar.” says a man’s voice, he sounds a bit congested, like he might be getting over a cold. “Now, since this is my penultimate year as Head Gamemaker, I wanted to ensure that this year and next year will be extra special. We’ve got some interesting new traps we’ve been beta-testing for the past three years that are locked and loaded and a stunning new arena that I’ve modeled after a few from Games past that I particularly enjoyed.”

“Blanche is retiring?” Willow knits her brow. “Hm. He’s been around for a while. I think… Cecelia’s Games were his first? Maybe even Blight’s.”

“We sure will be sad to see you go, Orestes. Won’t we, folks?” The crackly sound of a sighing audience groans out of the car’s sound system. 

“Well, Caesar, I always say when one door closes, another opens. But, hey, you’ll still have me around next year, and let me tell you; these Games are gonna be great, but next year? Next year is gonna be faaaann-tastic!”

The audience busts into frantic applause. “Sounds like even he wants these Games to be over fast.”

Willow snickers, fidgeting with the hem of her short red sundress. “I’m hoping 4 days tops.”

“Alright, everyone, we are getting so close to the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Orestes and the Gamemakers’ Guild have been deliberating long and hard since the private sessions this afternoon. I managed to sneak a peek at the scores and, let me tell you, we’ve got some stiff competition this year. But first, let’s take a look at some past Victors and their private session scores. Now, I’m sure we all remember this lovely lady from last year, right? The Tiny Terror herself, Miss Bijou Shackelford of District 1. She scored a nice juicy 11 out of 12 points last year and I think I speak for everyone when I say she more than delivered! I mean, let’s hear it for Bijou Shackelford!” The crowd loses it. Through the windshield, he can see a billboard displaying the broadcast. Caesar is green-screened onto Bijou’s promotional image from last year, her immaculate uniform and confident smirk, before she even knew who Ptolemy Notch was or what was coming. The image switches to Willow two years ago, she cringes as they pass underneath it. “Then we have the beautiful Willow Charlebois from District 7! Willow was a bit of a fixer back in 68, scoring a 7 out of 12. But I think she more than made up for it with her resourcefulness, level head and that amazing maneuver with the- oh, and I seem to be getting the signal that we are out of time, so let’s get into these scores! What do you say?” The audience loses their minds once again. 

“I love how he asks like that’s not exactly what’s about to happen and they still act like it’s the craziest thing they’ve ever heard.” Willow rolls her eyes. “The people here are like a bunch of overgrown babies.”

“From District 1…” Orestes Blanche begins. “Eisen Deschamps, score of 11. Citrine Singer, score of 10. From District 2, Magnus Dryden, score of 8. Aloisa Semper, score of 7. From District 3, Turing Benoit, score of 8. Ada Quinn, score of 6. From District 4-.” he begins to sweat immediately, a gross lukewarm sweat. “Ciaran Whelk, score of 6. Annie Cresta, score of 9.”

Willow elbows him. “Nice going.”

“From District 5, Kayden Yaw, score of 7. Deena Mollier, score of 4. From District 6, Axel Moore, score of 7. Hallie Feeney, score of 5. From District 7, Alder Groves, score of 9-.”

“Hey.” he elbows Willow back, she has a hand clapped over her mouth. “Snowball’s chance in Hell?”

“-Briar Bains, score of 8. From District 8, Merino Cross, score of 5. Chantilly Pick, score of 8. From District 9, Flax Allard, score of 7. Maizie Hillier, score of 6. From District 10, Marcos Fleischer-.”

“I have no idea how that happened.” Willow shakes her head incredulously. “My God, what did he do for them?”

“-score of 7. Jasmine Bone, score of 6. From District 11, Mose Rowe, score of 2. Cerise Maas, score of 10. From District 12, Asa Cordovan, score of 9. Awinita Poole, score of 4.”

He feels an immediate pang in his gut for Lachesis and Seeder, hopes whoever kills Mose will be fast about it. 

“Well, there we have it.” Willow leans her head back to stare at the ceiling of the car. “Year 70, may the odds, blah blah blah. God, I hope Blight left me some wine.”

He can’t bring himself to go directly upstairs when they get back, doesn’t have it in him to face Annie after he’s essentially been neglecting her for the past three days. Willow goes straight up to the 7th floor to celebrate Alder’s unexpected score while he makes his way to the bar at the back of the lobby. He finds Cashmere alone, in the process of ordering a drink and looking mildly haggard, and sits beside her. 

“Actually, make that two. Thanks.” she says, flagging the bartender back down. “Hey, kid.”

“Congratulations on your 10.”

“And your 9.” she forces a smile. “Citrine’s been talking my ear off about Annie. She really wants her.”

“Does Citrine, by any chance, want a 12 year old with a score of 6?” Cashmere makes a face. “Yeah, I figured as much.”

“Hey, he’s a cute kid, but Citrine’s in it to win. Like, to the point of delusion almost. I don’t think the whole mortality thing has set in for her. I mean, for Careers, it’s…” Cashmere trails off. “But you know that. Levi was the same way.” As the bartender sets his drink down, a fruity-looking thing in a tall glass that smells strongly of wine, he thinks of Levi, his throat wide open courtesy of Bijou, bleeding out under a grey sky and sparse rain. Cashmere looks him up and down before she hesitantly places a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I think so. What about you? You look a little… nauseous.”

Cashmere takes a long sip of her drink. “I just got back with Bijou. She’s really shaken up. I’m just… taking the edge off, then I’m headed right back upstairs. I don’t think she’ll be able to sleep alone.”

“Scary.”

“I’ll say.” Cashmere shudders. “Shit, I almost don’t want Citrine to win. I know the second she’s out of that arena Ptolemy’s gonna have her on her back. I felt the same way with Bijou, even though I wasn’t her mentor. I just… I knew. I knew with Bijou, I knew with Willow…” she shakes her head. “And I know when I get back upstairs, Citrine’s gonna have questions and I’m just… I don’t know what to tell her, like, yeah, you’ve been training since you were 8 or 9 to be ready to die for your district and the second you get there, the second you get what everyone in your Lanistarium class is ready to risk life and limb for, you find out that after all the parties are over and all the magazine features are published, you’re really nothing more than a pretty face and few holes. Congratulations, Citrine. Don’t you feel like a winner?” Her voice breaks, and she pauses, jaw clenching, before she drains her glass. “Shit, sorry to unload on you.”

“It’s okay. I get it. I feel the same way with Annie.”

Cashmere nods slowly, jaw clenched, eyes glossy. “I better go.” she slaps a couple bills down on the bar and gives him a stiff side-hug. “I’m pretty sure Ptolemy’s gonna cancel his Opening Night party on account of the whole Bijou debacle, so come find me. Hopefully this whole alliance thing will work out.”

He doubts it will, but he humours her anyway. 

An hour or so has passed by the time he finally steels himself to go back upstairs. The common area is almost completely dark save for a lamp in the corner and the cool-toned flicker of the TV, almost entirely silent aside from the low chatter of the speakers, and Annie is leaning over an elaborate spread of loose-leaf papers. An interview from 63 is droning on the screen above her, the girl from 4 that year was a Career, plain-pretty like Annie, mentored by Mags, placed 6th. 

“Let’s all give a nice warm Year 63 Welcome to Miss Morwen Pelage!”

Annie pauses to write something down, then picks up a highball that’s been sitting nearby and drinks ravenously. Caesar pesters Morwen about who did her nails, what her strategy for winning will be, if there’s anyone special back home. 

He turns the kitchen light on, Annie nearly jumps out of her skin.

“Sorry.”

She stares at him. “How long were you standing there?”

“Like a minute or so?”

She sighs and goes back to the papers. “Did you have fun? Whatever it is you were doing?”

“Not at all.” She hates me. “I caught your private session scores though. Congratulations, by the way, but I can see you’ve already started celebrating.” He gestures to her drink, she looks like she wants to break every bone in his body.

“Yeah, right.” Annie covers her face with her hands, “god-fucking-damnit.”

“Hey, a 9 is objectively good. You’re not a Career, you haven’t had a day of training before this week, there are only three better scores you could have gotten, you did a good job.” She doesn’t look convinced. “I got a 9.”

“Ciaran got a 6.” She spits, leaning back against the cushions, hand still covering her eyes. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?”

This is your fault. She’s not going to let this Ciaran thing go. “Annie, I need you to know that that was just a suggestion. It’s a strategy you can use, you don’t have to.”

“Well, it’s one of your only contributions thus far, so I’m running with it and now Ciaran is too. We allied, like, officially.”

He knows he has no grounds to argue with her, knows there wouldn’t be a point even if he tried. “That’s good. You know, Sligo and I still have a little bit of time to work with you, so maybe in the morning we can-.”

“I mean, unless you have something better to do, of course, like palling around with Eisen and Citrine’s mentors or adding to your hickey collection.”

“I’m completely free tomorrow.” He sits beside her. “And I’m sorry, by the way. I know I’ve been preoccupied, but you’ve done really well for yourself so far.”

“Yeah, Mags knows her shit.”

“She does.” He picks up one of the papers, Annie’s penmanship is absolute garbage but his isn’t much better. He can make out the heading- ‘59- CETO MAELSTROM’, undercut by ‘18-Portside-Volunteer-mentored by Arnav Skiff (won 34) (dead?)’. A few lines down, ‘no bodies of water in arena but still made final 8’. “So, Ceto Maelstrom?”

“What about her?”

“You saw her interview?”

Annie snorts. “I’ve watched every single girl from 4 from 30 to 63.”

“You have a favourite yet?”

Annie cringes. “That’s morbid.”

“Okay, fine, do you have one who you… relate to?”

“I liked Kekoa Dulse, from 60, but I work with her brother, so I could be biased. Linnea Flenser and Salina Mast, too, the girls from 50? Asenath told me to pay special attention to Phoca Dylan, apparently people are saying I have a ‘distinct Phocaness’.”

“A Phocaness?”

Annie rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I skimmed her interview. She’s pretty, I guess, and clearly she did something right if she won, but I didn’t pick up anything I can use.”

He doesn’t know whether or not he should tell her about Phoca. He still remembers the day he met Phoca in Gil Caravel’s makeshift sparring range out behind his trailer. He’d been young but he still remembers looking at her and thinking that maybe the Games weren't worth it. 

“Have you seen Phoca’s Games?”

She shakes her head. “The only ones I’ve seen all the way through were yours and the ones that came after. My parents didn’t want me watching them until I absolutely had to.”

“That’s understandable.” Better than being stuck in front of them from the age of 8. “Well, if people are making the Phoca comparison, you don’t even really have to have the same approach as her. I’d say try to namedrop her in your interview. People are already comparing Ciaran to me, the whole victor-second-coming thing kills every time. Bijou Shackelford was The Next Cashmere Van Elsberg, Horemheb Shale was The Next Ajax Rockwell. I ‘d say if they’re making those comparisons already, it’s a good sign for at least one of you. I think if you sell yourself as a hardcore Phoca admirer, at least a handful of her sponsors from back in the day are still alive. Can’t hurt.”

Annie raises her eyebrows, searching the table for her Phoca paper. She finds it, sets it in her lap almost reverently. “Okay. Phoca Dylan-.” she reads out loud, “won Year 49, mentored by Drunk Uncle-.”

“Drunk Uncle?”

Annie smirks. “That’s what Ciaran and I have been calling Sligo. Anyway, Phoca was 17, from the Flats, mentored by Drunk Uncle, beach-slash-salt marsh arena, water-heavy, which could explain why she won… Is there a way I can watch Phoca’s Games? Is there, like, a past Games channel on these TVs?”

He knows it wouldn’t be hard for him to find a way to stream Phoca’s Games for her but can’t bring himself to let her see them. “Shit, I don’t think so. But, I mean, you’ve got her interview.” Sligo remembers enough about her but if any of us bring her up he’ll either break something or drink himself into a coma before the Games even start. 

“I wish she was alive. I mean, yeah, obviously I wish she was alive because she died, like, really young, right?”

“She was 29.” 

“Do you… know how… she…?” Annie stares at him. “Sorry, that’s such a morbid question. Probably not my business.”

“No idea.” he lies. “And I’d really advise against asking Mags or Sligo.”

“Yeah, of course. Sorry I asked.” She goes for her drink again, picking out a sprig of mint and setting it on the table away from her papers. She directs her attention up to the screen, where Nella Limpet is twirling in a seafoam green dress while Caesar pretends to be completely overwhelmed by her middling stage presence. “How did you feel?”

“About Phoca?”

“No, like, this time five years ago. Before your interview.” She knits her fingers around her glass. “I don’t know, for some reason I can’t get over the interview because I know it’s, like… the last…” she gestures vaguely. “I mean, after the interview…”

In the warm dark of the room, her eyes are just as intense, but have gone from trawler-wake turquoise to almost forest green, and the backlit shadows around her features make her look five years younger.

“I don’t remember a lot of it. I know I was definitely scared. Spent a lot of time with Mags, I think she was trying to get my mind off things as much as she could.”

Annie nods slowly. “Same with Ciaran this year.”

“My interview ended up going really well, so that helped but… I don’t remember what came after that. I don’t know, it’s probably just the concussion.”

“Right. I mean, I just keep telling myself there’s nothing I can do about it at this point, so there’s no point being scared because either way, it’s happening.” She looks back at the table. “I wrote letters for everyone back home. Not that many people, but…”

“One for your dick of an ex.”

“Yeah, one for him, one for Saira, one for my friend Teesha and her family, she lives in the Peninsula, but I wrote down her address… you’ll get them where they need to go, right?”

“That depends, do you think your ex could beat me up?”

“I’m serious, asshole.” Annie’s voice breaks and she turns to face him again. “Yes or no.”

“Yes, absolutely. Sorry.” He eyes her drink. “Where can I get one of those?”

“Haven’t you had enough?” she smirks. “You smell like you’ve been bathing in it.” Comment aside, she crosses the room and jabs an order for two drinks into the keypad on the wall. “I don’t even want to know what you’ve been doing instead of Odairifying me this whole time.”

He bites back what he wants to say, that she’ll find out soon enough or something along those lines. Despite the fact that he barely knows this girl, the thought of Ptolemy sweating all over her is almost enough to get him puking again. He thinks of Bijou three floors down, laying sleeplessly in bed with Cashmere and terrified out of her mind. “It’s a long story.”

“Sure.”

“It is. Once you’re a Victor, you don’t really get a break during the Games. You get what I’m saying, right? I’m a public figure, it’s a whole racket.”

“Mags and Sligo are Victors too, they’ve been doing their jobs.”

“It’s different with recent Victors. If it ever ends up being your problem, we’ll talk about it then.”

Annie gives him a weird look as she makes her way back to the couch. When she sits back down, she’s closer to him than she was before, and he can smell a soapy, artificial frangipani scent coming off her slightly damp hair. 

“Why then? Either it ends up being relevant or I die without telling anyone.”

Because if I tell you, you’ll care even less about winning than you already do. He feels himself holding out his hands stupidly. “I just can’t.”

Annie rolls her eyes. “You are the weirdest person I’ve ever met.” On the screen above them, the image shifts from Nella Limpet to Sirena Fisk and he immediately feels his stomach start to churn again. Annie eyes Sirena with a detached reverence, dividing Nella’s mostly bare sheet in half with a line and scribbling down SIRENA FISK-65. “Do you remember a lot about her? We can skip this one, if it’s, like… raw.”

“No, it’s fine. I don’t remember much. She was older than me, I think 16? We never formally allied, I don’t think she saw me getting very far. She was from the Lanistarium up North.”

“Were you not? I mean, I know you’re from the Flats originally, but…”

“I had a good amount of training, but never on an institutional level. The guy who trained Phoca trained me. But Sirena came out of the Lanistarium.”

On the screen, Sirena leans back casually in her chair as Caesar comments on her high training score, her wavy flaxen hair slicked back to showcase her matching pearl earrings and necklace. He remembers watching her get ready as Asenath and Hermia fussed over her, the way she had straightened his jacket backstage and told him not to be nervous. The last and only time he saw her in the arena was when he watched her being beaten to death. He’d never seen a body break down like that before, and even after the concussion he remembered the sound of her bones crunching, how long it took her to stop screaming. The Sirena on the screen blows a kiss to the audience and he remembers how she had wished him luck as she exited the stage, a thin finger of sweat dripping down the inner side of her right arm, one lock of hair out of place, a tiny smudge of lipstick on her teeth. 

Annie gets up to answer the knock on the door, thanking the Avox who brought their drinks up entirely too enthusiastically, like she’s trying to compensate for his lot in life, and sets them on the coffee table as Sirena gives the audience one last twirl and departs. Leucie Clamm replaces her, all dead eyes and false enthusiasm. Annie seems to have given up taking notes entirely, glancing between the Phoca paper and the Linnea paper interchangeably. She picks the remote up and skips back to Phoca’s interview. 

“So, Phoca, your mentor, Sligo Altomar, holds the record for most confirmed kills, as you probably already know.”

“Yes, Caesar, and I plan on breaking that record.”

Phoca turns towards the camera and smirks, she doesn’t look much like Annie beyond the hair and eye colour but there’s definitely something there. Neither Annie nor the Phoca on the screen bear any resemblance to the scrawny, nervous woman in Gil Caravel’s kitchenette who wouldn’t make eye contact with him, who wouldn’t cross the line where grass met sand even though her arena was nowhere near Brineridge. He watches Annie watching Phoca, thinks of the iteration of Phoca Dylan he met 10 years ago, and decides that if Annie doesn’t make it, it could always have ended worse.

Chapter Text

Scoop, slaughter, scaling, line, cut from vent to gills, remove interior from the base of the head, liver, swim bladder, gills, vacuum seal, freezer, pallet, truck. Caretta isn’t speaking to Maris this week. Someone was laid off upstairs. The foreman is sleeping with someone from Free Range. Vent to gills. Someone left the door open on the loft. Swim bladder. Saira wants to go to the beach after work. Gills. Coral is this week’s freezer runner. Vent to gills. Interior. Four hours and twenty-three minutes until lunch. Coral. Vent to gills. Can’t go to Skipjack’s on a Processing day because there is no time to wash off the smell. Liver. Moriah cut her finger again. Gills. She’s bleeding on the line. Gills. 

Asenath is pacing again. 

“Sit down, dear, you’re making me nervous.” Procula chides, groping on the vanity for the roll of garment tape she keeps misplacing now that she’s one her fifth glass of posca. The interview dress is arguably the absolute best case scenario, she almost can’t believe it’s something that came from inside Procula’s brain. Delicately draped white silk with the absolute slightest tinge of pearlescent pink, but only when the light hits it a certain way. It’s floor length but low enough on top to ‘pay for itself’, as Procula said, right before she grabbed her tits with those obscene nails. In place of sleeves, there is a spiderweb of pearls that begins just below her shoulders and ends at her forearms, attached separately to the bodice after Aegina arranged her hair in simple loose curls. For the first time all week, she doesn’t feel completely ridiculous.

“Now, remember what we were talking about, Annie-.” Asenath drills, breathless, “-about being yourself, but not so much yourself, you remember that?”

“Yes. Be myself but not myself.”

“What I mean is… be an elevated version of yourself. Elevated, not exaggerated, please don’t confuse the two. Please.”

Camarina steps up onto the pedestal behind her and starts to brush a warm-toned highlight across her collarbones. “I wouldn’t worry too much. You’re the prettiest one out there, nobody’s going to really be focusing too much on what you’re saying.”

“And if you think you’re losing them-.” Procula grins, she has lipstick on her teeth again. “-just lean forward and push your arms together!” 

She busts into that grating laugh again, joined by Camarina, then a hesitant Aegina. Asenath grimaces and goes back to the bowl of posca. 

“Sorry I’m late.” Mags announces, opening the door just enough to sidle in. Someone has straightened her hair, it’s pulled back with a thin indigo velvet band, hanging to her waist in a silver curtain. “Ciaran’s been stress-puking since- my God, look at you…”

“Isn’t she just a vision?” Aegina squeals, taking one of her hands and making her extend her arm to display the dripping pearls. 

“Hadriana Ravinstill reincarnated.” Procula reiterates for possibly the 10th time in the past hour alone. “I’m telling you, it’s like I’m channeling her. I just turn my brain off and let her…” Procula gestures dramatically, her bracelets clanking together, “…speak through me!”

Mags ignores her. “They need you backstage in five minutes. Ciaran’s ready.”

“We’re ready.” Asenath shoots Mags a conspiratorial look and she suddenly feels immense relief that she’ll be rid of Procula soon, even if the alternative is arguably worse. As they’re leaving, Asenath puts a hand on her shoulder and leans in. “And don’t listen to those three.” she whispers. “This isn’t Hadriana. This is Phoca Dylan’s revenge.”

The hallway is long and white and smells like sweat and hairspray, vibrating with nervous conversation.  At the front of the line, Citrine and Eisen are standing in silence, glancing back occasionally. Citrine’s dress is comprised of thousands of strips of rhinestone banding attached to a white bodysuit underneath and her long black hair is loose and chemically straightened. Eisen and Magnus are wearing suits that are nearly identical but Eisen’s is crimson and Magnus’s is slate grey. Aloisa’s outfit makes her look older and frumpier than she is, a military jacket, beret and pencil skirt, her hair slicked back, her face severe. Down the line, the bug-eyed blonde girl from 7 is wearing a forest green dress that seems more like it’s wearing her, and her partner is wearing a three piece suit of the same colour. Asa and Awinita are the last to arrive, Asa in head-to-toe buckskin fringe and Awinita in a virginal floor-length white cupcake of a dress that makes her look like she’s about to be baptized. When Citrine and Aloisa see her, they turn to each other and exchange a look. At the end of the line, Cerise, in a simple pea green slip, her long braids wrapped around sparkly approximations of apples and grapes, turns to Awinita and smiles. The pair from 10 are both looking dejected in matching cowhide, but at least their outfits for the interview aren’t as bad as the ones for the parade. 

“Hi Mom!” Ciaran rehearses under his breath, a line ripped directly from Finnick’s interview. He keeps pacing with his shell in his hand, “Nisha, if you’re watching this, go to bed!” Beside them, one of the gears decorating the neckline of Ada’s dress pops off and one of the stylists for 6 hurries over with a glue gun. 

“SINGER!” barks a stagehand with extensive facial tattoos. “CITRINE SINGER, DISTRICT 1, YOU’RE UP!”

“You don’t need to yell.” Citrine snipes, more to Eisen than to the stagehand, he laughs and gives her an amiable shove as she follows the stagehand up into the wings. She’s glad she won’t have to deal with Citrine and her prying for much longer. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t track me down and fuck me up specifically for blowing her off.

“Stop picking at it!” The girl from 7 snaps, “do you want a hole in your face on TV? Seriously, Alder-.”

“It itches.” he whines back, earning a smack in the shoulder and a chiding from one of their stylists, who is swooping in to dab at the blemish he’s been exacerbating. 

Leaning around the kids from 3, Aloisa meets her eyeline and smirks. “I give those two ten minutes.” she remarks under her breath.

For some reason, that remark pisses her off. “That’s weird, I was just thinking the same thing about you.”

That gets a secret shared grin out of the kids from 3 and a bark of laughter from Magnus. Eisen just stares at the entrance to the stage with his shark eyes, sweat glistening in his buzzed hair. Aloisa fumes, wracking her brain for a comeback. Applause erupts from the audience, followed by an exclamation of ‘LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FROM DISTRICT 1, THE SENSUAL CITRINE SINGER! LET’S GIVE HER A BIG HAND!’

A stagehand waves Eisen forward as Citrine stumbles offstage, bending over to liberate herself of her shoes as she goes. Once she’s got one of them off, they make uncomfortable eye contact. Citrine smiles. 

“Pretty dress.”

“Thank you, I like yours too.”

Citrine steps closer, bringing with her the cloying scent of vanilla and aerosol, too close, entirely too close until she’s almost certain this sparkly freak is about to kiss her.  Instead, Citrine gives her a long, indecipherable look before turning to Ciaran, her voice jumping at least three octaves.

“And look at you! So precious!” she pinches Ciaran’s left cheek. “I could just bite your face off.” Ciaran looks equal parts confused and terrified. Citrine straightens up and stares at her again. “Good luck.”

She turns and departs in search of her escort, her dress clinking as she goes.

“She’s weird.” says Ciaran.

“She wants to ally with me.”

“Yeah? You gonna do it?” 

“No. I already told you, we’re a team. Plus I don’t trust her as far as I can throw her.” 

“Okay, good.” Ciaran stares at his blindingly polished shoes. “What do you think he’s gonna ask?”

“Just about us. I don’t know, didn’t you and Sligo go over this?”

“He mostly just made me watch Finnick’s interview, and this one guy from a few years ago named Ridley. Gave me some one-liners then kind of just complained about Asenath. By the way, what’s a trollop?”

I guess both of our mentors have completely given up. “Just… be confident. It’s not the audience you have to worry about at the end of the day.”

“Aren’t they the ones sending us food?”

“Ciaran, you don’t have to worry about sponsors. You’re 80 pounds soaking wet and adorable, people don’t want to see you get hurt.” 

Ciaran chews on his lower lip. “You’re just saying that.”

“How many Games have you watched? Last year’s?”

“None.”

“Exactly. I’ve seen the past five, little kids always get a lot of sponsors.” she lies, praying he’s buying it. “Finnick got the most expensive sponsor gift anyone’s ever gotten. Why? Because he was young and cute.”

“And he was good at stabbing things.”

“You might be good at stabbing things.” Eisen exits the stage and Aloisa steps up, the line moves. “You’ve spearfished before.”

“I wasn’t any good at it!” Ciaran whines. 

“Well, maybe you’ll be good this time.” Her feet are beginning to ache in these ridiculous shoes and she can feel sweat pooling in the bodice of her dress. “Whatever. I’ll be there to help you. One thing at a time.”

“WELL, LOOK AT YOU, MISS ALOISA SEMPER!” Caesar’s voice is carrying all the way backstage. “SHE’S DRESSED TO KILL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!”

The crowd is in hysterics. From the wings, she can see a sliver of one of the screens on the stage, blowing Aloisa’s image up so she can be seen from the cheap seats. 

“Damn it, Alder, I told you-.” 7 is complaining again.

“Leave me alone!”

“God, will the two of you just shut up?” the scary girl from 8 cuts in, her partner backs up so as not to involve himself in the dispute. 

“Fuck off.” 7 shoots back. 8 takes a swing at her head and she dodges it, going after the taller girl’s face with her nails. A pair of stagehands hurry over and pull them apart. Both of their male counterparts are backing off and giving each other sheepish looks. 

“Chantilly and Briar are both nuts.” says the girl from 5 behind them, her District partner makes a sound of assent. 

“I wouldn’t worry about them.” he offers. “Acting like that, they won’t last the first day.”  

She was 14 when Maris Winch had cornered her in the Processing lavatory and asked her if she had a boyfriend yet. 

“Or a girlfriend.” Maris clarified, chapped lips peeling back over coffee-stained teeth and prominent gums. “All good by me, but you’re a pretty girl. Need a nice boy who's gonna keep food on the table. Get you all fat and gross so you won’t go anywhere.”

Maris Winch is one of those women who had a small window of time to grow out of her bitterness and missed it because she was too busy worrying about everyone else. She was only 36 then but could have passed for 46, the skin on her hands thick with scar tissue after years of boning cod, her hair permanently lopped at her shoulders and the colour of old rope, skin like oatmeal. Her unfortunate looks could have been excused with a welcoming personality or pleasant conversation, but she’s never tried, always going straight into awkward prying, veiled insults and a litany of grievances spanning from the weather to men to other women to  life in general. 

Maris was cut off as Eldi Galleon pushed the door open, pausing in the doorway and looking them over for a few seconds.

“Stop pestering the new girl, Maris.”

“It’s an honest question.”

Eldi shot her a look before retreating into the stall. “Don’t pay her any mind, Annie, she’s always in everyone’s business. You holding up okay otherwise?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. I’m here if you need anything.”

Maris stared after Eldi as she closed the stall door, turned towards the sink and began to wash her hands. “You don’t have to call that one ‘ma’am’.”

Turing almost trips over her and his way offstage, mumbles something approximating an apology and hurries off down the hall, where Ada is waiting with their escort. The heat from the lights and sheer volume of bodies in the audience almost knocks her on her ass as she ascends the stairs, held back by a stagehand as Caesar segues between Turing’s segment and her own.

“And now, from the salty shores of District 4 comes a lovely young lady who, I’m sure, will capture sponsors and opponents as easily as trapping a lobster. This year’s oldest Tribute, 18 turning 19 in August, I give you the enchanting Annie Cresta!”

“You must be Kari’s little girl.” the foreman remarked, forcing a regretful smile and exhaling stale coffee breath into her face. “She was one of my best employees. Really, a profound loss. But we’re very happy to have you here, Amy.”

“Annie.” Saira corrected, a hand on the back of the chair, a bit of blood from the Processing floor on her shoe. 

“I’m sorry, Pollock?”

“It’s Annie, not Amy, and just for the record,  my name is Saira.”

“Catfish got your tongue there, Annie?”

Two pearl beads have come loose and are sticking to her palm under the stage lights. In the wings, Ciaran’s head keeps bobbing past the threshold, earning him a whispered scolding from the stagehand. Her lipstick tastes so much like nothing that it’s overpowering. 

“Sorry. What was the question?”

“Don’t apologize!” Caesar turns to the audience, “no apologizing!” They cheer back in response. “We’ll start again, these things always end up going overtime, you’re fine. How are you liking the Capitol so far, did you think you’d ever make it here?”

“Fucking quota.” Maris had announced over the line as Saira walked her towards the bathroom. “They better not reap any of mine today with this fucking bullshit goddamn quota going up.” 

“If you don’t clean up that mouth, I’ll clean it for you.” Saira shouted back. 

“They won’t pick me.” she tried to reassure herself, sitting on the edge of the sink while Saira went at her eyes with a dull brown pencil. “With the Lanistarium. And the tesserae in the Flats. And I’m only 14 so my name is probably way at the bottom.”

“They won’t take you-.” Saira answered, voice flat with concentration, “-because your bad luck has run out. Tilt your head back.”

“It’s nice to have a break from work.”

The audience busts into peals of laughter. Caesar grins. 

“I’ll say! I won’t get a break until next month! Tell me about your job; you’re a fish… farmer?”

“I’m an intern at the Whimsiwick Pisciculture flagship compound.”

“-I guess what I don’t understand-.” She could hear Eldi ranting all the way from Shellfish, and Saira shook her head when she noticed her looking towards the door. “-is Processing is short five people, all out with gullpox that came from one specific individual who came in coughing all over the line because you told him he’d be canned if he called out. Now we’re for sure going to be late on the order and you’ve got Cresta, Pollock and Dulse upstairs? Are you off your fucking rocker?” 

“Eldoris, calm down.”

“This is ridiculous. We can’t pack that fast! Get the ambassador on the phone.”

She turned to Saira. “Should we go back down?”

“No, we’re needed up here. Ignore her.”

“I don’t appreciate you pointing the finger at Dennis, he has a family to feed. And need I remind you that you’re up here carrying on instead of packing fish.”

“You are a goddamn-.”

Saira gave her a smack. “Annie, quit eavesdropping, you’re boiling those mussels.”

“Sorry.” she turned the heater dial back to where it had been, then drew it slowly back to the correct measure. “Gullpox can’t kill you, can it?”

Saira shakes her head. “You don’t want it, though.”

“So-.” Caesar crosses his legs and turns to face her, “what exactly does the average day look like for an intern at Whimsiwick Pisciculture?”

“Well, I process and package all of our exports, and I also take care of the free-range fin fish…” What was it Conchita said about why she hates working in Shellfish? “-but mostly I just watch shrimp fuck.”

Laughter below the stage. Caesar is smacking his knee.

“Aren’t there cameras up here?”

“It’ll be the most entertaining thing they’ve seen up here all week.”

“We could get in trouble.”

“My dad’s the foreman and you’re my girlfriend. We do what we want.”

The floor was still wet with cleaner but she couldn’t bring herself to care after a day in Processing. Theo had cashed in a favour with one of the night crew for… something. She never thought to ask why he wanted to go to her work in the middle of the night when they both have school the following morning, and afterward he’ll be in Free Range and she’ll be in Processing. She wanted, during that time, to be switched to Free Range permanently, to sit in front of him in the dinghy while he slides a hand around her waist pretending to adjust the feed funnel or glance down at a fin or scale that might look off.

“You never talk to me at school.”

“I never see you.” She stalled him, a hand placed firmly against his sternum as he moved in to suck on her neck. “Annie, it’s not like that and you know it.”

“You won’t catch anything.”

He laughed. “If I thought I was going to catch something, do you think I’d be doing this?”

“Not you, I meant ‘you’ like that whole group. Like Drift and Eryk that stupid cunt Ione.”

“Let’s not talk about them. Let’s talk about you.” He licked from her collarbone to her jaw. “About how bad I want to just-.”

“Well, folks, there you have it! She is the lovely Annie Cresta of District 4! Let’s give her a big hand!”

And it’s over.  Before she realizes what’s happening, the wall of heat is gone and the lights are gone and everything is white and cold again. She feels one of her heels almost slide out from under her as she descends the stairs. She leans back to tell Ciaran what she thinks is ‘good luck’ before smacking directly into a warm body.

“Holy shit.” Finnick has her by shoulders, “you were fucking incredible.” she can feel herself staring at him, her mouth hanging open. “Annie, say something, why are you looking at me like that?”

“I completely zoned out, I don’t remember anything. I think I said something about shrimp.”

“Yeah, everyone loved it. How did you even come up with that, did you and Asenath work on that?”

“And now-.” Caesar announces as the stagehand directs Ciaran up through the wings. “-our youngest Tribute, also from District 4, we have our favourite little guppy, Ciaran Whelk!”

She shakes her head, realizing that the last time she ate was the night before, everything is swaying. “I just… one time my coworker said she was sick of watching shrimp fuck. Then another time I watched shrimp fuck. Then I got fucked in front of some shrimp.”

“Gross.” says the girl from 7, who is still standing in line, twisting a layer of skirt in her fingers. 

Finnick smiles and takes her hand. “Let’s go. Asenath’s waiting upstairs.”

She pretends not to notice the pair from 9 watching them go, the girl miming sloppy kisses and the boy thrusting. 

By the time they make it back up to the 4th floor, Hallie from 6 is finishing up her interview. She’s only 13, a little sweet-faced scrap of a kid in a juvenile powder-blue dress whose copper hair is curled around her face and pinned at the back of her neck, and she’s doing a decent job of working the audience. It looks like she’s going for plucky and optimistic, and she seems to have convinced everyone except herself. 

Asenath turns around from her spot in front of the TV. “They loved you, believe me, I would know. We’ve had some real duds since I’ve been doing this and some real knockouts, you’re in the top three, easily.”

“I made sure they brought up some oysters.” Finnick cuts in. “You mentioned you like them. These are good ones too, from the Flats. Not farmed.”

“Ugh, thank you.” she descends on the plate immediately, piling horseradish onto a particularly large shell. “I haven’t eaten anything all day. Wasn’t entirely convinced it would stay in.”

Finnick bites his lip. “Yeah. You did really well though.” the door swings open and he turns his attention towards Ciaran, who is in the process of getting his tie off, followed close behind by Sligo. He forces a grin. “Hey, man, you stole my line!”

“So-rry!” Ciaran singsongs, running over to sit next to her. Hallie stands for a round of applause and exits the stage, followed by her District partner, a melancholy, plain-faced 16 year old in a burnt orange suit. “Yuck. I hate oysters.”

She elbows him. “More for me.”

“Mags is getting our little man a sponsor as we speak.” Asenath announces, sitting beside her on the couch and picking up an oyster, cradling it in her nails. “Some older lady who has a grandson, she should be up soon.”

“Kind of early, don’t you think?” Sligo observes.

“Well, if Finnick can run around grubbing for sponsors since the second we got in, I don’t see why Mags can’t.”

His mouth is tight, he looks uncomfortable. “Yeah, it’s… I think she mentioned something about that to me. I mean, I’ve already got a few for Annie, so…”

Asenath shrugs, turning her attention back to the screen, where the girl from 7 is just entering, the stage lights casting her white-blonde hair alternating shades and red and blue. 

“District 7’s very own Briar Bains, everyone, let’s make her feel welcome!” Caesar crows, the girl smiles and gives the camera an awkward wave as she sits down, struggling to arrange her cumbersome dress. It looks like her stylist is trying to make her look classier; the strapless gown that she keeps tripping on, the meticulously braided hair threaded with what look like gold twigs, the long white-tipped nails, but it’s obvious that she’s District to the core, from the way she sits slumped forward with her knees apart to the way she keeps gnawing on the inside of her cheek. Back home, she wouldn’t be out of place boning cod on the Processing floor or working as a dockhand for some commercial vessel like the one Ciaran’s dad captains. 

“That kid has the worst mouth.” Asenath quips. “Not in a mean way but… if she wins, I hope they hook her up with some fillers. Send her to my girl.”

She pictures that scrawny little thing looking top-heavy with Asenath’s blown-up lips.

“I think she looks pretty.” Ciaran assesses. 

Sligo eyes Briar appraisingly. “Blight was telling me that one’s actually showing a lot of promise. Been in the shop since she could walk.”

“Well, her partner and Annie tied in their private sessions.” Asenath picks up another oyster. “I have no idea what he could have pulled out to make that happen.”

“I can’t believe I only got a 6.” Ciaran carps, crossing his arms. “I feel stupid.”

“It’s just because you’re small.” Sligo tries to reassure him. “If you were a foot taller, it would have gone in a totally different direction.”

“And there are worse scores than 6.” Asenath cuts in. “Lachesis’s kid… now that’s depressing.”

The room goes silent. Sligo nods in concurrence, Finnick bites his lip and directs his attention back to the screen, where Briar is saying something about how she was scared at first but isn’t anymore after seeing what she’s going up against, which gets a loud laugh of faux agreement out of Caesar. Beside her, Ciaran tenses, knitting his fingers in his lap, before getting up and stumbling towards his bedroom. Finnick exhales heavily and turns to Asenath, looking like he wants to strangle her.

“Why… would you say that? Why do you always have to say something awful?”

Asenath holds up her hands in surrender. “It was just an observation!”

“Okay, well it was an observation that we’ve all made and we don’t have to keep bringing up. ‘Hey kid, you got a shit score, but good news, that kid you’re friends with got a worse one and he’s probably gonna die horribly and there’s nothing you can do about it’. Nobody asked.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth!”

“God, will the two of you just shut up?” Sligo tries to cut in, they both ignore him. 

“I’ll go talk to him.” she offers, grabbing a few oysters as she goes and not bothering to look back when Asenath calls after her not to worry about it. She’s sick of the three of them and their stupid bickering already, Mags seems to be the only one with her head on straight and God knows when she’ll be done with that sponsor.  She knocks on Ciaran’s door. 

“Go away, Asenath.” he answers, his voice thick with tears.

“It’s Annie.” Ciaran crosses the floor and cracks the door open, looking up at her with bloodshot eyes. “Can I come in?” 

Ciaran sighs and begins to make his way back to the bed, letting her follow him in. If she thought her own room was a mess after her little bender the other night, Ciaran’s is worse, although she doesn’t know what she expected from a dirt poor 12 year old boy who has been left to his own, seemingly limitless devices in the face of certain death. The room looks like someone set a bomb off in a candy store and reeks of grease and sugar, she’s surprised he still has a single tooth in his head. The TV on the wall is set to a rerun of Finnick’s interview, and for a second she begins to understand why people keeps making the comparison. Finnick was at least a head taller than Ciaran and already decently built at 14, but their hair is the same warm, rusty beige and they have similar features, clearly their having the same stylist was intentional, because everything Ciaran has worn since they arrived seems to be a near-precise approximation if not outright recycled. 

Ciaran climbs back into bed and inspects a half-full bag of something red and sticky before holding it out to her. “Want some?”

“What is that?” Ciaran shrugs. “I’ll take your word for it. I’ve got these.”

“I hate oysters.” Ciaran complains, shoving a handful of red sludge into his mouth. She shuffles a few wrappers off the end of the bed and sits down, raising an oyster in a mock toast and throwing it back, getting a cringe out of Ciaran. These oysters are definitely wild-caught, big and pungent and so satisfying she almost can’t stand it, and they’ve been sent up with a sauce that’s equal parts sour and spicy. It’s weird how tastes change, she considers briefly as Ciaran sucks sweet sludge off his fingers, if I’d come here at his age I’d probably be having candy for dinner too. 

“You might want to try some protein or something. Bulk up for the arena.”

“Who cares?” he sulks. “Mose and I are just gonna die anyway.”

“You don’t know that. But you’re gonna regret not having one last solid meal when you’re on Day 2 of an empty stomach. I can order up some quail, you liked that.”

“Whatever.” Ciaran crosses his arms, his lower lip trembling. “I don’t care what happens anymore.”

“What, so I should just leave you and ally with Citrine? Is that what you want?” Ciaran’s mouth tightens, the tears gathering in his eyes begin to spill over. “That’s what I thought. I’m not giving up yet. We’re from an interior district. We win this shit, it’s not like other places who only win once every few decades. We won five years ago and there’s nothing to say we can’t win again. But not if you keep shoveling sugar into your face. If you want to eat in here, I can order something, but I’m gonna go back in there and get as much advice as I can before tomorrow and you are going to eat some real food.”

“I liked the quail.” Ciaran grumbles, hugging a pillow to his chest. 

“Quail it is.” she crosses the wrapper-strewn floor, stepping on something wet and sticky in the process, to the menu on the screen set into the wall. She finds the icon for the roasted quail and punches it a couple times. “Well, if you’re okay, I’m gonna-.”

“No.” Ciaran leans forward, holding out a hand. “Can you stay for a bit? It’s not that late yet, Sligo’ll be up for a while. We can watch the-.” he rustles around the wrappers and retrieves  the TV controller, switching to a live feed of Marcos from 10 wrapping up his interview. “Please?”

“Okay.” she concedes. “Let me just go get my drink and the rest of the oysters.”

Her 7th grade class watched Ladon Starboard die in the cafeteria of Portside Secondary, sectioned in at the front with the 8th graders and the few 6th graders who had been eligible for Reaping that year. He’d died the night prior and school had already let out the previous week, his family had been notified and she had put two and two together almost immediately when she realized that Ione wasn’t in attendance. 

He’d tried to go after the girl from 10, cornered her in a crumbling stone structure, she smashed his face with a nearby brick before he could draw his machete. He had been 16. A few people in his class cried, one teacher. She hadn’t known him well, but figured he couldn’t have been all that great if he’d been related to Ione. Teesha cried all the same, and afterward the walk along the boardwalk back to her house was silent. 

Mom picked her up from Teesha’s in the early evening, exchanging a few words with Teesha’s mother Kalani about how sad it was, how she hoped Davit and Klaia were holding up okay, and how hard it must be for Ione, how she was rooting for Nella, and how she couldn’t wait until it was all over. They held hands all the way back to the old apartment, ignoring the squelch of sweat on their palms in the heat.

“Do you want to talk about it, Ann?”

“Not really.”

Mom nodded, staring down at the smelt she was in the middle of frying. “Well, if you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. It’s okay to be scared. I know I was scared at your age.”

She hadn’t known then if she was scared or not. She knew Teesha was, and usually Teesha was easier to read than most people. She always just assumed that since she and Teesha were best friends she felt whatever Teesha felt, but she hadn’t felt the urge to break down and sob to her mother how horrible it was. All afternoon, as Teesha had been spilling everything she felt to Kalani, she had sat on the living room floor showing Pearl how to trace the dotted letters of her 1st grade spelling homework and when Kalani asked her if she was okay she simply answered that she didn’t know, accepted Kalani’s hug and kept thinking about how one second Ladon had been alive, the next, not. She thought about it all night, counting the seconds that passed in the dark of the apartment, the light from the boat moored outside casting a yellow strip along the ceiling, obsessing over each breath she took, Dad snoring on the other side of the curtain that served as a wall. If the ceiling caved in, if someone pried up the window-screen, if a tsunami suddenly swelled up and drowned the building… She didn’t sleep that night, resigned herself to staring at the ceiling in petrified silence.

Ciaran falls asleep around 10:30, teary-eyed and resigned and full of quail and candy, right on top of her left arm. She slides out from underneath him, trying to shake some sensation back into the dead limb, and makes her way into the common area, where she finds Sligo draped across the sofa, watching an old interview she vaguely recognizes; a buxom, swarthy girl with steely eyes and a mean smile, wearing a navy tulle dress with her waist-length black hair in one long braid. He startles when she walks in and switches the TV off, visibly trying to collect himself.

“Annie.” he says, too stiffly for someone who has been drinking since noon. “How’s the little man?”

“Better. He fell asleep. I got him to eat some real food.”

Sligo nods. “If you’re looking for Finnick, he just went down to the-.”

“I’m not.” she sits beside him. “I actually wanted to talk to you.”

“Hm.” Sligo takes a long drink of wine, now that she’s closer she can see that his eyes are a bit red. “What about?”

She picks up the bottle and pours some into the glass, letting it slosh around with the melting, fruity-flavoured ice from the drink she finished earlier. “I know you’re not my mentor, but Finnick hasn’t really given me a lot of advice. He’s been… busy-.”

“Busy’s a nice word for it.”

“He told me he was-.”

“Getting you sponsors?” Sligo snorts. “God, kid. And here I thought you were one of the smart ones.” Sligo leans back and shakes his head. “They were stupid to not have Mags on the books this year. I keep telling them, the kid isn’t up to it. One day, sure, once he’s older, a little past his prime, once he runs out of juice or knocks somebody up. I mean, you haul the poor sucker around for five years talking about how much of a hot piece of ass he is, what do you expect? Every Games Groupie from Tugurium Row to Palatine Park is gonna be throwing themselves at him.”

For some reason, she isn’t surprised, but the oysters and wine in her stomach begin to churn all the same. Sligo gives her a grim, tight-lipped smile followed by a stiff clap on the shoulder. Every positive feeling she had towards that idiot, of which there were only a few to begin with, melts away, giving way to raw disgust. 

“I can’t believe him.”

“Well, believe it.”

“Now there’s no time!” she’s fully aware of how pathetic she sounds. “Why even bother mentoring me if you’re just going to make me watch a bunch of dead girls’ interviews? He didn’t even help me come up with anything to do for the Gamemakers, I’m shocked I got anything higher than a 4!”

Sligo knits his brow. “What did you end up doing for them?”

“They had these mannequin things down there, for, like, target practice or whatever.” she leans forward, head in her hands. “I… processed one.”

“Processed?”

“Gutted it, like we do at work. Took it apart the way we take the fish apart. It’s all I know how to do because that slut wouldn’t help me.”

Sligo lets out a bark of laughter and smacks her on the shoulder again. “Hey, it got you a good score! I’m not complaining!”

“I’m gonna be chum by the end of the first hour.”

“No, you’re not.” Sligo placates, turning to face her head-on. “Look, you’re late in the game, that’s Finnick’s fault, but we’ve got a few hours and you could do a lot worse for a last minute mentor, hand me those matches, would you?” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes.

“You really shouldn’t be smoking inside.”

“You want my advice?”

“Yes.”

He jerks his head once more towards the box of matches on the mantle. She retrieves them and Sligo lights up, holding out the pack to offer her one. Against her better judgment, she takes one. She never made a habit of smoking, but sometimes Theo used to steal cigarettes from his parents, and sometimes Saira would smoke when she drank. The kind Sligo smokes are much smoother than Saira’s awkwardly-shaped, hand-rolled things, and they have a vague herbal aftertaste. 

“The one upside to your idiot mentor slamming everything that breathes is that some of those people have money, so don’t worry too much about not getting sponsors. And if you’ve allied with Ciaran, you just split whatever you get. That was what I did with Ly-...” Sligo trails off, then goes for his wine, sucking back a thick throatful. “It’s always good to find a source of water, anyone’ll tell you that. How do you think you are at hand-to-hand?”

“Like, fighting?” Sligo nods. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’m strong, and I’m good with a knife, like I can stab, but some of those kids are way bigger than me. Like I could take Briar, probably, but not Eisen or Asa.”

“Well, you might not have to take them.”

“Finnick said the Lanistariums always teach you to go straight for the Cornucopia, so everyone going in there will know what they’re doing.”

“12 doesn’t have a Lanistarium and I know Asa’s mentor well, his kids never go straight in, so that rules out Asa.”

“There’s still Eisen, Citrine, Magnus, Aloisa-.”

“You aren’t gonna be the only one to kill. And you could take Magnus or Aloisa easily, don’t worry about those two.” Sligo leans forward, “Magnus is about the size of a grouper, you think? If you’re on Caretta’s line, I know you’ve processed a grouper before”

She stares through the plume of smoke forming between them, wanting nothing more than to break Finnick’s collarbone. “Yeah. A few.”

Sligo shrugs, blows smoke in her face. “I’ll tell you right now; killing a human is not that different from cleaning a grouper. If you push the existential shit out of your head for five seconds, the Games could be nothing more than a singularly shitty day at work. You clock in, you clock out. A Tribute really is just an employee.” He eyes her for a moment, his mouth tightening and turning  downwards slightly. “That’s what I told Phoca.”

“How did she win? Did she work at a fish farm too?”

Sligo shakes his head. “Family were clam divers. She trained with some local guy down in the Flats for a few years. Wasn’t gonna volunteer initially but they picked her and nobody stepped up.” 

“Like what happened to me.”

“Well, she won.” Sligo drinks again, his jaw tightens. “I shouldn’t have brought her up. We don’t talk about Phoca.”

Chapter Text

In the pale morning, Annie’s eyes are the colour of Brineridge Bay from the middle of Gil Caravel’s driveway, the area where it was about waist-deep. He doesn’t like the look she’s giving him.

“Well.” she opens. Behind her, Procula is on her knees scrabbling around in a large white leather duffle bag. Annie turns back to watch her for a few seconds, then directs her gaze to the craft at the edge of the roof, her hair blowing around her face in the warm, fuel-scented wake.

“I…” his mouth has that rancid early morning taste. “I’m really impressed how far you’ve come in three days. I have full confidence in you.”

Annie’s gaze falls somewhere below his left shoulder, she takes a long, tremulous inhale. “Sure.”

“Well, this is as far as I can go. But Procula will make sure you have everything you need. Just remember the basics, find water, don’t let yourself overheat, all that stuff we’ve already gone over.”

“Don’t die.” Annie nods slowly. “Don’t let Ciaran die.”

He puts a hand on her shoulder. “I meant what I said about that just being a suggestion. If you can make the alliance work, that’s great, but take care of yourself.”

Annie gives him a long, icy look. The other stylists are beginning to arrive with their respective Tributes. At the edge of the roof, the girl from 10 holds the stairwell door open for a dumpy woman with hair the colour of watermelon flesh. “Yeah.” she deadpans. “You too.”

He has to go, he wasn’t supposed to be up here in the first place. He can’t bring himself to take his hand off her shoulder. “I should go now.”

“Yeah, I don’t think-.”

“I’ll send you whatever you need, okay? Don’t worry too much about getting into the middle of everything-.”

Annie is staring behind him, the boy from 7 and the girl from 3 have also arrived with their stylists. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid. That’s the last piece of advice I have.”

She forces a smile. “Can’t promise anything there.”

He avoids the elevator, the ascending smattering of Tributes and stylists and takes the stairs two at a time, trying to digest the churn of anxiety in his stomach. Calm the fuck down, he tells himself as he reaches the landing of the 10th floor, she’s just another girl, if she wins, great, if she doesn’t, she doesn’t. It’s not like they’ll send you back into the arena if she doesn’t do well, why do you feel like you’re about to throw up? Even in the stairwell, he can still hear the groan of the craft overhead. When he reaches the 6th floor, he finds himself retching into a potted ficus. 

Constantina Snow Memorial Cavea, colloquially known amongst some Victors as The Pit, (he heard Sligo call it Connie’s Hole once, which got him a smack from Mags when he repeated it) is an expansive viewing area adjacent to the lobby of the Tribute Centre allocated for mentors to watch the Games away from civilians. He imagines it was considered luxurious once, but in the years since it was built, it’s taken on a musty, decades-old-spilled-liquor smell. Many of the plush seats are dotted with cigarette burns and the screen is beginning to warp in the top left corner. He can’t imagine maintaining it is high on the Gamemakers’ Guild’s list of priorities when the only people who use The Pit are mentors who are drinking themselves blind more often than not and the Avoxes who bring them the drinks with which to do so. The press never goes in, mentors are always interviewed in either the lobby or the media rooms, and Gamemakers usually watch from Caesar’s studio. Last year, after Bijou opened Levi’s trachea and his communicuff went dark, he leaned back and stared at the dusty chandelier, the light from the screen illuminating decades worth of cobwebs, and imagined what it would be like to be crushed by it. 

Next to the screen is an ancient-looking scoreboard, which is beginning to slowly flicker awake as the trackers are placed. It’s been there as long as he can remember, the displays beginning to warp and take on the yellow tint of outdated technology. It lists the Tributes and their mentors by District, illuminated if they’re alive, dark if not.  

HUNGER  GAMES LXX
I- EISEN DESCHAMPS-GLOSS VAN ELSBERG
I- CITRINE SINGER-CASHMERE VAN ELSBERG
II- MAGNUS DRYDEN- AJAX ROCKWELL
II- ALOISA SEMPER- BRUTUS GUERRERO
III- TURING BENOIT- BEETEE LATIER
III- ADA QUINN- WIRESS FONTAINE
IV- CIARAN WHELK- SLIGO ALTOMAR
IV-  ANČICE CRESTA- FINNICK ODAIR
V- KAYDEN YAW- ARON SPARKS
V- DEENA MOLLIER- SOLEIL FLINT
VI- AXEL MOORE- NESTOR FLEET
VI- HALLIE FEENEY- LILLIAN SPOKE
VII- ALDER GROVES- WILLOW CHARLEBOIS
VII- BRIAR BAINS- BLIGHT OAKES
VIII- MERINO CROSS- GEORGETTE SERGER
VIII- CHANTILLY PICK- CECELIA NEEDLES
IX- FLAX ALLARD- FARRO STALKDALE
IX- MAIZIE HILLIER- GWENITH TILL
X- MARCOS FLEISCHER- KIP HYDE
X- JASMINE BONE- RENNETTE METZGER
XI- MOSE ROWE- SEEDER GREENE
XI- CERISE MAAS- CHAFF DUBOIS
XII- ASA CORDOVAN- HAYMITCH ABERNATHY
XII- AWINITA POOLE- HAYMITCH ABERNATHY

He finds Mags and Asenath towards the mid-back of the theatre, Asenath looking the way she always does on Opening Day; overdressed and morning-drunk, and Mags looking like she wants to strangle Asenath. 

“Where’s Drunk Uncle?” he leads in, taking a seat on Mags’s other side.

“I absolutely do not find that funny.” Mags deadpans, giving him a side-eye and lowering her voice. “Where do you think?”

“He better stay conscious at least until noon. I held up my end of the alliance, he needs to hold up his.”

“He’s been doing this a long time, Finn, you don’t want to see what happens when he tries to do it sober. We’ve got a bit of time, anyway.”

“You want some of mine?” Asenath inquires, entirely too loudly, bracelets rattling as she reaches across Mags to shove a half-spent highball in his face. “It’s very good. They call it a Lychee Landmine, isn’t that annoying?”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Mags knits her eyebrows and plucks the glass out of Asenath’s hand, grimacing when she takes a sip. “God, that’s sweet. You have the palate of a hummingbird.”

At the front of the theater, he can see Rennette and Blight holding hands as they file in, Rennette slightly bow-legged and Blight fumbling with his belt buckle. Willow and Kip, both sitting in different rows, shoot each other a look of annoyance as the other two shuffle back to their respective rows. Willow turns around and meets his eyeline, miming penetration and gagging. It’s no secret that Blight and Rennette have had something going on for the past few years, at least semi-annually. He’s always wondered if they ever see each other outside of Games season. The only Victor either of their Districts have had since it began has been Willow, so they must have seen each other on her tour, but beyond that he can’t see either of them traveling. 10 is a large exterior District with tight security and Blight has a daughter back in 7, at least the majority of other Victors who have had something going on have been from bordering Districts at least. If there’s any stress involved, neither of them are showing it. Rennette prances up the aisle, her auburn curls in disarray, and takes a seat between Kip and their escort, blowing a kiss to Blight as he finds Willow. Closer to the exits, Haymitch and Sligo exchange a few words before the former heads for the door and the latter makes his way up towards them, drink in hand.

“Here’s to 70.” he grumbles, raising his glass as he sits down on Asenath’s other side. The screen lights up and starts a slow slideshow of all the Tributes’ headshots and a brief rundown of their information. DISTRICT 1 MALE- EISEN DESCHAMPS-AGE 18- MENTORED BY GLOSS VAN ELSBERG- STYLED BY HESPERIA TOBIN fades into DISTRICT 1 FEMALE- CITRINE SINGER- AGE 17- MENTORED BY CASHMERE VAN ELSBERG- STYLED BY PROSERPINE HART and so on. By the time the slideshow reaches DISTRICT 4 MALE-CIARAN WHELK- AGE 12- MENTORED BY SLIGO ALTOMAR- STYLED BY FERONIA LEFEVRE, Willow and Enobaria are making their way up the aisle, waving him over. 

“Ptolemy’s postponing his opening night party because of the whole mess with Bijou.” Enobaria lisps, smelling like she’s been bathing in amaretto. 

“We’re asking around to see if anyone wants to come up to my floor for drinks. So far, Rennette, Gloss and Horemheb are all in. Cashmere’s a maybe, plus us two and you hopefully.”

Annie’s solemn face fills up the screen along with her information, some dunce of an entry level Gamemaker has misspelled his last name as Odiar. 

“Sure, why not?” He can think of a myriad of reasons why not, but Willow looks excited to be hosting and if Enobaria’s already started drinking, it’ll fall to him to make sure Rennette doesn’t give herself alcohol poisoning. He takes one more look at Annie before her features morph into DISTRICT 5 MALE- KAYDEN YAW, etc. Her steep bone structure, wide eyes and twin braids becoming cropped curls and a baby face. 

“We’re thinking of starting around 7, once things slow down…” Willow stares at the floor. “But we’ll play it by ear.” 

Enobaria is opening her mouth to tack something on when the screen cuts to a shot of Flickerman decked out in that damn chartreuse eyeshadow that makes it look like he has some kind of infection. He’s looking up at the title card with an expression of fake intrigue. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, two minutes to Launch. Thank you.” The speakers interrupt.The screen fades back to DISTRICT 5 FEMALE, DEENA MOLLIER. 

“Well, I better get back down there.” says Willow, sloshing the remaining couple inches of her drink. “See youse later.”

“We’re up here.” Enobaria gestures to the row behind Sligo, Mags and Asenath, where Brutus and Ajax are passing a flask back and forth and Athena and Horemheb are sitting on either side of Hatshepsut Lynn, a scrawny, perpetually overdressed woman in her late 40s who has been the escort for 2 since before Enobaria’s Games. She’s railing about something and Athena and Horemheb seem to be only pretending to listen, as he sits down he catches the tail end of the tangent.

“-like throwing a hot dog down a hallway. I tell you, just picturing it makes me want to crawl out of my skin. I can’t wait until that old bag retires. But you know all about that, don’t you, Asenath?”

Asenath whips around. “Huh?”

“Who was it Axford had been sleeping with at the 4th Embassy? It was Clay, wasn’t it? Or was it DeVoorte?”

“Oh, Clay.” Asenath supplies. “Poor Cymopoleia walked in on them once.”

The lights begin to flicker as the last of the stragglers begin to take their seats. DISTRICT 12 FEMALE-AWINITA POOLE-MENTORED BY HAYMITCH ABERNATHY-STYLED BY CLEOPATRA SLADE fades into a simple title card; THE 70TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES, below that, brought to you by Orestes Blanche. Below Blanche are the Tier 1s, B. Devine, S. Crane, F. Buchwald, P. Heavensbee, J. Dolittle, L. Ring and X. Anderson. Below that, the Tier 2s and 3s are crammed together in a much smaller font, all the genetic engineers, environmental engineers and live feed operators. He knows Procula’s sister is somewhere within those ranks, as well as that one guy who likes the backs of Enobaria’s knees a little too much. The title card fades into the establishing shot, his stomach twists again. It’s happening, it’ll be over soon. 

The arena is big this year, a wide bowl of a valley ringed about 75% of the way around by dense woods, the other 25% by what appears to be some kind of high rock formation. A thin, shallow river threads through the valley and right through the circle of platforms. The Cornucopia this year is middling, mostly backpacks and satchels arranged tightly around a small inner pile of weapons.

“I was talking to a guy-.” Brutus leans forward to whisper to Sligo, “-says Blanche wanted to keep it small and hide stuff around the arena.”

His communicuff chirps to life as an illuminated ring labeled D4F zeroes in on a small figure towards the Southwestern edge of the circle, right between D6M and D3M. He’s relieved to see that Cashmere’s girl is way on the other side, but the relief turns to nausea when he realizes she’s only a stone’s throw away from Ciaran, separated only by Haymitch’s girl and Seeder’s poor little sap, who Ciaran has already expressed interest in assisting in some way. Against his better judgment, he reaches back towards Enobaria, who takes the hint immediately and presses a very full flask into his palm. 

A drone drops down above the Cornucopia and suddenly he’s looking directly at Ciaran, who looks like he’s about to either pass out or throw up. The uniforms this year are khaki button down shirts with short sleeves embroidered with the corresponding District number, tucked into khaki shorts that look to be the kind that can unroll into full-length pants, black boots and fingerless gloves with padding on the palms. The drone tracks in a circle to get a good look at the Tributes; Chaff’s girl holding a string of round red beads to her lips and whispering something, Willow’s boy chewing his lower lip and signaling something to his partner on the other side of the circle, Annie craning her neck to look for Ciaran. 

“Ladies and gentlemen-.” Templesmith bloviates over the loudspeaker, Mags takes hold of his hand. “-let the 70th annual Hunger Games begin!”

Every year, every time he hears that sentence, he remembers the way he’d frozen and all but tripped off his platform, that long, agonizing second before he realized that he was being pursued. Whoever it had been, he hadn’t bothered to look and he’d been too concussed during his Victory Interview to take it in, had grabbed him just enough to rake him with their nails before he’d slipped away and into the dense marsh, abandoning any notion of trying to get his hands on a weapon. 

Annie has managed to grab a small crossbody bag and is hauling ass for the Eastern edge of the arena when Gwenith’s girl, Maizie, the lanky one with waist-length brown curls, slams into her, sending them both to the ground. Mags tightens her grip on his hand. Shit shit shit. 

Maizie is raising a knife, holding it up to deliver the killing blow when she freezes, drops the knife, and suddenly Annie’s terrified face is splattered with red. Maizie’s name goes dark on the scoreboard, then he sees the arrow that’s run through her back, through her lung, and exploded out of her chest. 

Annie grabs Maizie by the shoulders and pulls her down, wetting her hands with blood and smearing her face and neck. She grabs the knife, wedges it under her body and goes limp, just in time for Magnus to run up, bow in hand, to assess his kill. He places a foot on Maizie’s back to pull out the arrow, still never taking his eyes off Annie. He shoves Maizie’s body aside, steps around the two of them and stares down at Annie’s bloody face. Slowly, he reloads the bow, aiming it down between her eyes. Mags is cutting off the circulation in his fingers but he can’t bring himself to care. 

Suddenly, Magnus springs back into action, zeroing in on something in the distance. Aloisa sprints past and grabs him and thankGodthankGodthankGod, he leaves Annie alone. She’s smart, gives it a few seconds before scrambling to her feet, remembering to grab the knife and her bag and booking it into the woods. Mags lets his hand go, there is a smattering of sounds of approval from around them.

“I’ll give you that one.” says Ajax. “Smart kid.”

“What can I say?” Asenath gushes. “Hadriana reincarnated, she’s an actress!”

The relief, however, is short-lived, and he’s just begun to feel better about this whole mess when Sligo jumps to his feet, knocking over his glass.

“Get the fuck out of there, you little asshole!” He shouts at the screen, where Kayden is looming over a seemingly unbothered Mose, prompting a shrill scream-sob from Lachesis a few rows ahead. Ciaran is running towards them, throwing his body between his friend and the larger boy.

“Oh God-.” Asenath groans, covering her eyes. “He didn’t, please tell me he’s not doing what I think he’s doing.” Mags is just watching, the hand not occupied with strangling his is clapped over her mouth. 

Then Kayden is on the ground beside Ciaran and Mose, stabbed in the back, then a few seconds later Mose isn’t moving anymore, his head tilted at an angle it shouldn’t be, then he loses sight of Ciaran, closed in by four solid, khaki-clad frames. Nobody in The Pit is breathing.

We knew this would happen. It’s horrible but we all saw it coming. The last thing you can do for him is at least have the stomach to watch him die. 

Mose Rowe and Kayden Yaw have gone dark. Lachesis is sobbing into Seeder’s shoulder and Brutus is passing his flask to Farro to hand off to Aron. Ciaran Whelk is still illuminated, his little rabbit pulse lighting up Sligo’s communicuff. 

“I told him not to drag it out.” Gloss complains. “You at least give the little ones a quick death.”

“I don’t think they’re killing him now.” Ajax observes. 

Eisen is saying something to Citrine, then they turn to Magnus, who nods. In the time the pack have been debating what to do, Aloisa has tied Ciaran’s wrists and ankles. Magnus throws Ciaran indelicately over his shoulder and points into the treeline. He and Eisen converse briefly before he leaves with Aloisa. Citrine and Eisen depart into the brush. 

“What the hell was that?” Athena heckles.

“Bait.” Enobaria observes. “They’re probably using him as bait.”

He feels sick. Of course the kid who ends up as bait is the one his Tribute specifically wants to protect. It doesn’t help that Magnus and Ciaran are heading in Annie’s direction. Sligo is leaning forward with his head in his hands, breathing heavily like he’s about to throw up. A memory chews at the back of his mind; a rerun, a severed finger, a crying girl, a crocodile mutt, Gil Caravel’s backyard, someone is telling him in a sharp, pointed whisper not to lie to her.

“I need a drink.” he says to no-one in particular. Mags gives his hand a squeeze as he goes and Asenath, never missing an opportunity to buzz in his ear like a mosquito, follows him out of The Pit towards the bar. 

He has to suppress the urge to start swinging when he steps into the fluorescent light of the lobby and comes face to face with a Capitol News camera, operated by a weaselly little woman with a teal bowl-cut and ambitious lip grafts. 

“Finnick, what do you have to say about your Tribute’s close call back there?!”

“What do you think her chances are? You think we’ll be seeing more of your girl?!” shouts a man with tar-stained teeth and a split-dyed beard. 

Asenath, finally, makes herself useful, shoving Bowl-Cut aside and dragging him by the hand to the private bar, where press are not allowed. The bartender is a tall, pretty girl with dark brown skin and short orange curls who takes their orders and doesn’t ask questions. 

“You okay?” Asenath asks after they’ve both downed their first drink in barely thirty seconds flat. 

“I don’t know.” he manages. 

“Maybe you should eat something.”

“Can’t.” 

“Okay.” she taps her long nails restlessly on the bar. “Yeah, me neither.” 

On the screen mounted above them, Turing from 3 is tearing through the bush with Cerise from 11 close behind. At first he thinks she’s chasing him, but they soon slow down at the base of a large tree to shrink against the roots. Behind them, Citrine is hunting. She looks around for a moment, then takes off in the wrong direction.

“Can I top you both off?” says the bartender.

“Please. Thank you.” Asenath hands her their empty glasses and puts a stiff hand on his shoulder and quickly removes it. “God, you’re sweating a lot.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

The bartender is shaking up two more of what they had before, and he notices as she walks by that she smells strongly of orange blossoms and vanilla. There’s something about her presence that takes the edge off, this cute Capitol girl with her nothing-job whose biggest obstacle to overcome this week will be the twinge in her wrists from having to mix drinks for all these boozy Victors. He pictures her going home to some equally inconsequential significant other for a delicate, floral-smelling fuck before they watch Caesar’s nightly recap. Picturing this, he wants to revile her, but when she sets his drink down and smiles at him, he’s thinking about how her long, smooth neck would feel under his lips. 

On the screen above them, a drone has found Annie, and she is huddled in a waist-high patch of what appear to be hostas, sorting through the contents of the bag she grabbed and scrubbing at her face with her sleeve. He almost can’t bring himself to look at her.

He times his arrival to Willow’s party precisely to avoid the first half hour, and when the elevator doors open to the dark green carpet and birch-patterned wallpaper of the 7th floor, he can hear the sound of drunk people all the way at the end of the hall. As he makes his way in their direction, he can hear something shatter, and he steels himself for whoever he will end up having to take care of. Last year it had been Willow, which was understandable for her first year as a mentor but inconvenient nonetheless, he and Cashmere ended up having to drag her all the way from The Pit to her 7th floor bedroom, where she puked all over both of them. He hopes that, if anyone is going to black out, it will be Blight or Willow, or at least Rennette, who will probably end the night in Blight’s bed either way. 

The one silver lining is that, despite the fact that these booze-soaked, trauma-saturated ragers always seem to end with at least one drunken injury, they’re starting early this year. Ptolemy usually hosts a party on opening night and assets are obligated to attend, half to network, half to work, so anything organized by and for Victors normally starts later in the night and they’re usually already knee-deep in their cups.

Rennette answers the door, hammered already, with her lipstick smudged all the way up the side of her nose and all over her teeth. He’s always liked Rennette but there’s something frustrating about her. She won her Games at 16 and by that point had already missed her shot at anything resembling a childhood completely after having to raise her three younger siblings. She’s 26 but acts 13, drinking like she thinks she’s getting away with something and engaging in constant, borderline pornographic PDA with a man eight years her senior. At the end of the day, there’s no point in faulting her for it. Ptolemy’s been wearing her out since he first got his greasy hands on her, she’ll probably never be rid of him until he’s completely used her up. This is how she’s decided to make up for lost time. 

“Finnick’s here!” she calls back to the party-goers, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him over to the circle of couches. She drops down next to Blight, who is working on removing an identical lipstick smear from his forehead with his sleeve, and winds an arm around his waist. Enobaria is leaning back with her bare feet on the coffee table and her eyes closed while Gloss and Kip are on the balcony, engaged in an animated conversation and passing a cigar back and forth. The Games are on the TV, but blessedly muted. Nothing seems to be happening, the Tributes are spread out and he doubts the Gamemakers will start poking at them on the first night, at least that isn’t the way Blanche normally does things. 

Cashmere sits down beside him, smelling like one particular client whose name he doesn’t know but whose scent he could recognize from a mile away; an acrid mix of stale cigarettes, mothballs and meat. Her hair is in disarray and her mascara is smudged. 

“I’m having one drink, then I’m going to bed.”

“You’re saying that now but-.”

“I’m serious.” she slurps her generously overfilled wine glass, which definitely counts as more than one drink. “I’ve got Zenith and Gilt downstairs keeping an eye on Citrine. Don’t ask me to do shit before noon tomorrow.”

“That bad?”

“Well, I mean aside from spending all last night talking Bijou off the ledge then spending all day getting railed. Aside from Citrine’s biggest sponsor being Ptolemy Goddamn Notch and the fact that I got one of Festus Creed’s mustache hairs in my eye an hour ago. Should I go on?”

“No, I get it.” 

Cashmere groans, reaching ineffectually towards the platter of cured meats, fruits and small cubes of cheese on the coffee table. He takes the hint and hands her the platter. She picks up a bright pink strip of what he assumes is pork veined with fat and wraps it around a grape. 

“Talk about something else.” she requests through a mouthful of flesh and fruit, shifting to drape her legs across his lap and lean against the arm of the couch, the platter balanced on her stomach. 

He picks up a slightly sweaty green olive. “Like what?”

“Anything but this, I don’t know.” she covers her eyes with her free hand. “I don’t know.” 

He stares back at the polished rosewood coffee table, veined with green glass around the edge, trying to come up with an anecdote that is entirely divorced from this sterile purgatory of a city. For some reason, all he can call to mind is the dog he saw last night on the way back from Ptolemy’s who had jumped up, snatched its owner’s hairpiece off and shaken it like it was prey, Procula’s newest dispute with her sister, this time it’s something about earlobe filler, Hedylogia Notch’s infected eyebrow piercing…

On the screen, Caesar is running through highlights from the first few hours of the day; Annie’s narrow escape, Citrine slashing Wiress’s girl’s throat, Ciaran’s boneheaded display of camaraderie. Cashmere watches intently as the Career pack fall on him, arguing over what to do with him.

“Sweet little idiot.” She shakes her head, eating another strip of meat. “Don’t worry. If it’s Citrine who kills him, she’ll do it fast.”

At the Southern corner of the arena, the girls from 8 and 10 appear to be forming a tentative alliance, or have at least agreed to not bother each other. On the other side, in the shadow of that huge rock formation, the pair from 12 have managed to find shelter under an overhang and are splitting what appears to be an MRE that the boy managed to get ahold of after landing a satisfying punch to Eisen’s temple, along with a bedroll, a water bottle and, by some miracle, a machete. He’s one of those exterior kids who, through a combination of hard labour or good genes or, in his case, both, could end up besting any over-zealous Lanistarium graduate. 

“Haymitch got lucky this year.” Willow remarks, leaning over the back of the couch and grabbing a few slices of cheese off the platter. “That Cordovan kid’s the real deal. I definitely see him making it at least to 7th place.”

“He’s good.” Cashmere agrees. She opens her mouth to continue but immediately reconsiders so as not to immediately nuke the mood. Asa Cordovan is about 6’2 with a thick mullet of chestnut curls, wide brown eyes and a strapping build. He’ll have a lucrative pool of sponsors as the Games go on and everyone in the room knows why. 

With the Tributes spread out and exhausted, Caesar cuts to the studio, where he and Claudius are joined by Orestes Blanche, a middle aged man with a raspberry-coloured combover who has always reminded him of a hardboiled egg. He turns the volume on his communicuff all the way up and tries to relax as Willow hands him a drink identical to the one Annie had been drinking the night before her interview, which turns his stomach a bit. He ignores it, focusing on the conversation Enobaria and Rennette are having about some old movie that aired last night after the interviews. Apparently Procula’s insistence that Annie is the second coming of Hadriana Ravinstill has caught on with some of Caesar’s people, and they decided last night was as good a time as any to dust off The Darkest Day, a soppy melodrama that came out about 15 years after the war on a shoestring budget. Hadriana played a grating Capitolite matriarch who falls on hard times when her war criminal husband gets liquefied by a landmine. He’s never seen it, but knows it’s widely regarded as the beginning of the end of Hadriana’s acting career.

“You could really see her implants starting to drift.” Enobaria quips, smirking and miming crooked breasts. Rennette cackles and smacks Blight on the shoulder, jostling his highball. 

“What are we talking about?” he hears Gloss cut in.

“Hadriana Ravinstill’s pendulous jugs.”

“Gross.”

Caesar cuts to commercial, It looks like Augustus, Athena and Willow actually did end up filming one of the promos he told Asenath he had been filming while he was actually staring at that damn trident tattoo on Procula’s lower back and wondering when it started looking so shriveled. They’re standing in a line in laurels and white athleisure and staring down the camera with smug expressions, the greenscreen behind them lit up with CGI fireworks and a heading; THE 70TH ANNUAL HUNGER GAMES WILL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER THESE MESSAGES. Then comes a commercial for the Whimsiwick-Moss company. 

“I’m’nna hit the water closet.” Blight announces, Rennette whines as he stands up. 

“I’ll miss you!” she calls after him, getting an unenthusiastic reply of ‘I’ll miss you more’. Willow rolls her eyes before making her way over to the door of the suite to meet an Avox who has brought up a platter of assorted shellfish and a bottle of clear liquor.

“I hope Briar murks Jasmine in the next hour so I don’t have to listen to them tonight.” she whispers when she returns, just loud enough for both him and Cashmere to hear. She sets the platter down, oysters, shrimp, mussels, crab legs and lobster tails. “It’s a whole performance.”

“That’s why she gets better tips than you do.” Cashmere shoots back, earning her a smack to the shoulder. 

“I’ll gladly send them downstairs.”

“Good, I’ll trade you for Zenith and Gilt.” Willow grimaces. “Exactly.”

He takes an oyster from the platter, thinking of Annie and the way she’d ripped into them after the interview. If she makes it to the Final Five, I’ll find some way of sending her some, even if they’re just canned. 

Willow pours them each a shot. Cashmere chases hers with another meat-swaddled grape. 

“What happened to one drink?” he pries. Cashmere smirks. 

“Shots don’t count. Willow spilled it into my mouth by accident.”

“You know how it is.” Willow sits on the floor beside them between the couch and the coffee table, leaning her head against Cashmere’s hip. None of them speak for a while, watching Merino from 8 tearing through a patch of tall grass. Blight returns, tapping something into his communicuff as Rennette slithers back into his lap. Cashmere keeps her eyes on the screen as Citrine pops up, waving Eisen over to show him a camera mounted in a tree trunk. The feed switches to their faces, up close and distorted. They back up a bit and smirk at each other. Eisen flips off the camera. Citrine smirks and goes to pull her uniform shirt up but Eisen stops her, trying not to laugh and failing almost immediately. Cashmere smiles and eats another grape, then picks up a raspberry and holds it to Willow’s lips. She takes it and chases it with a sip of liquor straight from the bottle. Eisen and Citrine pretend to kiss for the camera. 

“They don’t seem so vicious.” Willow quips. 

“They’re not.” Cashmere tacks on. “None of them ever are, really.”

Watching Eisen and Citrine reminds him of Bijou last year, switching between her steely glare and cruel smile, the way she had been sitting beside Levi on the ground eating the gopher they’d caught before she realized he was simply in the way. Knowing where she is, knowing how she’s feeling, her presence seems to burn a hole in the building all the way from the 1st floor. Maybe that’s why nobody seems like they can relax. Cashmere is drinking like a fish, Gloss keeps bouncing from conversation to conversation as if he can’t bear to be still, Enobaria and Rennette are both covered from collarbone to ankle and keep touching their necks like they can still feel their collars strangling them. Watching them, he soon realizes he’s been doing the same thing and suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his left hand.

His communicuff chirps. Annie has made her first kill.

Chapter Text

Inside the bag is a vial of iodine, a small plastic tacklebox with a roll of monofilament line and six hooks, a sleeve of bandages, a box of matches and an empty metal bottle for water. She lines everything up on the ground and stares at it, too nervous to move out from the cover of leaves. 

“Get up.” she whispers to herself finally, after about an hour or so. She’s managed to scrape the majority of Maizie’s blood off her face with her sleeve, but she can feel it drying into her pores. “You’re being stupid. You have a knife. Go find Ciaran.”

Standing feels like suicide, but she does it, and suddenly she realizes that she has walked a good fifteen feet away from the bush. The valley feels dangerous, but she knows that most of the others probably feel the same way, and if they all head for high ground they’re going to run into each other eventually. There is a light, tepid wind coming up the slope, she can smell water. 

Saira had come to say goodbye to her after the Reaping, great-grandma’s ring wrapped in a scrap of what appeared to have once been a bedsheet. Saira had grabbed her by the shoulders and shaken her.

“You will not die on me.” she had insisted. “Do you hear me, kid? You will not die on me.”

“I won’t.” she lied, avoiding eye contact with Saira and focusing instead on the wall over her shoulder, the wallpaper decorated with sand dollars and seahorses on a field of faded teal pinstripes. So fucking ugly, she’d thought to herself as Saira rattled off reasons why she wasn’t allowed to die because ‘I’ve already lost two Crestas, I won’t lose another one’ and ‘Maris is gonna process me herself if we end up short a person’. The ring felt like it was made of lead. 

Saira finally let her go, collapsing into the opposite chair and knitting her fingers in her lap, staring at the ground. In the back of her mind, she wondered when Saira had started to look so old, the threads of silver in her long black hair, the deep crease in her forehead, the lines at the corners of her mouth. 

“Oh, Anne…” she choked out, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You know I love you.”

“I know. I love you too.” Saira looked up at her, eyes glossy. “Please don’t cry.”

Saira’s jaw tensed and she cleared her throat. “I’m not. I’m not, because there’s no reason to. Because I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t leave our line short. And leave you to deal with Maris?”

Saira let out a dry bark of laughter before directing her gaze at the floor, her eyes filling with tears again. “Damn it, Annie.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Saira got up and pulled her into one of those desperate, bone-crunching hugs that she hadn’t been subjected to since Mom and Dad’s joint funeral. They both still smelled a bit like Processing, but there was no reason to mind. 

“Don’t apologize.” 

“I will try. I don’t know if-.”

“Well, they train you. You think Sligo Altomar went in knowing how to kill seven people? He grew up by the boat launch and worked on a shrimp boat. If he can do it, you can do it no problem. I believe in you.”

“Thank you.” she choked into Saira’s sturdy shoulder, trying not to sound as pathetic as she felt.

Saira released her. “Okay. I’m gonna stop in on Calypso and Ronan’s boy, tell him good luck. He’s gonna need it.” She opened the door and took one last look back. “I love you, Annie. Even if it doesn’t… work out, I am so lucky to have known you, my girl.” 

She finds the creek in what she assumes is the late afternoon but keeps away from it, deciding that she’ll only spend the bare minimum amount of time necessary down there in case other people have been specifically looking for running water. She watches the bank for a while from the top of one of the heavily wooded hills that line the basin of the arena. She passes the time by looking for insects to bait her hooks with, moving on to looking for plants to eat when she doesn’t find anything bigger than a woodlouse. That, too, turns out to be a waste of time. She’s beginning to regret spending so much time trying and failing to figure out archery when half the other tributes are probably putting together full meals for themselves and she likely couldn’t tell poison ivy from bittercress with a gun to her head. She hopes, wherever he is, whoever he’s inside, that Finnick will end up with food poisoning before the end of the night. 

Nervously, looking over her shoulder every few steps, she makes her way down to the water. There are a few plants growing along the banks, but most of them give way like grass. She sits there for a while feeling utterly defeated, her throat raw from exertion and dehydration, her stomach empty, her head light. There are minnows picking their way along the creek-bed, but nothing that looks big enough to eat. She watches them for a while, their tiny bodies flickering through the sparse weeds, the occasional bright scale, their wide, stupid eyes, and thinks of the tiny bait fish that used to gather around Anamarija II’s slip, sliding in and out of lobster traps, almost incomprehensibly small. She can almost feel the Gamemakers bent over the arena like children over a tide pool, stretching eager fingers forward to grab her, to catch her, and she feels a gnawing urge to dart away and burrow into the sand.

A twig breaks behind her, then she’s staring up into the darkening sky, dragged backwards along the ground and unable to breathe. She fumbles for Maizie’s knife, grabs it, and soon after there is a rhythmic sound of squelching and whoever has grabbed her is writhing, releasing their grip on the rope they’ve looped around her neck from behind. 

She lays there for a few seconds, trying to suck down as much air as she can, waiting to make sure the person she’s laying on top of is definitely dead. Maizie’s knife is sticking out of their bloody uniform shirt, and from her vantage point she can make out a lanky frame and small breasts, shoulder-length blonde hair, pale freckled arms and a thin bracelet made from woven-together scraps of fabric. 

Willing herself to stand up and look at what she’s done, she can feel her assailant’s warm blood on her back going cold in the evening air. There is a wet rattling noise that is becoming more and more infrequent until it’s gone altogether, punctuated by a distant cannon. 

When she finally turns around, Chantilly looks smaller now somehow, her eyes and mouth are both open. The knife has caught her in the ribs, lower abdomen and shoulder, but the killing blow was obviously the one that tore open her neck. She kneels next to Chantilly and stares at her for a while; her eyes are blueish grey, she has a small, upturned nose and her teeth are spaced out and underdeveloped like Awinita’s, there is blood in her mouth and her blonde hair is threaded sporadically with hints of ginger. All she finds on the body is the rope and a sleeve of grainy crackers, which she adds to her bag before going back to staring at the body. The more time that passes, the less it resembles the girl who had shushed her in the gym. By the time she convinces herself to leave the area, she feels like she’s staring at a decoy of a person, the human equivalent of a plastic fishing lure. 

“Sorry.” she whispers as she departs in the direction she assumes Chantilly came at her from. She can hear the approaching hovercraft that will take her back wherever they take the bodies, she tries not to think of the people who will receive her remains instead of the live child they’d known. It’s not my fault, she tells herself, if she hadn’t come after me first I wouldn’t have had to do anything to her. I’m bigger than her, she should have known better. 

She isn’t sure how long she’s walked by the time the sun begins to set, but decides she won’t stop moving until she absolutely has to, figuring that if she can’t see where she’s going, nobody who may want to hunt her can. The cannon goes off six times before the sky lights up with the six deceased. District 3, Ada, District 5, Kayden, District 6, Axel, District 8, Chantilly, District 9, Maizie, District 11, Mose. Out of all the Games she’s watched, the casualties are low for the first day. She wants to take it as a good sign. 

She doesn’t remember falling asleep, but knows she can’t be awake when she looks up to see Asenath sitting on the ground across from her, legs positioned awkwardly, held in place by her skin-tight red dress. 

“Good, you’re alive.” Asenath fishes a compact out of the bodice of her dress and begins to powder the area underneath her eyes. “Let’s keep it that way. I want a Victor this year, that Nicodemia won’t stop gloating about Bijou.”

“Where’s Ciaran?”

“Ciaran?” Asenath scoffs. “I don’t know. Honey, I’m not even real, you’re just seeing me.”

“I’m dreaming.”

“Stress dreaming. I get them too, usually about work.”

“I used to fall asleep and see my hands gutting fish until I woke up. Now I guess this is my new job.”

“Hm. I never thought of it like that. You’re very eloquent for a District kid.”

“You’re very eloquent for an overdressed old bag from the Capitol.”

Asenath gasps. “I am not old, you little wench! You’ll be my age before you know it. You’ll be my age and divorced and working some dead end Embassy job and being sexually disappointed by every Tom, Dick and Septimus in Palatine Park." She takes a deep breath and forces a grin that looks more like a grimace. “What were we talking about?”

“Never mind. I’m going back to sleep.”

Asenath stands up and shuffles over to her, sitting down stiffly beside her and exhaling heavily. 

“It was an impressive kill. The girl from 8. I didn’t think you’d get her in time.”

“Neither did I. I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Well, you’ll have to face it eventually if you plan to get out of here. Sure, it was in self-defense, and yes, killing is kind of the whole point, but at the end of the day, you, Annie Cresta, have taken a human life.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“And if you want to get out of here, you’ll probably take at least one more.”

“I’m getting Ciaran out.”

“Would you kill for him?”

“Well, we’ve established that I would. I just did. Will you just leave me alone?”

Asenath rolls her eyes and stands up. “Alright, if you insist. I’ll be here if you need me.”

“Great.” she looks down at her hands. One is grasping a fillet knife, the other balancing a chopping block, on which a bleeding yellowtail has somehow manifested. She holds the knife at the vent and goes to insert it. When it breaks through the flesh, she hears a gagging noise, followed by a muffled scream. She looks up to see a tall, white-clad man with his back to her, holding Asenath around the neck, doing something to her mouth. He drops her and she writhes on the forest floor, shrieking wordlessly, blood spraying from what was once her tongue. She lunges at the man, tripping over Asenath’s prone body, and manages to get him on the ground. When she raises the fillet knife, Finnick’s face is smirking back at her. 

She comes to on the hard ground, her bag wedged under her head, a sad attempt at comfort, and lies there in a cold sweat, staring up through the trees at the pale purple dawn. Stress dream. The scream is carrying through the woods still, and in her half-awake state, it takes her a second to realize that whoever is screaming is very much corporeal. Worse still, it doesn’t sound like they’re very far away. She huddles at the base of the tree, white-knuckling Maizie’s knife. The scream is high, young, feminine, which gives her momentary relief before she remembers that Ciaran’s voice has not yet dropped. She realizes the sound is coming from her left right before it tapers away, and there is an agonizing gap of silence before the cannon goes off. 

She hadn’t expected Calypso Whelk to even think to come see her in the Justice Building. It was getting close to the end of visiting hours when she walked in, her eyes red and swollen behind thick glasses, her long red hair in disarray. They stared at each other for a few seconds before Calypso finally managed to speak.

“I’m sorry about this.” Her voice was flat and hoarse. “You deserve better. I knew your parents, they were nice people. You went to school with my niece. Thalassa Murrel.”

“I remember Thalassa.” Thalassa Murrel had been friends with that cunt Ione Starboard but hadn’t been that bad herself. After Mom and Dad died, she remembers Thalassa coming to find her when she’d been alone on the swingset as she almost always was after school and sitting beside her in silence until the streetlamps started to come on, then they walked back to the boardwalk together and parted ways, never exchanging a word. 

Calypso sat where Saira had been sitting and crossed her legs. “I had Ciaran when I was 17. It was an accident. Ronan’s ma used to make homebrew, we stole a bottle and drank it on the beach, we were being stupid. Even after all that, even after I was pregnant at my high school graduation, even after everything everyone said about me, when I saw him for the first time it was like staring at the sun.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

Calypso stared at her. “I’m in no position to ask anything of you, Annie. I understand that, and I understand that you need to look out for yourself.”

“I’ll protect him.”

“No-.” Calypso raised her hands. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You don’t have to, I want to.”

Calypso was silent for a minute or so then stood back up, smoothing her worn, knee-length skirt. “I work at the licensing office. Whenever there’s a tribute from Portside, a lot of the time people in town will put money together to sponsor them. I’ll make sure you get a cut of it.”

“Thank you.” 

Calypso nodded and made for the door. As she was beginning to leave, she turned back. “By the way, that’s a beautiful ring.”

She doesn’t know she’s found him right away, but knows by the time the clearing is in sight that she isn’t alone. There’s something in the air, a kind of tension, a retention of breath. 

It looks like the woods have receded around one massive tree, which is broken in half. The top half forms a kind of ramp and is tall enough to extend out of the clearing, the place where it’s broken is high enough that it’s almost not obvious that it’s broken at all. 

Starting where the trunk has splintered and the tree has a deep vein of rot about four feet across that runs about ten feet down. Ciaran is standing inside it, stiff and upright, his wrists and ankles bound. When he sees her, his expression shifts from relief to fear and he begins to shake his head. She watches him for a while before he raises his tied hands slowly and points up towards his left shoulder.

Magnus is perched at the very top of the fallen top half of the trunk, staring down at the surrounding woods, a satchel slung across his body and a loaded bow in his hands. There is a patch of blood on the grass at the base of Ciaran’s tree, the source of which appears to have been dragged several feet before vanishing entirely, the body retrieved. When she looks back up at Magnus, she notices blood on his hands and uniform.

Ciaran shakes his head again, mouthing something she can’t make out. She mimes casting a fishing line a few times before Ciaran nods, his eyes flicking back up towards Magnus, who is staring in the opposite direction, leaning and craning his neck like he’s searching for something. The little asshole has an impressive set-up up there, a backpack that appears to be very full is balanced meticulously in between two branches. Whoever he killed, he must have looted them and probably Ciaran too. Slung across his body is a satchel with a large bloody splotch on it, he’s rooting around inside it as if examining the contents. 

If she hadn’t been inclined to kill before, it’s becoming increasingly enticing, watching the smug little prick scan the woods with his bow loaded. Ciaran looks terrible, his knees are skinned and the left side of his face looks like it’s been smashed with something heavy, his strawberry blonde hair matted with the blood that looks to be coming from his forehead and has dripped all the way down his neck. Maizie’s knife is heavy in her right hand, her fingers twitching around the handle. She has no idea how good of a shot Magnus is, but she won’t be of any use to Ciaran if she puts herself in a position to find out. Fuck it, she decides. I can be patient.

Three hours pass by. Her left leg has gone numb and all she can think about is the salt and grease and crisp skin of those roasted quails when the cannon goes off and Magnus hits the ground. On impact, the satchel opens, hundreds of foraged mushrooms of various colours and sizes spilling onto the ground.

She waits until they’re well out of the way to ask questions, and by then they’re catching their breath by the creek and she’s half-trying to remember how much iodine to put in the water to disinfect it, half-wondering how she can possibly feel like she’s about to throw up with nothing in her stomach. 

“I was almost in the woods, but then I saw Kayden going after Mose.” Ciaran confesses hoarsely, leaning down by the water to wash the blood off his forehead.

“Ciaran, please don’t tell me you-.”

“He was gonna kill him!” Ciaran whines. 

“Yeah, that’s the idea.”

Ciaran pouts. “I just…” he crosses his arms, and for a second she wants to tell him to stop acting like a baby before remembering that he only recently finished 6th grade. 

“Is that when Magnus got you?”

Ciaran nods. “Kayden killed Mose, then Magnus came and killed Kayden and grabbed me.” he gives her a dark look. “Aloisa wanted to kill me right away, but Citrine told Magnus to use me as bait. It worked. That girl Hallie tried to come stab me, but he shot her from the tree. That’s how he got the mushrooms, so I guess Hallie technically killed him too.”

The bait was for me, obviously. They know I’m trying to protect him. 

She feels a little bit sick, thinking of those three off in the woods thinking up ways to kill her, then about the look on Maizie’s face when the arrow ran through her, then about Mose, that little boy who couldn’t have caused any harm even if he’d wanted to. “Did Mose die fast, at least?”

Ciaran hugs his knees to his chest and nods. “I didn’t see exactly what happened, but he wasn’t moving.” 

Silence stretches uncomfortably between them, Ciaran picking at the scabs on his knees and pulling up handfuls of grass, avoiding eye contact. She can hear the low, annoying whirr of a camera drone in the branches overhead, rustling leaves as it hones in on them.  Ciaran notices it too, watching it watch them with a suspicious expression.

“I’m gonna go look for something we can eat.” she offers. Ciaran perks up a bit then forces a smile.

“No mushrooms, right?”

She forces a dry laugh, picking up Maizie’s knife. “Definitely not. Use my lures, there are probably fish in this creek.”

She’s barely walked ten feet before the sound of another cannon cracks through the woods. She spins around to see Ciaran unscathed, looking as confused as she probably does. They give each other a long look. 

“Don’t go too far.” Ciaran urges.

“I won’t. Just don’t draw attention.”

She isn’t sure what Ciaran’s idea of far is, because she has to walk a good seven minutes before she sees something other than grass on the ground. It’s a weird, weed-looking thing with big leaves that look almost like the top of a stalk of celery. She begins to dig it up, but finds only long, spindly roots that can’t be good for anything. She gives up on edible plants altogether and hopes against hope that Finnick will take his head out of whichever crotch it's currently buried in for long enough to send them something. She kicks at the creek bed, sending a shower of loose sand and grass into the water, pretending she’s kicking it into her idiot mentor’s eyes.

Then she sees what set the cannon off. 

Jasmine from 10 is face down in the water, hot pink and bright green vomit clouding the water around her, beginning to drift in the current. She slides her foot underneath her and flips her over, her eyes are open, the scleras speckled with pink and green, her glasses broken. All over her face are small puncture wounds. She feels sick, inspects the area for anything that she may be able to use. She finds matches, a few of those ice packs that go cold when you break them up and a partially-eaten container of brown rice marked with a note that reads ‘from Vinicius. keep up the good work!’ She looks down at the dead girl, her dark hair spread out around her, eyes clouded over and pinpricked with colours so unnatural they look almost obscene. Beside her, there is a spent fire pit and the charred carcass of a fish, half eaten. The skin is mostly burned but there is a pearlescence to it that she doesn’t trust, especially when paired with the chemical smell lingering over Jasmine’s body. She pulls Jasmine out of the water and leans her against a nearby tree, careful not to touch any of the fluorescent puke. It’s a slightly more dignified position for them to retrieve her body in, she decides. The corpse’s clouded, speckled eyes watch her as she makes her way back. 

“Throw that away.” She orders when Ciaran displays the fish, a neon pink and green spotted thing that looks like something between a tilapia and a gar. It’s bleeding an oily green substance where the hook has punctured it. “Don’t touch it. There’s something wrong with it.”

Ciaran backs up from his catch, hands raised. “What do you mean?”

“The girl from 10 is dead. It looked like she’d been eating one. She threw up and it was all this colour.” she points at the fish. Ciaran looks sadly up at her.

“I’m hungry, Annie.” 

“She had some rice. We can have that, but I’m not letting you eat something that could make you sick.” 

“Are you sure?”

She kicks the limp fish back into the water, then wipes the toe of her shoe on the grass. “I’m not taking any chances. She looked awful.” 

She hands him one of the ice packs to hold against his eye and opens the rice. Jasmine has eaten a bit of it, and for a second she wonders if there’s a chance it could be cross-contaminated by the fish, but it’s still a little bit warm and she’s starving. 

Ciaran eats the rice begrudgingly, inspecting the note. “Who’s Vinicius?”

“The sponsor that sent this, I guess.” 

“Why don’t we have anything like this?” 

“I think it takes time.”

“I wish someone would send us something other than rice.” Ciaran sulks. “That quail was really good… and the crab legs.”

“Well, maybe we can convince Sligo or Finnick to send us some.” 

Ciaran grins up at the sky. “Hey Sligo!” He shouts. “If I make it to tomorrow night, you owe me a quail!”

“Don’t yell like that, someone other than Sligo might hear us.” She gives him a smack on the shoulder. 

“Like Finnick?” Ciaran turns skyward again. “Hey, Finnick, Annie wants crab legs!”

She covers his mouth with her hand. “I’m serious, you little twerp. Shut up and eat your rice.”

Ciaran eats the rice, smiling mischievously, and she feels a prickle of sympathy for people with younger siblings. Who would have thought he’d be such a pain in the ass… Calypso better name her next one after me for my trouble… Still, she makes sure to take the portions of rice that Jasmine had been at and leave the untouched side of the container for Ciaran, just in case. 

“I wonder what District 10 is like.” Ciaran remarks later on, after they’ve eaten and are setting up a rough shelter against a tree, one step ahead of what appear to be thunderclouds overhead. 

“Why?”

“That’s where she was from.” he replies plainly. “Jasmine. I know that’s where meat comes from.”

“Meat, leather, lots of things. Anything that comes from an animal.” She tries to remember what she knows about District 10. They had a brief unit on other Districts in 7th grade, but it focused mainly on fishing outposts on lakes, rivers and the East coast, manned by people from 4. In 9th grade, they revisited it, but only briefly, and that was primarily to learn about how exports from 4 were used with other exports and what they came together to make. Fish scales in makeup, a type of seaweed that can be made into fake nails, sand, salt, whale oil… Salt goes to 10 to cure meat, and there is a fishing outpost there, but beyond that she can’t call much to mind. She knows it’s to the South of 4 with 5 in between. She once heard someone say that the open-water fishermen who go down there can smell the slaughterhouses from the water. “I know it’s big. Maybe one of us will see it on our Victory Tour.”

Ciaran goes quiet, looking down at the leafy branch in his hands that he had been about to lay across the top of their lean-to. “Yeah.” 

As the sun begins to hang low in the cloudy sky, she builds a fire, small enough to not draw attention but hot enough to boil their water, the bottle rigged on a makeshift spit. She has to admit, it’s the first good idea she’s had so far, and intends to save the iodine in case an instance presents itself where lighting a fire wouldn’t be safe. Ciaran roots through the bushes, coming back with a large bundle of leaves, which he lays along the floor of the shelter.

“Very sophisticated.” she remarks.

“Nothing but the best!” Ciaran chirps, seemingly trying to mimic Asenath. He sits down beside her and watches the water as it begins to simmer. “Thanks for coming after me, by the way.”

“Of course. You would have done the same for me.”

Ciaran nods pensively. “I was so scared, Annie. Aloisa wanted to kill me, but Eisen thought it would be better if they used me as bait.”

“Eisen’s a psychopath.” She wraps an arm around Ciaran’s shoulders. “You’re safe with me.”

Ciaran chews on his lip. “They mentioned you. They knew you’d come for me. Citrine’s still tight about you blowing her off and Eisen thinks you might be a threat. You and Asa, the tall guy from 12. They’re probably out looking for him now.”

“I am a threat. So if they’re smart, they’ll stay away from us.” The water begins to boil. “Let’s let that go for a couple minutes, then we’ll cover the fire up with dirt. We’ll let it cool overnight and in the morning it’ll be ready to drink.”

“Good. I’m thirsty.”

That night, Magnus, Hallie and Jasmine are projected into the sky as the anthem plays. She knows she isn’t going to sleep, even after the sky has been dark for an hour or so. Inside the shelter, Ciaran is sleeping fitfully, parched and hungry and terrified out of his mind. She can’t stop thinking of his family; Calypso with her swollen eyes and her strong, soft-spoken husband who looks so much like Ciaran, her five little daughters following her out of the Justice Building like a school of minnows, not knowing if they were going to see their brother again. 

Eventually she resigns herself to laying in the shelter with Ciaran and watching the dark surrounding woods through the gaps between branches. Nothing is stirring beyond a squirrel that passes by and scurries up a tree, then a pair of deer an hour or so later. She watches them apprehensively in case they turn out to spit venom or have a taste for human flesh or something equally as horrible and ridiculous, but they wander through the brush until they’re out of sight.  She can’t stop thinking about the things she’d do for a hot shower and a stiff drink. 

Against her better judgment, she dozes off eventually, woken only by the sound of someone crashing through the woods followed by a white light that floods the lean-to. She shakes Ciaran awake, keeping a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t say anything. For a few minutes, they lay there in petrified silence. She can feel tears dripping from Ciaran’s eyes down over the back of her hand, hot, rapid breaths against her palm, she keeps her eyes on the person who has just sprinted into the clearing. The light seems to be coming from their face.

“Flashlight?” Ciaran whispers when she withdraws her hand.

“Looks like a headlamp.”

She sees a grin creep across Ciaran’s face. “Suicide.”

When the person turns away, she can make out long blonde curls that she knows belong to Briar from 7, the homely, bug-eyed girl who had worn the dark green dress for her interview. She could run out there and stab her, neutralize the threat right then and there, steal the headlamp and not use it for obvious reasons. Briar turns sideways, her features illuminated by the lamp, she has a heavy nosebleed and a raised welt on her forehead. 

“Briar.” Ciaran breathes.

“Don’t let her see us. Stay down, you can watch from down here.” She shows him a small gap at the base of the lean-to. 

“Alder!” Briar shout-whispers, looking around fruitlessly. “Look at what I found!”

“Shit.” She tries to make herself as small as possible, pulling Ciaran close. “We need to be ready to run.”

Ciaran whimpers. A twig snaps a little too close to the shelter, but Alder passes them by, running up to join Briar. 

“What is it?” He asks, a bit out of breath.

Briar swings a familiar looking satchel off her shoulder and hands it to Alder, who smirks. “Up on that hill with that big broken tree. There was a parachute nearby with a 2 on it.” She lets out a bark of laughter. “Didn’t I tell you it would be easy?”

“Are you sure?”

“I poked around there for like fifteen minutes. I know what I saw. Plus they showed his picture tonight. One down, three to go.”

“And they’re still hanging around there?”

“I saw Citrine and Aloisa hanging around by that big rock ledge, Eisen probably isn’t far away from them.” Briar rifles through the bag, producing something small and brown, she holds it up for Alder to inspect. When he looks it over and gives her an approving nod, she starts eating it. 

Alder turns the headlamp off. “I could see you coming from a mile away. It’s like a giant sign that says ‘KILL ME’ on your forehead.”

“Sorry for not wanting to trip and break my neck.” Briar argues. “So, what, you wanna go now?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

Briar pauses. “You see Asa lately?”

“Haven’t seen Cerise either.”

“What about Ciaran?”

Alder digs in the bag, extracting a small white mushroom. He tosses it casually into his mouth and nods as he chews. “Saw him.” Oh God, please no, not now, not this little dork, that’s just humiliating… “He was down by the water, I think he’s allied with the girl from his district. They were together, and I haven’t heard any cannons so they’re probably still together.”

“Damn it.” Briar carps. 

“We might still have a chance. They don’t have any food, maybe we could work something out, get her in on our treaty.”

“I doubt it. She gives me a weird feeling. Sneaky. I watched her mentor’s Games with Hephaestia, he literally stabbed one of his allies in the back.”

It all happens entirely too fast. Before she realizes what he’s doing, Ciaran has slipped out of the shelter and snatched up Maizie’s knife, shoving it in the pocket of his shorts. She makes a desperate grab for his ankle but fails to make contact.

“Damn it, Ciaran!” she whispers, not knowing what to do. She’s unarmed, exhausted, too tall and at the wrong angle to slide out of the shelter without making noise. She’s started to crawl awkwardly towards the exit when he reaches them, holding his hands above his head. Briar flips the headlamp back on and beams it at Ciaran. 

“Well, speak of the devil.” She remarks. 

“It was Magnus.” Ciaran sputters. “Magnus ate the mushrooms. I was there. He was using me as a trap. Annie cut me loose.”

Alder holds up the bag. “So these were Magnus’s?”

“Well, Hallie’s. But he killed her and took them and ate them.”

“That makes sense.” Alder turns to Briar. “She was watching me during training. Judging by what she got, my bait-and-switch worked.” He starts to laugh. “That idiot probably thought these velvet polypores were lowland brittlegills!” He looks at Briar, as if waiting for her to join in laughing, but she doesn’t. 

“Yeah.” Ciaran cuts in, forcing a laugh to act like he gets it. 

Briar takes that moment to look past Ciaran, knitting her brows and scowling. “Your friend is here, Ciaran.”

“Annie, come here.” he shouts back, not turning around, hands still raised. “It’s fine, they won’t hurt you.”

“I never said that.” Briar snipes. 

Grabbing one of Magnus’s arrows, she starts to creep forward, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Did he make some kind of deal with them before launch? Why do they trust him but not me? Both 7’s are staring at her, Briar looks acrimonious but Alder seems mildly intrigued if not amiable. When she reaches Ciaran, he grabs her by the arm and pulls her forward. 

“Annie’s really good. She built a shelter and boiled water and she can run fast and-.”

“Who cares?” Briar steps forward, taking a hatchet out of a holster slung over her shoulder. “Why shouldn’t I take this to your neck right now?”

“Peace treaty!” Ciaran begs, stepping between them with his arms still raised. “She’s a good ally, I promise! Better than Asa or Cerise.”

“He has a point.” Alder cuts in. “If we go back on the peace treaties, what’s to say Asa and Cerise won’t?”

“Well, what’s to say this one won’t?” Briar jerks the hatchet in her direction. “I work at a sawmill, lady, piss me off and I’ll turn you into 2-by-4s.”

“Ciaran, what the hell is happening?”

“Just trust me. She killed Chantilly, but it was in self defense. And she knows about the fish.”

“Of course she knows about fish-.” Briar spits, “-she watches them fuck.”

“Some of the fish in the creek will make you sick, but not all of them. Annie knows which ones.” 

Briar eyes her. “I don’t even like fish.”

“Which ones?” Alder cuts in.

“Ally with us. You can trust us. Right, Annie?” Ciaran’s sharp little elbow catches her in the ribs. Briar looks like she’s ready to kill at the slightest provocation, while Alder looks only slightly intrigued, the hand not holding the bag of mushrooms fiddling with one of the belt loops on his shorts. 

If this goes sideways, Ciaran, it’s your fault. “What the hell is this peace treaty business you all keep going on about?”

“Well, it’s-.” Alder begins, Briar turns around and jabs him in the gut with her finger. A whispered argument follows with Briar glancing back at Ciaran occasionally then smacking Alder in the ear. “Well, she knows now! I keep my word, Briar.”

“So do I, but you don’t see me-.” she cuts herself off with an exasperated groan and winds up to hit Alder again. He flinches and she drops her hand. 

“Well, before the Games…” Ciaran shuffles some dirt around with the toe of his boot. “I wanted to make sure we had allies, at least one. I don’t think Mose really picked up what I was putting down… but Alder and I got to talking and… well, we agreed not to hurt each other. And they made the same deal with Asa and Cerise.”

She eyes Alder. “Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”

“See!” Briar cuts in, stepping forward and pulling her hatchet again. “I knew she wasn’t-.”

“No, no, wait!” Ciaran steps between them again. “Just trust me, okay? We can be allies.”

One sideways look from Briar and I’ll vent-to-gills her… “Look, I don’t blame you for not trusting me. To be honest, I don’t trust you either. But if you won’t hurt Ciaran-.”

“I keep my word.” Briar spits. “Peace treaty.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Think of something to say before this little freak severs your jugular… “I know where 1 and 2 are. And I also have it on very good authority that Eisen and Citrine won’t come anywhere near me.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen it,” she lies. “At the Cornucopia.” She holds up her bag to drive her point home. “Citrine and I both went for this, but I grabbed this knife, I scared her off. They took one look at me and fucked off into the woods. If I’m around they won’t come near you, that’s why I’m with Ciaran.”

“Like a bodyguard.” Alder observes, gnawing on a mushroom. 

“Yeah sure. Look, the Gamemakers are gonna find ways to fuck with us no matter what we do. Me, I don’t want to kill anyone else. You don’t kill me, I won’t kill you and maybe we can help each other. I’ve got lures and line and I know which fish are safe.”

Alder glances at Briar, then points at the shelter. “Could you help us build one of those nest things?”

“Sure. It’s not hard.”

Alder nods. “Give us a second.”

They walk about six feet away and huddle up together, occasionally glancing over. She grabs Ciaran by the arm and marches him about ten paces in the opposite direction.

“What the hell is this? What does she mean by peace treaty?”

“It’s, like, an agreement to leave each other alone.” Ciaran avoids eye contact. “I figured since Alder is good at foraging and you know a lot about fish, maybe we’d make a good team. It’s better than them killing us.”

“How do we know they won’t kill us?”

“Because we agreed not to.” Ciaran justifies. “If we hadn’t split up during training, you’d know. Sorry.”

“Alright.” says Briar, walking towards them. “Fine. We’ll ally. But if this goes South for me, Ciaran-.”

“I know, you’ll turn me into 2-by-4s.”

Briar shakes her head. “No, you’re too small for 2-by-4s. Mulch, maybe. Get over here and shake on it before I change my mind.”

She holds out her hand. Briar’s grip is firm but her palm is uncomfortably wet and her expression is acrimonious.

“You and I can take first watch." She decides, never breaking eye contact with Briar. "Ciaran, Alder, you two get some sleep. No weapons in the shelter.”

“Sounds good.” Alder smiles agreeably. Ciaran waves him over to the shelter and shows him how to slide in. Beforehand, Alder disarms himself of a small but cruel-looking switchblade and something resembling a corkscrew. Briar shoots her a glare as she sits outside the shelter.  

“What happened to your face?” She opens after a few uncomfortable minutes of silence. 

Briar brings her hand up her nose, her fingers come away with some small flakes of dried blood which she wipes on her pants. “Flax and I went for the same bag. He got it and hit me with it. There was something heavy in it.”

“Here.” She hands her tentative new ally one of the ice packs Jasmine had. “Break it up.”

Briar crunches the pack and holds it gingerly to the swollen bruise on her forehead, reluctantly mumbling her thanks. The silence of the night returns, the trees are uncomfortably still, almost unnaturally so. There is something in the distance, some dull low hum that almost sounds like being underwater. It doesn’t feel like an immediate threat but there’s something about it that sets her on edge, like something huge is bearing down on them waiting to be set loose. Briar seems to hear it too, leaning forward and tilting her head as if trying to focus on it, her brow furrowed under the ice pack. She tries to push it out of her mind and keeps her eyes on the dark trees, illuminated by a moon that seems just a little too bright. 

Chapter Text

His first date with Procula Derringer was three-or-so weeks before he turned 18 at a restaurant in the Capitol’s uptown that he gathered was intended to emulate some approximation of what people here thought 4 was like. He’d been to worse places and it was all paid for, so he told himself that whatever happened that night, at least he’d be getting free food and liquor, the latter of which he indulged in ravenously. Even then, he was still no match for Procula, who was already swaying dangerously by the time his town car arrived. 

That was his first night in the Capitol that month, and he’d spent the previous night at Skipjack’s Speakeasy and paid one of the bartenders to ignore the fact that he hadn’t turned 18 yet. He was two drinks in when Sev Dauphine came in with Pontus Herring and Ronan Whelk and they sat in a row to his immediate left. At that point, he hadn’t known much about any of the three men beyond the fact that they all worked on the same trawler. They ordered a round and started talking about work. Sev was helping his son look for dockhand jobs, Pontus lamented the long hours and how he hadn’t been laid in three months, Ronan didn’t talk much, but when he did it was about his wife and children. Nisha, his youngest, would be getting teeth soon. 

“Three years until Bosun’s out of the woods.” Sev sighed. “I tell you, you never get used to it. How old is Ciaran again, Roan?”

“10. 70 will be his first.”

Sev sucked in air through clenched teeth. “May the odds, man. But they will be. Just don’t let him sign up for any tesserae, that’s how they get you. I told Bosun, I don’t care how bad it gets, I’ll steal overcatch before I let him get mixed up with that. Once you start, you can’t stop, that’s what everyone says.”

“Some kids in the Flats have their name in 50 times before they’re 16, I heard.” Pontus remarked. “And in the Peninsula, there’s a whole secondary market since they have so many Careers. People sign up and sell what they get. Guy up there lost a hand for it a while ago. His daughter ended up in the Games but she’d been thinking of volunteering anyway. Came in 7th.”

“They’re ballsy up there, I’ll give them that.”

Mom paid for my training with tesserae, he wanted to cut in, staring into the pale head of his beer, two a month for two years but I still volunteered. I don’t know if Gil ever sold them. He remembered eating the salty bread that Mom would make in Gil’s tiny, grimy kitchenette in between bouts of endurance training and target practice, running his hands through the grain and dried seaweed ground into a sandy consistency. He remembered Gil standing behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist as she braided the strips of dough together, his lips against the back of her neck. Some nights she’d still smell like stale cigarettes when they got home. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about that as he stared at Procula across the table, trying to get used to the light reflecting off her sequin dress and flickering over his face. He’d never bothered to count how many times his name would have been in the pool, never felt the need to attempt to do the math or possibly never had the energy. It would have had to have been a substantial amount but few enough for Asenath to have missed it entirely when she dipped her hand in and withdrew Erasmus Cove, a scraggly 13 year old with a fucked-up leg from a cannery town about an hour inland from Portside. Then I had to volunteer, and look where it’s gotten me. I should have just laid down and died when I had the chance.

“These’re a n’aphrodisiac, you know.” Procula slurred, brandishing an oyster. 

“I think I heard that somewhere.”

She let out a grating laugh through clenched teeth, sucking the oyster back and chasing it with a deep swill of a bright green cocktail that reeked of some indecipherable artificial fruit. He felt a little sick as he started to peel his crab legs, watching as she threw back her drink and gripped the edge of the table. He thought of Sligo at last year’s equinox festival, that woman he’d come with begging him to just come back to her house to sleep it off, before he ordered another round and started puking down the storm grate. 

“Lemmetellyou…” Procula leaned in, grinning, lipstick on her teeth. “If you weren’t… from… thedistrictsss…-” she hiccupped, tracing her fingernail along the edge of an oyster shell, likely intending to come off seductive but landing more in the territory of skin-crawling. She didn’t finish the sentence, just broke off into drunken laughter, which he indulged and attempted to reciprocate.

“So what do you do for work again? You said you’re a stylist for the Games?”

“Hon-neeeyy, I am a designer. Very different.”

“Ah.”

“Stylists blow-dry and wax and… the nails and blah blah blah… I have… the vision.” she threw back more of her drink. “The artistic vision of the… the…” she gestured vaguely. “You ask a lot of questions.” She reached across the table and slid her thumb into his mouth. Her hands tasted strongly of lotion. “G’head, drink more. I won’t tell your mother.” She winked, breaking off cackling again.

“My mother’s dead.” He hadn’t realized what he’d said until it had been out for a few seconds, hovering in the airspace over the table. Procula withdrew her hand and clapped it over her mouth.

“Oh, you poor thing.”

“Oh, it’s… it’s fine, don’t worry about it. It’s… I shouldn’t have-.”

Procula stared at him saucer-eyed, at first he was afraid she was going to break down in tears, but she reached for her drink and drained it. 

“My mother is an absolute pill.” she slurred, waving a hand. “You’re not missing much.” 

Caesar is airing the deaths from the previous day. Hallie, shot from above, Magnus, poisoned by stolen mushrooms, and finally Jasmine, poisoned by fish. The fish are mutts, he ascertains, eyes on the screen as Procula performs a papery handjob to a soundtrack of rattling bracelets. Orestes Blanche calls them toxilapia, but they look more like the needlefish that often swarm around the slips back in Portside, except for their slightly bulkier bodies and fluorescent green and pink colouring. Their meat looks like any other fish but is about as deadly as cyanide once it begins to digest. They’re aggressive, carnivorous and their bites secrete tracker jacker venom. Jasmine would have died tweaked out of her mind, but not enough to not feel the poison ripping her stomach to shreds. Thanking every higher power he can think of that Annie found her and put it together, he comes dutifully up the side of Procula’s forearm as Caesar and Claudius ooh and ahh over a testing video of a school of toxilapia mowing down the corpse of a large pig. There is a warm, sour taste in the back of his throat, he’s getting a cramp in his left calf, and he can hear Procula’s upstairs neighbours yelling at each other. 

“Well, I think she was asking for it.” Procula quips, wiping her hands on the bedsheets, “I mean, the damn fish looked like Andronica Dovecote’s pubes. You didn’t hear that from me.” She lays back and adjusts her necklace, arranging it flat against her leathery chest. “I’d like to send them something. Do I do that through you?”

“Me or Sligo. What do you want to send?”

Procula pauses, twists her necklace around her index finger. “You know, I always wondered why nobody just sends a tribute a gun. It would all go by so much faster if one of them had a gun.”

He stares at her, trying to figure out exactly how frequently she must have been dropped on her head as an infant.

“Yeah. Good idea. I’ll send Annie a gun.” 

Procula snorts, running a nail over his bicep. “I should be a Gamemaker.” 

The pristine hallways of Procula’s apartment building are completely empty, he assumes everyone is either watching the games in their respective units or at one of the viewing parties around the city. When he passes by individual units he can hear cheering, heckling, the occasional interspersion of commentary from Caesar. ‘Talk about a fishy situation!’ A laugh track. In one of the rooms he passes, he can hear someone chanting ‘go Ciaran, go Ciaran, go Ciaran’, a few doors down, the sound of clinking glasses.

Every year, every third week of July, there is no escaping it. The Games are on every screen, every radio broadcast and every print publication, ad nauseum. This year, it looks like Ciaran is shaping up to be a favourite, along with the girl from 12 with her doe eyes, button nose and sweet disposition and the big crazy-eyed kid from 1. He isn’t surprised. The favourites are usually cute, pretty or scary. People seem to like Annie, but never beyond a polite laugh at the shrimp bit or perhaps mild attraction. She has a nice face, long hair, nice rack, and she’s 18. Men will bet money on her because maybe they’ll get the opportunity to nail her if she doesn’t die. Women will be annoyed by her when their significant others look a little too long. He doesn’t think, should she survive, Ptolemy will have much use for her. She’s not his type, too coarse, too mature, no family on the chopping block. She’s a nice, upwardly-mobile Portside girl who will probably have a few too many children and marry some guy from the Peninsula with a big boat should she make it out in one piece, or at least he hopes it’ll be that simple. “As always, I’ve been Caesar Flickerman-’. The radio drones in the taxi that will take him back to the Tribute Centre, “-wishing all of you listening at home a happy and safe Hunger Games opening weekend and imploring you all to please drink responsibly. I, more than anyone, know how heated it can get in the arena, but please take this opportunity to exercise good judgment. With that in mind, happy Hunger Games, and have a great night.” The anthem plays him out. 

Mags and Asenath are back where they were yesterday, the pretty girl from 11 whose name escapes him is watching the girls from 1 and 2 from a safe distance. 1 and 2 are looting Jasmine’s body with little luck, and when the hovercraft comes down to retrieve the body, they step back and watch her ascend, exchanging a few words as 11 retreats. It’s weird that they took so long to pick her up, but he decides it’s for the best if it tipped Annie off. 

Mags elbows him as he sits down. “Ciaran made it through the night, we owe him a quail.” 

“I’ve got half. I made Procula chip in under the table.”

“That’ll be nice for them.” says Asenath. “I’m about to go look into getting them some more water.”

He has a sneaking suspicion that she meant to do that hours ago and got distracted by something completely unrelated. Either way, she heads towards the exit and he takes the seat on Mags’s other side. 

“Procula told me to send them a gun.” 

Mags laughs, shaking her head. “The Guild really should promote her.”

“Did I miss anything?” 

“Looks like they’ve figured something out with the kids from 7. I’m not sure how long that’ll last.” 

“What about Sligo, where’d he fuck off to?”

“In the sauce. Not that I blame him. That poor girl from 10 didn’t exactly go quickly, it was hard to watch. It’s a good thing Annie found her when she did.”

The scoreboard beside the screen lists the name and district of each tribute, illuminated if they’re alive. Magnus Dryden, Chantilly Pick, Jasmine Bone, Hallie Feeney, Kayden Yaw, Axel Moore, Ada Quinn, Mose Rowe and Maizie Hillier have all gone dark. For some reason, he still can’t wrap his mind around the fact that Annie took out one of them. He thanks every higher power he can think of that Annie found Ciaran, remembering how pissed he’d been when Ciaran tried to get in between Kayden and Mose. On the screen, Marcos from 10 makes his way down to the creek, just barely evading Annie and the other three. He’s a swarthy, scrawny kid with a plain face, his first crop of facial hair just starting to grow in. He’s managed to get pretty far unscathed but that can’t last long if he tries to eat any of those fish. The kids from 7 are both pretty beat up, Briar’s nose has started to bleed again and Alder looks a bit queasy. Annie and Ciaran are dirty and dehydrated but still seem energized. For a second, he considers the fact that one of them could still win. He hopes against hope that it’s Ciaran. 

When 4 and 7 start to slow down for the night, setting up in a densely wooded area up on the ridge of the Southeastern edge of the arena, Willow catches his eye across The Pit and waves him towards the door. 

“Hey, ally.” She smirks, wrapping her arm around his and pulling him towards the bar. “We’ve got some time, 1 and 2 are both setting up camp for the night.”

“What’s this peace treaty business, by the way? Was that your idea?”

Willow rolls her eyes. “Blight’s, kind of. He told Briar to get on people’s good sides but not to make too many outright alliances, which is exactly what she ended up doing.” She waves to Bijou across the bar, who is at a booth with Rennette and Enobaria. “She’s a good kid, they both are. She just wants to protect him.”

“Yeah, mine are the same.” 

Willow doesn’t seem to know what to say to that, and he doesn’t blame her, he wouldn’t either.

Rennette looks like absolute hell, eyes pink and swollen, hair in disarray. At first, he considers joining them, but decides against it when she drops her head to the tabletop and begins to sob. Bijou rubs her back awkwardly and Enobaria scans the bar as if trying to figure out how to escape. She meets his eyeline and grimaces, sliding out of the booth and making her way over.

“Oh God, finally-.” She waves to a bartender, who shoots back a look of understanding and reaches for a bottle of high-end whiskey. “I don’t want to sound callous, but I cannot deal with that right now.”

“Is that all because of Jasmine?” Willow cranes her neck to observe Rennette. 

“You’d think she never lost a kid before.” Enobaria shakes her head. “Whatever, I get it. I just needed a break. Congratulations, by the way, your alliance looks promising.”

“Let’s hope. I mean, they’re no Career pack but-.”

“This year’s Career pack is barely a Career pack.” Enobaria scoffs. “They’ve already lost one, I wouldn’t be surprised if those kids from 1 turn on Aloisa by the end of the week, assuming she lasts that long.” She retrieves her drink. “Whatever. None of them are mine. If either of you need a sponsor under the table, let me know. I like that Alder kid.”

“Me too.” says Willow. From her tone, it’s obvious she isn’t getting her hopes up. 

Most Victors he knows personally have had at least one Tribute they’ve lost and never fully gotten over, one that they made the mistake of getting a little too close to in the days leading up to the Games. Three years ago, the girl from 2 took four days to die from sepsis, and Athena drank so much she had to get her stomach pumped. The year before that, when his successor Horemheb Shale barely escaped with his life, his ally, the lanky girl from 9 was torn to pieces by weasel mutts, and Gwenith snuck up to the sixth floor, tore through Lillian’s stash of Morphling and almost overdosed. Then there’s Sligo and Phoca, which nobody talks about. 

Day 3 of Year 70 dawns grey and murky, heavy clouds obscuring the tops of buildings and pissing down a constant deluge of unseasonably cold rain. The arena is still bright and cloudless, and he watches the live feed over breakfast. Annie’s alliance is camped out by the creek still, keeping watch in alternating shifts. She’s awake, pouring bottled water into her hand and rubbing it on her face while Ciaran sleeps fitfully beside her. Briar is messing with a multi-purpose pocket knife and Alder is slowly beginning to rouse, staring up into the overhead canopy of leaves with a familiar distant expression. 

Sligo, freshly showered and oddly alert, is standing up close to the screen in a bathrobe that hangs dejectedly off his lanky frame. He has a couple grapes in his left hand but isn’t eating them, just rolling them around in his palm like dice. When it switches to a still image of 1 and 2, he leans sideways as if searching for 4 and 7.

“You’re making me nervous.” Mags quips, shoving a chair out from the table. Sligo begins to make his way over, keeping his eyes on the screen.

“I don’t trust Blight’s kid.” He carps, running a hand through his damp hair. 

“Really?” Mags sips her coffee, leafing through a stack of papers to the left of her plate. “In my book, she’s-.”

“No, she knows what she’s doing.”

“What did Briar do?” He cuts in. 

“Never mind.” Sligo snaps. “I know kids like that, I don’t trust that little bitch as far as I can throw her.” He takes a flask out of the pocket of his robe and sloshes some liquor into his coffee. 

“Mags, what the hell is he on about?”

“Finn, don’t worry about it. Eat something, you’re disappearing.”

He gives Sligo a long, questioning look, receiving an eyeroll and a loud sip of what is beginning to smell like rum in response. The door on the other end of the common area opens and Asenath clacks in, fighting with the zipper on the back of her tight white dress. She looks, for the first time in all the years he’s known her, out of sorts. Mags waves her over and she leans down, gathering her hair away from the zipper. 

“Walk of shame.” Sligo smirks. 

“You’re a pig.” Asenath shoots back, taking a seat on Mags’s left. “That witch of an ambassador fired her assistant, decided I was the only person in the entire GD city who could handle the life-or-death undertaking that is scheduling promos for the regatta in August. She had me up until 3. I’d wring her neck if I could fit my hands around it.”

Mags hands Asenath the coffee pot. “Why don’t you just tell her no? You’re not her assistant anymore.”

“She’s still my boss.” Asenath pours an ungodly amount of maple syrup into the coffee before taking a sip, grimacing and gesturing for Sligo to hand over the flask. He obliges, watching her with mild amusement. “Whatever. I’d rather deal with her than Axford, and if I get this done I won’t have to.”

“Who’s Axford? You and Hatshepsut were talking about her the other day.”

Asenath takes another long drink of coffee. “Apollonia Axford is the Minister of the Interior, so she oversees Districts 1 through 4. I report to Neptunia Cox, the Ambassador to 4, she reports to Axford and Axford reports to the President.”

“Hm.”

“There hasn’t been a decent person in that post since my father-.” she continues, “-and of course that all went sideways. One thing you need to know about this city, Finnick, is that the only way you get anything done is by kissing ass or lying.”

“What happened to your father?”

Mags blanches and shoots him a warning look, but he can’t figure out why. Asenath takes the bait immediately, turning towards him and raising her right hand to her upper lip like she always does when she’s about to go on a tangent.

“My father was the Minister of the Interior for thirteen years. Best one there’s ever been, ask anyone. You know, my family used to be a big deal. The Glasses are actually related to a branch of the Barclay family, who married into the Prices, who just so happen to be one of the most influential families in the Capitol.”

She’s talking nonsense. “I see.”

Asenath leans back in her chair. “So, long story short, a lot of people were jealous of my father. I mean, rightfully so, he was incredibly successful… Traffic accidents are very easy to orchestrate, especially back then, the roads weren’t what they are now. Anyway…”

“Shit, you mean someone ran him down?”

“No, it… I mean, I was just a baby, I don’t remember what happened, I wasn’t there… But a woman was killed. By accident, my father was a good driver. But she was some… distant relative of someone important, I think she was a Cardew or a Snow, probably… Anyway, Daddy was framed, sent off to a work camp in 2 for 15 years. Axford slithered her way into his job, that was the end of it. I really do not like that woman.” Asenath goes quiet, draining her coffee. She looks over at the clock mounted on the wall about the TV, where Deena from 5 is sharpening a long stick. “Damn it, I’m late. I’ll be in The Pit in a few hours. We’ll send Ciaran that quail.”

She stands up, pauses for a moment as if she wants to say something else but thinks better of it, and leaves, walking a little more quickly than normal. Mags has a tense look on her face.

“That was weird.” he remarks.

Mags sets her mug of coffee down a little too hard. “Finnick, I don’t expect you to know this, but we do not talk about Asenath’s parents. Please, I won’t ask again. It’s a very complicated situation, I don’t think a lot of the people in her life have been totally honest with her about it and quite frankly it’s not my place to tell her the truth now. This conversation is over.”

For some reason, he can’t imagine Asenath as somebody’s daughter. Capitol people have always seemed so fundamentally backwards and artificial that the thought of them coming from something as normal as another human’s body was never something that crossed his mind. Sex with them is always chemically buffered so as to prevent any accidental procreation and he always just imagined it was the same way with their own partners. He knows many people from the Capitol who have children, Liv herself has four daughters with the President, two of whom have children of their own, the escort for 3 missed last year’s Games due to maternity leave, Procula has shown him pictures of her niece and nephew a few times, but even then the children in question have seemed more like accessories that eventually morph into people. He can’t picture Asenath Glass as a child, clawing her way out of the womb with those long plastic nails, clomping around a nursery in tiny pumps, micromanaging her classmates. He almost wants to find it funny but Mags looks so serious he immediately feels like he’s gotten too close to something horrible and he can’t imagine what. 

“Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Mags stares at the table for a few seconds, thinking of a new topic of conversation. 

“Well-.” Sligo pushes his chair back from the table. “I should probably-.” He mumbles something unintelligible as he makes his way back to his room. Mags waits until he’s gone to speak again.

“You… seeing people today?” She asks in a low, conspiratorial voice.

“Yeah. Livia in a few hours, but after that I’m done.”

Mags nods, standing up slowly and gathering up her papers. When he looks closer, he can make out the heading on the first page. RETIREMENT FROM MENTORSHIP- below that, NAME- Morag Flanagan, AGE- 75, DISTRICT- 4. He feels a bit sick. Retirement? She puts an arm around him and gives him a stiff kiss on the forehead. 

“I’ll see you tonight.” She leans back down and whispers in his ear. “You’re a good kid. We all love you. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Liv keeps the Games on while she’s in service, reruns from the past two days, staring at the screen intently. At one point, she shoves him off to rewind Jasmine’s agonizing demise, the poor kid cooking and proceeding to inhale the fish punctuated with mouthfuls of rice, the coughing fit that followed, the blood vessels in her eyes bursting with pink and green until she finally threw everything up and collapsed into the water. She died simultaneously publicly and completely alone. When Annie comes along to loot her body, Liv pauses it and rewinds it again. 

“Those fish are really something. Toxic to eat and vicious when they’re in the water. They essentially eat you from inside after you eat them. Disgusting.” There’s a shadow of a smile on her face. He feels sick. “Yours are safe for now, but I guess we’ll see.”

“Is there anything else? Any other mutts? Traps?”

“Well, if I knew I wouldn’t tell you. No, I only knew about the fish because they were my idea. Like those mushrooms years ago, what was it, 47? I told Coriolanus I wanted something gruesome.”

Of course you did. “I guess I’m just excited for what’s next.”

She gives him a cold, withering look like she’s unconvinced, and suddenly he feels very young. 

“Down.” She orders. He obeys, sliding onto the floor and sitting at her feet facing up at her, chin on her knees. She’s forgotten to rewind, and in the mirror on the opposite wall he can make out a portion of the screen. Caesar is talking through a narrow altercation between Asa from 12 and Aloisa from 2. They’d clashed briefly on the Southwestern edge of the arena in a blackberry patch. Aloisa had made to attack Asa, her long, serrated knife catching him in the shoulder before he took off into the woods and eventually outpaced her. The drone follows Aloisa down the Southwestern ridge as she heads North, where Citrine and Eisen have set up camp for a dinner of MREs courtesy of Ptolemy. The thought alone makes him gag, picturing Ptolemy stroking himself as Citrine chokes down canned mystery meat, making sure to feed her so she’ll be healthy enough for surgery the second she’s extracted. 

Liv watches, unmoved, bringing a hand down to grip the back of his head. “When I was a girl, I visited District 1. Ghastly place. You’d think it would be halfway decent but the people there live like animals. You can tell by looking at those two. You can bathe them and straighten them up and sponsor them all you want, but you’d have better luck putting lipstick on a pig.” She jabs a finger at the screen. “Do you think she’s pretty?”

He turns around slowly to look at Citrine again. She’s shaking a packet of electrolyte crystals into her water bottle, her vicious facade dropped momentarily. He thinks of Bijou, Cashmere, Enobaria, Athena, all just girls, all mired in rage since before puberty, live wires ready to burn out the moment they don’t have to pretend anymore. She’s beautiful, he thinks, feeling somehow worse, she’ll be face down ass up by the end of the summer. 

“I’m sure she’s someone’s type, but not mine.” 

Liv scoffs. “I guess there are people out there who get off to-.” she waves a hand at the screen as Citrine tries her water and makes a face, handing it to Eisen, who shrugs and takes another sip. “-District girls.” She knots her fingers tighter in his hair when she says District, as if shifting blame. “Coriolanus bought one once. Tiara Faberge, insipid name for an insipid person. She cried when he took her, told him she had a boyfriend, which I found hard to believe. Drink.” She hands him a gilt-edged flask full of something that starts off sweet but goes down burning like vomit. He recognizes the name as someone who isn’t supposed to be talked about. Tiara Faberge, Marc Arbor, Rhea Holstein, Lucy Baird, Phoca Dylan… 

“No-one could compare to you, Liv.”

She yanks his head back sharply. “You’re goddamn right. And if I see you being unfaithful- even for a minute- there’ll be a spot right next to Tiara under the rose garden with her name on it.” 

“Of course not.”

“After everything I’ve done for you…” Liv shakes her head as if she’s already convinced herself of some transgression. “For you to throw it all away for some District whore…”

“I would never do something like that, Liv.” He can hear a twinge of desperation in his voice and feels even more pathetic than he sounds. “You’re the only woman in the world that I would ever want.”

Her powdered, close-set face is impassive. “Why should I trust you?”

God, I’ll fuck you for another six hours if you just shut the fuck up… “You know me, Liv, you know I would be nothing without you.”

Liv eyes him, an L-shaped vein rising in her forehead. “Your Tribute this year, do you think she’s pretty?”

“Livia-.”

“Answer the question. You sent her food. Do you think about fucking her? Is that why you keep feeding her?”

“I feed her because she’s my Tribute, Liv. I have to, it has nothing to do with-.”

“Well, she won’t win.” Livia knots her fingers cruelly in his hair again. “I’ll make sure of it. You think you can salivate over some little whore and I won’t notice? And here I thought you were one of the good ones. I’ll make sure the box they send her home in is locked so you won’t have a chance.” Her hand wraps around his throat, forcing his eyeline up to meet hers, she just stares back.

“Liv, I promise. I can’t even think of other women, I don’t want anyone but you, you know that. I can’t even sleep when I go back to 4, if I could stay here with you forever I would. I’d never leave, you’re all I ever want.” Liv’s mouth is tight. “Please.”

“Please, what?” He isn’t sure what. “You ungrateful child, what could you possibly want now?”

“Please, Liv, just let me… let me have you.” He babbles, palms sweating.

Liv rolls her eyes, lays back against the pillows and spreads her legs. “I really do like you a lot better when you don’t speak.” she snaps her fingers and points at the juncture of her thighs. “If you want to keep your tongue, convince me.”

Marc Arbor was from 11. Vanished on his Victory Tour right as his train was scheduled to pull into the Capitol. Rhea Holstein, a sweet-faced beanpole of a girl from 10 who won either the 20th or 21st by total accident with zero kills, committed suicide-by-Peacekeeper four years after her win in an apparent psychotic break. Lucy Baird won the year before Mags and is practically a mythical being in 12, it’s less that they don’t talk about her and more that they seem afraid to say her name. Tiara Faberge was raped and buried under a rose garden. 

Sometimes he wonders if he’ll ever be one of those cautionary tales, one of those names that gets spat out quickly at the beginning of the Reapings, the people to whom that old adage of no winners-only survivors doesn’t apply. He’s been out for five years. Rhea had been out for four. Phoca had been out for nearly thirteen. 

The drive back from Ptolemy’s is long in the evening traffic, and he spends it in the back of the cab with his head between his knees as whatever Liv kept forcing down him threatens to come back up. The rain doesn’t look like it’s going to stop anytime soon, and in his delirium he stares out the window through the fat veins of water on the pane. Against the darkening grey sky, the Capitol is sparkling belligerently, the Avenue of Tributes lit up with the pre-Games portraits, living Tributes projected in colour, dead ones in greyscale, females on the West side and males on the East. Annie stares down at him, pearlescent in her interview dress, her smile demure. Across the way, Ciaran forces a cute-little-kid grin, his face splattered with too-dark freckles courtesy of Feronia. He still remembers her wetting that makeup brush with excess spray tan and jabbing him in the face with it until it looked like he’d been standing behind a car stuck in mud. He watches Annie for as long as he can, the flash of the camera reflecting off her sparkly lip gloss, her pearl earrings, her eyes. Soon she is out of sight, and Briar is glowering down at him in her forest green gown, then Chantilly in head-to-toe tulle and lace, then Maizie, then Jasmine. Three dead girls smiling and waving in dresses that cost more money than their families will ever touch in a lifetime. 

He only stops by the Pit long enough to make sure Annie is still alive, which she is. Annie and Briar seem to be getting marginally more comfortable with each other, and the 4-7 alliance is dividing up Ciaran’s quail on the banks of the creek as the sun sets over the arena, which must be in a different time zone judging by the remnants of daylight.

“Go rest.” Mags urges with that sad, knowing look she gets sometimes when she can tell he’s just gotten done with Liv. “I’ll be up for a while, Ajax and I have been meaning to catch up.”

Upstairs, he turns the shower on as hot as it can go and pumps in a random assortment of scents to mask the smell of stomach acid as he kneels over the drain, sticks his fingers down his throat and purges himself of Her FirstLadyness. When the last dregs have swirled away, he resigns himself to sitting motionless in the scorching inch or two of water and letting his pulse scream in his ears. Only when his vision begins to cut in and out does he shut it off and let it slowly drain away, leaving a pathetic cluster of cacophonously-scented foam at the lowest point in the stall. 

He orders a bottle of wine, a roast quail and a platter of oysters to the room, flips on the live coverage on mute on the TV in the kitchen and scrolls through the on-demand recap channel in the living room. He pauses briefly at 49-Phoca Dylan-District 4. Below a thumbnail of Phoca’s victory tour poster, the left side of her face strategically covered by her long black hair, the caption reads- an idyllic tropical beach arena was the site of bravery, bloodshed, and a dark horse victor you’ll certainly want to keep an EYE on! He scrolls higher. Between Myrtle Caswell, District 7 and Ajax Rockwell, District 2, is a delicate girl with a smirk that doesn’t quite reach her sky-blue doe eyes. Her blonde curls are cut neatly to her jaw and she’s anything but ugly. Her bone structure is strong but elegant, her skin spotless and her lips full. She almost reminds him a bit of Annie. 27- the crown jewel of District 1- Tiara Faberge!

Tiara’s arena was one of the first of its kind, a dank scrapyard that spanned a few miles with the Cornucopia at the top of a precarious structure of rusted beams. The Tributes from 4 that year were both volunteers from the Lanistarium, one of the first graduating classes, if he remembered correctly. Coral Niekamp and Zale Fisher, they both died early on. Coral was bludgeoned to pulp with a steel beam, Zale succumbed to infection after gashing his leg open in pursuit of a weapon, taking 4 out of the running just shy of the Final Eight. 

Tiara, who was a rare case of a Tribute from 1 not coming out of a Lanistarium, had sprinted for a cover of scrap metal and hid, waiting until the bloodbath was over to scavenge what had been dropped off the metal structure. She came away with two knives, a loaf of bread and a sleeve of crackers. A sponsor sent her a bottle of water. She waited and waited and won, not knowing the reason why she’d been able to pull through on sponsor gifts alone. Clearly, she eventually found out. 

He isn’t sure where the time goes, but by the time Lucretius Flickerman’s outro music plays and Tiara’s victory interview ends, he’s drained half of the wine, finished the oysters and resigned himself to pushing a few pieces of quail around his plate, too nauseous to finish. The menu pops up again, a countdown beginning as Ajax Rockwell’s Games get ready to autoplay. He doesn’t know Ajax well, he’s an older Victor from 2 who hangs out with Sligo and Chaff occasionally and is apparently downstairs catching up with Mags, mentored either Enobaria or Athena, he can’t remember which… Nice enough guy, but wholly unremarkable. 

When he turns the TV off, he realizes that the room is spinning and he can hear his heartbeat in his ears again. At first, he regrets the wine, but realizes his head is remarkably clear, then realizes that’s the problem. He chugs some wine straight from the bottle, but it refuses to go down and he finds himself leaning over the kitchen sink, hacking red splatters against the aluminum. He imagines what Sligo would say if he happened to walk in, or Mags for that matter. After the conversation at breakfast, he doesn’t want to cross Asenath’s path again lest he violate some unspoken agreement that the rest of the world seems to be in on. All this over a car accident? Who the hell did her father hit with his car? 

In the lobby, he buys a pack of cigarettes, the wine tucked under his jacket, and skulks outside to chain-smoke under an awning that looks out onto a sidestreet. Shit weather aside, he feels better in the open air. The rain is getting louder, hammering the pavement and pooling around the grates, coming down faster than it can drain. 

I’m turning into Sligo, he considers, taking a long swill of wine in between drags. As much as he dreads that possibility, he can’t help but feel a devious sense of satisfaction. The sooner he becomes a washed-up old wreck like Sligo the sooner Liv will be put off, the sooner he’s no longer young and pretty the sooner he stops being palatable. He pounds another few inches of wine, praying for it to go straight to his gut. 

He’s always been confused as to why Sligo was never sold as an asset. The Satis-factory had been operational then, and even if it hadn’t, Ptolemy wasn’t the first to figure out that people will drop bucket-loads of money to fuck a Victor. Sligo was attractive enough, if a little unhinged, from an interior District, fit and healthy. Maybe it was that he didn’t have a lot of leverage, but there are other Altomars in Portside. He knows Sligo has a cousin, Harras, who works with Ciaran’s dad, and has been close with Lysandra’s family since she died. Maybe his high kill count turned people off, maybe they thought he might be dangerous, or maybe his early spiral into addiction had been considered uncouth. Whatever it is, he feels a prickle of envy deep in his stomach. I would have given anything to let myself go like that, to drink myself to death in peace…

The sound of heels smacking wet pavement brings him back to reality. A tall, slim figure is cresting the block to the North, huddled in a long pink coat, blonde hair plastered around a pale face, features contorted with something resembling fear. The figure keeps glancing over their shoulder and speeding up, and when they make it into a puddle of light from a window, he recognizes them.

“Cashmere?” He calls. Her head snaps up to make eye contact with him, a modicum of the tension in her frame releases, and suddenly she’s sprinting down the block and across the street, eyes wide.

“Finnick!” She yelps. “Oh God!” 

It’s hard to make out with the rainwater streaming down her face, but she’s crying, and she won’t stop looking over her shoulder. She leaps over the river forming in the gutter and throws herself on him, sobbing desperately. 

“What the hell happened to you?” He takes her face in his hands, she’s sucking in air and turning back in the direction from which she came. She starts to point at the block diagonal from them, choking down thick gulps of air, spitting out tears and rainwater.

“It’s him-.” she shudders, pointing back again. “The one- the one who-.” 

As she breaks down again, wrapping her arms around his neck, he realizes what she was running from. A man is making his way down the dark street, craning his neck like he’s trying to figure out where Cashmere has gone. He’s not very big and appears to be well-dressed, but his face is obscured by a scarf and a hat with a low brim.

“Was he following you?”

Cashmere nods, trying to drag him back inside. “I knew-.” she chokes out. “I knew- he-, Finn, it’s him, the one who hurt Bijou-.” She breaks off sobbing again. 

Drunk and now angry, he shoves Cashmere under the awning away from view and takes off up the street. The man, whose face he still can’t make out, takes notice of him and does a jerky 180, stumbling a bit, possibly inebriated. Either way, the asshole is faster than his tailored, rain-soaked clothes should allow. The wine is sloshing around in his stomach and he still has a twinge in his left shin from kneeling while Liv was talking at him, but he’s keeping a reasonable pace.

“HEY!” He shouts, the man hears him but doesn’t bother to turn around. “HEY ASSHOLE!” The man slides a bit on the rain-slick pavement, but recovers quickly, taking a sharp turn down an alleyway. Just my luck, he seethes to himself as the man knocks over a garbage can, forcing him to slow down to dodge it, you better pray I don’t catch you… 

Finally, the man comes to a door, flings it open and scrambles inside. He’s just half a second too late, because the door locks behind the man with an infuriating click and he can’t get it open. He rattles it for a while, hollering obscenities as the man takes off down a hallway behind the door and disappears from view. 

He isn’t sure how long he stands there, staring at the empty hallway through the tempered glass, rain drenching him to the bone, but only once he begins to shiver and the door handle begins to feel icy against his skin does he give up the chase. The Tribute Centre is farther away than he remembers and he has a brutal ache in his stomach from his drunken sprint. The man had light skin, he remembers, his hands were visible, and he was almost certain he could have made out a mousy-coloured mustache, but beyond that he wouldn’t be able to pick the fucker out of a line-up. As the awning he left begins to come back into view, Cashmere steps hesitantly out from underneath it, joined by Gloss. 

“What the hell is going on?” Gloss prods, wrapping an arm around his sister, who is trying to catch her breath. He holds up what feels like a placating hand, about to announce that he has everything under control, but the ache in his stomach begins to feel like an inferno, and within seconds he’s doubled over, hands on his knees, vomiting wine and oysters onto the sidewalk. 

Chapter Text

The alliance, which Alder and Ciaran have been brainstorming names for while Briar glowers at her suspiciously, sets up camp by the creek. She figures it’s safe enough now that there are four of them and they all know to be careful of the fish. She washes Ciaran’s blood-spattered clothes in the water, hanging them up to dry on a low-hanging branch while she shows Alder how to build a shelter. He’s a nice kid, much more personable than his partner and easier to talk to than most people she knows. Even with Ciaran, there’s a disconnect, some gap in their communication that she’s never fully been able to breach with anyone, but Alder seems like he gets it, like they not only speak the same language but some obscure shared dialect. She decides, feeling like it’s going to bite her in the ass sooner or later, that she trusts him. 

“Alright.” Briar announces, once they’ve finished a scant meal of some saltines Briar grabbed at the Cornucopia and canned tuna provided by Alder’s mentor, “everybody listen up, Annie and I came up with some rules last night if this alliance thing is gonna…” she gestures vaguely, “…proceed” Briar looks over at her to cede the floor. 

“Okay. Rule number one, don’t hurt any other members of the alliance. We all have specific things we’re good at, we have to use those to help each other. It’s fine to want to win, but being part of an alliance means that if you don’t win, you have to give the other people in your alliance the best shot you possibly can. If I die, one of the three of you will win, is essentially what I’m getting at.”

“Well said!” Ciaran cajoles. 

Briar continues. “Rule number two, all sponsor gifts will be divided evenly. Food, supplies, whatever. Since there’s four of us, we’ll have a lot coming in, so nobody’s gonna starve. On that, everything useful we find in the arena will also be divided evenly.” 

“And lastly, I know this isn’t ideal, but we have to be prepared to split up if necessary. Only one of us can win. The Gamemakers are going to do whatever they can to keep us moving, and if it comes down to the four of us, they won’t want us on a team together.”

Briar nods. “If it comes to that, me and Alder will walk in one direction, Annie and Ciaran in the other direction until we can’t see each other anymore. Then whatever happens, happens. Odds, favour, you know the drill.”

Ciaran has a dark look on his face. “You mean, we’ll have to kill you?”

“Not necessarily, but we won’t be allied anymore.” Briar shrugs and Ciaran and Alder exchange a look. “Whatever, it’s all hypothetical right now. Maybe Citrine will jump out from behind a tree and kill us all within the hour.”

“She’s kidding.” She tries to reassure Ciaran, who has gone sheet-white and is looking over his shoulder. “Okay, so let’s decide what we want to do today.”

“I can forage.” Alder offers. “Hallie’s mushrooms are pretty much all inedible, so we should probably look for new ones. That bunch of trees up the hill back there looks like our patch back home, there’s probably some good ones over there.”

“Alright.” Briar decides, “Annie’ll go with you. Me and Ciaran can wait here until you get back, then we’ll move campsites.” Before she can protest, Briar shoots her a suspicious look. “He needs someone who’s good with a weapon in case you run into someone.”

“And you can’t go with him?”

“Peace treaty. Nothing bad’ll happen to Ciaran if nothing bad happens to Alder.” Briar’s brow is knit, she crosses her arms. 

“I’ll be fine, Annie.” Ciaran insists. “Briar said she’d show me how to make a spear out of a stick.”

“We won’t be long.” Alder tacks on. “It’s mushrooms, it’s not that complicated.”

Aside from the fact that mushrooms are arguably the most high-risk low-reward thing to be foraging, Briar is a pain in the ass and Ciaran looks like he’s about to start whining again. 

“Fine. We won’t go far though.”

“We won’t have to.” Alder stands up and brushes cracker crumbs off his pants. “Mushrooms like low land and damp soil. The substrate here looks promising.” He starts down towards the water where he left Hallie’s sack, dumping the inedible mushrooms into the water. Briar shoots her a weird look.

“Do you not trust me or something?”

“Briar, I just said it was fine.”

“If I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it a long time ago. You fell asleep while we were keeping watch last night, for your information, and I didn’t even think of killing you.”

Ciaran, you have the most dubious taste in allies… “Briar… Wake me up next time.”

Briar’s expression is smug. “Oh, believe me, I tried.”

She’s rolling her eyes, about to rip into this little twerp the way she usually reserves for the new interns when they mangle one too many fish on the Processing line, or for the men on the smoking patio at Skipjack’s who can’t take a hint, when she sees Alder bending down over the water. At first she isn’t sure what he’s doing, but when she looks closer, she notices his lips pursed and dipping below the surface before he leans back, satisfied, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Alder!” She shouts after him, he jumps and whips around. “What the hell are you doing?!”

His mouth hangs open, fully aware that he’s just done something stupid. Briar turns around, turns back at her with a confused expression for a second, then back to Alder.

“You absolute hoser…” Briar chides. “Were you drinking out of the creek?”

“I was thirsty!”

Briar pulls a bottle of water out of her backpack and shakes it at him accusingly, then turns back to give her a mocking smirk. “Thanks for agreeing to babysit him, by the way.”

She turns and walks off to join Ciaran, who is making some lures by the shelter, pausing here and there to scratch a small cluster of bug bites on his calf. Alder stalks back up the bank, mumbling something inaudible.

“Please don’t do th-.”

“God, I get it.” He whines. “Whatever. I’ll just take an iodine tablet.”

“Alder, that’s not-.”

“I’m just kidding.” He looks at her like he’s expecting the joke to land. It doesn’t. He yanks on the collar of his shirt with one finger and smirks. “Tough arena.”

Not wanting to indulge him, she starts back towards the shelter to pack up her weapons. She leaves some lures with Ciaran, trusting him to not catch anymore of those weird fish, and tucks Maizie’s knife through one of her belt loops. As Alder is organizing his satchel, a few branches break overhead, scattering the campsite with acorns. A canteen of water attached to a parachute marked with a 7 lands delicately on top of the shelter before breaking through the roof with a heavy slosh. 

“It’s fine.” She reassures Ciaran as he goes to fix it. “We’re moving today anyway.”

Alder looks embarrassed as he retrieves the bottle, peeling off a small slip of paper taped to the bottle and unfolding it. Briar peeks over his shoulder and smirks. 

"’Don't do that again, from Willow.’" she reads, breaking off laughing as Alder aims a punch at her shoulder and misses.

"She's right. You can't just drink creek water without boiling it, everyone knows that."

"Well, sorry for being thirsty.” Alder crosses his arms.

Ciaran puts a hand on his shoulder. "Don't feel bad. I ate grass on the first day. Threw up."

Enthusiasm at an all-time low, she follows Alder into the woods towards this hypothetical patch of mushrooms. The section of forest they end up in is cool and heavily shaded, and when they reach it, Alder scans their surroundings and smiles self-assuredly.

“Oh yeah, this is it.”

“How do you know?”

“I know a lot about mushrooms.” Hopefully more than you know about creek water. He notices the look on her face. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’ll eat them before you do if you don’t trust me.”

She doesn’t bother with flattery. “I’d appreciate that.”

Alder nods, smiling, before taking off in the direction of a large tree, around which are a few clusters of small brown mushrooms. He waves her over. “A good thing to look for is brown gills, and if there’s anything red anywhere on it, don’t even go near it. These are morels, we eat these all the time back home.” He gathers the morels and sticks them in his bag, going after a yellow cluster on the side of a tree a few meters away. “This one too, chicken of the woods. You can eat it as long as it’s not on a yew tree. As you can probably tell from the leaves, this is an oak, so we’re fine.”

As I can probably tell from the leaves? “Good. Does it taste like chicken?”

Alder smiles. “It doesn’t not, I guess.” He lunges up the tree at the mushroom but can’t reach it. “Stupid thing…”

“Here.” She takes a knee in front of the tree and knits her hands together to give Alder a boost.

“Oh, I don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

“Alder, I killed a girl two days ago. I think I’ll live.”

Alder blanches a bit, but eventually concedes, managing to grab the yellow cluster. It breaks off the tree with a wet crunch, about the size of a red snapper and promisingly heavy. 

“You eat these a lot back home?”

“Oh yeah.” Alder spots something a few feet away and waves her over, pointing out a thatch of skinny-stemmed mushrooms with small caps. “Our encampment isn’t as regulated as Creedsville and the towns up North and mushrooms will pretty much grow on anything anywhere. Peacekeepers don’t bother me because they don’t like the woods. Easy money if people want them. These aren’t my favourite but you can eat them.”

“I’ll get them, you keep looking.”

As if he can smell it, Alder beelines towards a tree about fifteen feet away and starts having at white bulbous thing clinging to the trunk. “So what’s your district like? I know it borders ours but I’ve never seen it.”

“I like it. I don’t know anything else, but I like it. It’s wet, we get a lot of rain and storms and it gets really humid in the spring and summer. I’m from right in the middle of the district, so it’s not as cold as the Peninsula but not as hot as the Flats. I like going to the beach when I get a chance, sometimes I go fishing with my godmother.”

“They let you catch your own fish?”

“Yeah, we get a pass from the farm. They track everything we get, but we keep most of it.”

Alder brandishes the white thing before putting it in the bag. “Sounds like a nice place.”

“I guess. It’s not perfect, but I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing it again.”

Alder smiles sadly. “I hear you.”

Under a cover of low bushes, there is a small growth of brownish-grey mushrooms. “Hey, what about these ones?”

Alder takes a long look before recoiling, pulling her hand away from them like the mushrooms are going to jump up and bite it.

“No! Hell no, those are velvet polypores, don’t even think about it. Just avoid this whole area.”

“You think that’s what Magnus ate?”

“Probably. Hallie got a bunch.” Alder catches his breath before waving her in the opposite direction. “There should be something near this- oh, yeah, here they are. You’ll like these. If it’s okay to build a fire, they’re good cooked.”

The base of the tree is ringed with fat beige mushrooms, the smallest about the size of a cherry tomato, the largest, slightly bigger across than a man’s hand and about as tall. Alder gets to digging greedily. 

They’ve barely made a dent in the patch when a scream rips through the woods, followed closely by a cannon, startling a handful of beige spores out of Alder’s grip. He goes white.

“What the hell-.”

“That sounded like Briar.” He shudders, abandoning the handful and taking off in the direction of their camp.

They see Ciaran first, huddled, pale and shaking, against the base of a tree but thankfully unharmed. Further along, Briar is standing over a still body, the hatchet in her hand covered in fresh blood. When she gets closer, she makes out the neatly cut brown hair and milky skin of Merino from 8, blood pooling around a deep slash through his stomach. She grabs Briar by the arm and pulls her back as the hum of the hovercraft grows audible, drags her back to Ciaran.

“Are you okay?” She takes Briar by the face and looks her over as Alder kneels beside Ciaran and puts a hand on his shoulder. Briar’s face is completely blank for a few seconds, then crumples into sobs. “Briar, what happened?”

“He came after me.” Ciaran cuts in. “I was being stupid, I was distracted. He would have killed me but Briar stopped him.”

“Is that true?” She interrogates Briar, who nods and covers her face, recoiling when she realizes she’s smeared her forehead with Merino’s blood. “Ciaran, hand me the water.”

She pours a bit over Briar’s face, rubs it around with the heel of her hand to get rid of the blood. There is a distant sound of breaking branches as a cable comes down to collect Merino’s body. 

Nobody seems to know what to say. Briar starts breathing quickly, tears leaking out of her eyes as she curls in on herself next to the patch of blood on the grass. Ciaran is still catching his breath and Alder seems like he’s afraid to move. 

“We should start walking now.” She suggests finally. “Someone might have seen the cable come down, we’ll want to be out of the way for the night.”

They decide on high ground, Ciaran and Alder want to be able to see people coming. Briar walks behind the group, crying silently. On their way back through the woods, the patch of mushrooms has been cleared away, the stalks severed with something sharp and uniform. Alder wants to harvest more, but they all decide to not linger when they notice the boot print in the damp soil.

The sun is beating down evening-orange by the time they reach the valley, headed towards a tree-lined ridge that cuts through the arena with low ground on either side. The trees are unfamiliar, tall with greyish bark and leaves that flicker in the sun when the wind blows through them.

“Briar, what kind of trees are those?” Ciaran tries to lighten the mood. She doesn’t respond, doesn’t even bother to look up when she hears her name.

“Cottonwood.” Alder supplies, running up to join them. “Those are cottonwoods.”

“I like them. They look like fish scales.”

She thinks of WP, staring down into the shimmering throngs of fish in the inlet, Saira giving her instructions in a rough tone so it doesn’t seem like she’s giving her any preferential treatment and Theo’s hand creeping along her outer thigh while he pretends to adjust a feed funnel all steeped in the salty, curdling smell of the compound. Mara Langoustine fell in once, one of the new interns who used to cut her fingers on purpose during Processing days so she could get out of work. Malik Abalone hauled her out and ripped her a new one as she sat there, drenched and looking satisfied with herself. The new ones always love to cause problems until they realize it doesn’t get them anywhere with the higher-ups and they just get assigned worse and worse jobs, forced to work injured, and end up as freezer runners on their days off. Theo would always try to get her to do that so they could go out by the loading dock and get each other off, damp, clammy hands down the front of standard-issue cargo pants, a shared cigarette afterward, but it only happened once. Theo had licked the blood from the self-inflicted gash on her palm and told her he’d marry her once he inherited his father’s job. Stupidly, uninjured hand sticky and cramping, she had believed him.

She smacks herself on the forehead. That idiot isn’t allowed here. He can’t be the last thing I think about.

They settle at the very top of the ridge under a particularly large cottonwood, somewhat shielded from prying eyes by a few low bushes. She isn’t sure how she feels under the open sky, doesn’t know whether to feel overexposed or protected, knowing whatever Finnick deigns to send her will find her easily, but also that she has just entered a fairly large alliance with a girl whose mentor specifically warned her against doing that. She stares up into the sky, imagines herself making eye contact with whoever is looking at her. I see you, she mouths, you don’t scare me.

“I trust them.” She tells Ciaran finally, taking him aside once they’ve settled in as much as they can, Briar sitting a little ways down the hill and staring into the distance, Alder cleaning the mushrooms with the water his mentor dropped and taking sips in between. Clouds are beginning to close in, as if the Gamemakers heard her, as if they’re trying to hide. “She could have let Merino kill you. And Alder could have easily taken me out with a mushroom. Shit, I almost took myself out with one.”

Ciaran nods. “Briar wants to keep Alder alive and you want to keep me alive. I just hope it doesn’t come down to me or Alder.” He eats another one of the thoroughly-vetted morels. “These aren’t bad.” He rolls up his pant leg to scratch furiously at his calf.

“Bug bite?”

Ciaran shakes his head. “It itches all over my back too. Maybe there was poison ivy or something down by the creek.”

He extends his leg and she has to stifle an audible gasp. His skin is prickled bright pink and green from his thigh to his calf. When she looks closer, she can see a few spots along his collarbone and on his hands.

“Shit. Do you think it’s from washing your clothes in the creek?”

Ciaran shrugs. “I feel fine. Just itchy, and it’s not everywhere. Maybe it won’t be that bad.”

“Keep your pants rolled up so the cameras can see. Hopefully Sligo’s sober.”

Ciaran forces a smile, securing his pants above the knee with a strap sewn on the inside. Briar, who has begun to ascend the hill, steals a glance at his leg. 

“Gross.” She remarks. “You gonna eat the rest of those?” She gestures towards some white mushrooms with tiny caps and long stems.

“Knock yourself out.”

Briar sits down heavily on the grass and takes a few, placing them delicately on a cracker. Her eyes are still bloodshot, but she seems to be attempting to put on a casual air. It’s not very convincing. Her hands are shaking and she can’t seem to relax. 

Ciaran clears his throat. “I’m gonna go see how Alder’s doing with dinner.”

As he goes, he puts a hand on Briar’s shoulder, causing her to crack a sad, secret smile. They sit in silence for a while, listening to the sound of trees rustling, birds conversing amongst themselves, cracker between Briar’s teeth.

“So is Annie short for anything?” Briar asks with her mouth full.

“Ančice. Technically I’m named after an Anamarija but Ančice is on my birth certificate.”

“Who was Anamarija?”

“My dad’s grandma. He also named a boat after her. Then the boat sank with him in it and I got reaped, so there’s that.”

“Damn.” Briar pauses. “Unlucky name.”

“I come from a very unlucky family. But I’m the last one, so The Cresta Curse will end with me. What about you, what’s your family like?”

“Well, you’ve met one of them.” She jerks her head towards Alder. “Our moms are sisters.”

“Wow. And you got reaped the same year, that’s rough. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Whatever happens in here, there’s gonna be a funeral back home. Either way, we lose at least one kid.” She pauses, lowers her voice. “Have you noticed Alder acting… a little off?”

She watches him as he shows Ciaran how to build a proper fire, which sticks to use at which level. “Not really. Why?”

Briar eyes him. “He threw up while we were walking, didn’t tell anyone, I saw him go behind a tree like he was trying to hide it. I don’t know, that and the thing about the water, I’m just worried.”

For some reason, she feels her stomach begin to twist and her palms begin to sweat. She imagines the rash on Ciaran’s leg crawling up Alder’s esophagus. “If… if he gets sick from the water, it’ll probably pass through him really fast. We have your bread, just make sure he eats enough. Little kids back home get sick from drinking saltwater all the time, I wouldn’t worry too much.” 

Briar clenches her jaw and gathers her legs close to her body. “I hope you’re right.” She pauses, starts to unfurl her long yellow braid. “I think it’s hitting me.” She gestures widely in front of her. “This… everything. I think my brain is making sense of it.”

“Mine too.”

“It’s not like I have some amazing life back home, and you know something? Sometimes I used to think I wanted to die, but I think I don’t anymore.”

She moves closer to Briar, whose face has gone hard, flaxen eyebrows knit tightly. She wants to put an arm around her but is afraid she’ll start crying again. 

“Me too. That’s why Ciaran’s going home.”

“Or Alder.” Briar cuts in. “Ciaran or Alder, one of the two.”

She nods. “If it’s not Ciaran, it’ll be Alder. If not Alder, Ciaran.”

Briar holds out her hand and she shakes it, the way she’s been doing since they first allied. 

“I wish we could have been friends.” Briar confesses. 

“We are friends. At least for a little bit.” Ciaran’s little fire pops to life, he jumps back from it and high-fives Alder. “I don’t really have any friends back home. My best friend moved away when I was about Ciaran’s age. And I have my godmother but no friend friends.”

“Me neither.” says Briar. She turns her face skyward, lips tight and eyes drifting shut. “Hey, you know what you said about dissolving the alliance? If it ends up just being us?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t wanna do that.” she says decisively. “I don’t wanna kill my friends.”

“Briar, you said-.”

“I know what I said. I know what Blight said. It’s one of the last real choices I get to make. I will not lay a finger on you or Ciaran. And I can tell from the way you’re looking at me right now that you feel the same way.” 

They exchange a long, empty look. For the first time, she takes in how young Briar really is. Her height, authoritative tone and eagerness to do violence have always made her seem older but she and Alder are both only 15. 12 and 15 and 18, they are all evenly spaced and something about that takes the edge off. Maybe Briar is a mature 15, maybe I’m a young 18.

“Okay.” she finds Briar’s hand, slack in the grass, places hers overtop. “I don’t kill my friends.”

Briar glances back at Alder. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to build a fire?”

“We need to boil my water and Alder wants to cook those big mushrooms. Plus it’s cloudy. We’ll put it out if it gets too big.”

Briar exhales heavily. “Okay.”

Overhead, a small shadow is looming, a parachute holding a square insulated box about 8 inches across drifts into view, printed with a 4 on the base. It starts to drop right next to Ciaran, who grabs it. He and Alder inspect it for a few seconds before unwrapping it, after which Ciaran’s eyes light up and he lets out a triumphant little-boy yelp.

“Annie, look!” he holds up the box. “It’s my quail!”

Ciaran and Alder toast Briar’s bread and some of the mushrooms over the tiny, hesitant fire while Briar watches with a serene expression, tearing up the quail into four equal servings. She watches the rest of them from a few feet back, pretending to weave reeds into approximations of plates for their first full meal in a while. She knows they will all be dead very soon, all four of them, Ciaran and Alder with half-digested toast and quail in their guts and she and Briar clinging to their brief friendship. She knows that for all their platitudes of strategy and desperate confidence, they’re all dancing around the fact that the odds are stacked against all of them. Everyone watching must be laughing their asses off. 

“I’m going to look for plants that we can eat.” she tells Briar, who looks up at her, pretending as if she hasn’t been sneaking bites of quail. 

“You want me to come?”

“No, you keep an eye on them. I won’t be long.”

Briar studies her. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” she lies. “I just thought I smelled wild leeks in the woods over that way.”

Briar smiles sadly as she departs along the ridge and back into the treeline, careful to stay where she can see the rest of the group. She takes Maizie’s knife just in case.

The sun is almost all the way down, the last beams flickering warm and orange through the canopy of trees and lighting up the dark clouds. She knows there are forests in 4, up at the very top of the district where she’s never been and likely never will go. A pang of regret shoots through her gut.

In a small patch of verdant bushes and low ferns, her knees give out and a familiar roar of heat sets in behind her eyes, crawling needle-like along her jaw and down her throat, making it contract. She lays on her back on the lush ground, ignoring the lingering chemical smell. She raises her arm, brings the heel of her hand down on her forehead as hard as she can, and again and again, slams the back of her head repeatedly into the soft ground, bites down on her forearm and screams muffled obscenities until a cathartic ache forms in her chest. When everything is gone she just lays there and stares at the sky as the TV static fades gradually out of her bloodstream, rage melting into the manmade ground. 

For a while there is just the ground and the cloud-blurred sunset. Maizie’s knife is heavy in her pocket. It would be easy to make it look like someone else had found her, maybe when Ciaran or Alder or Briar wins they would find out she killed herself and maybe they would feel some kind of way about it, but she doesn’t care. It would be easy if she did it now. 

She isn’t sure how long she lays there thinking about that, but the orange glow of the sunset fades away, the woods darkening. She picks the knife up, nestles the point into the dip of her clavicle, presses down just hard enough for a tiny drop of blood to bead on her skin. It would be okay to do it here. They’d come get me before Ciaran could find me. I wouldn’t mind dying here.

A high, terrified scream sounds from the general direction of their campsite. Panic or instinct or a mixture of both launches her forward, knife ready, a macabre slideshow flickering through her mind. Ciaran, gutted in the grass, Briar with an arrow in her lung, Alder’s face caved in. Before she reaches them, she stumbles to her knees, quail and mushrooms and the morning’s canned tuna spraying out of her mouth in a putrid grey foam. Get up, she begs herself, get the fuck up, they need you. Be useful for once in your pathetic life…

“ANNIEEE!” Briar wails, joined by Ciaran. She remembers where her legs are, wills them to pick her up and move, to propel her through the trees. She screams Briar’s name back as she sprints, her lungs and throat beginning to burn in protest. Please let them be alive, she begs some force that she isn’t sure even exists, that for some reason saw fit to bring her here, I understand what’s going to happen, I know it will probably be soon, but just let us last a little longer…

When she finally reaches their cottonwood, feet tangling beneath her and dropping her to her knees again, she finds Alder convulsing in Briar’s lap, fluorescent green blisters lining his mouth as it fills with a neon swirl of green and pink vomit. Ciaran is standing back with his hands raised above his head, frantic sobs ripping through his little body. 

The only thing she can make out from Briar between sobs is “the water, he drank the water.”

There is just Merino in the sky tonight. Alder’s breathing is laboured, but it’s there. Briar is crying softly, reluctantly keeping watch, avoiding eye contact with the boy she killed when his face looms over them. She nudges Ciaran awake.

“Oysters.” she whispers. “With lemon and garlic and hot sauce.”

“What?” he rubs his eyes. 

“You got your quail, that’s what I want.”

Ciaran shifts closer to her, presses his damp face into her shoulder. “Raisin bread. The one my mom makes. With cinnamon and apple butter.”

“Okay, don’t get crazy.”

“If Sligo wants me to win, he’ll send it.”

“I don’t really like raisins, more for you, then.”

“I do. I like raisins. My mom says I’m the only 11 year old boy she knows who likes raisins.”

“You're 12, Ciaran.”

He laughs sadly. “I wasn’t when we had that conversation.”

“What about you, Briar?” she whispers. “Any food, if you could have it right now.”

“Shut up.” Briar whimpers, staring at Alder, who has exhausted himself and is laying limp against the tree so he doesn’t choke on the sappy green fluid streaming from the blisters throughout his mouth. She knits her fingers together around her hatchet. “Fine. Pancakes.”

“My mom puts blueberries in pancakes.” Ciaran remarks. “They’re expensive in 4, but we like them.”

“There’s a blackberry bush in the woods behind our trailer.” Briar says flatly. “But we don’t put them in pancakes.”

Silence again, save for the faint conversation of insects and the wet, faraway din of the creek. Past that, that grey mass emits a low, groaning echo at all times, even as far away from it as they are. Briar flips her headlamp back on, beams it towards her languishing cousin then up into her eyes.

“Salmon. The first one after the run, my dad brings one home and we grill it on the porch.” Ciaran offers. “Last summer I cut up all the lemons while my mom was at work.”

“Scallops.” She throws in. “Fried haddock.”

“My dad’s smoked venison.” Briar sniffles. “And Alder wants butter tarts.”

Alder coughs, followed by a weak groan. They take it as concurrence.

In the morning, they wake to the sound of the cannon. At the base of the hill behind their campsite, Ciaran finds what remains of Marcos from 10, the frail shell of his body, consumed from within by pink and fluorescent-green weeds, growing out of his mouth and nose. When he is pulled from the arena, thin roots pull out of the ground. Briar watches him ascend into the hovercraft, looks back at the outline of his body in the grass, and starts to dry-heave. They don’t move that day, don’t forage, don’t look around, don’t even speak to each other. 

Another night goes by with no deaths. She keeps watch, half over Briar and Ciaran, half over Alder. She thinks of Chantilly's limp body, the way it looked less and less human the longer she was dead, the waxy skin, the marble eyes.

She knows Alder will be dead soon. His skin has a sick, lime-hued undertone as do the veins in his eyes. He’s been having seizures, green foam leaking out of his mouth. When she sits up with him at night, her hands itch to smother him and get it over with, but Briar has deluded herself into thinking he can still make it. Ciaran is starting to lose motivation, sits under the tree all day, staring listlessly at his token. Around midday of the third day of her dull-eyed vigil, Sligo sends two cans of sardines in olive oil, a grainy, unappetizing loaf of bread and a bottle of water, accompanied by a note; proud of you two, from all of us.

“I know you don’t want to-” she whispers to Alder, maneuvering his upper body into her lap, his head against her ribcage. “-but I need you to just try to swallow it.” He can’t hear me, he doesn’t know what I’m saying, he isn’t in there anymore. She tilts his head back, pouring the water from a few inches above his lips to avoid any cross-contamination. The water fills his mouth, he coughs as it runs down his neck and soaks his khaki shirt.

“He can’t, Annie.” Ciaran whimpers, picking at the label of one of the cans, Whimsiwick Canneries, From The Open Ocean To Your Table, which she knows is BS. “His throat’s swollen.”

“I know.”

“You’re wasting water.”

“I know, Ciaran, just take it.” She hands him the bottle. Ciaran gives her a look like a kicked dog.

“Don’t get mad at me.”

“I’m not…!” she pauses and decides against raising her voice. “I’m not mad, I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated that Briar is making me pretend like he’s going to get better, I’m frustrated that I’m here, I’m pissed that Sligo conveniently forgot that I’m allergic to fucking pine nuts so I can’t eat that damn bread. I’m pissed that Finnick is too busy boning anything with a pulse to send us anything and I’m pissed that I’m here. I don’t want to be here. I’m over it. I’m ready to die.”

“Don’t say that!” Ciaran sobs. 

“I’m just being honest.” she glances over at Briar, slumped on the edge of the hill and hugging her knees to her chest, her hatchet forgotten on the ground beside her. “Can you just sit with him for a few minutes?”

Ciaran nods and she lowers Alder back onto the ground, wedging his bag underneath his head. Ciaran seems afraid to touch him and gradually convinces himself to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey.” She opens, approaching Briar, who looks up with bloodshot eyes. “We just got these. You should have some.”

Briar puts her head down again. “I’m not hungry.”

“When was the last time you ate?” 

Briar shrugs. “You need to stay with Alder.”

“Ciaran’s with him. Please just have some.” She sits beside her. “Briar, starving yourself won’t do anything for him. Ciaran and I already had some, we want you to have the rest.” Briar gives her a distraught look. “Briar, please.”

The tears that have been collecting in Briar’s eyes start to spill over, her lower lip trembles. “I’ll eat when Alder eats.”

“He can’t. You know he can’t. He’s not… at a point where he needs food anymore.” she puts an arm around Briar, feels her shaking like a leaf. “Just have some bread. Sligo paid good money for it, I don’t want to waste it.” She hands Briar the bread, who handles it like it’s going to leave something unwanted on her fingers, and opens her can of sardines, sloshing them around in their casket of filmy olive oil. “I actually don’t hate these.” she tries to lighten the mood. “I ate them a lot as a kid. I went through this phase where I would only eat things from a can-.”

“I don’t want to win anymore.” Briar confesses, digging her nails into her upper arms. “I don’t want to go home. I can’t look my aunt in the eye.”

“Briar, she won’t blame you.”

“I was supposed to protect him. He was supposed to go home.” she takes a bite of the bread and continues with her mouth full and her voice cracking. “He’s always been the good one.”

“You’re both good. If I didn’t think you were good, I wouldn’t have allied with you.”

Briar shakes her head. “He was supposed to go home. My mom knew it, my aunt knew it. Blight and Willow knew it, they just wouldn’t say it in front of me. Nobody back home wants me to win, they wanted Alder.”

“Don’t say that, it’s not true.”

“How the hell would you know?” Briar snaps, tightening her grip on her shoulders. She has a point.

“Finish that and have some of these-.” she hands Briar the can of sardines. “-then go over there and sit with him. Ciaran and I can keep watch, but I think you should just stay with him. I know you don’t want to hear this but I don’t think he’s going to make it through the night. You’ll regret it if you don't get to say goodbye to him.”

A long, agonized keen fights its way up through Briar’s throat. She pulls her closer, tucking her face into her shoulder in a way that feels almost maternal. She looks back at Ciaran and Alder. Alder is staring, empty-eyed, up at the flat blue sky like he knows it’s waiting for him, his shallow, spastic breathing the only movement he’s capable of. Ciaran alternates between watching Alder and surveying the landscape. She wonders briefly if it was a stupid idea to camp up here, ignoring the brief twinge of guilt in her stomach when she remembers that it was Alder’s idea. Either way, they haven’t seen any signs of life in several days beyond what was left of Marcos. Eisen is definitely still kicking somewhere out there, Citrine and Aloisa with him most likely. Both Tributes from 12 have miraculously made it thus far, and the last person she remembers seeing is Awinita, scampering through the woods holding a large wrench, blissfully unaware that she was being watched. Besides them, she’ll have to wait until dark to take inventory. She hopes desperately that whatever higher power can hear her in this manufactured hell will put Alder out of his misery. She’d rather the last she sees of him be his smiling face projected on the artificial dome of the sky instead of the diseased caricature she’s been watching rot for the past couple days.

They don’t see Alder’s face in the sky that night. By the time his cannon wakes them up, the arena has been dark for hours and the Eastern horizon is purple with the encroaching dawn. Briar’s heartbroken wail echoes in the valley, but nobody comes to investigate. She wraps her arms tighter around Ciaran and prays the next cannon that goes off will be her own.

Chapter Text

“You’re off your rocker.” Zelmyra Dunne, of the Old Guard Dunnes, chides, her voice breaking slightly as he thrusts her back up against the headboard. They’ve been going back and forth like this for the entire forty-eight minutes she’s been in service and if he has to stay hard any longer he might stroke out. He has no idea where Procula met this absolute nightmare of a woman and even less idea why she referred her. For the duration of the time he’s known her, Procula has been both generally unpopular in the circles she runs in and possessive of him to the point where he wouldn’t put it past her to cut him open and set up camp in his ribcage, but Zelmyra is absolutely loaded and has incentive to hear him out. It could be worse. She’s maybe in her early 50s, hard-bodied and leathery, her sleek black bob threaded with highlights in various shades of garish pink. She’s had some kind of procedure to alter the smell of her sweat, and within the first half hour the room had begun to stink of artificial cherries. 

“I’m making you an amazing offer here. If you sponsor Annie and she wins, I will personally make sure you make Tier 2 next year. If she dies… your next visit is free.”

He knows how to sweet-talk Gamemakers. In all his years in bed with them he’s been able to ascertain that as a group they tend to be equal parts competitive, stingy and prone to virulent jealousy. From the second Zelmyra checked in, she’d been talking his ear off about that slut Euclydia and that dunce Plutarch. He has no idea who these people are and doesn’t care to find out. Zelmyra is a Tier 3, high enough on the ladder to own him for two hours and low enough to be both simultaneously protective and resentful of her station. He prays she has some weird fetish that he’ll be able to indulge, enough to make up for Sligo’s screw-up with the pine nuts. 

“I don't gamble, kid.”

“That’s not- ahh, fuck.” He feels a sharp jolt right at the base of his stomach and begins to sweat, a familiar spasm taking over his jaw. 

Zelmyra knits her skinny magenta eyebrows, sighs and closes her legs. He stumbles into the bathroom, snatches up a towel and comes desperately into it, swallowing the uncomfortably warm cherry candy taste in the back of his throat. 

“Honestly, if I was in the mood to be panhandled at, I’d go down to Tugurium Row.” She pauses, takes a cigarette off the dispenser on the nightstand and lights it. “If I wanted to back a Tribute, and I don’t, because they always disappoint me, I’d go with that big kid from 1, or at least the crazy little fucker from 12. At least they’ve been keeping things interesting. Your girl seems nice, that’s the problem. We don’t watch the Games to see nice girls try to keep sick little boys alive. If she wanted my money that badly she should have spatchcocked him and the cousin too.” She gestures him back to the bed and he lays down beside her, feeling like she’s just sucked his life force out. She runs a hand along his inner thigh. 

“So you’re not even going to consider my offer?”

“No, I’m considering it. I’m considering it to be a sad attempt at squeezing a winner out of a subpar batch from a boring district.”

“Come on, she’s the oldest Tribute, she’s already made a good kill-.”

“One kill and it was in self-defense.”

“Okay, but it was a good kill. You have to admit, it was a really good kill, Chantilly almost had her.”

“You know who hasn’t ‘almost been had’? Eisen Deschamps. My husband has shares in the cosmetics sector in 1, maybe I want to redo my poolhouse.”

“You just said you didn’t back Tributes.”

“I don’t, but you’re annoying me now and I’m considering it. Be a doll and suck on my toes.”

He obeys, suppressing the urge to bite them off. Her toenails are slightly too long and scrape at the roof of his mouth, she’s missed a spot shaving her legs, leaving behind a slim thatch of wiry blonde hair. He wonders briefly what would happen if he pointed it out, if she'd be embarrassed, seeing as every other inch of her is waxed raw. 

Zelmyra leans her head back, running her free foot up the side of his neck and up into his hair. “I wouldn’t work myself up over it if I were you. I have it on very good authority that it’ll probably either be 1 or 12. That little bitch from 7 has had her foot in her mouth for too long.” Very funny. “We’re thinking it’s about time we had a new exterior Victor, and who better than Asa Cordovan? Someone to take over when Haymitch’s liver inevitably shrivels up, and they both will have won a decade year! Nice Victory Tour to keep those damn yokels quiet. Did you hear they’ve been striking? Come here.” His mouth tastes salty as Zelmyra pulls him on top of her. “Orestes isn’t quite taken with your girl and her little friends.”

“He will be.” He’s grasping at straws and knows it but doesn’t care. He’ll take anything at this point. “Just wait, she learned from the best.”

“The best, is it? The Van Elsbergs are mentoring this year, you know. I know who to talk to to see if she measures up, we can corner them together by the end of the night, see who really learned from the best.”

The idea makes him sick. Annie’s nothing to sneeze at but Eisen could snap her neck like a crab leg and everything Annie can do, Citrine does with Lanistarium training and double the sponsors. 

“You’d rig the Games to win an argument with a hooker?”

“Honey, I already do it for far less.” She runs a sweaty palm over his cheek. “It’s sweet that you still think you got out because you were the best, because you trained and you wanted it and you did your best. You were the most fuckable, and sure, it didn’t hurt that you had some low skill for stabbing things, but that fork didn’t fall from the sky by accident.” Zelmyra pauses, giving him an annoyed look. “Oh, don’t gape at me like that. I’m getting bored.” She lays across his lap. “Spank me, will you? And hard, I want Mamercus to wonder where I’ve been.” 

Alder Groves is dead. He can’t stop throwing that fact around his mind as he showers the fake cherry stink off, throws back two shots of something Procula left on the nightstand yesterday, hails a cab and hauls ass back to the Tribute Centre. He’d been with Willow in The Pit when the poor kid’s heart finally gave out, half asleep with his legs draped over the armrest of his seat and his head in Cashmere’s lap. On her other side, Willow had been talking quietly to Gloss when her communicuff hummed long and low and blacked out, then she started to sob and didn’t stop. Hephaestia and Blight took her upstairs and that was the end of it. Cashmere had half a mind to go up and check on her but Blight said to just leave her to it, that she needed to be alone. A few other Victors, Rennette, Enobaria, Wiress, mostly other women with no active Tributes, have gone up to check on her. They have all returned sullen and eager to drink. Last he checked, Mags had left Sligo and Asenath to watch Ciaran and gone up with Seeder. 

Ptolemy’s private imacavea is a few floors up from the main stage in the Media Tower, an adjoining building just to the South of the Tribute Centre from which Caesar’s studio operates and all advertising and publicity are organized. He enters using his Satis-Factory key fob and immediately finds himself in front of a vast screen blown up with a tight shot of Citrine and Eisen taking a break from the hunt. Ptolemy is spread across a loveseat on the west side of the room, one hand holding a glass of whiskey and the other gripping the greased left buttock of a gorgeous Avox. She’s 20 at the absolute oldest, naked save for a scant triangle of silk at the juncture of her thighs and a bronze collar. Sweat is collecting on her upper lip, tears in her eyes, and her pierced nipples are spit-slick and swollen. Across the room, Himeros, Ptolemy’s equally nauseating nephew, who will take over the company when Ptolemy’s arteries inevitably tap out and he keels over balls-deep in some unlucky Victor, is mixing himself a drink. Every member of the Notch family he’s met, except for maybe Hedylogia, who isn’t so bad, seems to be fundamentally unappealing but rich enough to attempt to hide it. Where Ptolemy is an obvious casualty of his excessive lifestyle, Himeros looks like he could have come out of an exterior district the way he’s built, one of those sick, scrawny frames that calls to mind waste even when pumped full of delicacies and laden down with luxury. Every time they’ve interacted, he thinks of discarded, picked-clean chicken bones, the kind that always remained on Gil Caravel’s front lawn after the bins were collected on Thursday mornings back in Brineridge. Himeros eats like his uncle, drinks like his uncle and,like his uncle, does little more than fuck, but where Ptolemy looks like he bleeds bacon grease, Himeros Notch looks like he bleeds dust. 

“There he is!” Ptolemy exclaims, “we were just talking about you.” He gives the Avox a hard smack where his hand has been resting, she flinches and her mouth opens soundlessly, baring the ragged cauterization of what was once a tongue. She’s not one of Snow’s, he realizes. Real Avoxes, those who have been tracked down and apprehended and listed in the registry, have the entire tongue removed through a slit at the base of their throat. He’s seen the procedure once, at 17 on a date with Dr Diogenes Gaul, who was overseeing a round of such surgeries performed by medical students after a rebel cell had been unearthed in District 6. A pretty, if somewhat beat up, middle aged woman was anesthetized, her neck sterilized and opened, her tongue threaded through like some horrible mutated snake, severed at the very root, and sewn back up. She went from woman to unit in just under an hour, everything she knew before functionally erased save for in her own mind, which felt somehow even worse. This girl, who Ptolemy is now pulling into his lap, a meaty hand kneading at her left breast, is an Avox in physiology only. She had a name once, but nobody has ever written it down to be legally replaced with a number. She doesn’t have the dignity, if it can even be called that, of having had her personhood formally repossessed, it has simply evaporated. She doesn’t have any District-specific features; the strapping build of a farm girl from 10 or 11, the sunless complexion of a coder from 3, she doesn’t look like a miner or a jeweler or a fishwife. She’s small and curvy, almost slightly doughy, with ample breasts, delicate features and skin the white-pink of a raw scallop. Her wavy ebony hair is greasy and chopped unceremoniously to her shoulders, her hazel eyes wide and terrified. When he looks closer, he can see that she is missing her left ring finger.

“Nice place.” he remarks, trying to act impressed. The room looks like a bigger version of his suite at the Satis-Factory, Ptolemy probably used the same horned-up interior decorator. At the far end of the room, there is a bar, where Himeros appears to be searching for a chaser, the TV is mounted in the middle above a low cabinet made of a glossy black wood, and to the far right is another seating area, where a woman he’s never seen before is tangled up with a young, silver-collared man who almost looks like Horemheb Shale from behind, but turns around eventually, revealing a different eye colour and different nose. Bronze for Avoxes, silver for roadsiders and civilian assets, gold for Victors. His neck begins to itch.

“I usually host a party or two here every year.” Ptolemy waves a hand, “we’re still pretty much at it from last night.”

“Second wii-iind!” Himeros calls, head in the bar fridge.

“Go ahead and have a seat, son.” Ptolemy waves him over to the opposite couch. As he crosses the room, Ptolemy steers the girl to the floor where she slumps listlessly at his feet.

“Ptolemy, if this is about Ms Sickle-.”

“What?” Ptolemy breaks off in a wheezing laugh, once again showing his stained veneers. The girl flinches, drawing her knees up to her bare chest. “Oh, bygones, kid. Boudica’s got a standing bimonthly appointment with Gloss now, if anything that little bender of yours did me a favour.” He feels a brief pang of sympathy for Gloss. “No, no, this is about the Games. I’m feeling pretty good about my track record. I mean, I bet on you, Cashmere, Horemheb, Bijou, Willow… I think I have an eye for promising assets. I want you to sell me on that Amy of yours.”

“Annie?”

“Whoever she is. Now, for transparency’s sake, I’ve already dumped a bundle on Citrine. I want Citrine, Finnick, I want her bad. But, that said, I need a backup. I’m weighing my options, but seeing as I don’t have Victors from 11 and 12, I figured I’d give you a chance to make your case for her over Cerise.”

“You’re backing Cerise?”

“Considering it. Citrine, Cerise, Annie and Awinita are the best-looking out of this batch that are still kicking. Deena’s a cutie, but her fun-bags haven’t come in yet, and frankly, none of the boys seem worth my while.”

He feels sick, but figures a sponsor is a sponsor. “Annie’s very pretty.”

“Cerise is prettier.”

“That’s subjective.”

Ptolemy shrugs. “Awinita too, I think if I’m going to have a Victor from 12, for which there is an untapped market, believe it or not, I’d want her. She’s cute, and she seems like she’ll do as she’s told.” This conversation is making him sick. He’s picturing Cerise drugged senseless and bent over a coffee table, Citrine struggling for breath as her face is shoved down into a mattress, Annie’s wrists and ankles tied to bedposts, a ball gag in her mouth, Awinita’s skinny brown neck covered in livid hickies. Suddenly he finds himself praying they all kick it within the hour. The screen switches to Annie and Ciaran sitting together on the hillside, Briar catatonic behind them. “Ah, the woman of the hour. See, Finnick, her nose is too big. Nobody wants that looking up at them mid-suck-off, and imagine getting stabbed in the eye with that thing when you kiss her. It’s dangerous, I’ll have to draw up a waiver.”

“She has the same nose as Falia.”

“Falia has an ass to balance it out, plus she goes for half the price of a Victor. Honestly, kid, it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”

“Annie’s 18. She’s a woman already, she’s better in bed.”

“Believe me, I have more women than I need. I’m overrun.”

“Her youngest competitors are only two years younger than she is, assuming you've written Deena off. In a couple years, Awinita will be an adult too.”

“Two years of good business before we find a new one. Come on kid, you’re killing me here. I’m trying to give you a shot because I really do trust your judgment. I currently have two, nice big juicy reasons to bet on Annie.” he makes a squeezing motion over the Avox’s bare breasts. “You’ve gotta give me at least one more.”

“And don’t say her snatch!” Himeros crows from the bar, getting a bark of laughter out of Ptolemy.

“Why not? That’s what you’re both interested in.”

“Oh, please, son, what kind of animal do you think I am?” You don’t want me to answer that. “What does she bring to the table? The vibe, the flavour, the… what the hell do you call it again? Zeitgeist?”

“The pudendal milieu.” Himeros supplies.

“Sure. You know, you had the whole… youngest-victor thing. Enobaria was the kinky one, Cashmere was the classy one, Willow was the exotic one, Bijou was the cute one, which one could Annie be? Because I’ve already got angles for the other three, and if I get my hands on one of them, they’ll be running you out of business.”

This is such a fucking joke. “Annie is…” Socially inept? Pretty but in a very specific way that appeals primarily to provincial fishermen and other women? Deserving of so much better than this? “Bespoke. She’s a very specific taste, I don’t think people know they want her until they can’t get her out of their minds. She kind of creeps up on you.”

Ptolemy makes a weird, pensive face. “She’s only got so much time to do that before she turns 25 and I have to start coming up with weekend deals.”

“She can do it in a week. But don’t take my word for it. I’ll tell you right now, everyone who’s bet on her has been a client of mine, you want to talk about running me out of business, you might as well just replace me now. Honestly, I’m shocked you don’t have any roadsiders from 4. You’d make a killing.”

“People like the smell of fish, I take it?” Himeros quips, making his way back to the parallel couches. 

“It’s a whole thing, a real fantasy for people. What was that movie again, with Hadriana Ravinstill?”

“Salt and Seduction.” Ptolemy supplies. “I remember it, I mean, how could I forget? They’ve been playing the same reruns all week.” Ptolemy eyes him. “Procula knows what she’s doing with the Hadriana angle. Of course, I don’t see it. Yet.” 

“Nose job, blonde highlights-.” he shrugs, Ptolemy tilts his head from side to side as if picturing it. “You could offer us as a pair, I’d show her the ropes.”

He tries to picture explaining this to Annie, who already seems to detest him. A sponsorship from Ptolemy Notch is practically a one-way ticket out of the arena. Weapons, tip-offs, a steady supply of food, whatever someone might need. He can still see his own inaugural Ptolemy gift drifting down from the blinding blue sky, raising his hands to catch the sun-warmed shaft, the safe, sinister weight, the first time he watched someone die on the end of it. He can’t remember a Victor in recent years who hasn’t been one of Ptolemy’s besides Enobaria, but she’d been allied with the girl he did end up sponsoring, which kept her going until the other girl accidentally poisoned herself with a berry. Annie’s good but not amazing, she’s just lost her forager and she seems to be losing the will to live. A Ptolemy gift would be enough to keep her alive for a while and maybe to restore some of her enthusiasm. I’ll attach a note, he decides, tell her I’m still in her corner, that I know she can do it if she just tries.

“Oh, hold that thought, doll-.” Ptolemy raises his right hand, the communicuff on his left has begun to chime. He answers, pressing a finger to a receiver in his ear. “Ptolemy Notch speaking. Oh, you can’t be serious… Well, how the hell did he get in? My word… The little imbecile, if she wasn’t my niece, I’d have fired her months ago. I’ll be there in half an hour. Well, of course I am! I’m seriously considering shutting down our budget suites, they’re more trouble than they’re worth, Slitcrawler outbreak waiting to happen. Alright, I’ll be there soon.” He hangs up. “Finnick, I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’m needed across town.”

“What happened?”

Ptolemy punches his driver’s number into his communicuff. “My idiot niece left the front desk unattended and one of our Do-Not-Books made his way in. An Avox was found.”

“Found?”

“Raped, strangled...” He rolls his eyes as if mentioning a minor inconvenience, the girl he’s been fondling has gone sheet-white. “We’ll have to replace the carpet. Today of all days. Look, send Abby something on me, we’ll reconvene when I deal with this. I have to drop the ambassador to 12 a line, see if Awinita has any collateral back home, but you seem serious about this girl. Let’s see where it goes.” A meaty, clammy hand finds his shoulder. “I trust your judgment, doll. It’s business, nothing personal.” A wet kiss finds his cheek. “We’ll talk. In the meantime, have a drink, take Cherry for a spin, break her in. We just got her in from 5. She’s been a very bad girl.”

The Avox eyes him, arms crossed protectively over her chest. He stares back, trying to let her know he’s sorry about all this, that he would help if he could. She seems to understand, because something in her face relaxes. She curls back in on herself and lowers her gaze before Himeros crosses the room, hauls her to her feet and bends her over the arm of the sofa.

The Pit is steeped in conversation, which he knows immediately to be a bad sign, confirmed by the wide birds-eye shots of the arena looming on the screen. Enobaria and Athena are carefully descending the stairs, double-fisted glasses threatening to spill over until they zero in on Ajax and Mags, who must still be catching up. Towards the back, Sligo has dragged Asenath into a conversation with Haymitch and Chaff, and she keeps looking around trying and failing to catch someone’s eye. Nicodemia is putting some very sad middle aged moves on Summanus, the new escort for 9 and the Van Elsbergs are sneaking back in, speaking to each other quietly. He knows immediately they’ve just come back from sending something. He feels a little sick when he sees that Willow is still nowhere to be found. 

In the interest of being a team player, he takes a seat next to Blight, who appears to have tried and failed to conceal a massive hickey on his jaw with makeup. Willow’s, probably, as it’s a shade too dark for him. Blight forces an awkward smile.

“Hey man.” The poor sap is approaching his mid-thirties, but his voice always seems to be cracking, like he’s just testing it out for the first time. “Willow gave me some of her payout, I’m thinking I’ll send some food soon.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same.” He holds up the pathetic tip he was able to spank out of Zelmyra, wanting to save Ptolemy’s pity cash for an emergency. “How are they?”

Blight shrugs. “Briar’s all broken up about Alder, Annie’s trying to hold it together, same as it’s been.” He sighs loudly. “Briar’s a good kid.”

“Seems like it.”

Turing from 3, Deena from 5 and Cerise from 11 have allied, as is made evident from the lazy cycle of shots. Flax from 9 has been on his own for a while and is starting to look a bit ragged, but he appears to have secured a generous sponsor. The Career pack, rejoined by Aloisa, is eating again. Ciaran, Annie and Briar are sitting in silence on the hillside as if waiting to die.

“I’m gonna grab a drink-.” Blight stands up, obviously aware that he has neither the intention to carry on a conversation nor the skill to do it if he wanted to. “-you want anything?”

“Sure. Surprise me.”

Blight forces a tight smile and gestures vaguely. He realizes in that moment that, as annoying as they can be sometimes, Blight and Rennette are a perfect match, both equally weird in opposite directions, stiff silence to temper a non-stop boil of emotion. Okay, he thinks to himself, I get it now. 

Ciaran is sitting downhill from Annie, who is downhill from Briar, and alternating between staring at the shell he brought from home and staring at the sky. Sligo has sent a topical treatment for the rash on his leg but it doesn’t seem to be doing much, drying the blisters out but doing nothing to heal the shiny pits in the flesh. He tries not to acknowledge the truth, sick and tepid in the basement of his mind, that this kid has no hope of going home and the kindest thing the Gamemakers can do at this point is just let the ground open up and swallow him and that the District won’t forgive any of them for returning without him. I can’t let Annie win either, he realizes, I can’t bring her back to Portside. They’ll treat her like a murderer for not getting him out, she’s just a no-count WP girl from Harrington Place and he’s Ronan Whelk’s boy, she won’t be able to show her face again.  Annie is no Mags, she isn’t an institution or a matriarch. She is no Sligo, the hometown hero who wears his guilt like social chainmail and uses charity as a form of self-harm. He thinks of the way Sirena’s parents had looked at him like he’d beaten her to a pulp himself, how that had been the first time he sincerely wished he was dead.

He watches the drone watch them for a while. Annie makes her way down to sit next to Ciaran. She puts an arm around him. She's been crying.

“Your libation, my good sir.” Blight cuts in in an awkward attempt at levity, his dull regional twang failing to carry what he assumes is an impression of a Capitol accent. He’s brought back some kind of beer, gross, but I did ask him to surprise me. 

He offers a weak cheers, which Blight reciprocates, and they go back to sitting together in silence.

He isn’t sure how much time goes by, but he’s nodded off halfway through his third pisswater beer when he’s woken up by a high shriek and the Pit begins to rouse. His communicuff is still showing Annie’s pulse, and he can tell at a glance from the steady rhythm that she’s asleep. 

“Thank God.” he whispers, turning his attention up to the screen. At some point, Asenath must have joined them, judging by the familiar jacket draped across the seat beside him and the highball in the cupholder, filled with something thick and pink and festooned with a smear of scarlet lipstick. Blight is facing slightly away from him, sitting sideways with Rennette on his other side, leaning into his chest with her fingers knit around an empty glass and her eyes closed. He can tell she’s just come from Ptolemy’s; heavy, severely smudged makeup, baggy sweats to cover tacky lingerie, her gold collar glinting in the light of the screen.

“It’s the Careers.” Blight whispers, stroking Rennette’s cheek with one hand. Above them, Eisen is furiously trying to beat away a swarm of large pink insects. 

“Tracker jackers?”

“I can’t tell. Doesn’t look like it though, these ones are smaller and there’s more of them.”

Aloisa shrieks again, trying to protect her face and neck with a windbreaker, stumbling as she tries to escape. Citrine appears to be getting the worst of it. She’s lost her footing trying to swat the bugs away and they’re descending on her in a glittering pink cloud. Aloisa has fucked off in the opposite direction while Eisen is trying to help Citrine. He throws water on her and it doesn’t work, when he tries to pick her up the bugs attack his face. Citrine continues to scream. Caesar and Claudius are superimposed over the scene, joined by Orestes Blanche. Rennette stirs and rubs at her left eye, streaking green glitter down her temple. Blight kisses the crown of her head.

“-and there it is, they were doing so well, folks, but our District 1 Tributes appear to have found their way into another genius trap set by none other than our very own Orestes Blanche!” Applause track, Citrine screams as Eisen manages to get her off the ground and throws her over his shoulder. 

“Don’t worry, folks.” Blanche continues. “Our aptly named Man-Eater Skeeters are equipped with only the mildest of venom, however, Miss Singer looks like she’s… been through the ringer!” 

A laugh track erupts and Caesar and Claudius join in. Only a few bugs continue to pursue Eisen and Citrine as he slows down, lowering her to the ground and looking her over. 

“Come on, look at me, open your eyes…” Eisen begs, then turns skyward, waving his arms. His message is received, as Cashmere is quickly descending the theater stairs and booking it towards the closest drop room as fast as she can on those 8 inch heels. Citrine is alive but can barely hold her head up.

“He’s gonna take my job!” Caesar bloviates, clapping Blanche on the shoulder. “Miss Singer’s been through the ringer!”

Citrine vomits over the front of Eisen’s pants, he wipes her mouth with the back of his hand. 

“Ah, we have fun, but seriously, folks, that was one narrow escape. While we wait for- Oh, look at that, looks like someone’s been very popular!”

With nearly divine timing, a parachute drifts down and Eisen catches it. He unpacks both a topical and an oral antivenom. Exhausted, Citrine lets him put the pills in her mouth and swallows them without complaint. Eisen collapses back on the forest floor and closes his eyes.

“Wh’happened…” Rennette slurs, starting to sit up, ice cubes slide out of her glass and bounce off the carpeted floor of The Pit. Blight sweeps them under the seats with his foot. 

“Don’t worry about it.” Blight whispers. “Let’s go upstairs.”

He finds Cashmere on the bridge between the Media Tower and the Tribute Centre, taking a corkscrew to a bottle of wine as the sun begins to rise over the Capitol. Her eyes are swollen, her makeup running. On her communicuff, Citrine’s pulse is restless but steady. 

“I got the Ptolemy sponsorship.” she deadpans, looking up at him from her spot on the polished tile. “I’m sorry, I know he had his eye on Annie too. I’ve already bought Chaff and Haymitch an apology round.”

“You think they need to drink more?” He offers, sitting down beside her. She laughs bitterly, running a hand through her long, unbound curls. She clinks her long powder blue nails against the bottle rhythmically, the way he’s seen Asenath do sometimes. “Don’t apologize, he gave me some pity cash and I just had a deposit come in from this Gamemaker lady. It’s enough to feed her for a while and I’m seeing Apophis tomorrow. Or, I guess, tonight.”

“Good. I mean, good about the money, not good that you’re seeing Apophis.”

“No, he’s not so bad. I’d rather him than someone who can actually get it up.”

Cashmere chokes on a mouthful of wine and breaks off in a mixture of laughter and coughing. “Hey, I’ll drink to that.” She pauses. “You better go see Willow. She’s not doing so well.”

“Because of Alder?”

Cashmere nods. “Zenith told me Blight had to have the phone cut off because she wouldn’t stop calling his mom.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is about this year, but we’re all attached. Me and Citrine, Alder and Willow… Of course, everyone loves Ciaran. It’ll be a real bitch to see him go.”

“Maybe we won’t.” 

Cashmere snorts. “You always know what to say, don’t you?” She leans her head on his shoulder and passes him the wine. “Circumstances aside, I’m really glad we met.”

He puts an arm around her. “Me too.”

“I remember when you won. Enobaria didn’t think you would, she wouldn’t watch the Final Three because she didn’t want to see you die. I felt obligated. It was crazy when you won. I mean, it was my first year as a Victor so I didn’t know any better but everyone kept saying that year was something special. We had to stay in the Capitol an extra week because of all the interviews.” Cashmere shakes her head. “Yeah. I don’t know. Some years, I don’t even take it all in. This year… Sorry. I’m just talking. I’m not making sense.”

“Maybe you should go to bed.”

“Can’t.” She says with finality. He doesn’t push it. They sit there for a while watching the sun rise and drinking in silence. Occasionally, a small flood of tears will stream from Cashmere’s eyes and she will wipe them away with the back of her hand, sniff loudly and decisively and go back to staring at the pale pink horizon. She peels her strip-lashes off and flicks them through the bars of the bridge to flutter away like tear-heavy insects.

“Hey-.” he breaks the silence, “-what day are we on again?”

Cashmere counts on her fingers, brow knit. “Five, six… Eight, as of right now. Today will be the eighth.”

“And we’ve got how many alive?”

“Both of our girls, Eisen, Ciaran, Aloisa, Beetee’s kid, Deena, Briar, Flax, Cerise and both from 12. Shit.”

“Halfway through eight days in. I don’t like that.”

“Yeah, Ptolemy, uh… when we talked, he said the Guild’s getting restless. They’ve got a few more traps planned to split up any alliances before they ‘bring out the big one’, that was the wording he used. What do you think it’ll be?”

“A ‘big one’? Maybe some big fucked up mutt?”

“That’s what Gloss was thinking. Honestly, I got the impression it might be some kind of natural disaster, like Zenith or Lillian’s Games. I remember hating those. They’d make us watch them at our Lanistarium, I’d always have nightmares.”

“They’re a complete ratings bomb, though. The Guild won’t do it unless they really need to get things over with.”

Cashmere shudders. “Well, if we get into a second week, I wouldn’t hold my breath.” She stands up, straightening her knee-length satin slip dress and checking her communicuff. “I’m gonna go stick my finger down my throat and drink some water. Citrine’s starting to come around, gotta feed the beast. Come with?”

“No thanks, I need some air.”

“Fair enough. Come find me later, I’ve got a line of white lightning with your name on it.”

She bends over to plant a maternal kiss on his forehead and clicks away towards the Tribute Centre, her gait uneven after a night of hard drinking and no sleep. As she leaves, the brightening sky begins to feel heavier, as if she’d been helping him carry it. The air has that crisp early morning smell that has shifted from comforting to disquieting as he’s aged, from crack-of-dawn fishing trips, flat blue water and hot coffee to swollen eyed regret and burning nausea, sweaty sheets embroidered with white roses, a clammy hand between his legs. The bright new sun of the eighth day hits the reflective facade of a nearby building and ricochets back into his eyes as if urging him up. The day is young, the wine is warm and thick, and before he knows it, it’s coming back up.

He takes a mental inventory of everything in his system as he bends over a trash can in a little alcove just off the bridge on the Media Tower side, where new Victors sometimes come to screw around away from the cameras. He smoked his first cigarette there with Cashmere and Gloss and hated it because it smelled like Liv. Last year, he watched Enobaria give Willow a tattoo there with a safety pin, Sihta down her wrist in choppy cursive for her District partner. Today, this eighth day of the 70th Games, he is purging himself of half a bottle of red wine, two gin and sodas, three pisswater beers, the two shots of something Procula left on the nightstand and the half-whiskey half-coffee he’d had for breakfast. Staring down into the pool of poison, he wishes his 14 year old self could see him now. 

“-know what you have to do.” A familiar voice echoes around the archway leading out onto the bridge from the Media Tower. He ducks into a corner behind a large potted fern, spotting a condom lying in the dirt surrounding it like a sickly purple snake. Classy. “I’m losing patience, Orestes, as is Coriolanus.”

“Your Ladyship, I promise, we’ll bring these Games to a clean close by the eleven day mark and not a day more. We have three final traps lined up to be deployed as needed, you have my word.”

“I want 4 out of the running.” Liv snaps, her voice cracking through the morning air like a whip. Even when he’s well out of her sight, it makes him flinch. His stomach is churning again. “The girl and the boy, I want them dead as soon as possible and I don’t care how.”

“They will be.” Another set of footsteps joins them.

“Always a pleasure, your Ladyship.” Caesar’s voice joins in, the ass-kissing laid on especially thick. “I’m sure with ideas like yours, we’ll be able to make up for the lag.”

“You shouldn’t need my ideas.” Liv snaps back. 

“Well, of- of course, I just meant-.”

“Will that be all?” Murmurs of assent. “Good. Three more days, not a second more, and I want both from 4 on ice by tonight. Don’t screw this up.”

There is a heavy gap of silence. From where he’s hidden, he can see Her FirstLadyness departing down the bridge and around the Tribute Centre towards the front courtyard. Blanche and Flickerman watch her go.

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you.” Caesar observes. “What are you thinking?”

A pause. “Did I ever tell you why exactly I ordered a 3-D scan of each Tribute right before launch?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We’ve got something planned for 4 and 7. I was thinking of saving it but after that mess with the Groves kid, I think it’ll be a real bombshell. If Whelk and Cresta survive that, which I doubt they will, we’ll push them North and drop the dam on them, one and done.” Orestes sniffs loudly. “Something smells like throw-up. Do you smell that or am I going crazy?”

“Probably just some idiot intern.” Caesar scoffs. “Isn’t it always? I’ll find out who and have them put on vomitorium detail.”

A laugh from Blanche, the sound of a smack on the shoulder. “You, my friend, are an absolute menace.”

Chapter Text

She can’t tell how long it’s been anymore. Since Alder, since she last saw another Tribute, since anyone in their ragged group has spoken. The hours of daylight seem unnaturally long, she isn’t sure how to categorize a day, an hour or a second anymore. The only thing that seems to change is food and water, both slipping away in small increments. She wants to go look for more but doesn’t trust herself to gather mushrooms and has sworn off anything out of that godforsaken creek altogether. There is nothing good in this arena that can come from water. If she or Ciaran do, by some miracle, make it out, there will be no falling back on any aquatic advantage. 

Briar is all but catatonic, having run out of energy to grieve a long time ago. She sits at the base of the cottonwood staring up into the flickering leaves, her eyes so swollen it’s a miracle she can hold them open at all. She wonders briefly if it’s better to just leave her, if she would even notice they were gone, and is immediately overcome with a pang of guilt for even considering it. On the other hand, she doubts Briar will have it in her to try to survive at all. 

Descending the hill a few yards, she sits in the grass next to Ciaran and puts her arm around him. “Hey. Talk about home.”

“What about it?”

“Anything. I just want to think about it.”

He pauses, thinks for a second, running his fingers through the grass. “My dad has Sundays off. If it’s nice out we take the boat to the sandbars up near the inlet. It’s shallow enough where you can just stand out there. Sometimes we’ll stay out until it gets dark. We have a grill-.” He mimes the proportions of it with his hands. “-my mom makes dinner. Me and Maren taught Nisha how to swim out there a few weeks ago.”

Is it only a few weeks? It feels like they’ve been here for years. Anything before the Reaping must have been late June. She remembers receiving a letter from Teesha, that one night work went late and she went out for a drink with Saira and Eldi Galleon afterward, the gull that had nested above the entrance to her apartment complex, a summer storm warning on TV on the morning of July 2nd. She had been too exhausted from work to worry, on the day itself a few people had nudged her on the Processing floor and told her she’d better be back for tomorrow’s shipment. She had laughed and promised she would. 

Ciaran leans his head against her shoulder. “What about you? What do you miss?”

“Well, I used to live above the licensing office in town when I was your age, where your mom works now. And every summer when school was out my dad would go North for the salmon run and my mom would work night shifts at Whimsiwick’s as a cleaner. So I’d be alone a lot, but every night the office would be really busy and all my dad’s friends would be down there. I would always fall asleep listening to them talk.” She tries to think of something else, something before Anamarija II went down and took her parents with her. “I miss the beach. I miss Saira, I miss going to Skipjack’s with her after work. I miss the harbour in the morning when I leave for work and I’m one of the only people on the boardwalk. I miss getting mail from Teesha. And I never thought I’d say this but I’m starting to miss watching shrimp fuck.”

Ciaran laughs. “I miss my sisters.”

She puts both arms around him. “You’ll see them soon. Just think about them.”

“I’m scared they’ll be reaped one day.”

Precisely why I don’t intend to reproduce. “Well, there are a lot of kids in 4. They’re just 5 out of…how many?”

“Well, we were just 2.”

They both go quiet, staring at the slope of trees, the flicker of the cottonwood leaves, the churn of evergreens and the expanse of bright green grass. It’s almost peaceful, and for a second she tries to remove herself from the situation, tries to convince herself that she and Ciaran and Briar are here of their own volition.

“I don’t want to win.” she confesses. “I don’t think I could go through the rest of my life knowing I’d killed people. Having to go out and give a speech in front of their families, it would just feel so… I don’t know, evil?”

“I see what you mean.”

“Because why do I deserve to win but they didn’t? I’m no better than anyone here. Would it have been so horrible if Chantilly killed me and was alive right now? Or if Jasmine hadn’t eaten that fish? They have families, they have friends back home, they have lives they wanted to get back to.” She feels her throat start to tighten. “Someone out there loved Maizie. Someone gave birth to Merino and held him when he was a baby. Somewhere in 2, there’s a photo album full of Magnus’s school pictures.” 

Ciaran sniffles. “Don’t worry about that.”

She shakes her head in an attempt to rid it of any trace of sentimentality. “I’m not. It doesn’t matter anyway. You’re getting out of here. I don’t know how and I don’t really care how. You’re seeing your sisters again.”

Ciaran doesn’t seem to know how to answer that, just lowers his head onto her shoulder and closes his eyes. She knows how exhausted he must be, she doesn’t think she’s seen him sleep for, what, two days? She can’t even tell what two days means anymore. All she wants is to sleep and never wake up.

The sound of a cannon rips through the valley. Ciaran flinches.

“Who do you think that was?”

She’s too tired to try to remember who’s still alive. A section of trees to the Northwest begins to undulate in the wake of the descending craft. This is the first time she’s seen it unobstructed, an angular C-shaped thing with a hatch at the bottom, all shiny black metal, letting off a draft of clear exhaust that makes the atmosphere around it ripple like water. It drops a cable into the woods and comes back holding a body of indeterminable identity. 

“Too far to tell. It isn’t any of us, that’s what matters.”

“I’m hungry.” Ciaran complains.

“I know, me too. We have a can of beans, some crackers, three chicken-of-the-woods and a bit of bread left. We’ll eat later.”

“Can I just have a little bit now?”

“No, Ciaran. I’m sorry. We eat together, that’s one of the rules we came up with.”

“Pleeease…” He whines. She shakes her head. 

“Maybe we’ll get more food later. Sligo might just be busy right now.” Or, more realistically, plastered off his ass.

“Maybe Finnick will send something.” Ciaran says hopefully. She knows it’s unlikely, but humours him anyway, anything to keep him out of the food supply until she’s had at least one piece of mushroom. 

She and Ciaran sit in silence for a while, so long her feet begin to fall asleep. Eventually, the sky begins to change, wispy clouds creeping in to take a bit of the edge off the sun. She realizes distantly that she’s started to burn after sitting out in the open for so long, the tops of her forearms have even begun to blister slightly. 

“We better get moving.” She suggests as they finish off the last of the crackers, a meagre three each. Briar gives her third to Ciaran, who tries to refuse to seem polite but drops the act within a few seconds. “I don’t like being out in the open like this.”

“Where do you want to go?” Briar says for the first time in God knows how long, her voice hoarse.

“I’m thinking as far South as we can. Whoever died earlier was up by that big rock formation, either another Tribute or something else got them, I don’t want to find out what.”

“They could have been sick or starved.” 

“There’s a lot of cover that way. We already know what not to eat, I say we hole up where the forest is dense and wait for our mentors to send us food.”

Briar shakes her head. “I don’t know. I trust your judgment, I guess.”

“Well, if you have a better idea, I’m all ears.” Briar shakes her head again. “What about you, Ciaran, where do you want to go?”

“South is good.” He decides through a mouthful of crackers. A crumb shoots out of his mouth and lands on the side of Briar’s boot, she either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice.

“Alright.” She stands up and starts packing. “Let’s go before it gets dark.”

She arms herself with Maizie’s knife, Ciaran takes Alder’s switchblade and Briar her hatchet and they make their way down the other side of the slope in single file. The area where Marcos died still bears the outline of his body in pink and green. 

The walk is longer than anticipated. From the hill, everything looked closer together, but the slope is long and the grass is high. Briar instructs them to roll their pants down and tuck in the hems, warning of disease-carrying insects, possibly snakes. The wind begins to pick up, causing the grass to sway around them like a merciless green-and-beige sea, and soon every inch of exposed skin is lashed and stinging. Ciaran pauses to rub at his left eye, which eventually necessitates rinsing with a generous portion of their drinking water to absolve it of the offending fibres. Briar takes his place at the front of the line and begins to hack angrily at the grass in their way. She can feel a welt rising on her cheek where it was brushed by the head of a stalk. There is something wrong with the foliage in the arena, at least aside from the few mushrooms that have yet to turn on them. She wonders if the rain that feeds the plants is the same water that comes from the creek, normal grass doesn’t sting to the touch the way this grass does, water should not kill the way she’s seen it kill in the past week.

At the treeline, they find a steep ridge of white stones. She’s only just barely tall enough to climb it on her own, so stays behind to give Ciaran and Briar a hand up along with the supplies. The Southeastern area of the forest is cool and dark with tall deciduous trees with sparse trunks and high plumes, almost resembling umbrellas. 

“So we’re gonna set up here?” Ciaran suggests, his poor eye streaming. 

“I don’t know. What do you think, Briar? I’m thinking let’s look for better cover, but if you think we should stay near the treeline…?”

“Cover.” Briar offers, almost weakly. “I’d rather just wait it out.”

More walking. She has no idea where they’re headed and is losing the energy to care. The landscape is flat and the trees offer almost nothing in the way of protection, not to mention the bare trunks must be nearly impossible to climb. This was a stupid idea , she realizes, watching Ciaran and Briar surveying the forest, trying to find an acceptable place to set up camp. The forest floor is dry and gravelly, interspersed with stones of various sizes and sparse grass. The trees thin out occasionally in places, then come back together like a cluster of toothpicks. Whichever type of tree they are, Briar probably knows, the grove covers a significant amount of ground. They’ve either made a remarkably stupid decision or an accidentally genius one, in the event that all the other Tributes are avoiding this area. 

She’s just getting to that thought, feeling a vague glimmer of hope, when a twig snaps. She hears someone breathe in sharply and looks up to find herself maybe four feet away from a disheveled, knife-wielding Asa.

The handle of Maizie’s knife is now slick in her palm, Ciaran whimpers as she shoves him behind her. Asa stares at them, almost looking like he’s unsure of what to do next, like he knows he should kill them but either doesn’t want to or doesn’t see the point. I can’t take him , she realizes, he’s too tall and too strong.   As they stare each other down in silence, she notices blood under his nails. 

“Shit.” says Asa under his breath. “ Shee-it .”

Briar, who she’d forgotten was even there, hurries forward with her hands up. “It’s okay. They’re with me.”

Asa inspects the three of them for a long, uncomfortable second. “Where’s Alder?”

“He died.” Ciaran cuts in. “Don’t drink the creek water.”

Stop telling people how not to die, do you want to go home or not? Asa bites his lip and turns to Briar.

“Sorry, sunshine.”

Briar shakes her head. “The fish too. Those pink and green ones, they’ll kill you even if you cook them.”

Asa gives her a long, appraising look. “I guess you’d know.”

“It really wasn’t hard to work out. Edible fish don’t smell like bleach.”

“Did you get anything from any sponsors?” Briar prods. “We have some food, if you want any. We have some-.”

She smacks Briar in the shoulder. “You’re not giving our food away.”

Briar smacks her back, harder. “Peace treaty, dumbass. It’s food or him.” She points at Ciaran, who shoots Asa a terrified look. 

You’re really testing this whole friendship thing. “What do you want, then?”

Asa shrugs. “Well, Haymitch sent me matches, but Awinita already found some. That said, I could eat the North end of a South-bound goat right about now.” He tosses her a box of matches, unopened. Briar begins to dig in her bag, retrieving the last of the chicken-of-the-woods, three of them, the size of a grown man’s hand. She can feel her face start to burn as Asa eyes them greedily.

“This good?”

“Perfect.” Briar hands them over. “Awinita’ll like these, she’s been all broken up over that squirrel we ate.” Asa shoves the mushrooms in his bag and swipes his knives together like he’s trying to sharpen them. “By the way, keep South. Pack’s got two camps, one near the mouth of the crick in that big patch of cedars by the mountain and another West a ways at the top of a hill. We’ve been casin’ ‘em both. They’ve got a whole load of food up at the first one and the second one… shit, I couldn’t hardly see what they had there. Citrine was posted up in a tree with a bunch of throwin’ knives.”

“So they’re split up?” Briar asks. 

“Couldn’t tell you, I think they’re taking it in shifts. Citrine was hunting Awinita for a while but she lost her. She’s back at our base now, I told her to stay there. I’m killin’ Eisen today.”

“You think you can?” Ciaran presses, like he’s just been informed of something exciting. 

“He’s the muscle. Once he’s outta the way, the other two will be easy to pick off. He’s gonna be at the crick most likely. I got shit to do back home.” Asa holds his knives up and grins. “Well, if y’all don’t mind, I got a prissy sumbitch to hunt down.” He steps around them. “Good luck, Half-Pint.” He ruffles Ciaran’s hair and gives Briar a friendly punch in the shoulder before taking off North in a light jog.

“HEY-!” She shouts after him, “there’s three of them and one of you, that’s suicide!”

Asa stops and waves back. “Better the devil you know, sweet-pea!” And he’s off again, pulling that stupid harmonica out of his pocket and letting loose with a shrieking arpeggio. They watch him sprint through the woods in silence for a long moment. 

Ciaran’s lips tighten. “He’ll be okay.”

Let them kill each other, I don’t care. “Let’s keep going.”

“I need a break.” Briar says quietly, dropping her backpack and sitting down on the forest floor beside it. “Don’t give me that look, Annie. Asa just bought us at least ten minutes.” 

“There might be other people around-.”

“I’m in Cerise’s good books too.” Briar lays back and folds her hands on her stomach. “And I’m not scared of Turing. What’s he gonna do, compute me to death?”

“Subtract your head from your body.” Ciaran smirks. 

“Divide me into pieces.” They both laugh. “Damn, shrimp-fucker, lighten up.”

“You traded the last of our mushrooms, Alder’s mushrooms, for matches .” 

Briar shrugs. “They only keep for so long.”

“All we have left is a can of beans.”

“We’ll get something later.”

“From who? Blight? Because you’re not Finnick or Sligo’s problem.”

Briar shrugs and lays back, staring up into the canopy of leaves. Ciaran sits beside her, exhaling heavily and picking at the scar on his forehead. 

“Maybe it’s better if we take a break…?” Ciaran offers hesitantly. She gives him a warning look and he directs his gaze back at the ground.

“He’s right. If Citrine pops out from behind a tree, I don’t want to be tired.”

“You’ll get more tired laying around like that.”

“Well, we can only run so far. They’ll corner us eventually, then what do we do?”

“We fight.”

“Well, I’m ready to fight now, if it comes to that.” Briar smirks. “Now or later. But Asa’s gonna be keeping at least one of them busy, so I’m going to focus on getting this stupid rock out of my shoe.”

She begins to pry her boot off. Ciaran rolls up his pants to pick at the blisters on his leg.

“Do you think he was telling the truth?” She presses Briar, who looks up at her with her brow knit. “Asa, do you think he was being honest about where the Careers are camped out?”

“Why would he lie?”

“To keep us around here so he knows where we are. Or maybe he’s in a ‘peace treaty’ with someone else who wants us out of the way. Maybe he’s in with Eisen and they’re coming back together later.”

“Asa hates Eisen, and I’m pretty sure the only ally he has is Awinita. You know, if I were him, I’d ditch her, she’s total dead weight. It’s a miracle she’s made it this far.”

“Maybe she’s good at something you just don’t know about. Maybe she’s the brains of the operation.”

Briar scoffs. “You’re just trying to freak me out and it’s not working.”

“I’m just saying, I’m not sure how much faith I have in this peace treaty business. Asa is competing against us, Briar, he can’t win if we’re alive.”

“Well, you can’t win if either of us are alive, can you?”

“I don’t care about winning, Briar.”

“Oh, bull shit , you don’t care. If you really didn’t care, you’d have just laid down and-...” Briar trails off, freezing in place, her mouth hanging open. Alder, Mose and Chantilly are standing at the edge of the clearing.

The first dead body she ever saw was Teesha’s cousin Nalu, a strapping, soft-spoken boy who had taken them to the beach a few times. He was in a canoe surrounded by possessions from when he’d been alive, he was so still she wasn’t sure he was made of organic matter, his forehead was covered by flowers where he’d smashed it against the reef diving off the pier despite there being a sign that warned against exactly that. He had been 15, she had been 8. When they set the canoe on fire, Teesha’s aunt screamed like she was being attacked. Dad got mad when she covered her ears. 

“Don’t be rude, Anka. This isn’t about you.”

But Teesha’s aunt didn’t see her, she just kept screaming, lunging forward like she would have gone with him if she could. Teesha’s dad and uncle held her back. Within the hour, Nalu was gone, as if he’d never been there to begin with, nothing left but ash dissolving in the water.

She almost knows Briar is stepping forward, her hand catching her in the chest before she is even aware of what she’s doing. Alder’s body looks even more full of poison than it had been, pink and green veins running through his body like someone has painted them on. His mouth is a swollen cluster of bright, leaking blisters, his eyes weeping syrupy venom. Mose’s head is turned at an angle it shouldn’t be able to reach, almost over the back of his right shoulder, his skin is a sick greyish purple where it was once a rich brown, a thin thread of bloody saliva hangs from his split lower lip. Chantilly’s neck is torn open, the blood congealed and blackening, the exposed muscles in her throat working as her mouth hinges open and shut. All three tributes, in their various states of decay, have small glistening black pinholes set right between their eyebrows. When the light of the late evening hits whatever this thing wearing Chantilly’s face is, the small circle reflects like glass. A word comes to her mind as she fumbles for Maizie’s knife, holding it out in anticipation. Lens . 

Briar breathes slowly. Ciaran’s brow furrows. She steps forward, arms out to direct them behind her. Nobody speaks until Not-Mose has turned his snapped neck to zero in on Ciaran, until he is leaping forward in a way the real Mose never could have, hands grabbing Ciaran’s shoulders, teeth snapping after his throat. 

Everything happens incomprehensibly fast. Briar manages to get Not-Mose off Ciaran, catching it in the unnatural bend of its neck with her hatchet and driving it to the ground. She has just managed to smash its head against the rocky ground sufficiently enough to stop it moving when Not-Alder leaps onto her, grabbing her by the neck. Ciaran screams. She is trying to help Briar when she feels a clammy body slam into her from behind, Not-Chantilly’s head swinging loosely on its damaged neck, teeth gnashing like a rabid animal. She manages to plant a hard kick in the thing’s gut, sending it back about six feet. Ciaran has taken hold of a large rock and throws it at Not-Chantilly, catching it in the shoulder as it sways inhumanly back to its feet. The thing lets out a sound like metal screeching on metal, it calls to mind a mutt from a year she can’t remember, must have been in the late 40s or early 50s, she remembers seeing it as a re-run right after Horemheb Shale won. The thing had been modeled after some long-extinct reptile that hunted in packs and called to each other across the barren arena with a blood-curdling keen. It killed a girl by biting down on her throat and shaking her, killed her two allies the same way, then began eating them. 

“ASA!” Briar shrieks, trying to free herself from Not-Alder’s grip, the weeping boils on its face streaking her uniform as it tries to bite at her stomach. “CERISE!” Not-Chantilly is recovering its footing and advancing forward.

“Briar, shut-!” she attempts, but Chantilly takes her by the neck, drags her along the ground, and then they’re falling together down some rocky drop-off, bloody teeth set in a too-wide mouth gnashing entirely too close to her face. Ciaran, who she last saw trying to help Briar, screams her name and she lashes out with her arms in what she assumes is his general direction, finding an alternation of rough earth and open air. 

There is a crunch, almost mechanical, and an outlet of air that smells like rust and rot. The pain is incomprehensible, but her breath keeps sucking back in and out. 

She finds her feet after a span of time she can’t approximate. Not-Chantilly has stopped moving. She doesn’t want to be around if or when it starts again. She leans over this approximation of the girl she once felt guilty for, stares into the camera lens set in her fake forehead and spits as productively and forcefully as she can. A few of her teeth are uncomfortably loose. 

“ANNIE!” Briar’s voice sounds from above, followed by Ciaran’s. 

“Where is she?”

Even from her vantage point, she can tell Briar is getting flustered again. “Don’t ask me, I was a little busy trying to kill that thing!”

“It dragged her away somewhere. ANNIE, WHERE ARE YOU?”

“Don’t yell like that, there could be someone around.”

Hypocrite. Trying to get her bearings, she tilts her head skyward and immediately regrets it, collapsing to the hard floor of what she assumes is some kind of… hole? Canyon? She can see the sky through the cover of trees, she can see the trail where she and the thing fell. 

“I’m down here.” she manages, her voice barely passing a whisper. Briar and Ciaran’s voices are softer now too, but close enough to make out.

“-wait here… comes back?” Briar.

“…if we… watch… parachute… Finnick…?” Ciaran.

“…hurts… lay down…” Briar. 

“…hope not… cannon… wrist…” Ciaran.

“I’m in the hole.” She attempts again, this time the effort takes the air out of her and she is left no choice but to lay flat on the ground, staring up into the sky. Her head is on fire, there is a ring of bloody teeth marks on her left forearm. I’m down here. Don’t leave, I’m coming up, I just need to rest first. I need to rest...

She rolls over, spits a tooth into her palm and feels herself falling again.

Chapter Text

He is halfway through breakfast, still a little drunk, when Briar and Ciaran get the gas. 

They’re asleep about twenty feet downhill of the gorge the mutt dragged Annie into when a night-vision camera set in a nearby tree trunk picks up movement. As it comes online, Briar is sitting up and beginning to cough, undercut by a low hiss. He remembers gas traps from Augustus’s Games, having lost his own Tribute, an 18 year old Lanistarium girl named Caretta Hook, to one. The gas drifts out of a spout built into some natural feature of the arena, this year a tree under which Briar and Ciaran have taken shelter, the one that had blasted Caretta in the face while she slept had been nestled at the root of a small, leafless bush. She and the girl from 1 had been scouting for food they could steal, The girl from 6 had been a favourite of Ptolemy’s since she was reaped and was eating like a queen. The Career Pack, Caretta and Augustus among them, had been watching her parachutes hungrily, and finally Caretta and Amethyst decided she had to go. 

The tactile hallucinations had woken her up and soon she was raving, shrieking and clawing at her skin. Amethyst had been keeping watch just out of range of the gas and soon Caretta was fully out of her mind. It had all happened so fast; Amethyst trying to reason with her, trying to calm her down, Caretta snatching the machete off Amethyst’s belt and taking it to her own throat. Caesar and Claudius had offered some explanation about the gas, trying to lead in with a lighthearted tone, but it immediately went sour. There are occasional suicides in the arena, but they are often relatively quiet; a Tribute will walk into a cave and never come out, starve themselves, eat a questionable berry or mushroom and curl up still. Caretta’s was all chemical rage and splattering blood, Amethyst screaming and trying to staunch it while Caretta thrashed, as if she couldn’t remember she was supposed to be dying. It was the worst phone call he’d ever had to make, and afterward he went up to the 11th floor and sobbed wretchedly in Seeder’s arms. 

Briar sits up for a while, staring ahead into the dark forest before she shakes Ciaran awake. 

“There’s someone here.” she whispers to him. “Don’t move.” Ciaran whimpers and Briar shushes him again. 

“Maybe it’s Annie?” Ciaran offers. Briar shakes her head.

“Footsteps are too heavy.”

There is nothing to be heard except the soft susurrus of trees and the distant, almost ocean-like groan that never seems to go away, he wonders if this arena is near a larger body of water just out of bounds. He’s always found it funny that the arenas are just… built out there in the world. His own had been low on the edge of District 11, a dense marsh with thick air, a brutal sun and legions of blood-sucking insects. Minimal mutts that year, too, the bugs and snakes and alligators more than held their own against the interloping cannon fodder. When he got home, the pebbly beach by the Victor’s Village felt like a warm hug, nothing could hide in the sparse marram grass. Willow’s arena had been somewhere to the North of Panem in that fabled frozen no-man’s-land, Horemheb’s in a vast plain at the very Northernmost border of 6 and 9. He’ll have to fuck another Gamemaker to get another look at the map to contextualize these Games. He wants to. If Annie is going to die, he wants to know where it happened. The thought makes him shiver.

 Briar stands up, draws her hatchet, and, without warning, takes off into the night. Ciaran yells for her to stop. Annie is still half-out, her pulse thumping belligerently as she tries to fight the concussion enough to stand up. The Chantilly mutt lies dead beside her. He feels her wake up fully, feels her heart begin to hammer his wrist as she becomes aware of Ciaran screaming for Briar to come back as she pursues something only she can see. 

He keeps his eyes on the TV as he stumbles into his clothes. Ciaran has begun to cough violently as he leaps to his feet and pursues Briar, Caesar is green-screened in next to him as a drone follows him through the pitch-black woods. 

“Folks, I can’t believe I’m about to say this but we are now on Day 9 of these 70th Hunger Games and, well, it looks like Miss Bains and Young Mister Whelk from Districts 7 and 4 have had a bit of a rude awakening!”

Ciaran is too small, his body is processing the hallucinogen too fast, and before anyone knows it he’s fainted, faceplanting down a small but steep ridge as Briar makes for the other side of the arena. His communicuff lights up immediately with a message from Sligo, who must have spent the night in The Pit. 

Downstairs NOW.

The elevator ride is nauseating. He’s almost certain it’s never jolted like this before and the panoramic view of the interior of the building has him tasting something he doesn’t even remember drinking. He stumbles out of the elevator, knocking shoulders with either an escort or a stylist who he doesn’t recognize, getting a high-pitched scoff in return. 

Sligo looks like absolute hell, at least more so than usual, standing near the entrance to The Pit with Wiress, whose Tribute died on Day 1. It’s no secret that they had a brief thing when they were both new Victors, Wiress having won the year after Sligo. They’d both been good-looking but a little off, both Interior Victors and both traumatized beyond repair. The relationship didn’t last, Sligo was a dead-end drunk by 22 and Wiress’s interest in him seemed like it was more scientific than anything else, once he passed out on top of her one too many times she wisely decided she’d seen enough. Then Phoca happened. They seem to have stayed on good terms though, Wiress has a hand on Sligo’s shoulder and seems to be saying something reassuring.

“I owe you, hon, seriously.” Sligo is saying.

“Don’t worry about it.” Wiress lilts in that spacey voice of hers. “We’ll catch up later.” She pulls Sligo into a stiff hug, cringing away as his hands begin to roam down the small of her back and just South of her belt. “There’s Finnick.” She offers him a twitchy smile-and-wave and scurries off back into the cavea. 

Sligo gives him a sullen look, almost looks like he’s gearing up to complain but doesn’t seem to have the energy.

“You got sponsor money?” He is about to say yes when Sligo cuts him off. “You damn well better, you’ve been running around all week and haven’t sent Annie shit, you’ve either got sponsor money or Slitcrawler at this rate.”

The money he’s gathered from Zelmyra and Apophis has depreciated in value significantly over the past couple days, the prices of even basic gifts jacked up exponentially to thin the pool. This has happened before and he feels like a goddamn idiot, remembering the bread he sent Levi last year that ended up feeding Bijou. God, what can I even send Annie right now that will help? It’s not like they’ll let me buy her a ladder … Food might keep her going for a while down there, but she can’t just sit in a hole and wait for everyone else to die off. Not only that, she’s at the top of Liv’s kill list and totally immobilized, probably injured from the fall and separated from her allies, who are now separated from each other as well. Last he saw Briar, she almost all the way across the valley and Ciaran is just beginning to come to, his heartbeat on Sligo’s wrist jittery and irregular. He can’t say he feels bad for Orestes Blanche following his failure to take out the alliance, at least Liv is breathing down somebody else’s neck for once.

Sligo leads him into a drop room down the hall from The Pit, a small outpost of the Gamemaker’s Guild manned by a group of Tier 5s from which mentors can deploy gifts. Just before he can cross the threshold, someone grabs him by the shoulder. He turns around to see Enobaria looking like she just woke up, wearing unfashionable wire-rimmed bifocals, sweats, a worn grey t-shirt hand-painted with TEAM SHALE , a memento from Horemheb’s Games, and not a drop of makeup. 

“Hey. You better get her something good.” She shoves her hand secretly into the pocket of his pants, leaving behind a wad of cash. 

“Enobaria, I can’t-.”

“No, I owe you. You helped me out with Horemheb, remember? I had a three-way at Ptolemy’s last night and they actually tipped, I just remembered I forgot to pay you back. Now we’re even.” She links her arm with his and drags him into the drop room. 

“40, 45, 50, there you go...” Sligo is grumbling, hunched over the monitor and dialing up a bottle of water, some electrolyte crystals and a pack of jerky. “You’re welcome, you little dunce. When you get out of there, I’m gonna tan your hide.”

Poor Ciaran is sprawled in the grass, the parachute holding his gifts casting a swaying shadow over him as it drifts lazily to the ground. He’s been laying out in the open for hours as is evidenced by the angry glow of sunburn on the left, skyward-facing side of his body. 

“Um, Miss Ashlar, unless you have a Tribute-.” One of the Tier 5s begins to butt in. Enobaria answers with a long stare and a slow probing of her tongue along her upper row of teeth. The Tier 5 blanches and backs down. The effect she has on Capitol people has always made him laugh, especially after having known her for five years. The Enobaria he knows can’t stand to eat meat and has such frequent nightmares about her Games that she has to keep a bucket by her bed to throw up in. He can’t picture her killing a spider.

Once Ciaran’s gifts have landed safely next to him and he has begun to stir, Sligo cedes the monitor and hurries back to The Pit. He types in Annie’s ID number, 004F70, which brings up a brief rundown of general information before a drone finds her. 

His breath catches in his throat. Annie is in worse shape than he thought, just beginning to regain consciousness. One of her bicuspids has been knocked out and there is a thin line of dried blood at the corner of her mouth, just about every inch of exposed skin on her body is either scraped or bruised. She doesn’t seem able to stand yet, and he recognizes the loss of coordination that comes with a concussion. She is crying weakly, cringing away from the Chantilly mutt, which isn’t moving but is gruesome enough still. He feels gravity start to increase when he realizes she is muttering something that sounds like ‘help me’.

Before he realizes what’s happening, the floor is rushing up to meet his eyeline and his knees are folding up to his chest. He feels arms, long, hard ones, catching him, a hand steering his face into a cotton-clad shoulder, the smell of cigarettes and coffee and the artificial raspberry scent that comes out of the Tribute Centre showers if you want it to.

“Shh.” Enobaria’s fingers are running through his hair. “Just breathe. I know it looks bad, but that’s why we’re here.”

“Miss Ashlar-.”

“Shut your mouth.” Enobaria’s voice switches from reassuring to threatening and back again. “Can you stand up?”

“Livia-.” He chokes out, the syllables coming up in wet, pathetic shudders. “That fucking- that fucking old cunt Livia-.”

“I know.” She’s pulling him to his feet now, he feels sick, his hangover is roaring back and he knows he’s going to throw up when he sees Annie again. “You have money. We’ll get her something that she can use. Do you want me to do it?” Eyes squeezed shut, he nods. “Okay. Let’s focus on getting her out of the hole first- Oh, shit, perfect. Finnick, they’ve got rope for 60. You have more than enough.”

“Is it long enough?”

“Looks like it. I’m going to buy it.”

“Okay. Fast.”

He hears the door swing open, two sets of footprints that stop short just past the doorway.

“Hey, just give us a minute, okay?” Enobaria says cordially, eyes fixed on the screen. He turns around, avoiding any glimpses of Annie, to see Beetee and Chaff in the doorway. They look at him with twin looks of awkward pity. 

“You okay, kid?” Chaff ventures.

“He’s fine, we just need a little more time.” They nod and turn to wait outside the door. Her hand is resting between his shoulderblades. 

“She’s out of water.” He manages. “I think Briar was carrying it.”

“Okay. We can swing that. But we’ll stop there, okay? We don’t want to weigh her down.” He nods, Enobaria brings a hand up to his cheek to make him look at her. “She’s going to be fine. People have survived worse. Okay?”

“Okay. Sorry.” 

She pulls him into a tight hug, sometimes he forgets how strong she is. “Nothing to be sorry for. I’m gonna stay with you until she’s out.”

The walk back to The Pit, five minutes at most, feels like it takes years. He stares at the back of Enobaria’s neck, the tight black curls right at her hairline, the tiny gold clasp of that necklace she never takes off, he tries to think of anything but Annie.

The screen is displaying an indignant, scab-covered Citrine when they enter, she looks like she’s getting ready to murder Aloisa, who has found her way back to the camp by the creek, where a significant margin of their food has gone missing. Aloisa is protesting her innocence, saying that someone must have snuck up and taken  it during the night. Citrine is flexing her hand at her side, visibly just itching to slap her. 

“Those two are gonna kill each other before anyone else has the chance to.” Enobaria observes. Brutus and Cashmere are shooting embarrassed glances at each other. Citrine steps forward and gives Aloisa a hard shove, sending her to the ground. Aloisa recovers quickly, springing back up and aiming a punch at Citrine’s jaw. She misses and stumbles forward, Citrine flits behind her and gives her a hard box in the ear.

Eisen is back at their outpost on the hill, having narrowly avoided a vicious-looking Asa last night, currently avoiding a catfight and a surprisingly mild one too, considering neither girl has gone for any of their ample arsenal in a setting where they're more than allowed to. The 12s have linked back up again and are patrolling the Northeastern half of the valley. Little Awinita seems to be coming into her own, her jaw set and her black hair loose and wild, Haymitch was even able to get her a few sponsors. She and Asa look like protagonists of one of those old books about the Rebellion, about the people who fled North and lived off the land, made a whole new country just out of reach of the Capitol. Most were burned, but he did see one once. It’s something of an open secret in Portside that the local library has… something the Peacekeepers wouldn’t be happy about if they saw it. He remembers being at one of Mom’s friends' houses one night for drinks soon after his win, a woman named Elva Abalone. She’d  mentioned something about a false wall behind the reference section, broken off giggling and refilled Mom’s glass. Soon after the funeral, when the world had felt so grey and empty, when food had no flavour and he had felt so tired that even sleeping felt like a chore, when he could still feel Ptolemy’s damp chest hair on his back, Mags had taken him to a dinner with her friends. They were a couple her age, Galatea and Wake Luiseño. The dinner was fine, he didn’t talk much and Galatea and Wake knew better than to press him, just kept his plate full and let him watch the small TV in their living room, where he found a rerun of a Capitol reality show about the chaotic inner workings of an insufferable nouveau riche family, The Peppers of Palatine Park . Panataia and Palaemonia Pepper were in the throes of a heated slap fight over an allegedly plagiarized wedding theme when he saw it on the shelf, behind a picture of Galatea and Wake’s two granddaughters and a painted scallop shell. The spine was worn but the title was legible, The Village . He’d inspected it, thinking it might having something to do with the Victor’s Village, a place he was desperately trying not to begin to hate. The cover showed a feral-looking couple, the man had a gun slung over his shoulder and the woman, her long hair flowing in the wind like a flag, was carrying a large bundle wrapped in a quilt. The author was named QP Butcher, so he assumed they were from 10, backed up by the long striped skirt the woman was wearing, of which he’d seen many when his Victory Tour stopped there. The girl from 10 that year was a fragile 14 year old named Marisita, her partner a 17 year old slaughterhouse worker named Shank who had tried and failed to protect her. She had worn a skirt like that at her Reaping. He had opened the book to the first chapter, which he soon saw described the couple featured on the cover, Paul and Elena, fleeing their hatchery town under the cover of darkness, paying off a Peacekeeper. He hadn’t known what to think, but soon he heard the floorboards compress behind him and turned around to see Wake giving him a stern look. He knew immediately that he’d seen something he wasn’t supposed to. Mags visited the Luiseños often, but never brought him back there again.

“Sorry to interrupt, ladies-!” Caesar bloviates over a freeze-frame of Citrine and Aloisa, the latter of whom has seized a fistful of the former’s hair, “-but it looks like someone’s got mail!”

His heart is in his throat when he sees Annie all but leap to grab the parachute holding her water and the rope, please, God, let the rope help … She goes for the water first, uncapping the canteen and sucking it back like she’s never seen water before. She polishes off half and saves the rest. She knows what she’s doing, she’s got it, she’s got it … Enobaria has a hand on his shoulder and is watching Annie with a hopeful look on her face. 

“I hope you don’t mind.” Enobaria whispers, “I left her a note with the rope. I would have asked you what you wanted to say but I didn’t want to get you more worked up.”

Annie unwraps the rope, there is a small slip of paper sitting on top of it, the size of a business card. She stares at it, then picks the note up and presses it to her lips. 

“What did you say?” Annie is surveying the edge of the chasm now, fully clued into what she needs to do. She must see something, because she lunges back for the rope and unfurls it.

“Miss Cresta has just survived a twenty foot fall, nothing to sneeze at-.” Caesar cuts in, “-but it looks like mentor Finnick Odair-.” he pauses for a loop of pre-recorded feminine squeals. “-yes, yes, believe me, I get it- It looks like Finnick has chosen exactly the right gift. The question remains, how will she use it?” Caesar’s face is a little bloodless. He knows Liv won’t be happy about this. He doesn’t care.

“I just wrote what Brutus wrote for my first sponsor gift. ‘See you soon’.” She shoots him a serrated smirk. He knows Enobaria isn’t a hugger, but when he wraps his arms around her, lifting her awkwardly off her feet, she lets him. 

It doesn’t take Annie long to find a long, relatively thick cluster of roots sticking out of the wall of the gorge. After about four tries, the water bottle tied to the end of the rope to give it some counterweight, she manages to get it on, an end of the rope in each hand, the middle comfortably snagged on the roots. He knows he should be relieved, but it feels like this was too easy. As Annie crawls her way up the rough wall, manages to throw her leg over the twist of roots and haul herself up over the edge, he can’t help but think of what she’s going to run into back on the surface. As she collapses on her back, breathing hard, turning over momentarily to spit up a bit of water and another tooth, he realizes that Liv has once again failed to kill her. 

Caesar loses interest in Annie, opting instead to cut back to Citrine and Aloisa, who seem to have exhausted themselves and are pointedly ignoring each other.

“Now you may be wondering, Singer… Where have I heard the name Singer before?” Caesar babbles. “Well, that’s because Miss Citrine here is the younger sister of none other than Signet Singer, third runner-up of year 66!” 

He pulls up an image of a strapping boy with Citrine’s same dusky colouring and sylphish features, his black hair slicked back. He suddenly remembers Signet, a cocky Lanistarium graduate, 17 at the time of his Games, who had been eviscerated by this horrific mutt that was somewhere between a wolf and a lizard. He doesn’t remember much of those Games, only that Horemheb won and only barely, and that his ensuing month of medical treatment had nearly killed both him and Enobaria, who had all but appointed herself as his adoptive mother. It was a rough year. He had spent the majority of it between Liv’s legs. 

The younger, surviving Singer looks like she’s getting ready to suggest a truce when there is a rustling behind them and suddenly Cerise from 11 is bursting out of the treeline like a bat out of Hell, pausing only to snatch up an armful of MREs. She’s a real athlete, he remembers Chaff saying she’s from an orchard town called Cantaloupe Corners, the name is cute, the living conditions are not. Her lanky frame is almost all muscle and she moves effortlessly, shooting through the camp like a determined hummingbird. Now we know who’s been stealing their food … 

Aloisa, a heavy-footed girl better suited to hand-to-hand, takes off after her while Citrine draws her machete and starts to survey the woods for any other intruders. Citrine calls out to Turing and Deena, inviting them to ‘try it, you little cunts!’ as a drone follows Aloisa and Cerise. Cerise looks almost totally unbothered, leaping over plants and stumps like a deer, her many tiny braids wound into big one that smacks her between the shoulderblades as she runs like it’s patting her on the back for a job well done. Aloisa is throwing out every profane word she knows, enough that it’s starting to sound like one long beep, and Cerise is throwing back her head and laughing, knowing she’s won this one. Aloisa is starting to tire, her face red and moist. Cerise takes a sharp turn where the trees start to thin into the valley and makes a bee-line for a seemingly random location somewhere in the Northeastern woods. Aloisa gives chase. It’s not until Cerise has made it a good way into the trees that he figures out what’s going on. Caesar seems to as well, because he and Claudius are leaning forward, mouths open when Cerise shouts ‘NOW!’ and an arrow flies out of the bush, catching Aloisa square in the left thigh. She drops heavily to the ground and Turing jumps out from behind a large rock, little Deena from 5 in tow with a bow just over half her size slung on her shoulder. The three of them begin to run North as Aloisa shudders in pain on the ground, visibly contemplating whether to pursue. She tries to get up and falls again, still cursing a blue streak. 

“Deena the little sharpshooter!” Claudius exclaims, “who’d-a-thunk?!” 

Once they are well out of the way, right up against that big rock formation, Deena is congratulated with her pick of the stolen MREs, of which Cerise has grabbed enough to allow pickiness. Deena chooses chicken and rice, which she enjoys all to herself, while Turing and Cerise split what looks like pulled pork and wheat bread, basking in their satisfaction. 

He and Enobaria draw their legs up in their seats to let Brutus through, presumably on his way to a drop room, while Soleil, Beetee and Chaff are down towards the front, accepting congratulations from Athena and Lillian, each one of their communicuffs lit up in the green flash of a new sponsor. Suddenly he wishes Annie had allied with Cerise or even Turing for that matter. Beetee’s Tribute is 16, one of the best 3 has had in a long time, tall and decently built with light skin, neatly cut black hair and flinty black eyes. He has wide, almost awkward hands that he hasn’t quite grown into yet, and it seems like there might be something unspoken between him and Cerise, who is his age and absolutely gorgeous, with her vinelike tumble of braids and lithe, lush body. Whatever is going on between them, the way their hands touch as they set up camp, the way Cerise eyes Turing’s chest and back through his uniform, the way Turing helps Cerise tie her hair back before she bends down to light their campfire, Deena doesn’t give two shits. She’s the Ciaran of the group , he realizes, then feels like he might hurl.

He catches sight of a flash of red hair towards the exit. Rennette is leading a hesitant, nauseous-looking Willow into The Pit. Blight waves them over but Willow turns to Rennette and shakes her head. They talk for a bit, Rennette shrugs then pulls Willow in for an awkward hug before making her way back over to Blight. She sits down beside him and plants a big kiss on his cheek. Haymitch, who has been sitting close by, makes a face and moves three seats down. 

“Is this seat taken?” says Willow glumly, now standing over him. He gestures for her to sit. Enobaria glances over and offers her a sympathetic wave. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just here for moral support.”

He puts an arm around her, which she leans into, her head on his shoulder. She smells like vanilla and a bit of cedar, then he notices the bundle on a string around her neck. He doesn’t know much about 7, having only been there once, but he knows that there are certain plants that are considered to have certain protective or luck-enhancing properties where Willow comes from. He knows she often carries cedar and sage, the former to keep herself safe, the latter to keep her energy clean, lest she return to 7’s sylvan Victor’s Village with Capitol glitter and grime poisoning her aura. 

Mags, Sligo and Asenath, moving in a clump like they’ve formed their own little alliance, file into the row just in front of them. Asenath offers a grimace of a smile and almost stumbles, Sligo catching her by the elbow. They are both, as evidenced by the indignant expression Mags shoots him and the tangy miasma of novelty cocktails, totally hammered. The clock on his communicuff reads 12:28. Asenath crashes awkwardly into a seat beside Fulgora, the escort for 5, and they start up a shrill conversation along the lines of ‘isn’t Deena just a little doll’ and ‘oh, I could just eat Ciaran up’, et cetera. Sligo sits beside her and Mags beside him, who turns back with that warm grandma smile of hers. Her hand finds his knee and squeezes.

“Nice going with the rope. I have a good feeling.”

He isn’t sure what to say to that, just smiles in return. 

It’s about an hour and a half before he sees Annie again. She seems almost invigorated, gathering the rope up and hanging it in a loose bundle from her belt loop. Near the gorge, she finds where Ciaran and Briar had been camped out. Her crossbody bag is still there, and she hovers for a moment, trying to figure out where they could have gone. The gas trap is spent, thank God, and she finds tracks in the dirt that have obviously been left by either Briar or Ciaran. Enobaria has just come back from a run for drinks and comes back with three fruity highballs and a plate of assorted meats, cheeses and fruits when Annie starts to follow them, down towards the valley.

“Breakfast of champions.” she quips as she takes her seat again. Willow curls up against him and nibbles reluctantly on a strawberry.  

As she walks, Annie finds Alder’s switchblade dropped in a bush. She looks around the woods, either looking for her allies or making sure she’s alone, then she makes a pained face, bringing her hand up to her ribs. She bends over and begins to dry heave, all that comes up is water.

“Should we send food now?” he asks Enobaria, who shakes her head.

“We’ll wait until she’s settled. We don’t want to drop something while she’s still running around, we don’t want to miss her or make it easier for someone to track her.”

“It looks like Miss Cresta is starting to figure out what happened to her allies!” Caesar states the obvious, popping up next to Annie on the screen. “But I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were her!”

He brings up a map, 7F is all the way on the other side of the arena, barely moving, while 4M is trailing along the Northern end, just slightly West. That makes him a little sick, as he can tell Ciaran is beginning to get a little too close to the Career Pack’s secondary camp, where 1M is standing guard. 12F, 12M and 1F are also a little too close for comfort, 5F, 3M and 11F still feasting under the rock wall. What gives him pause, however, is what the map is displaying just behind that huge grey mass, an expanse of rippling blue. He remembers a brief snatch of that conversation he overheard between Blanche and Flickerman, and suddenly he feels sick. We’ll push them North and drop the dam on them . It’s not a rock formation, it’s not a mountain, it’s not even a border wall. He’s trying to figure out what to make of this, how he can even wrap his brain around worrying about it, when the map disappears and Annie is back, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand and walking resolutely through the woods, shaking her head as if clearing it of an unsavoury image. 

He can smell Cashmere’s perfume behind him and is debating whether or not to take her up on that fabled line of blow when Citrine’s image fills the screen. She’s still at the food hoard and staring into the bush, machete raised. 

“And remember, folks, it’s not too late to submit any last minute sponsorships at a post office near you! If Cerise sticks around much longer, it looks like Citrine here is gonna need it!”

A commercial break. Willow, Augustus and Athena in that damn ad spot again, their white athleisure and gold laurel wreaths, Horn Of Plenty playing full blast as they pose in front of CGI fireworks. Beside him, Willow makes a gagging sound. He and Enobaria draw their legs back up into their seats as Brutus returns, holding a pint of beer.

“Honour,” says the Athena on the screen, followed by a “glory” from Augustus, then a “pride” from Willow. “We are the chosen, we are the pinnacle, we are-.” The last few bars of the anthem are louder now, playing them out before they all announce in unison, “-the Victors.” He imagines some underpaid low-ranking Gamemaker phoning that soppy bullshit in, hungover and overworked.

“Do I actually look like that?” Augustus quips a couple rows back to scattered laughter.

“Better lay off the posca there, bud.” Gilt, an older Victor from 1 and Augustus’s former mentor, quips back, giving his protege an amiable smack in the gut, where the past couple years of cope-drinking have started to settle. It hasn’t affected Augustus’s demand at Ptolemy’s though, in fact, this is only the second time he’s seen him in 9 days. Sure, he isn’t mentoring this year, but Victors from 1 and 2 are always present in the Tribute Centre for interviews unless of course they’re stealing a few hours of sleep or, in the case of almost everyone under the age of 35, at the Satis-Factory. He knows Augustus has a regular, a high-ranking Gamemaker, who is entirely too into knifeplay, and today he is wearing a sweater with a high collar and sleeves that are just slightly overlong. Poor bastard …

“Oh, there she is.” Mags reaches back to tap him on the leg. Annie has broken the treeline and is now standing on a long, sloping hill that leads down into the bowl of the valley. She seems too tired to keep walking, slumping to the ground, her hand resting on the left side of her ribcage. She’s hurt for sure, even if her fall was somewhat broken by the Chantilly mutt, she still fell twenty fucking feet, that must be the equivalent of falling off the roof of a house. Annie stares out over the valley before her face crumples and she starts to cry. If she sees the drone, she doesn’t let on like she does.

“M’sorry.” she chokes out, to no-one in particular, picked up by the drone’s microphone. “I’m sorry, I can’t… I can’t…” she slams her fist into her forehead, curling in on herself and breaking down. I should send her something else… He tries to take a mental inventory of anything she may have lost when she got separated from Briar and Ciaran. She’s brought the rope and water with her, smart but she needs to eat something. She has Maizie’s knife, but maybe she should have a better weapon? A hatchet or maybe a machete?

The drone watches Annie for a long time, a small brown and khaki speck in the vast green expanse of the valley, curled in on herself and twitching with desperate sobs. Mags is leaning forward to talk to Wiress in the row in front of her and Sligo is reaching back to receive a flask that Brutus is passing forward, passed to him by Augustus. The image switches to Briar, who appears to be hopelessly lost, looping in delirious circles through the woods on the other side of the valley. She must have been running all night, now she’s exhausted but still too ripped on whatever was in that gas to relax. She sways to a stop, looks up into the trees as if she’s trying to use the sun to place herself, and stumbles to the ground. The poor kid looks like her head is still spinning. Close to the front, he can see Blight counting what remains from her sponsors. Aloisa is lost too, barely ambulatory, unarmed save for a small knife, calling Eisen and Citrine’s names interchangeably. He feels for her, she was the weak one in the group, she’ll be lucky if they don’t circle back and kill her if they decide she’s worth the effort. He glances over to see a grim-faced Brutus taking another drink, makes a mental note to buy him a round when she inevitably bites it. Back to Annie, still crying.

A high-pitched scream echoes through the valley and Annie almost jumps out of her skin. At the edge of the frame, he can make out a small figure tearing through the bright grass, pursued by something about double its size. Another scream, two specific syllables bursting out of desperate, breathless lungs. The khaki Annie-speck is suddenly moving, and a quick cut to a hovering drone shot confirms the sinking feeling in his gut.

A disheveled, unarmed Ciaran is bolting out of the woods, pants torn, knees and palms skinned, face flushed. He’s moving astoundingly fast for someone so small, unnaturally so, almost as if his short, skinny limbs shouldn’t be heavy enough to cover the ground he’s covering with such fury. About twenty feet behind, Eisen is gaining on him, armed to the teeth, three times bigger, murder in his eyes.

“What’s this?!” Claudius cuts in over the image of Ciaran fleeing for his life, “Folks, we have a new development on our hands! District 1’s Eisen Deschamps appears to have zeroed in on our favourite little guppy, District 4’s Ciaran Whelk! ”

Ciaran screams for Annie again, Annie screams back for Ciaran.

Caesar, insufferable as ever, chimes in. “I wouldn’t hold my breath there, Claudius, it looks like they’ve got company! ”

Annie wastes no time in hauling ass down the hill, beelining towards Ciaran, knife raised level with Eisen’s jugular should they collide. As impetuous as the situation is, in the moment, he’s proud of her. She can be vicious when she wants to be, and he regrets having wasted what little time he had with her. Her 9 could have easily been made into an 11. She’s fast, she’s strong, she’s firmly uninterested in dying and all without a day of Lanistarium training. All things considered; her awkwardness, her sentimentality, her questionable taste in allies, given the chance, Annie Cresta is a fucking menace.

“Wuh-oh! ” Claudius blithers, as if reading his mind. “Looks like Annie Cresta, also of District 4, isn’t gonna take this one lying down! ”

He’s just mulling over this thought, leaning forward to watch his scrappy Portside girl deal a graceful killing blow to this crazy-eyed meathead’s neck, when Ciaran hits the ground with a nauseating crunch. Eisen has tackled him, driving his muscle-bound body right into the side of Ciaran’s left knee, snapping both legs like twigs against the hard ground. He hears Templesmith and Flickerman groaning before they cut to the studio. In a tiny square at the bottom of the screen, Ciaran writhes in pain on the dusty ground as Annie skids to a stop about seven feet from them, Eisen backs her off with a cocked throwing axe.

“So close!” Claudius crows. Caesar smooths his cat-puke-yellow hair with a palm that he just knows is putrid and clammy with stage-light sweat and makes a face at someone off camera.

“Drop it, bitch.” Eisen barks, loud enough for the cameras to pick up, the square slowly zooming back in to fill the screen, replaced at the top left corner by Caesar and Claudius in the studio. He’s gathered Ciaran’s limp body up against him in a tight headlock. Annie stares at him. “I said DROP IT!” He shouts, Annie flinches and lets go of the knife. It lands beside her right foot. “Kick it over.”

“Let go of him-.”

“KICK IT OVER.” Eisen orders.

For a long, nauseating second, there is just the three of them. Ciaran, his legs dragging limp beside him, clawing at the arm around his neck, Annie kicking the knife across the ground towards Eisen and raising her hands. Ciaran's mouth is moving but no sound is coming out, Annie and Eisen are staring at each other, their expressions indecipherable. In the back of his mind he wishes a fourth person would break the treeline and kill all three of them so it would just be over. Nobody is breathing. To his left, Sligo is white-knuckling the collar of his shirt. To his right, Mags and Asenath are clinging to each other.

“Just let him go.” Annie begs. “It’s me you want.”

Eisen keeps staring, impassive, his arm locked around Ciaran’s throat, compressing his windpipe.

“Run-!” Ciaran manages. “Annie-! Run-!”

“Let him GO!” Annie demands, clenching her raised hands. He feels himself clenching his own. Annie’s mouth moves soundlessly for a few seconds before she gets out a weak “please… please, Eisen…”

He's seen a lot in five years, but never anything like the second that follows. Maybe the worst part of it is the fact that it wasn't just one motion, that Eisen had to think about it, drop Ciaran, place his foot in between his shoulderblades and bring the axe down, that Annie was already stepping forward to grab Ciaran and that she doesn't realize what's happening because it's not something that happens. Not in Portside, not to little kids. But it happens, and by the time Ciaran's head lands face-up at Annie's feet, the room has dissolved into an indecipherable cacophony and she is still standing there, his 12 years of life pooling in the grass. Behind him, he hears Bijou start to whimper, hears Gloss trying and failing to calm her down, his communicuff lighting up  as Eisen gains about 17 new sponsors. There has never been a beheading before. There have been bad deaths, crushed skulls and broken spines and impalements and stomachs torn open, but never a beheading. Eisen stumbles back, absentmindedly dropping the axe and staring at what he’s just done. He’s gone white as a sheet, so ready to kill just minutes ago, it’s all too real for him now.

The noise Annie makes is like nothing human, a guttural, denatured wail that sends ice through his veins. She snatches up the axe where Eisen has dropped it. Eisen seems to slowly realize what she’s doing and tries to flee, but Annie launches herself forward and drives him to the ground almost effortlessly, kneeling on his shoulders, gripping the axe in both hands, arcing skyward and smashing it into his face over and over and over, punctuated with that horrible, feral keen. 

Maybe six seconds later, maybe eight, Annie is slack-jawed, exhausted, and covered in blood, staring into the middle distance, straddling what remains of Eisen with the axe still lodged in what was once his forehead. Maybe twenty feet away, Cerise, Deena and Turing are watching, stunned, from behind a sparse cover of bush. Turing has shoved the two girls behind him and Cerise has her arms around  Deena, who is maybe half an inch taller than Ciaran and half a pound heavier. When she looks over at them, they take off again. Annie makes no effort to follow them, just slowly stands up, throws up about two feet away from what was once Eisen, loots both bodies and walks slowly uphill back into the woods. She holds the axe that killed both of them at arm's length, as if it's going to attack her of its own accord.

“Fuck.” Mags whispers into her hands. “Oh God.” Down the row, Asenath begins to sob. Fulgora puts an arm around her. Sligo glances back at him, his mouth is hanging open, for once he has nothing to say, under any other circumstances it would be a relief, but he’s grabbing for Asenath’s hand on his other side and she’s grabbing for his. Willow is no longer beside him, and when he scans the theatre, he sees her running for the exit, hand over her mouth.

“Hey-.” Enobaria’s voice is shaky beside him, so is her hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“ HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE A DISTRICT PARTNER SCORNED !” Templesmith babbles as he stumbles into the aisle, trying to keep his teeth clenched against the onslaught of bile rising in his throat. In the reflection of the screen in the glass door, the clip of Annie’s first blow is looping, the spray of blood, her rabid expression, the last thing Eisen ever saw. “ THAT’LL TEACH EISEN TO PICK ON SOMEONE HIS OWN SIZE !”

Chapter Text

She finds a hole where the Northeastern slope converges with the grey mass of rock that she assumes is the very edge of the arena, small enough to keep her hidden but big enough to fit three or so people if necessary, and decides that is where she is going to kill herself. 

A day goes by without Ciaran. From the hole, she can see where Asa and Awinita have been camping on the hill right at the mouth of the creek where it flows downhill to infect the rest of the arena. Asa leaves in the morning and returns to Awinita with a stolen knife and an armful of cedar. They just sit there for a while by the creek and pick at the food from Awinita’s sponsor and she watches them through her migraine. She considers hanging herself with the rope but doesn't have the energy to leave the hole. She eyes the axe, tries to build the wherewithal to take it to her throat but can't remember how to close her hands around it, how to pick up and use it. It's crusted with both Ciaran and Eisen's blood and she wants to think something about it but isn't sure she can anymore. For a long gap of time, she lays in the dark and stares at the rock in front of her, thinking of Ciaran, of Sligo and Mags and Finnick and the fact that once she ends it she won't have to worry about them anymore. She thinks of Calypso and Ronan and their five little girls who are now without a brother. She thinks of her parents in pieces on the ocean floor. She thinks of the shards of Eisen's skull, the red soup of his brain. On the axe, she finds something small and dried up and grey. 

She drinks what remains of the water Finnick sent. It's more palliative than anything else, she's screamed herself hoarse and now it hurts to breathe. If someone finds her, they find her. If they don't, they don't. She tries to think about how each person she assumes to still be alive would kill her. Awinita with a wrench, Cerise with her machete, she doesn't know anything about Turing and has a gnawing sense of doubt that Briar would even kill her, or Asa for that matter if he still considers her to be part of their treaty. There is water leaking from the back wall of what will soon be her coffin. She touches it, the expanding damp spot in the rock that has grown an inch or so in the day she’s been alone, her hand comes back itchy and smelling like metal.

She holds the axe against her neck, thinking of Mom and Dad. If they’re waiting for her, if they can see her, if they went anywhere at all besides the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by the splinters of Anamarija II. She presses down, the metal has gone cold from laying on the stone, she can’t bring herself to apply the pressure necessary to sever her carotid. She wonders what Finnick will say when they bring her open-throated body back, wonders how Asenath will spin it for the cameras, hopes they’ll understand why she had to do it. She thinks of Nalu in his burning canoe, thinks of Finnick’s mom laying still and blue in the coffin that she remembers as not being from 4, a shiny cushioned thing emblazoned with the Capitol seal, remembers watching Levi and Shantie die on the monitor above the Processing line, identifying the grey husk of Mom in the morgue. They never did find Dad beyond his left shoe in the wake of Irving Kahale’s trawler and part of an arm washed up on a beach up North. Something had been eating him. She picks up the little shell Ciaran brought from home, someone has painted a C on it. She sets it beside the axe and backs away, leaning against the back wall of the hole not sure what she expects to happen.

Three days in, she hears a dull groan coming from miles underground, then she notices the shell moving.

Chapter Text

The fish eat again three days after Ciaran dies, and Liv buys a four hour session and rewinds Citrine’s final moments for three of the four hours. All things considered, it was an impressive kill, and even after he’s been juiced to a degree that Liv is satisfied with, he can still appreciate it in terms of entertainment value and the fact that it’s reflecting well on that mousy little girl from 12. 

He hadn’t been paying enough attention to remember when exactly Awinita ascertained that the fish are attracted to the smell of blood, but somewhere along the line she did. It was so well-executed but it happened so fast; Awinita setting the trap, acting tired and distracted, Citrine descending on Awinita as she was boiling cedar over her intentionally-smoky fire, the maybe-15 seconds of physical contact before Awinita gashed Citrine in the face, just enough to get her bleeding, flipped her over and threw her into the creek, where she had spent the past few hours pricking her fingers and letting the tiny drops fall within range of the shoal. Before Citrine could think to stand up in the shallow water, they were on her; flashes of fluorescent pink and green lighting up the grey creek and tearing her to shreds. It didn’t look real. 

Now the 12s have moved their camp from the mouth of the creek, a nerve-wracking spitting distance from where the 4F icon on his communicuff is showing up but there is no sign of Annie, to the Career Pack’s food stash just downwater. With no Eisen, no Citrine, and Aloisa shambling around the woods with effectively half a leg, Asa and Awinita now have more food between the two of them than they’ve probably seen in their entire lives. They’re rationing it generously, occasionally getting distracted by an MRE that contains an ingredient they’ve never heard of, a temperature-controlled package of something meaty-looking that came about an hour before Citrine bit it and must have cost Ptolemy his left nut. He wonders, Liv’s nails digging into his neck, how much money is about to hit Haymitch’s account to keep Awinita kicking, wonders if Haymitch has given up on being alive enough to deck Ptolemy right in his slimy face. 

Suddenly, the headboard is rushing up to meet his eyeline and bright white pain erupts from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. Liv’s moist body heat is no longer on top of him.

“Agh, fuck!” He yells before slapping a hand over his mouth, remembering who is in the room with him. He can feel her glaring at him from the other side of the room like she wants to immolate him with her gaze. The phone on the wall is unhooked, he can hear a vague dial tone.

“Orestes, Livia. You know why I’m calling. Don’t play dumb with me, you little worm. When I give you an instruction-. Don’t interrupt, you interrupt me, it’ll be the last thing you ever say. When I give you an instruction, I expect it to be followed. I am not my husband, I don’t mince around like he does, if she’s not dead by tonight, you will be, I’ll do it myself.”

On the other end, he can make out a nervous voice. “Madam, I assure you, we’re trying our absolute damnedest, but you know how unpredictable the arena can be-.”

“Oh, shut up, you. Set the forest on fire, hit her with lightning, these things are not complicated… Understaffed, my ass. I don’t care if you have to drop a damn firing squad into the arena, the little slut will die.” She shoots him a vicious sidelong glance as he brings his hand up to his forehead, finding a wet graze. “I want as little left as possible.”

“Yes, Madam-.” crackles Blanche’s voice out of the handset. “-I’ll call an all-hands meeting right now.”

Liv hangs up with a hard click and an eye-roll. She stares at the phone for a few seconds, breathing hard, before turning to him. “Don’t be so dramatic, you’re fine.”

Citrine’s demise has given way to the Final Eight and, by extension, the interviews with their friends and family back home. First, Aloisa’s parents, a mild looking pair from Plinthville, a small city in 2 where the district’s slightly more well-off live, say their piece, say they’re proud of her no matter what and that they love her. Her mother cries. Liv snorts. Then comes Turing’s father and 14 year old sister, both factory workers, both obviously in dire need of some victory money. Turing’s father is holding a framed picture of a pretty dark-haired woman who looks very much like his son. Next comes Saira Pollock, a woman he’s heard of but couldn’t put a face to until now. She’s a stocky woman of about 45 with long salt-and-pepper hair and a kind, sun-worn face. Around her there is a tall, strapping family with brown skin and black hair. To her left, a middle-aged man and a girl of about 11 or 12, to her right, a middle-aged woman and girl in her late teens or early twenties. Their names are displayed at the bottom of the screen as Delmar, Pearl, Kalani and Teesha Phyto. That friend she mentioned who moved away , he remembers vaguely through the agony in his forehead. 

“We love you, Annie.” says the older girl, who he assumes is Teesha. “We came all the way down to Portside, we just had to. I don’t know if we’ll still be in town when you get back, but you will get back. We’ll have crab legs on the table and wine in the fridge. If I hadn’t turned 19, I would have taken your place in a second.” Teesha’s voice breaks, then she begins to sob, her mother wraps an arm around her.

“We love you, Annie!” Her parents and sister announce in unison.

“Annie-.” Saira says into the camera. “-you need to keep going, my girl. I know you can. We’re all rooting for you here, but me most of all. You just keep going for us and for Ciaran, we love you so much, no matter what happens, we will always love you.”

Liv shoves him to the mattress again, knotting her fingers hard in his hair and staring at the TV with a look of utter disgust. 

“What a hideous woman.” she snipes. Saira and the Phyto family are soon replaced by Deena’s mother and two brothers, one about 20, the other not yet of Reaping age. Briar’s parents are a mousy, heavyset woman who looks very much like Alder and a lanky blonde man who is the spitting image of his daughter. 

“You just keep on keeping on, honeybee.” Holly Bains sobs, her husband Lammas holding her tightly. She has the same accent as Blight, but thicker. “You do it for Alder.”

Liv snorts. Cerise’s family are all just as provincially beautiful as she is, all dead-eyed and dressed in threadbare, old fashioned clothing. Awinita has a mother and two older brothers, rangy coal miners still in their work clothes. Asa’s segment is the most confusing. It opens to a hard-faced blonde woman and a group of five children, two of whom look similar to him with dark curls and wide hazel eyes.

“My name is Dinah Blythe and I’m the headmistress of our local community home here in District 12. I have known Asa Cordovan since he was 5 years old and can attest to-.”

“RIVERS!” shouts a high twang from offscreen. A small, flaxen-haired woman runs into frame, followed by a swarthy, rawboned man, his bare chest sunburnt under his overalls. “His surname is Rivers and he happens to be my son .” She says the last part proudly, grabbing one of the nearby children, a little girl who looks like Asa, by the shoulders, and taking the hand of a boy of maybe 12. “Asa Cordovan Rivers, he is a descendant of one Barbara Azure Baird, put that in your damn television program. You remember!” She practically barks the last word as her husband grabs her around the waist and drags her off camera. The little girl reaches for them as they go before the feed cuts off and switches back to Caesar in the studio. Liv is staring at the TV stonefaced now, her teeth gritted. 

“That was something.” he quips stupidly. Liv barely waits half a second to backhand him so hard the room starts to spin. He catches himself on the edge of the nightstand, thanking God she’s just wearing a signet ring and her wedding band on that hand. 

“We’re done.” she snaps, dressing as quickly as her age will allow. “Wash yourself, you reek of low tide. I’ll have Ptolemy refund me for the last forty-five minutes.”

“I’m sorry, your Firstladyness, have I disappointed you?” Ptolemy doesn’t like giving refunds, there is absolutely no scenario in which this ends well. Livia stares at him for a long moment, then spits. It hits him right below the collarbone and he is equal parts confused and terrified, his blood beginning to run cold. Liv’s upper lip curls and she turns to leave, slamming the door behind her. 

“Well, folks, what do you say we take a look at those Tributes?” the TV prattles through the heavy silence, saliva is dripping down his bare chest. “Uh-oh! What’s wrong, Briar? Party a little too hard last night?” Laugh track.

Asenath is completely verklempt by the time he gets back, sitting on the steps leading up to the theater with Lachesis to her left and Fulgora to her right. He almost keels over when he sees her initially, but catches a glimpse inside as Giulia is leaving and sees that A. Cresta is still illuminated on the scoreboard. She shoots him an acrimonious, swollen-eyed look as he approaches.

“Where the hell have you been, you little shit?” she snaps, Lachesis runs a hand through her hair. “Annie fucked off somewhere in there, the drones can’t get eyes on her.”

“I told you, I’ve been taking care of-.” He’s cut off by Flickerman’s grating voice from inside, still going over recaps to distract from the sparse deaths. 

“OH WELLHOWABOUTTHAT? DISTRICT 12’S AWINITA POOLE WITH A PISCINE PILE-DRIVER! NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL A PREPOSTEROUSLY PROFICIENT POUNDING FROM OUR PRECIOUS PROVINCIAL PRINCESS!’ 

“I am going to fucking murder that little freak.” Asenath growls, raking her nails through her hair. “I’m serious, I am going to shove my foot so far up his ass-.”

“CAESAR, PLEASE-.” Templesmith cuts in against the laugh track. “THIS POSTHUMOUS POETRY IS POSITIVELY PAINFUL TO PERCEIVE!”

“ OH, CLAUDIUS, YOU PERSNICKETY PIPSQUEAK, DON’T BE SO PITIFULLY PEDANTIC! ” 

The laugh track plays again, louder, and Cashmere opens the door, bringing the sound of sporadic groaning with her and Zenith close behind. 

“-mildly depraved to keep replaying it, like, okay, we get it, she talked a big game and got eaten by some stupid fish. They never did this with any of my other Tributes, I think Caesar’s just trying to fuck with me." She locks eyes with him and almost trips over Asenath. “You do not want to go in there right now, Caesar’s on one and everyone’s drunk.”

“I have to keep an eye-.”

“-on Annie? Good luck, they can’t find her. They’ve got her tracker, they can see her vitals, that’s it. Honestly, if she’s smart and stays put, I like her chances.” Cashmere glances back at Asenath and leans in. “What’s her damage?”

“What’s your damage?!” Asenath shoots back before breaking down again. Fulgora mouths ‘sorry’ in Cashmere’s direction.

“Let’s get a drink.” Cashmere grabs his arm and steers him towards the bar. “Didn’t get a chance to use the last of the sponsor money.”

Cashmere gets them a booth right under a monitor and orders a round of Horny Hadrianas, a saccharine whiskey-based drink served in a highball and comprised primarily of passionfruit schnapps and lemonade. He wonders briefly what Hadriana Ravinstill would think about that, what she’d think about the scrappy District girl who keeps constantly getting compared to her and the tacky, sycophantic stylist responsible. 

Zenith Saperstein, a demure woman in her late 30s who had been Cashmere’s own mentor, is one of those Victors who the Capitol more or less forgot about, despite being conventionally attractive and from an interior district. Her own Games left her with burns all over her body that even the Remake department couldn’t fully correct and ended up losing a foot, an ear and three fingers. He remembers her being completely ripped on Morphling when they first met and even though it seems like she’s been off it for a few years now, she’s replaced it with liquor, and she’s polished off three Horny Hadrianas by the time he’s finished his first. 

On the screen above, Awinita and Asa are walking through the low point of the valley. A camera set low in a tree trunk picks them up as they set their equipment down and sit in silence on the grass. Asa puts a tentative arm around Awinita and stares at the ground in front of him as she begins to sob. Zenith watches them with an almost sympathetic expression as Cashmere’s eyes rake their surroundings nervously. He tries to take a mental inventory of the Tributes he knows are still alive. Annie, Asa, Awinita, Briar … those are the only ones he remembers off the top of his head two drinks in. 

“So are you going to tell me what happened to your face?” Cashmere presses him around a mouthful of complimentary bread.

“Just…” He can’t tell her the truth here, the Tribute Centre is essentially Livia’s own property. “There was a painting, it was hanging weird. I went to straighten it and the nail popped out and it fell and hit me in the face. Fucking drywall.”

Zenith and Cashmere exchange a look. 

“At Ptolemy’s?” Cashmere inclines her head. “One of those paintings in the hallway at Ptolemy’s?”

He’s never seen a painting at Ptolemy’s. “Yeah. That big ugly one.”

A muscle is working in Cashmere’s jaw, another between her eyebrows. Her hand closes tightly around her glass as if strangling it. 

“Fuck that painting.” She spits. Zenith raises her glass. “Oh, by the way-.” Cashmere begins to dig in the pale pink beaded purse hanging from her elbow, a Van Elsberg family heirloom from before the Rebellion that he sees every year. She produces a cluster of bills. “From Gloss. Apparently all these sponsors came in for Eisen right before Annie took him out. From what I gather, Sligo already drank his cut.”

“Cashmere, I can’t-.”

“He’s not gonna take it back and Citrine’s dead. Take the money, Finn.” She shakes it at him again until he relieves her of it. She seems glad to be rid of it. He shoves it in his pocket and pretends it isn’t there. He doesn’t need it, a good chunk of money came in for Annie right after she wasted Eisen and he has no idea what he can do for her now, where she even is. He takes a long sip of Horny Hadriana and tries to think of next month when all this bullshit will be over. 

A drone hovers next to a long crack in the border wall of the arena, pulls in too close and bounces off, lodging awkwardly in a nearby cluster of bushes. It vibrates desperately for a few seconds before breaking free and lurching sideways, sweeping along the wall. The image shudders before the drone pulls back slightly and hovers at a small opening, maybe six-by-six feet and he almost chokes on his drink.

Annie is hunched over Ciaran’s shell and a scrap of bread, holding the axe up to her throat. Her face is covered in blood and her hair is matted and greasy, but he can make out the ring on her right hand, the opulent green of her eyes and the IV embroidered on her uniform.

Caesar pops up on the screen, blessedly muted, and yammers soundlessly over the image of Annie glaring at the drone before turning around, making a bug-eyed expression of mock fear and diving out of frame as Annie lunges forward, grabbing a nearby rock and whipping it at the drone. 

Cashmere and Zenith are watching with bright, incredulous faces. Zenith elbows him in the ribs and raises her glass. As much as he wants to be happy as he raises his own, there’s something foreboding in the pit of his stomach. He remembers Willow’s Games, the weird stand-still they’d come to in the Final Five when Willow, her partner Sihta and Sligo’s girl, Keelyn Karp, couldn’t find the pair from 10, the last two in the way. That year’s arena had been a vast, barren tundra that lay bleak and empty under a constant barrage of freezing rain, with Tributes opting to hide in the low trenches that veined the sodden ground when they weren’t chasing each other down across sheets of grey ice.  The pair from 10 were showing clear vitals but were nowhere to be seen. Sihta developed a hacking cough after three days of staring at the grey horizon and Keelyn began to show signs of frostbite and on the fourth day, three mutts came. He wasn’t even sure what kind of animal they were supposed to be at first until he heard Blight mention caribou two rows behind him, but even that was generous. They had the bodies and antlers of caribou and jaws of leopard seals, they got the pair from 10 moving quick enough, one picked the girl off while another ripped Sihta’s throat clean out. Willow managed to kill the third but not before it caught her in the temple with an antler and gored Keelyn through the diaphragm. Rennette’s boy, a strapping 16 year old, was already on his way out from trench foot when the final surviving mutt tore into him, leaving Willow alone in the frozen wasteland surrounded by dead and dying bodies. 

His stomach drops. He isn’t sure why, but suddenly his mouth is beginning to water like he’s about to throw up, and the Horny Hadrianas feel like they’re gathering right behind his eyes.

“I think…” he stutters, standing up awkwardly, still not sure what’s come over him. “I think I need to go. Somewhere. Back there.”

“You really don’t want to.” Cashmere quips, unperturbed, sloshing the melting ice in her glass. “I’m telling you, Caesar-.”

He’s starting to feel nauseous. “I’ll see you both later.”

“You okay, kid?” Zenith inquires, blinking like she’s trying to quickly sober up. 

He turns his attention back to the TV above the bar. Aloisa is still trying her damnedest to follow Turing’s group after they lost her a long time ago. The poor kid can barely walk but she’s refusing to give up the chase, pausing briefly to tear off the hem of her pants to fashion a rough tourniquet. Middling score and subpar performance aside, she’s the last of the Career pack left standing and knows it. Distantly, even with the knowledge that she would have killed both Annie and Ciaran without a second thought if given the chance, he feels for Aloisa. Sometimes Lanistariums will say they’re taking a chance on a Tribute when really they’re just trying to thin the herd for a slam-dunk win the following year. There must be a promising girl a few years below her, or possibly the girl they originally chose backed out, got sick or injured or died, pedestrian and undecorated. 

A drone is now following the pair from 12 as they exchange inaudible conversation over a looted MRE. They look to be slowly making their way to the hill Annie and the others had been camped on, stopping for a late lunch to lighten their backpacks. Caesar pops up again, greenscreened in as if he’s sitting on Awinita’s other side, pretending as if he’s talking to them, turning to the audience to drink in the laugh track. 

Cashmere stands up to meet his eyeline. “Hey, you look a little pale.”

He flexes his hands as if trying to do something about the sweat gathering on his palms. On the screen, Asa is wiping his mouth with the collar of his shirt when the first squirrel shoots by, just missing Awinita’s foot by a few inches. She watches it go with a bemused expression, handing Asa a bottle of water. As he takes a sip, another squirrel hauls ass past them, then another, then three more and a rat, then three rats, a snake and a rabbit. They exchange a long, confused look before Asa grins and mimes a clubbing gesture, to which Awinita shakes her head in disgust. He urges her, gesturing towards another passing squirrel, Awinita continues to argue, holding up one of the backpacks full of Career food to emphasize her point. Then Asa grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her out of the path of a fully grown deer bursting desperately out of the woods. He realizes what’s happening at the exact moment Asa, Awinita, Zenith and Cashmere appear to; there’s something happening at the edge of the arena, and the animals are trying to avoid it. Awinita and Asa look at each other, then back at the treeline for a long, carious moment. Within seconds, the microphones in the arena are picking up a distant, dull roar, the trees bending, undulating like waves. Caesar and Claudius are back on the screen, looking at each other with anticipatory expressions.

“Earthquake.” Zenith observes, “looks like an earthquake.”

He doesn’t bother excusing himself, ignores Cashmere calling him back, asking him what’s wrong. He half-collides with the escorts for 12 and 6 in his sprint back to The Pit, jostling one’s wig and spilling the other’s drink. Throwing the doors open, he arrives right in time to see a shot of Aloisa almost getting flattened by a frantic doe as she limps through the bush, Caesar greenscreened up next to her with that dopey expression of faux surprise. 

A birds-eye drone shot of the valley, deer speeding South like their lives depend on it. He stumbles back up to Asenath, Mags and Sligo, who are all watching the screen, confused. The water level in the creek has risen significantly in just a few seconds, lapping over the bank, moving so fast it’s bringing the occasional pink-and-green fish with it. The fish quickly recover as the water rushes up to meet them. On his communicuff, he can see that not only does 4F still have a pulse, but she’s running South, getting out of the way of something.

“Siddown, kid.” Brutus chides, leaning around him to see what’s happening. He’s about to apologize when an audible gasp fills The Pit, Asenath lets out a muffled shriek into her palm, Haymitch spits a mouthful of whiskey into the aisle, Beetee is whispering something frantically into his communicuff. When he turns back, the valley is gone and so is the outer wall.  

“Looking a little stingy there, Leyla.” Gil Caravel had chided the day Pontomedusa II wrecked in Brineridge Bay, looking down into the plastic bag full of stolen mussels Mom would bring every week. “What kind of operation do you think I’m running here?”

Mom fumed. “Gil, this is all I could get. Any more than that, I lose a hand.”

Gil sucked his teeth and tossed the mussels into his icebox. “You’re lucky you’re so damn cute.” Mom cringed as he pawed at her cheek. 

Every week was the same, five hours of what Gil insisted was Lanistarium-grade training. He’d purported to have trained from 10 to 18 but never actually made it into the Games, which had always seemed hard to believe.

“They would have sent him in at some point.” Mom always used to say, “we barely even had a Lanistarium back in his day, they’d have had some use for him.”

The plumes of smoke from the wreck were still visible at the Southernmost edge of the bay as Gil shouted him through laps into target practice. Mom watched from her decaying plastic lawn chair, cleaning the mussels she’d brought for Gil over a bucket. 

“Pick it up, kid!” He’d bark across the top of his beer bottle, bringing with it a low whistle of air across the opening. “Any slower, you’re chum!”

“What was she carrying?” Mom inquired, bringing a wet, sandy hand up to shield her eyes from the sun as she stared at what had been Pontomedusa II.  

“Taking salt down the coast to 10 for curing. Buddy of mine went down once, you can smell the shit from the water.”

Mom shuddered. “I’d hate to live there.”

“There’s probably some girl down in 10 thinking the same thing about the smell of fish- HEY!” Gil barked. “No time to eavesdrop in the arena, pipsqueak!”

“Oh, Gil, come on. He’s been at it for three hours. It’s hot, let him have a break.”

“There are no breaks in the arena.”

Mom let the strap of her dress slide off her left shoulder and leaned forward, “well, he’s not in the arena yet. Pleeeaasee…” she wheedled. “I’m hungry anyway, Finnick, put that thing down.”

Gil eyed her, lips tight. “You coddle him too much.”

“He’s off because he hasn’t eaten yet. Finnick, now .”

He watched the wreck all through lunch, as Gil bloviated about The Games, and why people lose and why people win and Mom pretended to listen. She was watching the wreck too, watching the lazy flick of sirens as the Coast Guard began to close in, too late. That night, the radio would inform them that four crew members had drowned, the salt shipment had been destroyed, and the Coast Guard would be leading clean-up efforts over the following week. 

When they got home that night, Mom had a big purple blotch on her neck where Gil had sucked hard on the milky skin. He can’t remember how old he had been then, maybe 10 or 11, not yet Reaping age, but old enough to know what happened when Gil took Mom behind the curtain in the trailer and told him to run laps. That week, she hadn’t brought enough mussels, sometimes she had to pay for his training in other ways. Mussels, littlenecks, razors, steamers, softshells, shrimp, oysters, tesserae grain and oil and her warm, young body. 

“It’s the worst way to go.” Mom said, leaning over the stove as she attempted to make something palatable out of some soon-to-expire overcatch she’d stolen a week prior. “You know what’s happening, all your body wants to do is fight it, that’s why it’s virtually impossible to commit suicide by drowning.”

Someone from Citrine’s prep team is already saying something about keeping an eye on the girl from 4 when Annie surfaces, the dried blood on her face beginning to wash away. The drone won’t leave her alone now, and she sits there treading water for a while, watching the water course through the arena, trees snapping, branches and concrete debris floating past, the last of the earthquake still working its way through the valley.

“Ahh, fuck.” Brutus carps as Aloisa’s pulse flatlines on his communicuff. Ajax gives him a sympathetic elbow in the ribs and Enobaria hands him his flask back. Annie flinches when she hears the cannon, then again, then again, as three Tributes drown. On the scoreboard by the screen, Asa, Aloisa and Cerise have gone dark. Beetee is watching the screen, Turing’s name still glowing just above Annie’s, then Deena, then Briar, then Awinita of all people.

Back in the studio, Caesar, Claudius and Orestes Blanche have donned snorkels and flotation rings, getting another groan out of everyone in the theater. 

“That should get the blood pumping!” Flickerman yaps, raising his eyebrows and looking directly into the camera, Blanche can’t seem to figure out how to keep his snorkel from jabbing him in the lip, keeps fighting with it while the other two continue their exchange. 

“-wasn’t kidding when he said this would be a Games to remember!”

“Well, you-.” Blanche gives up trying to talk through the snorkel and removes it altogether, “ - you know me, gotta keep things interesting!” He looks haggard, like he hasn’t slept in days, his nails bitten down to the quick. He wonders briefly what will happen if Annie does manage to win, deciding he’ll count Orestes as one of her confirmed kills should it come to that. At first the idea is almost funny, then it starts to make him itch.

“And remember, folks, there is still ample time to place any bets or submit any last minute sponsorships at a post office or pop-up kiosk near you!” Caesar points enthusiastically into the camera. 

“You forgot this.” Cashmere whispers as she takes her seat, passing him his half-drunk Horny Hadriana. He accepts it but doubts it’ll stay down. “Annie’s good?”

“I think so.”

“God, I’m kind of glad Citrine bit it already. Barely anyone back home knows how to swim.” As if he’s listening in, Caesar switches to a recap of Citrine’s demise, the live feed of the flooded arena still following Annie in a small square at the corner of the screen. “And there he goes again, God, I am really not in the mood right now.”

“While we wait for the Final Five to get their bearings, let’s take a look at some of the events that led up to this rambunctious riptide-.”

“Did you do something to piss him off? He keeps going back to Citrine and Awinita.” 

Cashmere snorts. “The guy who writes his jokes, this ugly fuck Tacitus, came onto me last night and wouldn’t leave me alone. I told him to make an appointment with Ptolemy, he didn’t want to pay, started freaking out.”

“Citrine, Citrine, Citrine…” Caesar chides on the screen above them. “You know, at first I expected better from District 1, but then I remember that, unfortunately for Miss Singer here, she was mentored by whatever this is-.” The greenscreen switches to a still of Cashmere outside a club in the Capitol’s downtown, piss-drunk, makeup running, her client’s hand hiking up her thigh-length dress, then to a still taken a few seconds later, Cashmere glaring at the camera and holding up a pixelated middle finger to match the pixelation between her legs as her dress slides up another few inches. A deafening laugh track plays. 

“Rough night, I’ll bet!” Claudius fans himself with his hand, Orestes looks like he’s about to lose his breakfast with every second that Annie stays alive.

“I mean, if I had to choose between toxilapia and a boozy, Slitcrawler-infested, stuck-up wench like Cashmere Van Elsberg, call me fish food!”

“Funnily enough-.” Blanche cuts in, mopping sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, “-toxilapia cannot technically be classified as fish, due to a high concentration of DNA from various aquatic reptiles and-”

“Why don’t we zoom in?” Caesar presses, blowing up the image of Cashmere’s face and zeroing in on a faint smile-line at the corner of her mouth that has been exacerbated by oxidizing makeup. “Man, she hasn’t aged well.” Templesmith and Blanche have gone totally silent and are giving each other a confused look. “Better step your game up, District 1, you used to send us your best and brightest! Now all we’ve got to show for it is plain, old Cashmere Van Elsberg.”

Cashmere stands up and throws her glass full-force at the screen. The dregs of her Horny Hadriana explode across Caesar’s face as he glares into the camera and the theater breaks into scattered applause. Down in front, Chaff whistles. The feed cuts back to the arena, back to Annie, who is front-crawling through the surge of debris with the handle of Maizie’s knife in her teeth. Nicodemia reaches forward to hand Asenath a few bills, which she accepts smugly. 

Little Deena has washed up on a small cluster of broken-off foliage and pieces of the dam that have become lodged in the branches of a sunken tree, hurt beyond repair. She’s twisted almost in half, her eyes thrown off centre, her lips blue and her limbs bent at awkward angles. It’s clear that she’s breathed in water that she’s no longer capable of coughing up, judging by her futile attempts to draw breath. Annie pulls herself up beside Deena, who seems like she’s trying to communicate something. She’s in absolutely horrific shape, and even if the other Tributes were to all drop dead that instant, there is likely nothing that can be done. Annie sits beside her little opponent in silence for a minute or so, puts a hand gently over her eyes and slits her throat with processing line precision. There is an agonizing six seconds before the cannon goes off, followed by a distinct outlet of breath in The Pit as Deena’s name and picture go dark.

“Poor baby.” Asenath whispers, draining her glass.

Annie starts to pick through Deena’s sodden clothing but doesn’t find anything she can use. She pauses for a second, breathing hard, then looks up at the drone filming her. She must see it, because her expression switches from dead-eyed to infuriated. One of the toxilapia has bitten her on the face, leaving a tiny, hot pink sucker wound right at the corner of her mouth. He prays the bite won’t lead to anything worse, wonders if he should send her anything for it, if it's worth it at this point. Annie glares, homicidal, into the camera for a few moments before a hand shoots out of the water and drives a knife into her Achilles tendon. Annie sucks in a desperate lungful of oxygen as Turing drags her down into the murky water. Mags grabs onto Sligo’s arm, who looks like he's about to throw up.

"And will you look at that, folks! District 3's Turing Benoit with a subaqueous sneak attack! Could this be the end of the road for- Oh, there she is!" Annie breaks the surface of the water to inhale again but Turing drags her back down. "-and there she isn't!"

"Does he ever shut the fuck up?" Asenath growls . He glances down to discover she has bitten off every last one of her acrylic nails and they're scattered on the floor around her feet. 

The camera cuts to one in a submerged tree that has blessedly come back online. Turing has some kind of device strapped to the lower half of his face, seemingly to allow him to breathe underwater. Someone tipped Beetee off, he seethes, fucking 3 and their ridiculous contraptions. .. A few rows down, he can see Beetee glancing over at Melpomene, the escort for 3, and exchanging a smirk. Respiratory advantage aside, Turing is floundering, weighed down and clumsy underwater. He's managed to land a deep slash in Annie’s thigh, but she's taller, stronger and a better swimmer, and she hasn't let go of Maizie's knife. She kicks Turing hard in the chest with her good leg, jostling his breathing mask. In the split second he reaches up to adjust it, she slides behind him, puts an arm around his neck and thrusts the knife into his stomach. She hauls it up through him in one assured, practiced motion, opens him, guts him like a fish. Turing’s name and picture go dark. Asenath’s grip on his hand is iron. 

Annie can't figure out how to get the mask off so she lets it sink down to the bottom of the arena with him, kicking her way to the surface, the blood from the gash on her leg mixing with Turing’s in a thick, red cloud.

"Good girl." says Sligo. "You're bleeding, get out of the water."

Annie begins to slither her way back onto a cement corner of the cluster. She slips a few times, her left leg is pretty fucked up still, but she manages to crawl up next to the smudge of blood where Deena had been and suck down as much oxygen as she can.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are officially down to the final three in these 70th Hunger Games. Let’s get eyes on our other tributes, shall we? It’s now down to District 4’s Annie Cresta, District 7’s Briar Bains and District 12’s Awinita Poole. All very impressive young ladies, but we all know there can only be one."

Awinita's left cheek has been torn open by debris, exposing her teeth, and she is holding her left arm against her chest at an awkward angle. She's sitting in the high branches of a sunken tree with her legs in the water, her face emotionless. She lost Asa and all of her equipment in the flood, including every last speck of food, and he doubts she's going to make it. It doesn't seem likely that anybody besides Annie, who is at the other end of the arena, is going to be able to get to her where she is, he hopes distantly that a Gamemaker or some weird amphibious mutt will take her out quickly before she's left to slowly expire. She gives the camera a long, sad look, her big brown eyes are bloodshot and some toxilapia have been at her neck. 

"Awinita Poole endeared herself to the audience with her down-home beauty and rustic charms-." Flickerman babbles over the image of the dying child clinging to the tree. "-early on in the Games we saw her ally with district partner Asa Cordovan and District 6's Hallie Feeney. Awinita is one hell of a strategist, as we saw with her takedown of District 1’s Citrine Singer. However, her emotional displays leave something to be desired. Is Awinita Poole just too sweet to survive? Only time will tell."

The shot switches to Briar, submerged up to her chin in a churn of splintered branches, clinging desperately to one that is big enough to hold her weight but keeps rolling over and over, dipping her in and out of the floodwaters. When she goes down, she thrashes her way back up, coughing and spitting. Her long blonde hair is trailing behind her, matted like seaweed. Her bag is still on, but she doesn't seem to notice. Her nose is pissing blood and she has a brutal-looking scrape from her hairline to her cheekbone. Her pupils are no longer dilated and she seems to be aware of what’s happening, but she’s not in good shape and while she appears to be able to swim, she seems afraid to.

"Briar Bains, ladies and gentlemen, now I know I can't be the only one who knew from the jump that she'd make it at least to the Top 5, but to see her in the final three is certainly interesting. She and her cousin Alder Groves allied with Annie Cresta and our little friend Ciaran Whelk relatively early in the competition. It'll certainly be interesting to see what happens when and if their paths cross again."

Briar hacks up a lungful of grey water, her blue-tinted lips trembling. She lowers her head and lets out a desperate whine. The log rolls again and she scrambles to keep hold of it, her head dipping below the water again. It's obvious the poor kid is on her last legs. Blight is down in the front row, biting his nails. 

The camera cuts to Annie, who looks like she's trying to figure out if she can still swim with her damaged leg. Her Achilles doesn't appear to be fully severed, but it looks like Turing hit something important in her thigh and she's bleeding heavily. He leans forward, trying to make out any pink or green shadows in the water around her little island, and it looks like she's doing the same.

“Many have called her Panem’s Big Sister, Auntie Annie and Annie The Shrimp Voyeur-.” I have literally never heard anybody say any of those things. “-but I have been lucky enough to know her as Annie Cresta of District 4.” Flickerman brings up a clip from Annie’s interview on the greenscreen, bronzed and luminous in her pearlescent dress, arguably Procula’s only worthwhile contribution. “At 18, Annie is this year's oldest tribute and was reaped during a work day at Whimsiwick Pisciculture, while her district partner Ciaran Whelk, was in fact our youngest.”

On the screen, Annie is leaning over the edge of her perch, careful not to tip it, before backpedaling with a look of pure animal terror in her eyes. Where she’s bled in the water, there is a furious strobe of pink and green. His stomach twists.

“Damn it.” Asenath spits, sounding choked up. “Of course they’d kill her with fish.”

"Toxilapia-." Flickerman butts in, "-are a genius new innovation by our stupendous Gamemakers. I’m sure by now we’re all good and acquainted with Head Gamemaker Orestes Blanche. Orestes, how about you give us a little insight on these menacing maritime monstrositie s -." The alliterations have gone from irritating to skin-crawling.

"We wanted to employ a mutt that was unassuming but dangerous from several different angles. In fact, it was the First Lady herself who suggested the initial idea. In the lab, we were able to combine several different breeds of fish, tilapia for the vessel, I guess you could say, and a selection of sharks, and pumped them full of a combination of tracker jacker venom and a low-grade neurotoxin. They can pick up the smell of blood from miles away and lay their eggs in rotting tissue. Needless to say, they were an indulgence on our part. Anything for our lovely Lady Livia." Orestes looks directly into the camera like he’s staring down the barrel of a gun.

"Yeee-ikes!" Flickerman mugs at the camera and yanks on his collar with one finger, undercut by a laugh track. "I'd hate to be in a flooded arena with a bunch of those things! Talk about a fishy situation!"

Cashmere rolls her eyes. "Take a drink every time he busts out that line."

"With whose liver?" 

"So, Orestes, you're the expert; can we expect to see some toxi-ma-schmapica action as the Games heat up?" 

Orestes forces a laugh. "Toxi -lapia. And... I'm fairly confident we'll be seeing more. At this point, the final three are in their domain now. And if I recall correctly, it's been a while since the shoal has eaten."

After half an hour or so, things begin to slow down. With the mutts gradually losing interest below her, Annie lays down on her back and elevates her leg as her island begins to break off from the tree it's snagged on, Deena's blood has dried in a chalky brown patch that Annie seems afraid to touch but stays close to, aware that any lingering on one edge of the cluster could cause it to tip. Awinita begins to doze off against the tree, Briar floats in silence, occasionally slipping off the branch. 

He orders a mixed drink with a stupid name at the bar and watches Annie watching the gash in her thigh. Mags calls her niece, Sligo does a line of blow with Haymitch and Chaff and spends a good fifteen minutes putting the moves on one of the new stylists for 9, a dumpy twenty-something in a tight dress who he believes to be named Galvicia, before she leaves and he slinks off to pester Asenath. 

The bartender, that tall, pretty girl who had been working on opening night, glances up at the screen and smiles at him. "She is a total fucking badass."

"You think so?"

"Oh yeah. Definitely rooting for her. After she just-." she mimes chopping, "-wailed on that guy who killed the little kid? I watched your games, I knew she was yours."

She's stunning, and the brine of liquor in his brain certainly isn't making her look any worse. She's tall and graceful with dark brown skin and a cherubic face, big brown doe eyes so dark they look almost black and hair shorn down to about an inch long and dyed burnt orange. She has flowers tattooed all over her arms in white ink and a gold hoop through her septum. He knows the type, knows she grew up upper-middle class in the Capitol but hasn’t been coasting on her parents’ money. Sometimes people like that can be worse than the ones who are fully and unabashedly deep-throating the silver spoon well into adulthood, but there’s something demure about her, something unpretentious. 

"She's been pretty impressive. Not to jinx it, but I have high hopes."

"I don't think you need to worry about jinxing anything. She's got it from here." She offers her hand, when he shakes it, her grip is firm and her skin is soft. "I'm Sekhmet, by the way."

"Finnick."

"Yeah, I know." She picks up a bottle of something pale blue and cloudy, pours a shot for him and a shot for herself. "On the house. I always root for 4."

"Oh. Thank you." He raises the shot, she raises hers, and they drink them together. It's a thick, saccharine liquid that burns comfortingly when it goes down. "So, why 4? Are you from there?"

Sekhmet shakes her head. "I visited once, stayed at the resort with my parents, I was little, the people working there were all really nice. There were some local kids hanging around, my parents let me go swimming with them. And my mom was one of Phoca Dylan’s prep team."

"Really?"

"Yeah, Nefertari Livingston. She dressed the girl from 6 this year." She grins, "that, and I love lobster." She gestures at the TV, where Annie is laying on her back, staring at her leg. "I heard her parents were trappers."

"Yeah, they were." He never got their names, all he knows is that they are very very dead and if Annie doesn't make it whoever wins will just have to face Ciaran's family, possibly Saira from Whimsiwick's. "How's your night been?"

Sekhmet shrugs. "Busy. Kind of sad, honestly. Lot of victors coming through, I find at this point they’re a little over it. This year’s kind of bleak, from what I gather.”

On the screen above, Awinita is poking nervously at her ruined face, cringing when her fingers make contact with her teeth. Her complexion is bloodless and her eyes are unfocused. Just let the poor kid die already…

“Things were moving too slowly. Too many alliances, too much distance between them. They needed to get the tributes moving.”

“So they drowned them.” Sekhmet shakes her head. “Well, my money’s on Annie. So, we’ll see.”

He raises his glass half-assedly, drains it and steels himself not to choke. “Are you doing anything later tonight?”

She eyes him. “I’m done in an hour. Why?”

Eisen’s discarded sponsor money is heavy in his pocket, he needs to get rid of it and fast before it makes him crazy. “I’m gonna buy you lobster.”

The thing about this year's Top 3 is that they are staunchly refusing to die. He’s not depraved enough to keep the TV on while he and Sekhmet are all over each other, but all through dinner he keeps an eye on the screen mounted on the restaurant wall over her shoulder as they talk and dismantle their lobsters, and when she falls asleep, he slips out from under her and gropes for the remote in the dark. He manages to catch the last glimpse of Asa’s picture in the sky. He was a good looking kid, lean, solid muscle with dark curls and a thin shadow of a mustache on his upper lip that will never fully get a chance to grow in. His eyes were a similar colour to Annie’s but a little bit warmer in shade, hazel that could pass for light brown. He’s smiling in the picture. Awinita watches from her tree, weakly holding up a three-fingered salute with her functioning hand. Briar, the stubborn little shit, is still floating in the dark, the night-vision cameras illuminate the exhaustion on her face as she drifts through the arena, trying to locate something better to latch onto, ironically a scenario in which a headlamp would have been helpful.

Annie’s little island has fully broken off from the cluster of branches at this point and is beginning to move in the slow current. He lays back down beside Sekhmet, plastering himself to the curve of her spine and never taking his eyes off the screen. Annie is curled in on herself, her eyes glazed over, completely motionless. He wonders if she’ll sleep, wonders if she’ll make it through the night.

Sekhmet stirs awake, eyes raking the room to contextualize where she is before she looks up at him.

“Checking in on Annie?”

“Yeah. Sorry, I thought you were asleep.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s my fault, as long as she’s breathing you’re technically still on the clock.” She kisses him and runs a hand through his hair. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the cameras cut to Awinita, who is once again breaking down. “Get some sleep, okay? I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Sekhmet, you don’t have to-.”

“I insist.” She kisses him again, long and sweet and flavoured with butter and wine. “Look at you, you’re exhausted, you’ve earned a break. I’ll wake you up if anything happens, okay?”

He knows whatever protestation he can offer wouldn’t be genuine and that she would know. He’s drunk and hasn’t slept in about a day or so, and all through dinner he kept complaining about his three-day migraine. He lets himself dip in and out of consciousness, watching the delicate slope of Sekhmet's bare back. Her skin is covered in a layer of dewy sweat, illuminated by the glow of the TV and the lights of the city outside as she watches Briar float, Awinita sob, Annie stare. For the first time in days, he feels a sense of mild relief, like he doesn't have to do this all by himself.

He’s woken up by Sekhmet shaking him, holding his screaming communicuff at arm’s length. The room is pale white with the early sun and for a brief moment he is tempted to pull Sekhmet down next to him and curl around her and fall back asleep, but then he remembers what the sound is, remembers where he is.

“I’m not sure why, but it’s going off.” she drops it on the mattress like it's going to explode. "I'm so sorry, it just sounded important."

"No, it's okay. Um, but you need to go. I'm sorry. Are you working tonight?"

She nods, stumbling back into the clothes she’d tossed on the floor. "Same place."

"Okay. I want to see you again, but I don't know what this..." he gestures vaguely at the communicuff, still going off. "...is. Either way, I'll be here at least until tomorrow. I assume I know where to find you?"

"Yeah." She straightens up, fully clothed, and leans in to kiss him again. "Good luck. To you and Annie."

"Thank you... from both of us."

To his immense relief, Annie is somehow still kicking. She's managed to get off her makeshift island into a tree maybe a kilometre or so South, still hanging onto Maizie's knife.  Asenath, Sligo and Mags are congregated under one of the monitors in the lobby, watching as Annie wraps a vine around her injured leg. Asenath walks up to him with her arms open for an embrace, her swollen lips spread over her veneers in a big, performative grimace of smile.

"There he is, my golden boy-." she wraps her arms tightly around his neck and growls into his ear, "-if you don't do something about that hickey in t-minus 5 minutes, I do not mince words when I say I will dump your ass in that arena myself, so help me God ."

"It's not that bad." He argues, unaware he even had one in the first place.

"You-." she lets him go but keeps a grip on his shoulders. "-need to make yourself presentable." she lowers her voice, "while you were getting eaten-." she jabs at his neck with her index fingernail, "-so was Effie's kid."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Those horrifying fish mutts, they..." she makes a disgusted face, glances over at one of the screens mounted in the walls leading into The Pit. “That’s why I called you. We’re in the Final Two.”

It must have happened in the early hours of the morning, he can almost place it, right after he and Sekhmet attempted another round but were both too exhausted. He had been in the shallow end of sleep, just conscious enough to watch the reflection of the very beginning of the sunrise in the windows of the office buildings across from the Tribute Centre. I can’t believe I brought a girl back to the Tribute Centre, that can’t be allowed … he wants to smack himself as he follows Asenath back to The Pit, her hand around his wrist. The same sun had risen over the arena, over the tree that Awinita had managed to sequester herself in, in the hour that it took the toxilapia to smell the blood dripping down her body and into the water from her shredded cheek. 

The first bite to her submerged shins had woken her up, the second and third had startled her, causing her to lose her balance and slip backwards into the floodwaters, into the gathering shoal. Flickerman plays the clip on a loop, the poor girl screaming and trying to grab back onto the branch as the swarm of fish sucked her to pieces, some even jumping out of the water at her face and hands. He doesn't have the stomach to watch the whole thing in its entirety, barely anybody else does, and by noon Sligo has already bought Haymitch five rounds with a good chunk of his cut of Ciaran’s payout. Sekhmet clocks in around the time they're both halfway to blackout and shoots him a sympathetic smile across the lobby. He notices that she's gotten rid of the tip jar her coworker set up, divided in half by a slip of paper, the left side for Annie and the right for Briar. 

He wonders what exactly he said to her last night during that gap of time he can’t quite remember, if he was maybe a little too comfortable around her... He tries to brush it off. It shouldn't matter anyway, she's just some girl, if he was too vulnerable or too easy or too much he can find at least twelve of her by the end of the day. Everyone wants to get railed by a victor, especially while the Games are still going on, and it's so nauseatingly satisfying to know how much money Ptolemy is losing now that his tribute is in the final two and he won't be available. He imagines Procula settling for some other slab of meat who doesn't pretend to know or care who Andronica Dovecote is, imagines Apophis tying somebody else up and losing his boner halfway through. Fuck all of them, he thinks to himself, trying not to show his elation, as long as Annie stays alive, they can all, quite literally, go fuck themselves . He'd like to see Ptolemy try to pimp him out when he's on a victory tour.

“Kid needs to move.” Sligo slurs once they’re back in The Pit. “Can’t just sit there forever.”

Mags smacks Sligo on the arm. Asenath keeps staring at the hickey, grimacing and touching her own neck.

“I have to ask-.”

“No you don’t.”

“Another victor?” She lowers her voice. “Cashmere? Bijou? Willow? Willow’s pretty, you are into women, right? I mean, it’s fine either way, I’m only asking because-.”

“Asenath, drop it.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I think it’s a little gauche to be whoring around right now.” She steals another look at the hickey and shudders.

Is it better or worse if I’m getting paid? He looks back at the screen, back at poor waterlogged Briar, who is beginning to look somewhat hypothermic. Blight and Willow are down in the front row, talking in hushed, anxious voices to their escort, an awkward beanpole of a woman named Hephaestia. He knows all three of them have gotten a middling payout now that Briar has made it this far and he's wondering how much of it they're about to lose.

Flickerman's obnoxious intro music plays and he sashays into frame, green-screened up against Briar's gaunt, blue-lipped face. Orestes Blanche is notably absent, but his chair is still pulled up to the desk. Are they expecting him? Is he late? Did Liv finally get him?

"Well, folks, here we are. Welcome to Day 13! Of the 70th Annual Hunger Games. Believe it or not, we are now down to the final two; District 7's Briar Bains-." He cuts to Annie, motionless, crazy-eyed, rocking back and forth and picking at the sucker bite on her face, "-and District 4's Annie Cresta and it has been a nail-biter! Or, in Miss Poole’s case, a leg -biter!" The speakers play a laugh track, The Pit fills with a loud collective groan. 

"Neck-biter." Asenath quips. And she's telling me I'm gauche… A few rows down, someone whose face he can’t make out turns around and shushes her. 

“-over the past thirteen days we have seen some incredible action, I think I speak for everyone in the audience when I say Number 70 has been one for the books. Such an interesting batch this year with even more interesting strategies, but we all know there can only be-.”

A high shriek interrupts the recap and Caesar cuts back to the arena. He can’t tell who it’s come from, but suddenly Annie is taking a running start and diving into the grey water. Asenath tenses beside him, her hand wrapping so tight around his wrist he’s afraid she might injure him. Another agonized scream, this time certainly from Briar. Annie is swimming like a maniac, his communicuff pulsing so furiously it’s starting to get uncomfortably hot. She’s making for a tree with a branch low enough to pull herself up on, then she’s up, then she’s climbing, up through the branches to look out over the drowned arena. Her mouth opens and closes a few times, before she chokes it out barely above a whisper, then speaks it, then screams Briar’s name. Caesar cuts back to the studio as he feels a hand on his shoulder. 

“Finnick Odair and Asenath Glass-.” says a plain-faced, windbreaker-clad woman with a bright green bob. “If you’d come with me, it’s time for final extraction.”

“For… huh?” He babbles, trying to get a look at Annie. Caesar is still talking, showing clips of Briar and Annie from the past two weeks. Asenath grabs him and begins to shove him to his feet, having done this herself only five years ago. Windbreaker Woman leads, Asenath pushes him, down the hall to the elevator then up to the roof, where a craft is waiting. Close behind them are Blight and Hephaestia, both looking like they’re ready to throw up.

“Alright, looks like everyone’s here.” shouts a stocky man in hi-vis over the thrum of the craft, joined by another man and Windbreaker Woman. “I’m Tullius Field, this is Quintus Loring and Opiteria Kane, we’ll be your extraction team for today. Now, as you know, the live feed of the arena has about a two minute delay, we know the outcome before anybody else does.” He turns to Blight and Hephaestia. “I’m very sorry to be the bearer of this news, but this year’s victory has gone to District 4. We’ll be retrieving Briar’s body.”

Hephaestia grimaces and leans forward like someone has punched her in the stomach. Blight grits his teeth and nods, stone-faced, before putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Wait-.” he knows it’s a bad time, but can’t stop himself. “-you’re saying Annie won?”

“Finnick, my God, read the room!” Asenath chides, circling behind him to put an arm around Hephaestia, who is bent over hyperventilating. 

Tullius grits his teeth and nods stiffly. “Congratulations. We better get out there now, she’s had a rough one, she’ll be wanting out.”

The arena has gone from a valley to a flat grey mirror punctuated by the tops of sunken trees. As he follows Quintus and Asenath into the dinghy, Tullius close behind, he can see Annie clinging to her tree, high above the sparse flicker of green and pink in the water below. Blight and Hephaestia wait on the hovercraft as the dive team departs to retrieve Briar. Tullius dumps a bucket of bloody, nondescript meat behind the boat as they start in Annie’s direction. Asenath gags. 

“To redirect the shoal.” he quips. “One wrong step and we’d be fish food.”

When Annie sees them, she doesn’t appear to register them, starting to climb higher but reconsidering, it seems like she knows she doesn’t have it in her.

“She looks awful.” Asenath shudders. “God, the poor thing must be freezing.”

“Well, we’ll get her warmed up soon enough. She’s in good shape, all things considered.” Tullius turns to him and grins. “She’s impressive, I gotta admit, I didn’t think she’d make it this far.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. 

When they reach the tree, Annie stares at them as if she’s wondering whether or not she needs to be scared. She looks terrible up close, her hair drenched and dirty, her face gaunt and covered in grime, her nails broken. She’s managed to keep her ring on, and when he moves to the front of the boat he notices Ciaran’s shell clamped tight in her fist.

“Hey. It’s over, you won.” He holds his hand out as Tullius grabs onto the trunk of the tree to keep the boat still and they drift underneath her branch. “We’re going home.” Annie’s lips move, not producing any sound. “You’re fine. Come here.”

“Annie, you did so well, honey.” Asenath gushes. “We’re all so proud of you.” 

Annie shakes her head, cringing away from him as much as she can. Something small and fast-moving knocks against the side of the boat and his stomach twists. Her body is taut and vibrating with anxiety as he maneuvers his arms around her waist and pulls her awkwardly into the boat, but she lets him, her eyes are crazy and locked on the water. Quintus wraps a blanket around her once she’s in the boat. There is a long gap of silence as he and Asenath stare at each other and back at Annie. She’s alive. She won, my tribute won the whole thing. 4 has another victor and it’s Annie Cresta and I was her mentor. He puts his arm around her as Tullius starts the motor up again and begins to loop around the tree. Annie looks even worse now that she’s in the boat next to him; her gentle olive tan has taken on a sick grey undertone and her eyes are dead and bloodshot, hemmed in by the colour of a week-old bruise. Her lips are stiff with chapped flesh and bloody, half-healed cracks that look like they’re about to rip open every time she so much as breathes. Her shoulder is hard and tremulous against him now that her Processing line muscle has started to waste and her hair is about half as thick as it was before and he can see how dirty it is now that it’s beginning to dry. 

“You deserve this.” he whispers close to her ear, feeling like he has to say something, knowing that the last thing she needs to hear is anything pertaining to Ciaran Whelk. “I am so proud of you.”

Steeling himself for the smell of death, decay, and two-weeks-unwashed hair, he leans in and kisses Annie stiffly on the temple. She doesn’t even flinch. 

About thirty feet or so behind them, Hephaestia lets out a grating shriek. When he turns back, she is kneeling on the ramp with Blight standing over her, one hand on her shoulder and the other over his mouth. The dive team is hauling what used to be Briar back to the craft and her left leg is gone, reduced to the edge of a femur, the remaining flesh mottled grey and fluorescent pink. When Annie sees her, her entire body locks up. She backpedals frantically like she’s trying to escape and Quintus has to wrap his arms tightly around her to keep the boat from flipping. 

“Coming.” she chokes out, her voice is so rough he’s half expecting her to start coughing up blood. She shakes her head insistently. Tullius navigates back to the craft as the dive team hauls Briar out of the water, lowering her sodden remains onto a spineboard and dragging her out of sight. 

“Don’t worry, miss.” Tullius placates, “we’ll be back soon, just sit tight.” 

The boat begins to crawl through the cloud of chum back to the ramp leading up into the bowels of the craft, where the dive team is ascending, Briar suspended between them. Annie sucks in a loud, shuddering breath, then another, in rapid succession. 

“She’s hyperventilating, Quint.” Tullius states the obvious, sounding almost bored as he looks over the edge of the dinghy. The fish are gathering, the shoal pulsing pink and green through the murky water. Watching them makes his skin crawl, like that time he’d seen a fish head discarded in the grass by the bank in town, seething with red ants. Behind him, Opiteria is passing an oxygen mask to Quintus, who is fitting it over Annie’s face. She keeps twisting her head away. Asenath watches her with a nervous expression.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asks stupidly. 

“Probably just shock. She’ll straighten up once she’s slept and eaten. We see this all the time.”

Asenath leans in close. “You weren’t like this when we extracted you. You were quiet the whole time.”

“To be fair, I was concussed and had no idea where I was.” He whispers back. Asenath shrugs, but he can tell she isn’t convinced. Annie lets out a long, high sob, thrashing in Quintus’s grip, she looks like she’s trying to escape upward, her legs straightening. She can see the fish gathering, she doesn’t realize she’s safe from them. He reaches forward to tap Tullius on the shoulder. “Does this thing go any faster?”

“It’ll be fine.” Tullius waves him off, “I’d rather wait a bit until we can get Blight’s girl on ice. You saw how she reacted.”

In a sudden moment of irritated petulance, he wants to cut in that ‘Blight’s girl’ had a name, but suddenly the boat lurches sideways, the lapping water swinging dangerously close. Asenath lets out a squeal and scrambles to get her bearings, one of her (blessedly declawed) hands coming down hard on his shoulder and gripping like a vice. 

“Damn it!” Opiteria yelps. Annie is fighting both of them now, Quintus trying to control her upper body and Opiteria descending on her legs. Even after two weeks of bare survival, she’s still strong, and they seem barely able to keep a hold on her. The dinghy sways again. Tullius digs under his seat and retrieves a first aid kit.

“You two hold her, I’m gonna make this easier.” He grumbles, extracting a vial of something clear and a hermetically sealed syringe. Struggling to keep his balance, occasionally flicking his eyes back to the roil of mutt and chum swirling below, he extracts a generous injection, advances forward carefully, and sticks the syringe into Annie’s thigh.  

She thrashes desperately a few more times, eyes wide, before going slack. They proceed towards the craft, agonizingly slowly. When they reach the ramp, they are pulled up by a thick rope looped around a hitch at the front of the dinghy, dragged up and in as the hatch closes behind them, behind himself and Asenath and their Victor. 

Chapter Text

There are aquatic parasites that eat the tongues of fish and live in their mouths. Even through the thick murk in her brain, she can still call back the day Dad brought her out in Anamarija II . It had taken him a while to launch her, he’d put the motor together himself. Mom would always say ‘you’re not taking Annie out in that thing until the motor stops making that noise’ and he would always say he was going to get it fixed and never did. It had made the noise that day, she had wanted to get out and go back upstairs to Mom but he told her it was fine. It was so cold that morning, the fog was thick like milk over the water, the metal edges of Anamarija II were icy even though it was only late September. The steelhead he pulled up had stared at her as it died and so did the thing that had replaced its tongue, the tiny exoskeletoned head cresting the trout’s gasping mouth. It stared out at her like it saw her, like they had conspired to kill the steelhead together. She wouldn’t eat it, threw her portion away when no-one was looking and had nightmares all week about Mom and Dad waking up with little armoured worms where their tongues should be. When the sedatives begin to wear off and the murk begins to thin, she can feel something spawning inside of her, a hot, toxic prickle deep in her throat. Since she began to feel it, they have started tying her wrists down. 

It took Briar three minutes to die. There was nothing she could have done that wouldn’t have killed her too. It would have been hypothermia if not the fish. She mentioned once, soon after Alder had died, that where she comes from they bury their dead under a sapling. The woman who comes in sometimes has tattoos on her collarbones and smells like sickness. She opens the blinds, fills an oral syringe with something that tastes like nothing and comes out in a weak, lukewarm rivulet and overfills her mouth and runs down her neck. The woman leaves, brings a clipboard, leaves again. She has to get up and swim before the bed is waterlogged and begins to sink. When she tries, they make her sleep again. Wherever she goes is dark and warm and she is the only one there.

When she sees Ciaran, he is in one piece, sitting perfectly still in the chair at the foot of her bed. She feels her mouth trying and failing to form words, trying to ask him if this means she’s dead too, but he just sees her and seems to understand.

“No.” He replies. “Not yet. If they waited another hour, you would be.”

Then how am I talking to you?

Ciaran gives her a long, confused look. “Do you think I’m dead?”

I watched you die. Eisen cut your head off with an axe.

Ciaran touches his neck. “Feels fine.”

You’re fucking with me.  

Ciaran doesn’t move, his legs aren’t long enough to touch the floor and he is wearing the suit he wore the day they met, which, for whatever reason, she can’t remember the occasion. It took him almost no time to die the first time, but his eyes had been open, they had looked her in the eyes and she had looked back. She had to look, it was the last thing she could do for him, she would have wanted him to look, she hopes that when she dies this time someone will look. But she doesn’t want to look at him anymore, his mouth is opening and closing the way it did when he was looking at her from the ground, the way the steelhead stared at her, the way the thing in its mouth stared at her. Her wrists are untied, her limbs are long and floating apart from their sockets, the joints are water and they are grey and full of death. 

She lunges forward, all floodwater and poison, and the door opens and someone catches her, someone who smells and feels familiar, cigarettes and a dank salt scent that she remembers only vaguely, a scent that came before the forest, before the water, another life ago.

“Call someone.” says the man. “Damn it, Asenath, get on the fucking phone.”

A woman is crying. She falls hard back into the bed and feels it bob and dip on the water. She wants to tell the man to come back, that he’s going to drown if he goes any farther. He is a long shadow on the other side of the room, the woman glows red and black and grey and white and her voice is high and thin and sad. She is up again, the man is holding her again, she is holding her hand out to the woman and the woman is backing off like she’s afraid she’ll be contaminated too and she wants to tell her that it’s fine, that the rot is locked behind her skin and as long as she stays in one piece she will be the last one it can kill. The man’s face is framed by long black hair threaded with grey, his face is light brown, his eyes are dark brown, his shirt is the colour of tilapia flesh and the collar is open and his neck is all one piece.

“Settle down, Ann. It’s just us, we won’t hurt you. You need to lay down.”

Dad calls me Anka, she tries to tell him, I know you’re not him because he calls me Anka. Ciaran is watching in the corner, never taking his eyes off her, the woman is still crying. Then she smells sickness again, and the woman who comes sometimes is pushing the man back. Something pricks at the bend of her elbow and soon she is underwater again. Everything is grey and silent. Something chews at her tongue. Her hand will not come up to scrape it away.

The woman’s voice is still high and thin and sad when she says, “I’ll take Finnick with me to the Embassy tomorrow. I don’t want him to see her like this.”

Chapter Text

 The most recent issue of The Lararium is on the coffee table in the hospital waiting room- The Unsinkable Annie Cresta- everything you need to know about District 4’s warrior queen of the arena- styled by Procula Derringer, shot by Nephthys Demigloss . The pictures were taken prior to the Games, they always are, but Annie’s expression is uniquely unenthusiastic. It’s the face of someone who still had a living, breathing Ciaran to worry about and wanted no part in preparing for what could only follow her failure to protect him.  He flips it open to her centerfold, finds her in the dress she hated, the ungainly nails, the stiff hair. Despite having been bored, annoyed and awaiting certain death, she looks beautiful. In the cool light of the studio, the spray tan looks almost tasteful, could even pass for natural, and her expression is more aloof than irritated. On the third page, Procula has her topless with her long brown hair crimped and covering her breasts, there is a scrap of blue fabric around her waist and a belt made of  foily approximations of shells and sand dollars strung together on a delicate gold chain. She is looking to the left, away from a column of text that had to have been written after she won. Reaped in the months leading up to her 19th birthday, Cresta was not going to lay down and resign herself to her circumstances- which, ironically, he knows is exactly what she planned on doing once Ciaran’s head left his shoulders. - now our stunning siren can kiss her days of crab pellets and cod rearing goodbye. If there’s one thing the 70th Hunger Games have shown us, it is that Annie Cresta is a rare pearl and the world is her oyster- between the nautical puns and alliterations, he wants nothing more than to punch whoever wrote this damn article. He flips to the first page, a picture of Annie shoulder-deep in water making semi-facetious bedroom eyes at the camera. The accidental foreshadowing turns his stomach. The byline in the corner reads, lo and behold, Andronica Dovecote. 

Ptolemy, always an accommodating trafficker, allowed him to check out early given the Victory. He hasn’t heard from Liv and is half relieved, half petrified, oscillating between the two in his rare moments of wakefulness. Most of the time, at least for the past three days that Annie has been in the hospital, he has been asleep. Enobaria and Horemheb came by briefly with a celebratory bottle of wine, but Mags sent them away, telling them to leave it by the bar. At one point when he got up to use the washroom, he noticed someone had taped a note to it that read ‘ SLIGO DON’T TOUCH!!! ’ Asenath poked her head in a couple times, and at one point set a glass of water on his nightstand, which was room temperature by the time he woke up. Around the day-and-a-half mark, he heard Willow and Bijou talking to Sligo in the common area, and he remembers not liking their tones, hushed and solemn with a lot of sharp inhales. His ribs still hurt from laying down for so long and the coffee he drank in the morning is somehow having the opposite effect it should.

Asenath looks out of sorts when he sees her, coming up the cool-toned hallway of Volumnia Gaul Memorial Hospital. She isn’t as done up as she normally is, her hair is beginning to corkscrew its way out of the split-dyed curtain he’s used to and her makeup is minimal. She’s wearing a long, straight dress with long sleeves and a high neckline made of a glossy dove-grey material and sensible black pumps. She hasn’t even gotten around to getting her nails fixed. 

She lets out a heavy breath when she sees him. “There you are. You sleep well? Well, of course you slept well, I couldn’t wake you up. I went in there and held a mirror up to your mouth to make sure you were still alive.”

“I appreciate the concern.”

Asenath waves a hand. “I need to warn you, Finn, she’s in rough shape. From what I gather, the fish got her pretty good. They’ve given her anti-venom and rehydrated her and all that, but…” Asenath shakes her head. “It’ll be a while until she’s… back to the way she was.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. It happens, she’s been through the ringer.”

Asenath hums nervously through clenched teeth. “That’s one way of putting it.”

His palms begin to sweat. “Well… can I see her?”

“Later. Right now we need to go to the 4th Embassy. There’s some paperwork I need to fill out, and we need to get Annie’s personal effects. I called a car, it should be out front.” She grabs his hand and begins to make for the elevator, her palm is suspiciously clammy. In all his years of being pawed at, he’s developed a knack for recognizing nervous sweat.

“Shouldn’t I-.”

“Finnick-!” Asenath throws her hands up, wanting to yell but thinking better of it. “You’re stressing me out. Would it kill you to just let me do my job?”

“I just want to see her. It’s been… what day is it?”

“July 20th.” She reads his expression and raises her eyebrows. “Exactly. She needs time to decompress. Your Games were only about a week, it took less time for you to bounce back.”

“She’s okay though, right? You’ve seen her, would you say she’s okay?”

Asenath makes a face that he doesn’t like, he can tell she’s trying to figure out how to phrase her answer and drawing blank after blank. Eventually her inflated lips thin as much as they can, her eyes avoid his and her fingers knit together. 

“It-.” She pauses and exhales heavily through her nose. “It could be a lot worse.”

The 4th Embassy is a tall, narrow building on the North side of Embassy Way in the Capitol’s East end. He’s only been a handful of times, but everyone there knows him and gets entirely too excited when he comes in. He hates it there, hates the overly chipper employees, hates the stale coffee smell that weighs down the air, and especially hates the display of all the Victors from 4, their framed pre-Games promotional pictures hung beside the ones from their respective Victory Tours. Mags, who had been Morag Bowline then, freshly married to Seth Bowline as a part of a business agreement between their fathers, is at the front of the row in black and white. She’s a tiny, malnourished 16 year old, dark curls hacked to her jaw, plucked from a cliffside fishing village. Thaumas Rorqual follows, a boy he barely knows anything about who would grow into a man he would never meet, then Arnav Skiff, the same. To Arnav’s left is Sligo, fresh from the Portside docks and only thinking about protecting Lysandra. In the picture that follows, he may as well have been photographed with her body, God knows he’s been dragging it around ever since. To his left, a recently-reaped Phoca glares confidently into the camera, lips twisted into something resembling a cocky smile, post-Games, she is sullen and scrawny, shrinking into a dress that cost more than the trailer she grew up in back in Brineridge. The glass eye they gave her is still and shiny, a slightly paler shade of brown than her real one, and it stares blindly off camera. He can’t look at his own pictures, every time he’s come, he’s never let his eyes wander that far.

The woman behind the desk has a name tag that reads Hello, my name is Cymopoleia, thank you for visiting the 4th Embassy. She’s a dowdy little thing, looks to be in her late 50s, and she has the phone balanced on her shoulder when they walk in, her hands occupied with a soggy-looking sandwich. 

“-and I told him exactly what I’m telling you… well, we’ll deal with that when and if-… I don’t appreciate that, Maritimus.” she looks up at them and offers a stiff smile, mouthing an ‘I’ll be right with you’, then returning to her conversation. “I think you’re completely overreacting. I’ve had the displeasure of knowing Carcinus Clay for years, on my list of priorities, he isn’t even in the top thirty. Now, you can stew over him as long as you want, I won’t stop you, but I think you’re wasting your energy, we have much bigger fish to fry, alright?” She rolls her eyes. “Well, of course I don’t, he’s dumber than a bag of sand and about as charismatic. The yogurt in the back of my fridge is a bigger threat to the Capitol than he is. I’m hanging up now, goodbye.” She smacks the phone down with a surly expression. “I’m sorry about that, it’s always something with that man.” She gives them both a sneaky grin, “I assume you’re here about your Victor, congratulations, by the way.”

“We just need the release forms and her belongings.” Asenath leans in. “What was that about Carcinus?”

Cymopoleia waves a hand. “Oh, you know. He’s been hanging around with some weirdos again.”

Asenath rolls her eyes. “I really don’t get why Salacia doesn’t just fire his ass.”

“Trust me, hon, it’s not for a lack of trying. Can I get you two anything in the meantime?”

“We’re good.” Asenath answers for both of them. Cymopoleia smiles and disappears into the adjoining office. As she opens the door, he catches a glimpse of two interns, maybe 24 or 25, standing by a coffee machine. The woman is running her hand up the man’s arm while he gnaws on a stale-looking pastry. A copier groans, someone sneezes wetly on the other side of the room, getting a hoarse ‘bless-you’ in return. 

“Morning, Asenath.” A woman chimes in, her voice thick like she’s finishing off a swallow of too-milky coffee. She’s about Procula’s age with a similar scrawny frame, a slick cap of teal hair and coloured contacts to match. “Congratulations, babe.” She circles around behind him, clamping a hand around his bicep. “Another-.” she squeezes hard on the name hanging in the air, “... Notch in District 4’s belt.” Her breath is a thick murk of gravy breaking through spearmint, he can feel it condensing in the hollow of his ear.

“Oh, we’re just thrilled, Ceto.” Asenath chirps, not watching the exchange. “She’s a real star, and such a doll. I hope she fires Procula, I’ll make some calls. Tigris maybe, or Nefi or Euphratia if she’s available. Ooh! No, Andromache, definitely Andromache. She dressed Phoca Dylan, you know.”

“I thought Andromache retired.” Ceto quips, a hand snaking around his waist. He could shake her off, throw her back hard against a desk and cause a scene,  but this is his job as much as it is Asenath’s. 

“She can’t say no to me. She was a friend of Daddy’s from way back when.” Asenath turns around and Ceto withdraws quickly. “She remembers me when I was- oh, Finn, what did Mags say? That saying was so cute, about when someone’s short?”

“Knee-high to a hermit crab.”

“Yes, thank you. She remembers me when I was knee-high to a hermit crab. If I ask nicely… and ply her with posca, of course!”

Ceto and Asenath break out into peals of sharp, mirthless laughter, two sets of overfilled lips in rictus sausage-link grins. 

“You’re terrible!” Ceto crows. She gives his bicep another squeeze before offering Asenath a limp wave and clacking off down a hall painted with murals of fish-heavy nets and waves. Asenath watches her go, her fake smile slowly going slack.

“She wants to fuck you.” Asenath deadpans, rolling her eyes and wrapping her sleeve around her hand to dust off his shoulder where Ceto touched him. “I could smell the crab boil in her skirt from here. God, she has no class whatsoever.”

“Right.” He forces a laugh. Asenath shudders again. Does she really have no idea?

“Cute dress.” Cymopoleia remarks as she comes back out, handing the shrink-wrapped package over. “You know, since the Reaping, I always thought she was such a classy little thing. Can’t wait for the tour.”

For two people who have known each other relatively closely for five years, the car ride back to the hospital is remarkably awkward. Asenath pulls a pack of clove cigarettes out of her purse and is suddenly fascinated with reading the warning labels, then moves on to intently watching the skyline.

“New season of The Peppers. ” she remarks at one point, motioning towards a nearby billboard, Palaemonia, Pomponia and Panataia Pepper looming spray-tanned and shiny over the skyway. “You hear about Polyxenia’s sex tape?” she lowers her voice. “Someone leaked it. You know, some people are saying, and you didn’t hear this from me, but some people are saying the guy in the video looks an awful lot like Gloss Van Elsberg.”

Probably was . Ptolemy has strict rules about videotaping, but they’re easy to break if you have enough money. Gloss’s face would have to be obscured, but any crackdown on tapes like that could risk exposing Ptolemy’s operation to the general public, an ostensibly consensual sex tape that may or may not depict a Victor is easier to write off. He doesn’t know if Gloss has ever taken an appointment with the brassy 60-something matriarch of the Pepper family, but it isn’t out of the realm of possibility. He combs his mental inventory of the times he’s done three-ways with Gloss, trying to recall any identifying birthmarks or tattoos. 

“Wow.” he deadpans. “That’s crazy.”

“Right?” Asenath shakes her head. “I swear, if I ever hear about you doing anything like that, I’ll smack you into next week.” 

He can’t think of a response beyond a tight-lipped smile. Asenath directs her attention back up at the buildings and billboards overhead. The afternoon is bright and hot, the sun beating down on the already-overlit city. The Avox in the driver’s seat mops his brow with the cuff of his uniform shirt and turns up the A/C, Asenath closes her eyes and lifts her hair off the back of her neck as it begins to blast her in the face.

They’re taking a different route, he notices, as they turn onto a shaded sidestreet in an upscale area of town. The sidewalk is wide, lined with classy-looking businesses, women draped in furs despite the heat filter in and out of boutiques and men in pressed suits smoke cigars on patios. 

“Are we going the right way?” He asks the driver. Asenath rolls her eyes.

“Of course we are, why wouldn’t we be?”

“We didn’t pass through here on the way.”

“Finnick, the main roads are about to absolutely lock up with traffic.” On ‘lock up’, she gestures almost aggressively. “Either we take a detour or sit there for hours. Just calm down, will you? I know this area like the back of my hand.” She leans back against the slick leather bench of the car, fumbling around on the inner edge of the door and retrieving a serving-sized bottle of champagne. “We haven’t toasted Annie yet, and we’re going to be so busy once we get back we won’t have a chance.” 

He finds the bottle on his side and uncorks it, holding it up to mirror Asenath. Tapping the mouths of the bottles together, they share an uncomfortable second of eye contact just before the ‘to Annie’, which comes out just out of unison. The wine is slightly warm. 

“Good stuff.” He forces out.

“Isn’t it? Fleming Vineyards, nothing like it.” There is an uncomfortable pause before Asenath speaks again. “You should know, you’ve done an exemplary job this year. Even if Annie didn’t make it, I’d still be immensely proud of you, and you should be of yourself. I know this isn’t easy for you, but we’ve all noticed how well you’ve been keeping it together. I wanted to tell you that without anyone around, just so you know I really mean it.”

When he looks up, he notices Asenath’s gaze is fixed out the window. She’s drawing in a deep, almost shaky breath. 

“Thank you. I appreciate that. I’m glad I’ve made everyone proud.”

Asenath only offers a tight ‘Mm-hm!’ in reply, still avoiding eye contact. Her exhale is long and wet. He doesn’t like being around Capitol people when they get emotional, Asenath least of all because she’s the only one he’s close to actually liking. Reluctantly, he slides a hand along the backseat, finds hers, and lets her give it a clammy squeeze. 

The car takes a ponderous left turn onto another street, this one is lined with restaurants, patios baking in the sun. Asenath’s hand slides out of his to check her communicuff, which she’s been ignoring the whole drive despite the sporadic pings. She stares at it for a second with a grim expression on her face before taking a long sip of her wine. 

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” she replies sharply. She leans her head back and closes her eyes. “Work.”

The package containing Annie’s yellow dress, white hair ribbons and blue-and-green beaded earrings, is heavy in his lap. He runs a finger along the edge of the plastic shrink-wrap as if reassuring the items that they will be with their owner soon, that they still belong to someone. The fabric of the dress is thin with age and he imagines she’s worn it at least for the past four Reapings. The ribbons still have a few brown hairs tangled up with the lace. The earrings are obviously handmade, and the hooks are slightly tarnished. 

Beginning to feel edgy, he looks up and out the window. The car has stopped at an intersection right next to a busy patio. His nausea is just beginning to pass when he spots a diminutive young woman with long, golden-brown hair and delicate features sitting at a table with a beefy middle aged man. He keeps brushing her hair out her face with one hand while she stares deliriously down at her untouched plate, swaying, obviously drunk on an empty stomach. 

Get away from her , he wants to yell, watching as a server refills Bijou’s wine glass, as the man picks it up and maneuvers it into her unwilling hand. Leave her alone, she’s a child . He rolls down the tinted window, to which Asenath mutters something about letting the cold air out, but by the time it’s open wide enough for him to make eye contact, the car is beginning to move and the man is going in to suck on Bijou’s slack mouth. He feels like he’s been punched in the gut. 

Five years ago, by this point in the month, he’d been in the Victor’s Village for a week while Mom drove back down the coast to Brineridge with Sligo and Mags’s niece Macie to pack up the rest of their scant belongings and bring them to the new house. He’d been staying with Mags, in her upstairs guest room, and waiting for it to hit him. He still felt like he’d ever fully come back and when he asked her why, she simply said something along the lines of things just being different now. He’d wanted to trust her, obviously she would know, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He was still a little concussed, still hadn’t figured out the layout of the Flanagan house let alone his own, still felt like the malnourished 7 year old standing outside Gil Caravel’s trailer, holding a pitchfork taller than him by half. This time five years ago will never feel like a real time. 

This time four years ago, Horemheb was still in the hospital and Enobaria was falling apart. He remembers going straight from The Pit to Ptolemy’s after Leucie died and just tuning everything out. Mom was only a few months gone, nothing felt real. He remembers laying underneath a man whose name he can’t remember, some important politician who had been on publicly rocky terms with his wife, and staring at the fold of the bedsheets in front of him, trying to stare as deeply as he could into the weave of the soft cotton, trying to lock away every tactile sensation in some deep hole in his mind. That evening, Liv came and made him drink until he couldn’t see. Between that and waking up in clean clothes in Cashmere’s bed at the Tribute Centre, there is nothing.

Most years it’s the same. Someone wins, Ptolemy wears him out until the Victor is out of the city and everyone moves on, but this year he’ll be able to leave all this shit behind until August, when he’s back on his back for a week, then home, then September and so on. He prays that this year Ptolemy will give him at least the summer off to get Annie settled. He remembers not seeing much of Gloss after Bijou won, but that could have just been a coincidence. Ptolemy will occasionally let Victors in his employ tweak their monthly obligations if they make a good case. Rennette once got time off to go to a wedding back in 10, but stayed for an extra three days the following month and had to let Himeros do her for free. He remembers hearing something about Enobaria getting time off when she got her teeth done, but knows Ptolemy hadn’t been given all the information, knowing how pissed he’d been when he saw them for the first time. 

“ You had such a pretty little mouth -!” Enobaria is almost disconcertingly good at the impression after a couple drinks, probably because she’s been subjected to Ptolemy’s smarmy voice for so long, “- I’ll have to draw up a waiver !”

The car is on its third detour when he remembers what Ptolemy will mean to Annie now, and he doesn’t even care enough to pester Asenath about why they've been driving in circles for so long. His stomach begins to clench thinking of how to explain it to her. She barely has any collateral back home, but Ptolemy will figure something out, he always does. He thinks of Saira, of that family who drove all the way down from the Peninsula, the older daughter, what was her name, Trisha? Tasha? who had cried and insisted that she would have volunteered if she hadn’t turned 19 before the Games. Nobody is ever truly alone in the world, at least from Ptolemy’s point of view, even an acquaintance can become collateral. Confirmed kills don’t harden people to the idea of death, not in any way that matters. If anything, some Victors become softer after the arena. Someone like Annie, who cared for a dying boy she could have easily thrown out of the way, who would have died for a scrawny 12 year old who was as good as dead the second his name was called, would spread her legs for all 12 Districts and the Capitol to keep someone she’s met once off the chopping block. She’s too good for this life and now he has to be the one to push her headfirst into it. He can taste vomit in the back of his throat. 

“Asenath-.” he whispers. She doesn’t turn to face him. She’s resting her head on the partition between them and the driver, teeth clenched, empty bottle in a white-knuckle grip with both hands. “-where are we?”

“Just outside Palatine Park.” she says dryly. He doesn’t bother to press her further. In the back of his mind, he thinks he knows why. 

An hour and a half later, in the waiting room, Mags tells him what Asenath wouldn’t as he stares at that issue of The Lararium that hasn’t moved all day. When she’s done, she tells him he doesn’t have to see her yet if he isn’t ready, that Annie probably won’t remember him coming in anyway, so whatever happens she won’t hold it against him. She says Annie will be better soon, that these things can take time. He tells her he wants to see her and they all walk down the hall together, not saying anything.

In a room identical to the one he vaguely remembers waking up in five years ago, Annie is sitting upright in a hospital bed with her wrists tied to the rails. Sligo is sitting beside her, watching her with a look he’s never seen before, uncharacteristically miserable even for the personification of misery himself.

Annie looks like absolute hell. Her hair has been treated, Remake would have been on her the moment she was stable, and is cleaned and wound into two tight braids, likely by Mags. Her bangs are trimmed straight across, her nails cut down to the quick but otherwise immaculate. Her skin, while clean and spotless, has a sick undertone to it and her eyes are puffy like she’s been crying for days. There is a tube stemming out of her left nostril, taped to her cheek, Mags mentioned something about her refusing to eat.  When he crosses the threshold, Annie watches him like he’s going to attack her at any second, her body seizing up as much as it can with her wrists and, he’s just noticing, ankles bound to the rails of the bed. 

“Hi, Annie.” He manages. She stares at him, upper lip curling in disgust, she starts to shake her head. “Yeah, I know. You’re all drugged up right now, you probably feel really weird, but I-.” 

“Cy…” Annie’s voice is barely a whisper. “Cymothoa…” She starts to fight against the strips of fabric keeping her wrists attached to the bed. “Cymothoa exigua…” She whimpers, Sligo sits on the edge of the bed and takes her face in his hands.

“No, Ann.” He says quietly. “You’re okay. I’ll show you, you wanna see?” Annie stares at him for a few seconds, there is something in her eyes resembling recognition, understanding. She nods, and Sligo retrieves a small, plastic-edged hand mirror from the nightstand. He holds it up to Annie’s face and she opens her mouth hesitantly, pushing her tongue just past her lips. “See? You’re all good. Don’t think about that little fucker, he can’t get you.” Sligo brings a hand up to Annie’s cheek again. “Oh, my girl, my Ann, he can’t get you.”

“I feel it.”

“No, you don’t, hon. You’re just scared.”

Annie’s face crumples and she lapses into soft, choked sobbing. It lasts for a few seconds before something switches and her face goes stony, then she’s thrashing, wrists and ankles desperate to get free. She’s fighting so violently that the bed starts to rock, the locked wheels shifting as much as they can. Mags hurries forward to where Sligo is already starting to try to talk Annie down while Asenath grabs a phone off the wall and punches a button towards the bottom of the keypad. From the time the episode starts to the moment the nurse arrives with the sedative, Annie does not break eye contact with him.

Horemheb Shale is a good guy, a Lanistarium reject who only just barely won his Games and ended up in a coma for the following month. He never fully bounced back, developed a limp and a dazed affect that makes it seem like he’s not all there, but his honey brown doe eyes and sanguine sex appeal make up for it. Everyone at Ptolemy’s always seems to want to protect him, but he understands what he’s gotten into and suffers it without a word of complaint. He has two parents, five siblings and a fiancée back in 2, so he does what he’s asked, keeps his head down and doesn’t stay a minute longer than he has to. Enobaria, who has all but adopted him after he almost died on her watch, pulls the strings she needs to pull when necessary, which has proven easy since Ptolemy is terrified of her. In the years since he won, he’s only mentored once, a strapping girl ironically named Victoria, she died within 12 hours. 

He tries to remember this, remember how fucked up Horemheb was, how slim his chances of survival were, as Horemheb returns from the bar, collared and stinking of sex with two Horny Hadrianas cradled precariously in his twitchy hands. 

“I’m sorry, man.” Horemheb says in his slurred voice as he sits down. “God, what a nightmare.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“‘Course.” Horemheb raises his glass in a shaky cheers, which he reciprocates. “Enobaria and I are in town until the end of the week, whatever you need, we’re here, we get it.”

“I heard my name.” Enobaria cuts in, drying her hands on her pants. The hand dryers in the downstairs ladies’ room must be on the fritz again.

“Just telling Finnick we’re in town for a while.”

“Yeah.” Enobaria sits down next to him and wraps an arm around his shoulders. “It’ll be okay, kid. She’s a strong one, she’ll bounce back.”

“I’ve never seen anyone like that before. She was… crazy.”

“I mean, yeah. That was a rough Games. Better crazy than dead. When’s her interview?”

“The 27th. Asenath bought us some time.”

“Good.” Enobaria turns to Horemheb. “What do you think, you wanna stay in town? I think I might.”

“I’ll call Althea, it should be okay.”

“Yeah, run it by her and give her my love.” Horemheb smiles, twisting his engagement ring around his finger. Enobaria watches him and smiles for a few seconds before taking a long sip of her Sazerac. “Listen, Finn, I know it seems like she’s fully gone right now, but I promise-.”

“Yeah, everyone’s been telling me that all day, even Sligo. Like it’s bad enough that he’s forgotten to be a dick, that’s how bad it is.”

Enobaria scoffs. “Well, yeah, that’ll happen. Don’t let me go off on a tangent about when this one won. I’m proud to say I’m one of maybe five people in the world who have ever seen Brutus Guerrero cry. You want me to come with you to see her tomorrow?”

“I don’t know… You’re kind of imposing.”

“Hm. True. Well, any moral support you need, we’re here.” She gives him a stiff Enobaria-esque hug with one arm. “Now can we change the subject?” She shoots Horemheb a look. “I’ve got some shit to tell you.”

“What?”

Enobaria leans in, the light from the little candle on the table lighting up her canines as she speaks. “Somebody whacked Orestes Blanche.”

The lingering fruity taste in his mouth goes bitter. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, he was balls deep in Falia and a guy in a mask came in and emptied a clip in the back of his head. That’s what I mean.”

He knows immediately who gave the order and why. I am not my husband, I don’t mince around like he does, if she’s not dead by tonight, you will be, I’ll do it myself.  

“Is Falia okay?

“God no. Completely traumatized plus she’s a roadsider, so it’s not like Ptolemy’s gonna give her time off.” Enobaria exhales heavily. “Anyway, someone wasn’t happy with him. Rennette thinks her client that day was in on it, he booked under a fake name and left once the gun went off. Just pulled his pants up and tipped her and walked out. She went to check on Falia and the body was already gone. There was just this big blood splatter all over the wall and the top half of the bed and Falia was all covered in blood too.”

“It was nuts.” Horemheb cuts in. “Kale says he was watching them from his suite window, says they just tossed the body in the back of a truck.”

“Can they do that?” He asks stupidly. “Like, obviously that was a hit, can they do that on private property?”

Enobaria shrugs. “Well, Ptolemy’s mixed up with some real high rollers and some real freaks. I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half the shady shit that goes on in this city happens at least in part at Ptolemy’s. We’ve probably seen a lot of it and not even put it together.”

“Got me thinking.” Horemheb supplies. “That lady who books with me sometimes just to talk about other people. She had a hell of a lot to say about you this week.”

He feels sweat begin to bead on the back of his neck. “You mean Procula, right? The skinny blonde with the bad makeup?”

“Oh no, I know her. No, this one’s older, maybe mid 70s. She’s got kind of auburnish hair and she’s always wearing green. She doesn’t tell me her name. She isn’t so bad, we never really do anything below the belt, but she doesn’t like the President.”

“Shit.” says Enobaria, her arm flinches like she’s about to raise her glass but immediately thinks better of it. 

“What does she say about me?”

Horemheb takes a deep breath, tracing a finger through the condensation on his glass. “She always wants to know what you’re doing, who you’re doing. She says she likes to watch you, says you remind her of someone. When I ask her who, she won’t say. She’s a funny one, but I mean, a lot of them are. I don’t think the people here are, like, all the way normal.”

“Obviously not. Anyway, we’re getting a new Head Gamemaker. I don’t know about you two, but I’ll put money on it being a Buchwald. One of the Buchwalds sees me sometimes. She’s got a couple uncles in the Guild and The Big Guy owes her grandpa crazy money.” Enobaria shoots him a nervous look. “You should see some of these people, Finn. You’ve gotta be seriously sick to go into that line of work.”

“Don’t talk so loud, there might be some around.”

“Oh, that’s fine. They all own it. Cashmere was telling me about this Tier 2 who would fantasize about putting her into his landscape traps. During their sessions, he’d lay on the mattress with his eyes closed stroking himself and telling her to scream. Before your time, obviously, but that’s why her suite has all that sound-proofing. He’s gotta be promoted by now.”

“That’s nauseating.”

“ Sick .” She hisses out the word and aspirates hard on the - ck . 

The night goes by wet and blurry. He remembers Horemheb going upstairs to call Althea and Cashmere and Willow coming downstairs barely dressed. He remembers them congratulating him and smelling alcohol on their breath. He remembers getting in the car in a crush of curled hair and tulle and cigarette smoke and Cashmere announcing that they were meeting Gloss at Bacchanal downtown. He remembers the smell of smoke machines, the strobe, the DJ dedicating a series of cacophonous thumps and shrieks to Annie, Willow’s arm thrown around his neck, a maelstrom of congratulations as he stumbled to the men’s room for a line with Gloss. He remembers all of this while thinking about Phoca Dylan the entire time.

He doesn’t remember the circumstances under which she visited Brineridge. Maybe she still had family there, maybe that fabled insanity of hers finally took over and she decided she might like to seek out the company of Gil Caravel. Either way, she was there, Sligo probably not far away. 

“Finn-.” Mom had said. “This is the Phoca Dylan. She won the 49th Games. Isn’t that amazing?”

“It’s an honour to meet you, Miss Dylan.” He had rehearsed that in the bathroom mirror all week. “You’re even more beautiful in person.” Mom had added that on. 

Phoca just stared with one eye. He remembers overhearing Sligo saying something about how she would only wear the glass one around the cameras, it was uncomfortable in the socket. Her left eyelid was slightly discoloured with scar tissue and lay flat and hollow, the eyelashes wet and spiked together. There was another strip of discolouration along the edge of her cheekbone. He remembered then and remembers now the way the barbed tail of that alligator mutt had raked her face as she escaped. 

As he collapses drunkenly into bed, not bothering even to take his shoes off, he remembers the way she had watched him that day. 

“Is this what you want?” She had asked him when Mom and Gil went inside to settle up some late payments behind the curtain in the trailer. “Don’t lie to me. I’ll know if you lie.”

“I want to bring honour to my District and to my family.” He parroted. 

“How old are you?”

“I’m 9, Miss Dylan.”

“Do you even know what death is?” And he hadn’t known how to answer, because he knew, but he didn’t. 

When he wakes up, his communicuff is screaming.

He has to elbow his way through a throng of reporters to reach the prep area of Caesar’s studio in the Media Tower, where Sligo and Asenath have Annie pinned down with the help of Procula and a few interns. Mags is stroking her hair and pouring morphling down her throat as she tries to fight them off. She spits the first dose over Asenath’s shoulder, Sligo grabs her around the neck so Mags can hold the second vial between her lips and not let it go until she has no choice but to swallow.

“Ann, if you don’t hold still-.” Sligo threatens, “-kid, get over here and make yourself useful.”

Annie aims a stiletto-clad kick at Sligo’s crotch, Asenath sits on her legs. Annie manages to get an arm free to claw at the airspace before Procula grabs her wrist and pins it back down.

“You’ll be fine.” he insists, Annie looks up at him, her expression boiling with vitriol. “The sooner you get out there, the sooner it’ll be over.”

She eyes him for a second, then spits square in his face. Mags claps a hand over Annie’s mouth and leans into it, Annie screams into her palm.

“The fuck are you doing?” He drags Asenath out into the hallway and backs her up against the wall, trying  to clear his tear duct of saliva, “-who discharged her?”

“It’s the victory interview. We can’t just… not. I know we applied for another week but the First Lady specifically insisted. She called the studio and said it had to be today, believe me, I'm as pissed as you are, I'm supposed to be at brunch.”

Fucking Liv, that rancid old cunt . “So you’re going to make her go out there like that?”

“Unless you can come up with something else.  I like my tongue where it is, thank you very much.” Asenath starts to leave, “she’ll be off her knockers in an hour or so.” A few rooms over, Annie screams again. “Just go with it.”

Procula leaves Annie’s hair straight, pinned back with a thick gold ring run through by a gold trident about a foot long. Each prong has a small pear-cut garnet hanging from the tip, which he assumes is Procula’s attempt at getting a little something extra from him. There is a thin band of pearls around her forehead that wraps around and hooks onto the clip at the back. The dress is a vast improvement, a turquoise silk chiton with sparse pearlescent beadwork cinched at the waist with the same belt from the photoshoot. She sits in the corner of the green room staring through him as Procula slides bracelets onto her limp arms. The drugs hit quickly, and she’s gone from fighting tooth and nail to sleepwalking in under half an hour, he doubts she even knows where she is or why she’s there.

“I’d like to see that Harrington hag call this derivative.” Procula says, mostly to herself. “Isn’t she just delectable, babycakes?”

Call me babycakes again and I’ll take that trident out of her hair and stick it in your esophagus. “Hadriana reincarnated.”

In his own green room, the one with 4M on the door that used to be Ciaran’s, where a picture of his 14 year old self is hanging, Procula hands him one of the most nauseating ensembles of clothing he’s ever seen. The jacket is a saccharine teal and the shirt underneath is a deep V-neck that plunges to his diaphragm. The pants are loose and high-waisted, Procula’s trademark dredging-up of what he recognizes as a costume piece from one of Hadriana Ravinstill’s old movies about a Capitol woman who defects to 4 for reasons he can’t remember and fucks a flamboyantly-dressed sailor-pirate-guy-thing. He watched it with Liv once, can’t remember much because he had been 15 and absolutely pickled, but he remembers the way she replicated what Hadriana and her counterpart were doing on the screen and thinking of it makes him want to set the outfit on fire with it still on. Procula covers her hands with that horrible sappy gel and slicks his hair back, sweeps golden-brown powder around his jaw and cheekbones and gives him a long, tonguey kiss before covering his lips in a sticky substance that starts to burn, turning them a sickly red and making them swell. 

“Just make sure not to eat anything until after the interview when you get that stuff off.” Procula warns. “You don’t want to swallow it.”

When he’s ready, he makes his way down to Annie’s green room. The door gives easily, and the air smells like hairspray has been sprayed recently. Camarina or Aegina must have stepped out. Annie’s back is to him and she’s sitting so still the garnets on her clip aren’t moving. 

“Okay, we better get ready to go.” He takes an oyster off the platter on a nearby table and tops it with sauce. The Annie he knows should have cleared the platter by now, something is definitely off. He sucks it back, making sure it doesn’t make contact with his sticky lips. They’re very good oysters, and the thought of just leaving them to congeal is offputting to say the least. “You should have some of these before I eat them all, I’m starving.” He takes another oyster and makes his way over, his next remark catching hard in his throat when he reaches her, when he sees the maybe 40 or so Morphling tablets in her cupped hands. “Give me those.” She ignores him, staring at the floor. “Annie, come on, don’t be a prick, give me the pills.” Slowly, hesitantly, she brings her hands towards his, letting the pills roll slowly out of her palms. He shoves the handful of pills in the pocket of his jacket. She blinks slowly, the drugs from earlier still crawling through her system. “Did you take any?” 

She shakes her head. “No. I had some-.” she motions towards the bowl of posca in the corner. It’s been whittled down significantly, but that’s most likely Procula’s doing. “Just one. Threw it up.”

She palms at her face clumsily, brings her hand back covered in thick, black, sparkly tears and wipes it on her dress. 

“Come on, Ann.” He goes back to the table and brings her the platter of oysters. “Have a few. You’ll feel better.” Annie eyes the platter like it’s covered in cockroaches. He sighs and sets it aside. “Okay. So here’s what’s going to happen. We have to do the interview, that’s a non-negotiable. So we’re going to go out there and just get it done. Then we’re going to go find Mags and Asenath and we’re going to explain what just happened. And, just the four of us, we’re going to talk about it. If anybody else finds out, they’ll send you back to the hospital and put you on suicide watch, and I can tell you, from experience, that you don’t need that right now. You need to go home, so we’re going to make sure that happens as soon as possible.” 

“I’m so stupid.” she slurs.

“No you’re not. Don’t say that.”

“It should have been me.” 

“You can say that all you want, it won’t make it true.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “My first year mentoring, I… did something like that too. My tribute died pretty early, I’d just lost my mom, I was just… over being alive. A lot of victors try, some succeed.”

Annie starts to break down again. There is a voice low in the back of his mind, some base instinct telling him to hug her, but he can’t get through the necessary motion, feels like if he touches her anymore than he already is that something dirty inside him will leak out onto her, something putrid like whatever has been festering inside Liv all these years. 

The PA system chimes, followed by a dull female voice;

“Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair, Asenath Glass and Procula Derringer, please make your way to the main stage. That’s Annie Cresta, Finnick Odair, Asenath Glass and Procula Derringer, main stage, thank you.”

“I can’t.” Annie whispers.

“You have to. I’m sorry. I promise, it’ll be over before you know it.”

Caesar is backstage in a garish all-chartreuse get-up, rehearsing a weird twirl-and-sweep motion and Asenath has worried her cue cards so much they’re turning to pulp in her hands. She exhales heavily when she sees him, her shoulders dropping a good four inches. She looks stunning, he has to admit, in a floor-length indigo satin slip with tiny, foily shells like the ones on Annie’s parade outfit sewn around the neckline. Her hair is pulled back with a thin gold band and curled in wide ringlets down her back, and she’s bleached the red half away, filled it in with turquoise and added a thin strip of gold through the black half. Her nails are a pale, pearlescent blue and tipped with gold leaf. 

“How’s she doing?” Asenath prods, clacking up to him and picking at his hair. “God, you’re way too young to have this much sludge in your hair…”

He swats her hands away. “She’ll be fine, let’s just make sure we do most of the talking.” He feels like she can tell he’s lying, but he won’t bring up what happened until they’re far away from the cameras. Behind him, Annie is being looked over by Camarina and Aegina as they try to salvage the makeup she’s cried off, staring at him with big, dead eyes, her fingers knit together. He wants to grab her and drag her out of here and put her on the train and never come back, wants it so badly it makes him nauseous.

Asenath nods. “I had a word with Caesar, let him know she’s still a bit sensitive. I’m not sure how much he took in, but I think I convinced him to tread lightly. He got rid of the axe bit.”

“ Axe bit ?”

She leans in. “The axe she used to…” she mimes a chopping motion against her forehead. “So, we don’t have to worry about that.”

“He doesn’t have it here , does he?”

“Not anymore. You’re welcome.”

“Alright, places, people!” a stagehand announces. “Escort on deck, stylist, then mentor, then victor, let’s move!”

“We have names.” Asenath quips bitterly. “Anyway, see you on the other side, kid. Break a leg.” she gives him a chaste, sticky kiss on the cheek before leaning over to wave to Annie and scampering across to the opposite wings where Procula is waiting as Caesar takes his seat.

“Aw, honey!” Aegina cajoles. “How can you be sad? You’re the prettiest girl in the world.” Annie lets out a weak sob. “I know... Camarina, leave her eyebrows alone, you’re upsetting her.”

“Aegina, will you stop being such a festering cunt for four seconds?” Camarina whispers harshly.

“I’m the cunt?”

“Oh yes-.” A peal of forced laughter from Asenath as she and Caesar introduce the segment. He’s pretending to hit on her, she’s pretending to be flattered. He can make out vague trivia about Annie, her age, where she’s from, what she was doing the day of the Reaping, then onto who dressed her. The crowd breaks into polite applause as Procula enters stage-left. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stay here, I keep choking on the stench of Slitcrawler.”

“Maybe you’re just standing too close to yourself.”

Camarina stalls, trying to come up with something. “Well, at least I never hooked up with my cousin.”

“That was an accident , you pestilent-.”

“God, both of you shut up!” Annie growls through a sob. They both go silent, glance at each other and back away. 

“-I tell you, Procula-.” says Caesar from onstage, “-if that’s what they call a siren song, it looks I’m gonna be running aground!”

“You know, Caesar-.” Procula leads in. “-a lot of District girls tend to be underdeveloped, isn’t that so sad? It’s the poor nutrition, you know. When I saw Annie for the first time, I was just over the moon! I mean, look at that body!”

“Oh, believe me, Procula, if I ever stop looking, I need to have my eyes checked!” The crowd goes crazy. “I mean, look at that! What a knockout, and from District 4 of all places!”

“Alright, Caesar-.” Asenath laughs nervously. “She’s only 18. Let’s let the hometown boys get their lines in the water before you start fishing for your trophy wife.” There’s something snappy in her tone. He likes it. Behind him, Annie is crouched in the fetal position like she’s about to throw up. He wants to go over to her but knows he’ll be called up soon.

“Is that what Daddy did, Asenath?” Caesar shoots back, sounding like he’s only half-joking. The crowd goes silent, save for a smattering of hesitant laughter and a loud lone guffaw. On the small monitor backstage, he can see Asenath staring, absolutely bewildered, out into the audience. 

“Shit.” says a stagehand. “He went there. Crazy bastard went there.”

“I mean, she tried him. Honestly, with that last name of hers, she should have stayed pushing paper at the Embassy.”

Asenath looks at Procula as if for rescue, but Procula looks equally as confused.

“Anyway!” Caesar changes tone. “I think it’s time, don’t you all?” Mayhem in the audience. “I think it’s time…” Caesar stares directly into the camera. “Finnick, we know you’re back there... Come on out!”

The applause is so fervent that walking onstage feels like walking into a wall. He’s forgotten how oppressive the stage lights can feel when one is right underneath them. Asenath and Procula are sitting together, Caesar in the middle, an empty loveseat stage-right. Something inside him switches and he manages to wave with both arms to the audience, face splitting into that muscle-memory grin. The sooner we do it, the sooner we can go home …

“How’s everybody doing tonight?” He feels the question explode out like vomit, and the crowd explodes back. “Yeah, that’s what I like to hear!”

“Well, look who it is, five years on and just as handsome as ever, isn’t he, folks?”

He casts a discreet glance back at Asenath, who looks shaken up. Procula is looking at her too, head tilted slightly as if trying to figure out what’s wrong. Before turning back to the crowd, he sees Procula’s elbow inch sideways and make contact with Asenath’s arm. 

“Now, when I found out you were mentoring this year, I just knew your Tribute would be one for the books, but wow! Your first Victor at 19, I think that’s pretty damn impressive.”

“Well, what can I say?” He sits on the inner edge of the right-side loveseat, his eyes landing on Procula’s left foot for just a second too long, just long enough to notice that a dollop of Annie’s liquid foundation has spilled on the pointed toe of her shoe and she hasn’t noticed. He’s so focused on it for that slip second that Caesar’s next line doesn’t quite land. He only realizes he’s missed it when Caesar stutters into a quick recovery. 

“-but, well, of course we knew that. You must have known from the moment you saw Miss Cresta that you had a winner on your hands.”

“Oh, absolutely. I knew from the moment Asenath called her name that this would be a Games I wouldn’t soon forget.”

“I think we were all thinking that, right, folks? I mean, come on!” Applause. Asenath has noticed the smudge on Procula’s shoe, quickly averting her eyes back to the wings. He can pinpoint the exact moment she sees Annie back there because she begins to look a little bit sick and, fuck, I’ve zoned out again … “I think Finnick’s been celebrating his win a little too much!” Cacophonous laughter. “Late night?”

“Oh, well… you know, everyone wants to party with a mentor!”

“Eh, who can blame them? I want to party with you!”

“Well, maybe when I’m in town next.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that!” Caesar elbows him in the ribs. “You know what they say about people from 4, they drink like fish!”

We drink to keep ourselves from going insane on month long fishing runs and to distract from the sensation of starving, he wants to announce, but bites his tongue and grins. “You can count on the Victory Tour being one hell of a party!”

Caesar lets the crowd scream themselves hoarse for a few seconds, leaning back and watching with a satisfied smile before he waves his hands to quiet them down.

“And now, it is my utmost privilege...” Caesar leads in, “...to introduce the Victor of the 70th Annual Hunger Games…” In the small pockets of darkness between stage lights, he can see the audience staring ravenously up at them. Procula is vibrating with so much excitement he’s almost certain the loveseat she’s on has shifted at least a foot and Asenath has managed to summon a stiff grin. “...from the salty shores of District 4, the Unsinkable ANNIE CRESTAAAAHHH !”

The audience breaks into deafening applause and Caesar does that insipid little spin-sweep motion towards stage right, where Annie is standing frozen in the wings, hands clamped over her ears. The applause tapers off, giving way to sporadic buzzing from below the stage as people realize nobody has walked out. Caesar shoots him a look. He crosses the stage and stands in front of her.

“Let’s go.” Annie shakes her head. “It’s okay, sooner you do it, sooner it’s over.”

Hesitantly, she lets him take her hand and lead her onstage to another onslaught of fervent cheering. Her legs don’t seem to want to move and she stumbles slightly before he sits her next to him on the loveseat facing Asenath and Procula.

“Now, that’s funny…” Caesar smirks. “There must be some mistake.” The audience, slack-jawed, vapid, lean in like they aren’t anticipating some stupid joke scripted a week in advance. “I thought our Victor this year was Annie Cresta… not Hadriana Ravinstill!” Procula lets out a sharp howl of self-indulgent laughter, loud enough to make Asenath flinch, and the audience joins her. She and Caesar lean towards each other and guffaw triumphantly, Annie stares, petrified, into the audience, white-knuckling her skirt with one hand and the back of his jacket with the other. “Ahh, we have fun. But seriously-.” the audience slowly begins to quiet down. “-Annie, how does it feel? Best of the best… Cream of the crop… Rags to riches, fish farm to fame and fortune, pisciculture to prosperity, Whimsiwick’s to win-.” One more alliteration, I’m breaking his nose . “We’re all dying to know… after all you’ve accomplished… how does it feel to officially be a Victor?”

Annie stares at Caesar, jaw clenched and eyes glossy. Asenath mouths something to her that he can’t make out.

“Say something.” He whispers to her. “Just… say anything.” 

Annie’s left hand drifts up to the right corner of her mouth, the tiny pockmark the toxilapia left that Remake didn’t fully smooth over. She digs her acrylic thumbnail desperately into the discoloured patch of skin like she’s trying to open it back up again, like she’s trying to pull something out of her face. Caesar stares at Annie then at him, leaning in and whispering out of the corner of his mouth;

“Any day now…”

“Sorry everyone!” He turns himself back on, putting an arm around Annie and grinning into the audience, “she’s just really tired. Just to give you all an idea of what the closing ceremonies are actually like on our end, none of our team have gotten any sleep since Annie got out of the hospital. It’s been press, fittings, photoshoots, interviews- the arena was less stressful!”

That gets a laugh, thank fucking God . Caesar is saying something he can’t make out over the sound of the audience and mugging into the camera, Procula is cackling and Asenath is forcing laughter. All he’s focusing on is the soft, plaintive noise sliding up through Annie’s teeth.

“Ciaran…” she chokes out finally.

“Ah, she speaks!” Caesar cuts in, to another smattering of laughter.

“Ciaran…” Annie whimpers. “Ciaran is… dead.”

Asenath locks eyes with him, mouths an emphatic ‘FUCK’ .

“What was that?”

Annie shakes her head. “Gone.” She covers her face with her hand, “he’s gone.”

Caesar sucks in an emphatic breath. “Yes. That was a hard one for all of us. Did you know Ciaran well?”

“We all got very close-.” He covers, taking hold of Annie’s hand again, “-in the lead-up to the Games. I know I, for one, am immensely proud of Annie for the level of empathy and… uh… concern she demonstrated towards Ciaran. When someone that young is reaped, it’s always really hard, but in this case I think it hit us all a little harder. Annie is… a very compassionate person.”

The ‘aww’ track plays and the audience sighs along with it. Procula is dabbing at non-existent tears while Asenath is gritting her teeth and staring at the floor. 

“Speaking of alliances, let’s talk about our friends from District 7. Now I think we all agree that your alliance with Briar and Alder was certainly an impressive move strategically. Let’s roll the clip!” The screen behind them lights up with aerial footage of Annie, Ciaran, Briar and Alder walking through the valley. The sun is low, and if he remembers correctly it was around the third or fourth day of the Games when the alliance was still new and tenuous. Briar stays close to Ciaran and Annie to Alder, both girls are armed and suspicious. Caesar turns to the audience. “Now, I remember my interview with Briar Bains very well-.” He pulls up a screencap from said interview; homely little Briar drowning in her green dress, her blonde curls worked into two long braids and threaded with budding twigs. The image switches to one of Briar and Alder on their chariot in matching birch-bark armour, crowned with crimson maple leaves. “After Alder’s mentor, the lovely Willow Charlebois, won a couple years ago, I think we all had our eyes on 7-.” The audience murmurs in concurrence. Annie stares forlornly at her dead friend, her lower lip trembling. “And what a coincidence that these two fffemme fffatales would fffinally ffface off in a fffearsome f-!”

Annie whimpers and slumps forward, gripping her upper arms and rocking back and forth. Caesar gives her an awkward, openmouthed look then glances over at Asenath, who holds her hands up and shrugs.

“As Annie’s mentor and a personal friend of Willow’s, I definitely-.”

“I’m sorry!” Annie sobs. “BriiiaaarI’msosorryBriarI’msosorryyy-.”

“-definitely was glad to see this alliance form. I certainly wasn't surprised that Briar was able to hold her own. I mean, her mentor was The Blight Oakes, she really couldn’t have done much better.”

“Except for you, of course!” Caesar smirks, giving his leg a playful kick. The audience dissolves into laughter, Annie covers her ears. “I mean, let’s hear it for Finnick and Annie!” The crowd goes absolutely insane. I hope a light fixture comes loose and kills all of you . He wraps his arm around Annie again, places a hand on her knee. She’s never felt as small as she does now, sucking into herself like she’s trying to disappear, clawing at her face with her two-inch stiletto nails. He takes hold of both of her hands and she doesn’t bother fighting him, doesn’t seem like she has the energy. “Now my favourite part- by far- of these Games had to be… arguably your secret weapon, right, Annie? Let’s get a clip of that flood!”

On the screen, Awinita and Asa watch the deer fly past them, then the squirrels, then the birds. They turn back, they sprint for the trees. A fragment of the dam smashes Cerise like a bug where she stands. Turing, overprepared, grabs his parachute in the absolute nick of time. Aloisa drowns, floundering with her shot leg. Annie’s head breaks the top of the surge, she’d won before she even knew what was happening. 

The Annie on the couch beside him covers her eyes and sucks in a shuddering breath, pounding on her forehead with the heel of one hand, gripping her hair with the other.

Asenath cuts Caesar off before he can speak. “I don’t think this is necessary.” Even Procula is looking uncomfortable, pulling a tissue out of the bodice of her dress and handing it to Annie. 

Caesar looks a bit panicked, but after a cursory glance around the stage, he seems to come to his senses. “Well, it’s been a nail-biter, folks. That concludes our time with the Victor of the 70th Annual Hunger Games, the Unsinkable ANNIE CRESTA!”

The crowd goes absolutely rabid. Annie’s body locks up completely as he grabs her around the waist and carries her offstage, throwing her over his shoulder indelicately. Her arms wrap tightly around his neck.

Chapter Text

The draft coming in under the window smells like fish. There is no getting away from it, Portside will always smell the same and she would know it anywhere. She can smell it on people from Portside, she wonders if they can smell it on her too, even after everything, even under the smell of death that she can’t seem to get away from. 

Macie Flanagan is short and stocky and pretty, with warm brown eyes and the same long dark curls that Mags must have had too when she was Macie’s age. She can tell at a glance that neither Mags nor Macie is from Portside. Macie braids her hair and irons her clothes and sometimes sleeps on the floor beside her bed even when she says she doesn’t need her to do that anymore. Macie makes bread and tea and thick, spicy soup with sausage and shrimp and celery. Macie grows vegetables in the front yard and buys eggs from a woman who lives by the docks and buys rum at the liquor store. Macie sings under her breath and reads books about people who have been dead for a long time.

“It’s easier for you to sleep when you’re here.” Macie says plainly, idly stirring the grits in the bowl in front of her. “I can tell, you look better today.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that, doesn’t even want to know. She doesn’t want to think about the past week, she knows she should feel embarrassed, wants nothing more than to feel embarrassed, but right now embarrassment feels like a chore she isn’t ready to attempt yet. She looks at Macie and feels her mouth twist into what feels like acknowledgement. Macie reaches for her hand but she moves it quickly underneath the table. 

Don’t touch me , she wants to say. I’ll make you sick . 

After breakfast, there is a gaping grey area that nobody has told her what to do with yet, and this happens every day and she hates it. It’s summer, she knows it’s summer because the fish smell is thick and wet and not thin and hard like it is when it gets cold. The sun is high, the air is heavy, the ocean is blue, the schools are closed until the end of August. Macie says today is August 2nd, which means she is 19.

When she turned 10, Dad grilled lobsters and Mom bought a cheesecake at the bakery and Teesha and her family came over. It happened that way every year until Anamarija II went down and Delmar was transferred up-District. The year she turned 15, the Phytos drove down, but Pearl ate a bad oyster and they had to leave the following day. From 16 on, Saira took her to Skipjacks and bought her beers she wasn’t allowed to have yet, but the guy behind the bar had been friends with Dad so he looked the other way.

“You want anything special for dinner tonight?” Macie is drying dishes. In the other room, Mags watches Capitol News and occasionally throws in comments or complaints. She wants to tell her to lower her voice unless she wants to lose her tongue. “I can radio Glaucus, he already told Auntie he’d set you aside something. Oysters? Maybe some crabs?”

“He works with my dad.” Ciaran says from the far corner of the kitchen. He’s sitting up on the windowsill that looks out onto the backyard, the patches of flowers, the long table for when people come over. “My dad is angry with you. He’ll probably make sure the oysters have all kinds of parasites in them. Better ask for something that gets cooked.”

“Crabs, please.” she manages. Macie smiles the way she smiles every time she speaks.

“Crabs it is.”

“It’ll make you sick.” Ciaran continues. “Crabs can make people sick if they’re not right.”

They’ll be fine, they’ll be cooked . She argues without opening her mouth.

“If you say so.” He hops off the window sill. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Her tongue feels itchy, scaly, she can feel it moving without her permission. 

She can’t go back to the house they gave her, so Mags or Macie will go if there is something there she needs. Half her clothing is in the guest room, just one of the two bags. She doesn’t own much, she’s realizing. The old apartment felt more full but there is a lot of space to cover in these big houses. The first night she slept at the house they gave her, the woman with one eye wouldn’t leave her alone. She hasn’t gone back since. Procula gave her new clothes but she can’t wear them here. The fabric is too sturdy, it feels like when they tied her to the bed. She wears a long, badly worn white dress and one of Mom’s old sweaters even though it’s hot. She closes the blinds and lays in the dark, waiting for a reason to get up that never comes. She can hear Macie on the phone downstairs but can’t make out what she’s saying. 

In 6th grade, when Teesha was still there, Drift Cisco found a little squid about 6 inches across with the head chewed off on the beach and put it in the back of her desk. It rotted there for a week, the smell was rancid and nobody knew where exactly it was coming from, but that it was coming from her row.

“Don’t you ever bathe?” Ione Starboard would spit at her. Ione was almost tolerable for a while after her brother went to the Games, like she might have thought being halfway decent would win her points with the universe, but at that point he still had a year to live. “Or are you just too slow to figure it out?”

She found it with her hand after a week, feeling around for her ruler way at the back, felt her fingers dip into it as the flesh began to give. She pulled it out and held it, stared at it, couldn’t bring herself to scream or throw it away until Teesha jumped to her feet and came over and grabbed her by the arm. 

“We’ll get rid of it.” Teesha whispered, as Miss Kahale began to turn around. “Get up, we’ll pretend you’re sick.” Then Ione began to shriek, climbing up on her desk. 

“Look what Annie has!” Drift shouted. Teesha turned around and slapped his face. The blackening arms, more liquid than anything else, sagged over her palm, down her wrist and between her fingers. The smell was unbelievable when it was out in the air. She felt bile creeping up her throat. Eryk Stone was laughing, holding his nose. She could feel a sound coming out of her, some kind of choking noise that could have been crying but her eyes were totally dry. Miss Kahale’s eyes found her and Teesha, and she made a loud noise of disgust.

“Annie Cresta, what are you doing?” She snapped. “Is that what’s been smelling in here?”

“It’s dead!” Ione wailed. “She brought it in here to rot!” 

“Miss-!” Drift cut in again. “Teesha hit me!”

“Shut your mouth!” Teesha flared. “Annie, we need to get rid of that, then we can clean your desk. Don’t pay attention to them.”

“Teesha, don’t encourage her.” Miss Kahale was coming over now, and the choking noise wouldn’t stop coming out. Miss Kahale was about three feet away before something in her began to make sense of what was happening, the dead thing in her hand, the smell. The revulsion she would normally feel began to make its way from her brain down the arm to the hand, and it expelled the rotting squid, flicking it away hard. It landed wetly on the top of Ione’s desk, right beside her foot, and she screamed like she was being attacked, backpedaling off the desk and landing hard on the linoleum floor between Thalassa Murrel and Marlin Mahi’ai. 

“Miss, it was Drift, I saw him walking around with it.”

“That’s true.” Theo Lotyde raised his hand. “He was chasing Coral with it.”

“Coral, is that true?” Coral Porbeagle, who she hasn’t seen around Portside since the beginning of high school, looked around, then at Drift, who gave her a hard stare back. She shrugged. 

“Look at her.” Teesha implored. “Annie hates dead things, she’s turning green.”

“Annie, that was very immature of you, and I’m very disappointed in you, Teesha, for egging her on.”

“It touched me!” Ione wailed again. “You’re disgusting!”

“Miss, I didn’t, I was taking her to get rid of it!”

“Miss, Annie was there when Drift found that thing and she wouldn’t go near it. I highly doubt she-.” 

“Theo, don’t interfere.”

“Yeah, Theo .” Ione chided. 

Her right hand was wet and smelled awful when she brought it up to her right ear, she resolved to use her knuckle to plug the opening. 

“Enough, Annie and Teesha, go to the office now. Thalassa, you can escort them. Theo, you can clean Ione’s desk.”

“Me?” Theo protested. 

“For trying to shift blame. That’s a very underhanded thing to do, I would assume your father would have taught you better. Ione, get up. It’s dead, it won’t hurt you.”

She isn’t sure why her mind keeps going back to that day, but it doesn’t stop until the sun is low in the sky and she realizes she’s been falling in and out of sleep. Her mouth is dry and there is sweat on the back of her neck. She lays with her face to the wall. When she lays down for a long time, the sheets start to smell like the Chantilly mutt. She washes them and sometimes Macie stops her as she’s bringing them down to the laundry room and says she’ll do it, but sometimes she doesn’t know if she does. 

“Smells amazing, Mace.” says a man’s voice, the man who isn’t Dad. 

“Annie requested crabs, so crabs it is.”

“Is she upstairs?” says another male voice, the young one, the one who isn’t Ciaran, whose shiny painted tan peels off at his wrists. 

“She’ll come down at her own pace, best not to force her. She’s a little out of it today.”

“Those meds aren’t good.” Not-Dad says decisively. “They made Phoca all loopy, didn’t take her mind off all that shit, just took her mind away altogether.”

“She needs to acclimate. If the doctors-.”

“Can’t trust those doctors.” says Not-Dad. “Better luck taking her to someone around here.”

“Who around here can help with that?” Macie says firmly. “We all remember what happened to Misty Herring.”

“Annie has a hell of a lot more money than Misty Herring. I’ll go with her, make sure they don’t do anything stupid. They mess her up before the Victory Tour, they’ll be in deep shit.”

Her feet cross the wooden floor to the landing, lit by a little sconce with a yellow shade. A few strung shells hang from it as well as a tiny desiccated starfish. She knows Mags is in her bedroom, can hear the sounds of things being rearranged and the crinkle of paper, then something is spoken softly, to no-one in particular. She descends the staircase halfway and sits still with her shoulder against the wall. She can smell crabs cooking in the spicy roux Macie always makes, they don’t smell like there is anything wrong with them. She knows what spoiled crabs smell like, not so much unlike rotting squid, which she would recognize anywhere. 

Something clacks hard on the porch, then a knock at the door. 

“I got it.” says Not-Dad. He crosses the floor, the door creaks open. “Ah. Took you long enough.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” a woman’s voice shoots back, high and slightly muffled, like she’s talking against something. She remembers the woman who was crying, the one who was all glowy. “I kept getting turned around, why do none of the streets here have names? Honestly…”

“This is why we just keep her in one place and don’t turn her loose.” says Not-Dad. “You know, people hate you here, right?”

Glowing Woman scoffs. “Oh, believe me, I figured it out. But I got what you sent me for, so let’s open it so I can relax.”

“Not until Annie comes down.”

“Well, I got more than one! Come on, Sligo, after the day I’ve just had, I need a drink.”

“Have some of this.”

A brief pause. “God, what is this, perm solution?” Another pause, then she gags. “Oh, it’s awful .”

“Then give it back.”

“No.” Another gag. “Ugh, how have you not gone blind?”

“Excuse me, baby.” says a warm voice just above her. Mags is descending the staircase with a small, paper-wrapped package in her hand. She slides sideways to let her pass, feels a palm gently stroke the top of her head. “You ready for dinner?”

She isn’t sure what that is supposed to mean, the edges of everything she sees seem to be smudged, the staircase feels unsteady, like it’s hanging from strings above dead air. 

“It’s just me, Macie, Finnick, Sligo and Asenath. Do you remember Asenath? She painted your nails in the hospital.”

They took the flaky pink paint off, the two women who wouldn’t stop sniping at each other while the third sprayed something in her hair that made the air sting. Glowing Woman had held her hand and painted each fingernail and held each finger still because they had been shaking. They replaced the pink paint with these long sharp things glazed with iridescent powder and crusted with little blue stones. She bit each one off on the train back to Portside, leaving her own nails scrappy and filed down to the quick. When she tries to scrape at her tongue and pick at her skin, she can’t.

“We’ve got wine, cake and some very good snow crabs. Glaucus didn’t think he’d be able to get them, but he knows a guy. You should see the size of them, Ann. Let’s go take a look. Take my hand.” Mags has tucked the package up under her arm and is holding out her hand. “You don’t want to miss your own birthday dinner, do you? And we’d all like to see you. It’s a little while until we’ll eat, but you can come have a drink with us, just a little one.”

She can’t remember if she wants a drink. She remembers drinking boxed wine with Saira, remembers drinking expensive wine in that gap of time when Ciaran was still there. Thinking of Ciaran makes her head begin to pound, she wonders if he will come back again. She isn’t sure she wants to see him. 

“I know, my girl.” Mags sits beside her on the stairs and puts an arm around her shoulder. Mags never smells like Portside. Sometimes she smells a bit like cigarettes or whatever she’s cooking or sometimes like plants when she’s been in the garden with Macie, but there is always a base note of vanilla. She’s seen where it comes from, a small yellow bottle with a dropper that doesn’t look like it comes from the Capitol. “It’ll be nice for you to see everyone. It’ll make you feel better. I know it helped me, when I was going through all this back then. And I know everyone is looking forward to seeing you.” Mags stands up and offers her hand again. “Trust me, Ann. You know you can trust me.”

Mags was given the first house in the first Victor’s Village and it is the oldest one. Back then, she can’t remember which year, only that it was about five or so after Mags actually won, they threw up the houses as needed before they finished filling in the remaining foundations. Lots of people in town know people who worked on the construction, and even though she didn’t need to, Mags paid each labourer out of pocket once the house was done. The living room is at the front of the house, then the dining room, then the kitchen way at the back. There is an adjoining drawing room behind the staircase that leads up to the four bedrooms and two bathrooms on the second floor, then another set of stairs that lead up into the third floor, where there is a studio and a sunroom that leads out onto the widow’s walk. Appropriate, because Mags is a widow. 

They are all in the back drawing room while Macie finishes dinner. They make her sit in the middle of the couch where everyone can see her, and her hands are shaking too much to hold her glass of wine, so the Glowing Woman, who she is trying to remember is actually named Asenath, will hand it to her occasionally, then take it back and place it on the end table. Not-Dad, who is actually named Sligo, sits on her other side, Mags in her recliner by the TV and Not-Ciaran, who is actually named Finnick, is supposed to be sitting on one of the chairs but keeps getting up and standing in the doorway, then in the kitchen, then next to Mags. He moves so much it makes her dizzy to look at him. When he notices her squeezing her eyes shut, he seems sad and leaves the room. He will always come back with something in his hands, another drink or leftovers from lunch or some tchotchke he will pester Mags about, a framed picture of someone who is dead, a little ship in a bottle, one of the shells that line the living room window.

“That was a gift from Lucianna Traeger, from 1.” Mags explains when he comes back into the room holding a small white sculpture in the shape of a slight, short-haired girl in an old-fashioned dress. “She won a few years after I did. Her talent was marble sculpture. She gave me that on her Victory Tour. It’s sad, she passed a few years ago, but her daughter writes sometimes.”

“I remember her.” Sligo cuts in. “Nice woman.”

“Beautiful.” Asenath observes when Finnick hands her the sculpture. “It really does look like you.”

“She had a real knack for it. Me, I’m glad they introduced that talent thing after I won. I wouldn’t have been able to come up with anything.”

“Mine was wind-surfing.” Finnick cuts in. “I hate wind-surfing, I could never stay on.”

“Leather tooling.” Sligo offers. “Liked it just fine, but I wasn’t very good.”

“We still have six months to work on yours, Annie.” Asenath puts a hand on her knee. “Don’t worry about it right now. But if you have anything in mind, we can talk about it.”

“Those earrings you made were beautiful.” Macie pokes her head in from the kitchen. “Maybe that could be what you go with.”

Asenath sighs. “Unfortunately, Willow Charlebois already has flat-stitch beadwork as her talent, and Cashmere Van Elsberg has overall jewelry design.”

Sligo scoffs. “Well, I don’t see why Annie can’t do it too, lots of people have overlapping talents. You can’t swing a dead fish in the Pit without hitting an amateur woodworker.”

“I’m not saying she’ll have to stop doing it altogether, I just don’t know that we can use it for the program. We can figure something else out, but not now. Finn, would you be a doll and top me off?” 

As far as she can tell, there is nothing wrong with the crabs, but she can’t make her hands stop shaking long enough to peel them. 

“Don’t apologize.” Finnick says as he takes the plate from her, she hadn’t realized she had said anything. He begins to crack the shells, opening the leg with small, sharp scissors and pulling the meat out with a fork. “It’s just the medication. You’ll acclimate.”

“Macie, you’ve outdone yourself.” Asenath announces with her mouth full. “I don’t know what I’ll do when I have to go home.”

“I’m sure you’ll live.” Macie’s tone has an edge that Asenath doesn’t seem to notice. Finnick cracks the last leg, pushes the meat together and removes the shells before smiling wanly at her. She can feel the stupid expression she offers in return, eyes wide and jaw slack, but can’t remember how to correct it. He sits across from her, Asenath beside him. Mags and Sligo at each end of the table. To her left, Macie hands her a bottle of hot sauce.

“Salmon run’ll be over soon.” Sligo remarks, leaning back in his chair. “Of course, Ronan’s crew was exempt this year, because of-.” He stops. Mags is making a slashing motion across her throat.

“You ever think of going, Sligo?” Macie ventures.

“Can’t. Portside vessels have to head up a few days after The Big Show. Let’s get off the subject.”

Asenath makes a sound of concurrence. Finnick is refilling his wine with a hungry look in his eyes. The red sauce coating the crab meat is slightly gritty, sometimes the spices clump together in the roux. Sligo cracks a claw, a chunk of shell flies loose and lands in his wine, he removes it with a fingertip. 

“Good to be back, isn’t it?” Finnick is addressing her now. “Maybe once you’re feeling a bit better, we can go to Skipjacks. You should call your friend who lives up North, have her come stay for a bit. We’ve got room.”

“That’s a nice idea.” Macie tacks on with a stiff smile. “Once you get used to the meds and, you know, get your bearings a bit. It’s not easy at first, but you’re starting a new chapter.” 

Asenath raises her glass of wine. “To new chapters. And to Annie.”

Everyone says ‘to Annie’ at the same time, and they hold their glasses up. 

“That’s you, idiot.” says a brassy voice from the far corner of the dining room, next to that old, limp-stringed guitar that belonged to Macie’s dead mother. Briar is there, soaked and grey and horrible. The fish have eaten her legs and she is standing precariously on the bird-bones of her feet, the phalanges tangled with pine needles, stinging grass, what looks like human hair in shades of black and brown, she thinks she can even see one of Cerise’s long braids. 

Now there is wine lapping over the edge of her glass and soaking into the pale green sleeve of her sweater, dark and thick and red. She knows the thing in her hand is a glass but as she stands up she can feel what resembles textured plastic, divots shaped like the pads of fingers, a grip, so she lets go. 

“Oh-.” the sound that comes out of Asenath is almost a yelp. She is picking up her napkin and leaning forward with it in her hand.

“That’ll happen.” Sligo’s voice is stiff and almost placating. “Mace, you wanna pass me that dishtowel?"

“What’s happening?” Finnick sounds scared. “Is she okay?”

Then she is not looking at the dining room anymore, there is a long stretch of hallway lined with pictures and most of the people in them are dead. 

“You ruined dinner.” Ciaran calls from somewhere in the house. When she turns around she can see him slithering from picture frame to picture frame, in the background of Mags and Seth’s wedding, beside a seventeen year old Macie, stepping between Mags and what looks like a fifteen year old Finnick. “You made a big scene and now everyone hates you.”

“Annie-.” someone is coming up behind her, a male voice. “Don’t leave, it’s fine. Just come downstairs, we all want to see you.”

“Finn, don’t force her. I think she’s had enough. I’ll check on her in a bit.”

Let them , she tells Ciaran as the hallway becomes stairs and the stairs become the door of the closet, they should. I do .

Chapter Text

He still remembers having to face Sirena’s parents after his Games. She hadn’t made it far, taken out by this kid from 8 who she thought she could take on easily but soon realized she couldn’t. He remembers watching him beat her to death, remembers thinking about it while he stared down her parents. He remembers wondering what they’d been thinking when she joined the Lanistarium, how they had felt when they found out she died, if they had seen it happen on TV, if they’d seen him get away. That much he can say for Annie; Eisen took Ciaran’s head, she took Eisen’s face.

Calypso Whelk can’t be more than 30, baby-faced and bespectacled, small like her son and bent sideways under the weight of her two year old daughter, Nisha, who has a chubby little fist perpetually knotted in Calypso’s long auburn hair. He recognizes her husband, Ronan, who has Ciaran’s face on a tall, sturdy frame. He lost a leg to a propeller a few years ago and was right back at work in a matter of months like nothing happened. Sligo had paid for a prosthesis, a good one all the way from District 3, and there was a picture of the two of them in the Portside Post; Ronan beaming and Sligo looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. But now Sligo won’t look Ronan in the eye, and Ronan is very obviously thinking about nothing but his dead son. The four other daughters, 10 year old Maren, 8 year old Asha and 5 year old twins Sabrina and Adriane, are kept a good distance away from their dead brother by a smattering of family. Calypso and Ronan are glued to the body, dead-eyed and silent, tears spilling quietly down bloodless faces. 

They cover Ciaran from the chin down with the flag of District 4, a coin placed over each of his eyes, surrounded with shells and beach-glass, letters from his sisters and parents and his favourite childhood toys. They lay him in a wooden canoe painted with prayers in a language that no-one pretends to understand anymore. Everyone who cares to come by drops something off for him to take with him wherever he’s going. He decides on one of his Victory Tour gifts that he’ll probably never use, a tasteful pair of abalone cufflinks he received from Mayor Valonia at the end of the tour. They had been one gift of many, he won’t miss them, and decides that something from a Victory Tour that Ciaran will never go on would be more meaningful than some cast-off jewelry from any number of high-rolling rapists. He fastens them to Ciaran’s undersized jacket himself and offers one last whispered apology. He and Sligo carry the canoe down the pier at the edge of the marina in town and set it, set Ciaran, in the water as Ronan loads the crossbow and Calypso lights the match. They drench him in fuel and Sligo hooks the canoe up to Lysandra , tows him out to a safe distance, and turns him loose into the current before Ronan lights the canoe up.

He told everyone that Annie was indisposed, when in reality she’s drugged to sleep in Mags’s guest room with Asenath and Macie checking in at alternating half hour intervals. By the end of the evening, Ciaran has dissolved in ashes into the ocean after barely 12 years in a world that never wanted him. They all watch the flames fold into the waves as the sun sets and Calypso sobs into her husband’s shoulder. It’s a hot night, the air is thick and smells of death. 

Neither Mags nor Sligo have anything to say, which he appreciates. There really is nothing they can say that will do anyone any good beyond the condolences they offered after the speech. Asenath, on the other hand, can’t seem to turn herself off, scampering through the crowd and yapping about  how tragic it is and how he was so precious and how 4 has lost one of its best. Calypso is giving her a look so full of hatred he can almost smell her hair burning. Ronan is doing his best to humor the woman who called his son to his death and almost succeeding, but his lips are tight and his grip on Calypso’s shoulder is iron. The sisters are running around by the water with a couple other kids from town, either too young to fully grasp what’s going on or already past the initial shock. The one exception is 10 year old Maren, a solemn little carbon copy of her mother down to the long red hair and diminutive build. She’s perched on the pier watching her sisters play, her arms wrapped tightly around a chubby girl who hasn’t stopped sobbing all night. Ciaran has a little girlfriend back home, he remembers Annie telling him. Her name is Maia. He saved his allowance for a month to buy her flowers on her birthday, doesn’t that just make you want to set yourself on fire?

He has always liked Macie Flanagan. She’s nearing her mid-thirties now, short and full-figured with long black curls and kind eyes. He hadn’t known Mags had siblings, much less a niece, until he met her the year after his win. Her mother, Mags’s sister, died of some lung disease with an ominous name when she was young and she’s lived in the Victor’s Village ever since, making occasional trips back to the Peninsula to visit extended family.

“I’m going back to see how Annie’s doing. Do you need me to grab you anything?”

“I’m alright.”

She puts a hand on his shoulder. “Auntie told me he thought the absolute world of you.”

Stupid kid. He can’t come up with anything, just smiles stiffly as Macie departs in the direction of home and Annie. Mags is talking to Sligo, who looks utterly defeated, sitting on the edge of the pier with his head in his hands, Mags beside him with a hand on his shoulder, staring out at the water. He watches them, watches Asenath, watches the Whelks as they watch the crowd. 

“Mrs Whelk-.” he approaches Calypso once Ronan has gone off to corral the children. He knows Ronan doesn’t like him and isn’t in the mood to get his face rearranged. “I wanted to offer my condolences again. Even though my time with Ciaran was brief, I feel immensely lucky to have had the privilege to know him. If you or your family need anything at all, my door is open.” 

Calypso stares at him, her expression switching from rage to something he can’t really identify. She’s actually very pretty up close, a demure, wholesome beauty that almost reminds him of Annie on the train platform in her hair ribbons and yellow dress. Her features are more delicate; tiny sloping nose, thin lips, downy eyebrows, and she has about a quarter of the presence Annie does. Everything about her seems small except the sky-blue eyes behind her thick glasses, the lenses of which make it uncomfortably obvious that she’s been crying for days on end. She nods slowly, with that very specific detachment of a grieving parent. 

“I appreciate that. Thank you.” She stares at the ground, knitting her fingers together. He doesn’t know what to do, if he should leave or say something else. Down by the water, Ronan grabs Sabrina’s wrist as she makes for the pier. “Annie couldn’t make it?”

He doesn’t like her tone. “She’s very sorry. There are some… complications we’re still dealing with from the Games. The fish, you know, they bit her, she hasn’t been well. She was devastated when we lost Ciaran, and once things are a little more stable, I’m sure she-.”

“Mm.” Calypso nods again, looking up at him. Her brows are knit now, eyes narrowed, lips tight. “The fish.” She runs a hand through her hair and forces a cordial expression, so reluctant it almost looks like it hurts. “Excuse me.”

She leaves in Ronan’s direction, picks Nisha up and stands at the edge of the water, staring at the horizon. The crowd is beginning to thin, the Whelks and their extended family will probably be out for a while as families of dead tributes often are, drifting along the boardwalk for hours as if the child they just buried will swim back to them unscathed. This is the first Portside funeral since he won, but he remembers one year when he was little, when a girl from Brineridge was sent back to the ocean by her family. Her mother sat there on the beach for almost a full 24 hours. He can’t remember her name but knows she had been one of Gil’s, because the mother would skulk around his trailer with murder in her eyes until her older son would come and drag her away. Mom would always watch her with a look of nauseous trepidation, and every time she came around he would wonder if that would be the thing that made Mom reconsider, but then they would be back again the next day, and Gil would take Mom behind the curtain to ‘talk’ and he would throw the pitchfork at the targets until his wrist and palm and shoulder felt like they were on fire. 

Skipjack’s Speakeasy, a precarious two-storey shipwreck of a building just off Portside’s main drag, should not exist, but it does. Having been tied to another illegal business for the past eight years, he isn’t entirely sure how this one has managed to go undisturbed for all this time, at least as long as he’s been alive.  It’s never moved, never changed names, never even restructured, it’s the same as it’s always been and always will be. He remembers going there with Mom after his first reaping, she got drunk with some handsy lobstermen and he watched the reaping on the TV above the bar, trying to catch a glimpse of himself in the crowd. He remembers seeing Asenath, pre-nose job,  and thinking she looked pretty.

He remembers the footage they’d edited in after the fact, when they aired the Victory Tour and spliced in the footage of Mom watching his win at the bar, surrounded by anxious onlookers who only knew who she was because of the camera crew. She’d started screaming and grabbed onto one of the women standing next to her, who he’d learn years later had been Saira Pollock of all people, who has been checking in on Annie whenever she gets a rare break from WP and leaving looking like she’s seen a ghost. 

“That’s my boy!” Mom had shrieked above the drunken cheers as everyone reached forward to congratulate her, “that’s my fucking son!”

A dour-looking waitress shoves past him on her way out of the kitchen, holding two plates of battered smelt. She shoots him an acrimonious look before giving the plates to two middle aged women at the bar. He’s never gotten the impression that people think of Mags and Sligo the way they think of him, but maybe that’s because Mags won so long ago and Sligo seems to be allergic to money. He knows Ptolemy is to blame for most of it, everyone in Portside knows he’s the Capitol bicycle but they don’t know he doesn’t have a choice. Sellout, puppet, lapdog, money-grubber, narcissist, he had already heard it all before he turned 16. 

Annie won’t hear any of it , he thinks to himself, I won’t let her get a complex on top of everything else.

It’s busier than he anticipated it would be. Most of the tables on the main floor are occupied with locals, a trio of Peacekeepers have occupied the corner of the downstairs bar a few seats down from the six-man crew of Little Leilani, a local commercial vessel, and there is a din of conversation coming down from upstairs. He watches the room for a few moments before thinking better of being there at all and all but bolting down the steps and out of the building. After a brisk walk back up to the boardwalk and North a few blocks, he finds that Lotyde Family Liquor has been closed since the early afternoon. He’s beginning to feel itchy inside.

“Damn it.” He says out loud, staring into the dark store, the shelves of bottles and the sign that reads ‘ The Lotyde family extends our condolences to the Whelk and Murrel families and those close to them, today we will close early in Ciaran’s memory ’. He finds it ridiculous. Wouldn’t Ciaran want his parents to have some kind of liquid relief? What about me? Come on, kid, if you actually thought so highly of me wouldn’t you want me to- he cuts off the train of thought right as it begins to pick up steam, feeling like an absolute dick.

Despite the fact that she’s only had two victors under her belt in twelve years, he’s never seen Asenath look this defeated before. She’s sitting on the boardwalk, right near the end, leaning against one of the slips and staring out over the black water with a bottle of wine (one he knows to be prohibitively expensive) in her hand. The damp weather has caused her chemically flattened hair to start reverting to its natural texture, with a couple corkscrews of hair sticking out of the two-toned curtain and one dangling over her face. Her eyeliner is smudged.

“Whole bottle of wine at a funeral. Classy.” He offers. She looks up at him with no expression. He sits next to her, takes a sip of her wine and gags. “Strong.”

“Yeah.” she shrugs, can’t come up with anything else to say. “Yeah.”

“Where’s Sligo?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“I figured I could find him where there’s alcohol.”

“Makes sense. But he has his own. And I think he’s probably taking the boat out, which is very dangerous and very illegal, might I add, but I don’t think he really cares.” Asenath goes quiet, pensive almost, and her forehead moves as much as it possibly can when she knits her eyebrows as far as they will go. She places a hand between his shoulder-blades, it’s an awkward hand, a very Asenath-esque attempt at comfort, but it’s something. “I want you to know that I care about you, okay? You were my first victor and it felt like a huge deal at the time but I just remember thinking how happy I was that one of those scared little kids ended up okay. And Annie is a great girl. I think she deserved to win, but I don’t feel anything like what I felt when you won.”

“How do you mean?”

Asenath’s eyes are a little glossy, her voice breaks slightly. “I don’t see things getting much better for her. I think, best case scenario, she won’t have to watch shrimp fuck for the rest of her life, but I can’t say that what she has coming is much better. People snap in there, kid. To be honest, Mags and I have been waiting for you to go off the deep end for a while now.”

“I'm flattered that you think I haven’t.”

She looks at him, her swollen lips slide back from her teeth in a somewhat scary looking smile. She brings a hand up, pushes his hair back, a gesture he can only describe as maternal. “She’s gonna need you. She’s gonna need all of us.”

“Even Sligo?”

Asenath snorts. “Hey, he has his moments.” She leans back. “I’m serious, Finnick. We’re family at this point. And, yeah, maybe Sligo is like… the weird uncle in the equation and you’re my little twerp of a nephew who I want to smack more often than not but I’m okay with having that be what it is.”

“But you have an actual family.” He doesn’t mean it to sound like an accusation, but Asenath tilts her head forward and gestures vaguely with the very tips of the fingers on her left hand. 

“You know what I mean.” She looks back out at the water and sighs heavily, bringing the bottle back up to her mouth to take a long sip before she continues. “I don’t, by the way.”

“Don’t what?”

She stares into her glass, alcohol and exhaustion dredging up something she’s been forcing down. “Have a family. My dad killed himself when I was your age. My mom died… having me. My aunt is a raging cunt who I hope is dead but I can’t be fucked to check and I haven’t spoken to my cousins since I had my original nose.” She smirks at him in a rare flicker of self-awareness. “So, you can imagine how long that’s been.” 

“I’m sorry.”

Asenath shrugs. “It’s fine. I’m good, you know? Government job…” she gestures vaguely like she’s trying to come up with something else. She drops her hand and sighs heavily. “Sometimes I feel like I was District in another life. I’d be able to hack it, you think?”

He wants to laugh. He’s always known Asenath means well despite having glitter where her brain should be but that comment is just so asinine he almost wants to slap her. She’s looking at him still, her stupid microneedled eyebrows knit, waiting for him to validate her like her kind always do. He stares back at her, this ridiculous, self-indulgent cartoon of a woman with her inflated face and her thick strip-lashes, and something sick inside him pulls him forward, his hands on her shoulders and his tongue down her throat. She lets out a low squeak, he can feel her trying to reconsider, then he can feel her just going with it. 

Asenath Glass, as exhausting as she can be, is an excellent lay. She’s older than he thought, 45 where he would have assumed 37, but her body is still taut and agile. She’s gentle, graceful, and she carries herself better in bed than she does otherwise, if a bit maternal. She’s a cuddler, a forehead-kisser, a pillow-talker, and despite being an older woman from the Capitol she doesn’t remind him of Liv or Procula at all. Personally, it’s nice, but at Ptolemy’s she would be a waste of his time. He doesn’t see her tipping well.

He finds it a bit funny that this didn’t happen earlier. She’s been in his guest room since she came out for Annie’s birthday, which nobody wants to talk about, smelling up his house with that damn eucalyptus perfume and leaving smudges of spray tan on everything. Then again, sometimes she seems like she can’t look him in the eyes, and he knows this is going to be something that weighs on her for as long as she has this job. Asenath Glass may be callous, she may be privileged, she may be jaded and frivolous, but she has too much of a conscience to do what she does and he knows that one day it may kill her.

When they’re done, they drink more and she sits on the counter and laughs and smokes out the window and no longer feels like she’s been leading children to their deaths all this time. In their two-or-so hours of intercourse, whatever she puts in her hair to straighten it has evaporated entirely, leaving her with a mop of red and black ringlets that reach to just below her breasts. He likes her hair curly, it balances her beestung face, and under her clothes he can see patches of her natural skin colour, a delicate olive tan. There’s something different about her, he considers briefly at one point. Capitol people are human at the end of the day and he knows that intimately, has seen every dank inch of a good margin of Snow’s inner circle, people who, even in their own ivory tower of a city, are essentially untouchable to the layman, but there is something different about Asenath. He knows that, as an escort, she is to most of his customers what Calypso Whelk is to Mayor Valonia, but he’s slept with escorts, slept with the nieces and nephews of Tier 4 Gamemakers, even once slept with some no-name intern of Caesar’s who booked her session as an Employee-Of-The-Month gift. There is something very different about Asenath, like all that shit she does to her face and hair and body is an act that she’s always going to be a few steps behind in keeping up. Even her voice is different. Since she’s been in town, he’s realized that she’s been putting on this awkward affectation since he’s known her. When she’s relaxed, her voice is much lower, her speech pattern just slightly languorous, and there is this vague monotony to it that he can’t quite place. The asininity of her earlier comment aside, Asenath could pass for District if she really wanted to.

“I miss your mom.” she confesses, once they’ve opened one of the only good bottles of wine he has, left over from the weeks following 69, when some distant Whimsiwick cousin came to Ptolemy’s and the furthest she made him go was a hand up her dress. Asenath gestures around the room with her glass. “Our little Leyla… the house feels empty without her.”

He wonders distantly if Asenath knows how she died. “I think about that all the time.”

“I’m so glad you had Mags.”

“Me too.”

Asenath leans back against the cabinets lining the walls and closes her eyes. “God, can you imagine if Ciaran would have won? You’d have six little kids running around here and they’d have actual parents. Fucking bleak.” 

He doesn’t want to think about all that collateral, can’t bring himself to consider little Ciaran, not even 13 yet, getting passed around that tacky room in the Media Tower with seven people on the chopping block. He wonders who they’d go after first, if it would be Nisha who washed up blue on Victory Beach or Ronan leaving for the day’s work and never coming home. When he thinks about it, he can feel the scrape of Liv’s nails, right around the area Eisen brought the axe down. 

“Too bad.” He manages.

Asenath takes a long drink of wine, pauses and looks over at him. “We, uh…” she motions between the two of them. “We don’t… do this.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“Not just that I’m old enough to be your mom, but it’s a massive conflict of interest. You could get in huge trouble and I’d lose my job.”

“No, it… one time thing.”

Asenath stares at the floor. “Thanks though. It was good. For me.”

“I’m glad. Me too.”

“I have to say you are very… horizontally talented.” she smirks, her face contorting shortly after. “That felt wrong. Forget I said anything.”

“I get a lot of practice.”

Asenath gives him a withering look and drinks again. “Stop it. You shouldn’t sleep around, it isn’t good for you. Your soul, I mean. It’ll wear on you, believe me, I would know.”

In that moment, he almost wants to tell her about everything, about Mom and Ptolemy and every stinking, sweaty body that’s been forced on him but the impulse catches in his throat. They’re having a moment, Asenath is acting like a regular person, and it’s the first he’s felt remotely relaxed in God knows how long.

“Yeah.” He offers. “I think it’s getting to that point.” They’re quiet for a while, listening to the ocean sighing to itself outside and the sound of bugs frying themselves in the porch light. Asenath hums something under her breath that he recognizes but can’t place, a jaunty, staccato minor key, and hands him her glass of wine. He tops her off.  “Hey, Asenath?”

“Yeah?”

He takes a deep breath, not knowing whether or not the question is appropriate. “How did you become an escort?”

“Oh.” She laughs dryly. “I was Neptunia Cox’s assistant for a while, when I was… I think I started when I was about 22? God, that woman is a piece of work. I was more like a slave, honestly. But when Salacia retired, they were looking for a new escort and I applied. My dad still has a few friends in the Embassy, I guess.”

“Do you like it?”

She gives him a long look, her makeup sweat-smudged and beginning to look clownish, at least more clownish than she normally looks. “Why do you ask?”

“Just because.”

She turns back to stare across the living room, the overhead light humming. They seem to notice the sound of it at the same time, because when he turns to switch it off, Asenath is already reaching for the lamp on the nearby console table.

“No.” She answers finally, boosting herself back up on the counter and taking another long sip of wine. “I like you and Annie and Mags and, yes, I even have a level of appreciation for Sligo, but I do not like my job. I thought I would, but I don’t.”

“I know.”

Asenath nods slowly. “I know you know. I know you all know. And I should quit, but I can’t. I’ve seen the way some of these other escorts are with the kids, I think if there’s anything I can do at this point, it’s…” She bites her lip, her voice is thick when she continues, but she doesn’t cry. “If not me, it’ll be someone else.”

Asenath falls asleep on the couch eventually, frizzy and sweaty and smiling, her glass empty and hanging from delicate, manicured fingers. He puts the glass in the sink, lays a blanket over her and goes outside. Mags has the light on in her guest room, showing him where Annie is. He stares up at the window for a while, trying to see if she’ll pass by it, but she never does. There are shadows moving up there, though, what could be an elbow, possibly the ends of long hair. He watches for a while until, as if she could feel him watching, Mags steps in front of the window and draws the blinds. Before he loses sight of the room, he sees Mags turn back and address someone. He wonders what they could be talking about. 

He wants to see her but doesn’t at the same time. The birthday dinner was rough. Everything had been fine until Asenath’s toast, Annie had raised her glass, the red wine had lapped over just slightly then she checked out entirely. Logically, it shouldn’t have been that bad, the wine spilled, the glass didn’t even break, but in about two seconds flat she’d fled the dining room and locked herself in the guest room closet. Macie went up to try to get her to come out but was unsuccessful. They ate crabs and cheesecake in silence and went back to their respective houses and steeled themselves for Ciaran’s funeral. As they were reconvening over breakfast in the morning, he overheard Mags telling Sligo that she was still in the closet. 

Sligo is chain-smoking on his front porch, his long, dilapidated body draped across two lawn chairs, absolutely smashed.  As he approaches, Sligo perks up, watches him warily as if he’s debating whether or not to knock him out on sight. He isn’t sure what his reasoning could be, he hasn’t done anything to inconvenience Portside’s resident trainwreck today beyond, arguably, existing. 

“Has the golden boy decided to grace me with his presence?” Sligo puts on a mocking lisp and fans himself with a limp wrist.  

He holds up a bottle of pisswater wine that was a gift from a client in the days preceding Ciaran’s death, some porcine, hesitantly kinky Gamemaker named Sabucia who had taken a solid two minutes to gather the courage to ask him to suck on her toes. “Olive branch.” 

Sligo eyes him, intrigued, then brings his legs down from the chair opposite him and nudges it forward with his ankle, breaking the silence with a loud, tarry cough. He sits down, taking in how gross Sligo’s porch actually is, mostly beer cans and fish guts. He is suddenly no longer offended by the assertion that he is prissy or effeminate in some way when this is the alternative.

Drunk Uncle produces a wine key from his pocket, because of course, opens the wine and raises it to him before taking a long sip. “Girl wine.” he snipes.

“Well, a girl gave it to me, so.”

Sligo raises an eyebrow. “Asenath?” He knows he will bring up that he slept with her eventually, but not now.

“No.” he tries to think of a woman from the Capitol whose name Sligo will recognize. Instead of the easy answer, Procula, for some reason he lands on- “Andronica Dovecote.”

“Stupid name.” Sligo hands the bottle over. “I was gonna take Sandy for a rip, but Mags took my damn keys, so here I am.”

How unreasonable of her to not let you use your single pickled brain cell to crash that tin can of a boat into the pier . “Hm.” He takes a sip of the wine. It’s bad, but then again he knows better. “I guess we’re all disappointed.”

Sligo stares at the sandy main road of the Victor’s Village, across the way at one of the empty houses that will sit there, waiting for the next rotation of 23 dead children, then the next, until someone moves in. “Humid out.”

There is no reason to reply and they both know it, so they sit there and pass the wine back and forth. He wants to be satisfied with the fact that they are within ten feet of each other and haven’t exchanged blows but can’t manage it. He doesn’t think he can feel anything anymore.

“It won’t get easier, will it?” He manages eventually. Sligo makes a bitter sound that could pass for a laugh and takes the wine from him. 

“You’ll find ways.” There is another gap of silence before Sligo leans forward, sniffing the air, then grimaces and shifts his chair away. “You reek of sex.”

He doesn’t have the energy to argue. “Sorry.”

Annie’s new house, like his, is on the South side of the Village, so it’s a near carbon copy as far as the layout. The wrap-around porch is on the same side, the kitchen window, then through to the living room, the back dining room, the drawing room, then upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms, the widow’s walk, the attic. The lights switch on slowly, like they know they won’t be on for long, or shouldn’t be. It’s sparsely furnished, the only sign that anyone has been living in it for any period of time are the boxes of Annie’s belongings arranged in the living room. 

In a box labeled MISC . he finds a photo album, one of those cheap plastic-sided albums that they sell at gift shops near the resorts. The pale blue cover is decorated with white line drawings of sea biscuits and crabs, and someone has written ANČICE in babyish marker letters in the top left corner. On the first page, he finds a black and white photo of a pretty woman with long dark hair, early 30s maybe, holding a very tiny, very pink baby. Written in black ballpoint beneath; Kari i Ančice/ August 52 PT. On the next page, Annie at maybe two or three sits on a brightly coloured carpet, one hand resting on the back of a small white dog, a pacifier in her mouth. Beneath that, Annie, around the same age, grins at the camera, caught in the act of scribbling on a white wall in green crayon. A class picture takes up the entire adjoining page, turned sideways so as to fit. Portside Primary School- First Grade- Ms. V Stone is written on a slate on the floor in front of the first row of children arranged in three rows by height. He finds Annie’s name and connects it to a little girl in a slightly undersized floral dress in the second row between a bespectacled boy with a missing tooth and a fat little baby-doll of a girl with warm brown skin and long curly hair tied back with two white ribbons. Where all the other kids’ faces are contorted into Say-Cheese grins, Annie is staring just off-camera with her eyes wide open, brows slightly lifted, mouth taught. He can’t decide if she looks unimpressed or nervous. When he looks closer, he notices the baby-doll girl to Annie’s left is holding her hand. Marlin Mahi’ai, Eryk Stern, Annie Cresta, Teesha Phyto, Minnow Rudder, Theo Lotyde. The little boy who would become Annie’s ex is slight and pale with neatly cut black hair, his button-down shirt slightly too wide. It’s obvious he has more money than a good margin of the class, with the possible exception of Teesha in her ribbons and a little girl with whom he connects the name Lanna Abalone in a crisp pinstripe matching set. 

He keeps flipping through; Annie and Teesha, 8 or 9, standing over a king crab spread out on a table, both smiling up at the camera. Annie, about ten maybe, stands between her father and a young woman in a wedding dress. Annie in another class picture, 6th grade, still in the second row, hair in two braids, her dress threadbare. The pictures start to change around the 13 year mark, presumably after Kari and Nereus Cresta died. Annie appears in group pictures of WP interns, seemingly not caring to document much of her life. She’s pasted in her parents’ obituaries out of the Post, a letter postmarked from the Peninsula and signed Love, Teesha , Pearl, Kalani and Delmar , an old receipt for a bottle of wine beside an expired school ID card and a note from Saira that reads ‘ Happy birthday, sweet girl. I could not be prouder of you. You are growing into the most beautiful woman and I can’t wait to see what the rest of your precious life has to offer.’ That part makes him a little bit nauseous. 

A floorboard at the entrance creaks. Gut clenching, he whips around to see Macie in the doorway, giving him a confused look. 

“Hey.” she offers.

“I- uh-.” He stands up quickly and backs away from the box, feeling like he did at 16 when Mags caught him getting into Sligo’s beer fridge. “I was just- I guess you’re here to get some of her stuff?”

Macie shakes her head. “No, we don’t have enough room upstairs. Besides, we’re cautiously optimistic she’ll get over it and-.” she gestures around the room. “Easier to leave it here for when she’s…” Macie makes a vague, exhausted noise and starts towards him. She takes a bottle of cheap wine out of the bag on her shoulder and sits on the stiff, plastic-covered couch. “If you tell my aunt about this, you’re chum.”

He mimes turning a key against his lips. “I probably shouldn’t be here either.”

Macie shrugs, then eyes the photo album. “It’s sad, you know?” she gestures to the small blue book with her foot. “After her 18th birthday it’s just blank pages. If she didn’t make it, they probably would have thrown it out.”

“She doing okay?”

Macie opens the wine and takes a hesitant sip. “Better than last night, but not good. Auntie wants to take her to a doctor in town to see if she’s on the right meds but I’m not on board. I don’t think the Capitol’s good for much, but she’ll get better help there than she will here, and she needs it. She’s seeing things, hearing things.”

“I want to see her.”

“I don't think that’s a good idea. Not right now.”

“Is it that bad?” Macie hands him the wine, it’s not very good and they both know better, but it’s something. “Is it about me?”

Macie sighs. “I think there’s a lot of guilt. I think when she sees you, she remembers why she’s feeling the guilt. I think it’s best that you keep your distance. It’s nothing personal. If anything, it’s because she still thinks very highly of you.”

“You think she does?”

Macie slides off the couch and sits on the floor beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. “I remember when I first met you. I kept thinking ‘what the fuck is he supposed to do now?’ ‘Where does he go from here?’. I think about that with her, but I have even less of a clue.” She shakes her head. “She didn’t want to come back.”

“That’s my fault.”

Macie drinks again, doesn't say anything.

Chapter Text

She can never remember which year it was, only that they took one from the Flats and one from the Lanistarium, and that everyone on the beach toasted them in the orange glow of their driftwood bonfire that was always in the same place. Teesha is always clean and pretty. Delmar’s reassignment had been a good one, her shoes were new and raising red welts on her heels, her hair straightened, her nails all uniform. She has been working on a whale-watching boat, bringing coffee to Capitol tourists, smiling and looking pretty for them, soft and clean and quiet. Teesha performs the routine that night, she wants to laugh but it’s like watching an approximation of someone she knows, just uncanny enough to be unsettling. 

“Right away, General Harrington.” Teesha lilts, lips pulled back over her gums, teeth never parting. “And Mrs Harrington, what a pleasure, I must say the maritime climate agrees with you.”

“Okay.” She will laugh nervously. “You’re scaring me.”

“Miss Cresta-.” Teesha knits her eyebrows in a rictus grin, in the shifting bonfire light, it makes her look like a monster. “-always a pleasure. Might I fetch you another-.”

“Ew, get away!” She dipped her fingertips into her cup, into the warming mixture of orange juice and something that smelled like it could clear a kitchen drain, and flicked it in Teesha’s direction. She remembers laughing, the two of them against the vast sigh of black ocean, conversation higher up the dune, the hum of Portside powering down for the night. 

Maybe a minute later, maybe five, maybe sixty, the subject will change.

“You and Theo Lotyde?” Teesha will ask. “Wow, I leave for three years and everything turns upside down. Who’s next, Ione?”

“I wouldn’t touch that cunt with a fifty foot pole. It’s not like Theo and I are getting married or anything, we just…”

“Just what? He’s a roach, Ann. I remember, even if you don’t.”

“He’s nice to me now. We work together. His dad’s the foreman, he gets me days off.”

Teesha will shake her head. “I don’t like that. What if you make him mad? A day off for a handjob, what about if you start seeing someone else?”

“It’s not like that. It’s just…”

“I worry about you, Ann.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“You know what I mean. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want to worry when I leave.”

“You don’t have to. I can take care of myself, we’re not little kids anymore.”

The ocean sucks in heavily, breathes out a long, hollow groan.

“You’re right.” Teesha will concede. “I’m sorry.”

“If you talk to him, maybe…” That will get her nowhere. She drinks again.

Every night since the first, sometime in September, it ends with Teesha walking down the beach to the waterline. Every night, she goes under and never comes back up. 

NOVEMBER

Seroposit comes in a round 50 mg tablet the colour of old milk with a divot down the middle to split it in half, which she does not do, because they tell her she needs all of it. She bites it in half and drowns both halves with weak tea. 

In keeping with the season, the rain is coming down in cold splatters, blurring the windows with near-solid sheets of water. It takes Mags a good hour of arguing before she allows Macie to turn on the furnace, which leaks warm, dusty-smelling air up through the vents. There is one right under her bed, the hot air creeping up through the space between the bed and the wall. Sometimes she puts her face right up next to it and breathes in the heat, imagines it coating her lungs and poisoning her. Macie keeps a stockpot full of soup simmering on the stovetop almost constantly, she adds things to it sporadically. It goes from mild to spicy to fish to meat to thick to thin, all with an undertaste of tomato and garlic. She is sick of soup but doesn’t say anything. Saira comes by sometimes to talk about the farm. Maris Winch slept with someone from Shellfish, there was a recall on a batch of prawns that may have been contaminated, a new batch of interns started in Free Range and have been causing problems. When Saira talks, she listens and nods and tries to comment and Saira looks at her with a sad, tight smile. Teesha calls usually once a week, promising to try to visit when the weather is colder and the tourists lose interest. She doesn’t tell her about the dreams she keeps having, but always feels like she should have once she hangs up. Macie tells her that if it didn’t happen the first time, it’s not going to happen this time, but she remembers how Mom always told someone when she dreamed about them and what happened. 

Macie says what she always says; “I understand why you might worry about that, but I think you’ll be fine."

I’ll be fine , she wants to say, because I wasn’t the one who drowned .

There is a long vein of grey rainwater running down the middle of the road. When she went outside two days ago, she saw Sligo in his boat out in the bay, an umbrella rigged to stand upright like a mast so he can fish even when the weather is bad. Mags laughed when she told her, laughed as they ate the steelhead he caught along with a new loaf of bread and the soup, which that day tasted thick and almost a little bit sweet. That was the day she asked where Finnick was. She remembers, for some reason, that that week was the week of November 13th, which she remembers as his birthday from some TV special around the time everyone had been talking about him 5 years ago. Sometimes, when the Seroposit is dissolving in her bloodstream, she doesn’t remember why they’d been talking about him, only that the thought is boiling hot and screaming red and horrible and she needs to stay away from it when there are people around.

“He had to go to the Capitol.” Mags explains, sounding like they’ve been over it many times that week, which they may have, but it’s only been two hours since she took the pill and the world is still thick and soft at the edges. “He has a work engagement there, but he’ll be back soon.”

“It’s just sick they’re making him work on his birthday.” Macie adds, shaking her head.

“Well, what do you expect?”

“I’d think they’d let him at least wait a few days.”

“Don’t expect anything from them, hon. I’ve told you about him and the First Lady.”

“It’s just sick. It’s sick, seriously.” Macie looks at Sligo, who redirects his gaze to his glass of wine.

Mags sighs. “Again, what do you expect?”

Macie makes a sound like air leaking out of a tire, shakes her head. 

Portside feels like it's holding its breath. The last time she went into town was at the very beginning of the month and she knew she shouldn’t have. She had walked down the boardwalk with Sligo a few paces behind her and slightly to her right and the entire time she had felt like he had her on the end of a rod. She had tried to turn around and leave but he just asked her what was wrong and she couldn’t explain it in a way that made sense so she tried to keep walking. They didn’t make it far. He wouldn’t stop apologizing after that. Macie does the grocery shopping and buys things they need around the house. A week ago, Macie bought soft green yarn which Mags says will be a sweater soon, but she never specified for who. 

Today, Briar has been standing in the rain since mid afternoon. She’s still out there in the dark as Macie washes the dishes. Finally, the soup has run out and nobody has bothered to top it off. She watches Briar over Macie’s shoulder as she stands in the road, the rain soaking her blonde curls, plastering them to her face, her ratty blue dress to her scrawny body. 

“What’s on your mind, Ann?” Macie says gently. “You need something?”

The hand Macie puts on her forearm is wet and feels like a corpse’s hand, like Chantilly dragging her down into the hole. “It’s really coming down out there.” She recites, remembering what Sligo said earlier.

Macie sighs. “Well, it’s that time of year. Dro-... Waterlogging my tomatoes.” Briar is staring now, her lips so tight her mouth looks like a mean, flat crease in her skin, her eyes so full of hate she’s afraid it will break the window. In the other room, Mags laughs at something someone on the other end of the phone has said. She hears the strike of a match and the squeak of the window crank. Macie groans. “Auntie, really, I hate it when you smoke inside!”

“Hold on, Galatea- Macie, you make it to my age, you smoke where you want! Go on, dear…”

“She’s not wrong, Ann.” Macie goes back to the sink, taking a ball of steel wool to a metal pot. The sound makes her brain stem itch. “She’s not wrong.”

“What does Finnick do for work?” She ventures, keeping an eye on Briar as she makes her way to the table and sits down. “Can I please have some more wine?”

“Oh, go ahead.” Macie passes her a glass. “It’s nice, huh? That’s straight from Fleming Vineyards down in 11, Sligo’s friend Chaff sent it. You’ll probably meet Chaff soon.”

“Chaff DuBois.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But what does Finnick do for work?” Macie’s back, which is to her now, tenses, and she tilts her head from side to side.

“I don’t know exactly. But I do know it’s something very important for the First Lady.”

“Doing what?”

She can hear the lie in Macie’s voice. “If I knew, I’d tell you. It’s very complicated, I hear. But you don’t have to worry about that.”

“What if I have to do it too? Will she make me work for her?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know. It’s alright, Annie. He’s safe, nothing bad’s gonna happen to him. We’ll call him tomorrow.”

“I can show you.” Briar says from outside, through the glass it sounds like she’s talking underwater. No, I know what you want, leave me alone. What happened to you wasn’t my fault . “How does it feel to be crazy on top of slow?” I’m not slow . “I know you are. I know more about you now. And I know where Finnick is.” He’s in the Capitol. “I’ll show you. Come outside.” Shut your mouth .

“Annie, hey.” Macie sits beside her. “You got both your pills today, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Maybe just have a little glass.”

“Just a little one.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna go check the laundry, you come get me if you need anything, or you can ask Mags.”

“I know.”

“Okay.”

“She doesn’t believe you.” says Briar. “Who would? If someone who was both crazy and slow told me something I wouldn’t believe them.” I’m no slower than you . “You’re going to come outside or I’ll make you.” Go back to 7 where you belong . “No.” Fuck you . “Say it to my face.” Kill yourself. “You first. You won’t. You’re going to come outside.”

“Please leave me alone.” She says out loud, just South of a whisper. “Please please please go away I don’t have anything for you.”

Briar says nothing.

Her jacket is new, a gift from one of Finnick’s Victor friends, stiff and lined with the wool of a young sheep, and there is lavender sewn into the lining to give it a scent, but she leaves it hanging in the foyer. She takes an old pair of sandals and no umbrella. After being inside for so long, she’s started to like the cold when it’s everywhere. The drafts are annoying, coming in under windows and doors, but the outside is bracing, almost sharpening the edges of her vision. Briar is standing by the boardwalk now, all the way down by the arch with the sign- Welcome to District 4’s Victors’ Village - as if they can ever forget where they are. Macie will be busy with laundry for a while, folding it slowly and pensively under the vent where the heat comes out, dawdling her way upstairs to put everything away, caving to her aunt’s urging to take a shot of cherry rum by the fireplace. Then maybe she’ll notice, but it won’t be for a while.

She can’t remember if it’s Sunday or Monday. The boardwalk is grey, the rain tempered down to a dense mist that an umbrella would do nothing for. Briar, a tiny yellow glow over a blue shadow, pulsing like a failing heart, leads her out onto Portside’s main drag. Periodically, she looks back.

“I’m still following you, idiot.” She urges, Briar turns and continues on her way. 

“You shouldn’t trust that one as far as you can throw her.” says a cool, snippy voice. Soft-soled shoes whisper on wet sand, thighs in loose, rough pants shush together, a canvas sleeve against the side of a shirt. “I told you to come with me, but of course you wouldn’t listen, now look at you.”

She knows what she’ll see when she turns, but she can’t manage to swallow the shriek at the last second, when she sees what remains of Citrine’s face, the tunneling wounds in her face and neck, her shoulder eaten away. She stumbles back, but Citrine is gone when she blinks. She stands there for a while trying to catch her breath, waiting for Citrine to come back.

“Hurry up.” Briar shouts back. There are no footprints where Citrine had been.

The boardwalk is empty, stores lit from inside but just as empty, Skipjacks’ two storeys rising out of the gloom and glowing a dull orange. A man she doesn’t recognize has forgotten his catch on the flake outside his house, is running out in slippers and a bathrobe to retrieve it when she passes by. She feels as sodden and sick as Briar now, bangs plastered to her forehead. She runs a hand through them to keep them from drying flat, remembering, somehow, what Ione had said about how someone could moor a trawler to her forehead.

He is at the very back corner of the upstairs patio, a pint of pale beer sweating on the sidebar he’s sitting at, overlooking the harbour. She would know him anywhere, his crisp, expensive clothing, dark cap of hair and milky skin, his prominent features and mean smile. The stool beside him is pulled out but it’s unoccupied save for a half-finished pint. He seems to feel her coming upstairs, because he turns around and when he sees her, it’s like the air is sucked out of him.

“Annie.” he says, jaw hinging like a fish out of water. “Whoa. Annie, I-.”

“Theo.” she offers in response. 

He breathes out a dry laugh. “How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t.”

“Sit.” He gestures to the stool beside him. “Drift went to the washroom, but… he’s been talking to that bartender. You remember Gayla Stone, right? She was friends with Thalassa and Lanna.”

“Sure.” She takes Drift’s seat, hoping he never comes back. “Can I drink this?”

“I’ll get you your own. You don’t want Drift’s germs. Anyway, you deserve your own.” He eyes her in a way she doesn’t like. “Shit, I mean… Imagine that. Our little Annie Cresta has won a fucking Hunger Games. Where’ve you been?”

“Home.” What does Mags call it? “Resting.”

“Oh, of course. I mean, that must have been… let’s not talk about it.” 

When he smiles at her, with his wide mouth and uniform teeth, she wants to cry. She wants to kiss him, she wants to hit him, she wants to throw him to the ground and smash the pint glass into his face until he doesn’t look like anything human anymore. 

“Don’t hurt him, Annie-.” says somebody small and pale from across the room, she doesn’t bother to look up at them. “You’ve hurt enough people. You wouldn’t hurt somebody else, would you?”

“Where were you?” She questions back. “I haven’t seen you.”

“Well…” Theo shakes his head, waving back towards the bar, holding up his index finger. “I’ve been taking care of things. Dad’s looking to retire, we have to move some things around. Nothing exciting. Why do you ask?”

“I’ve been back a while. You know where I am.”

Theo looks at the floor. “Annie… You know, you’re right. I should have come by. I mean, it’s not every- thanks, Mora.” A woman who smells like cooking oil and cigarettes sets a brimming pint glass down between them. When she drinks from it, it tastes like that night in September four years ago when she had still thought Theo really did want her. “Tell you what, we’ll make up for lost time tonight. You have plans?”

“No.” 

“Good. Neither do I.”

She watches him for a few seconds. “Teesha Phyto’s planning to visit in the winter.”

Theo snorts. “Remind me to stay out of her way, she hates me.”

“Yeah, she does. I did, too.”

“Hm. I don’t blame you. I promise, Annie, I’m not like that anymore. I don’t even see Ione, pretty much ever, I don’t know what she’s up to.”

“Who do you see ?”

Theo freezes. “Nobody. Not at the moment.”

The first time she kissed Theo Lotyde was at Thalassa Murrell’s 15th birthday party, on the short dock that led out onto Thalassa’s mom’s one-person vessel. She had been watching it bobbing in the wake of a passing trawler, resigned to abandon the party, when she heard his shoes on the weathered wood. 

“Why’d you leave?” He asked. “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Go away.” She hoped he couldn’t hear that she’d been crying.

“You know, Ione told me the same thing, but that’s what brought me out here, then if you tell me to go away, I’ll have to go back in there. Between the two girls presently telling me to go away, I prefer you, so I’m gonna take my chances.”

“All your friends are in there.”

“What, are you not my friend?”

“No.”

Theo sucked his teeth loudly. “And here I thought we were friends.”

“I don’t have any friends.”

“What, did you fall out with Teesha and Thalassa?”

“Teesha’s gone and Thalassa only invited me because her mom told her to.”

“Well, Thalassa was looking for you.”

“Well, if she wants me that badly, she’ll keep looking until she finds me.”

There was a long pause then, she kept watching Scylla’s dinky little fishing boat as the wake calmed and it resigned itself to knocking hollowly against the pier. The Murrells, once one of the upper crust of Portside (which wasn’t much to begin with), fell hard and fast down the ladder after Scylla’s father and uncle refused to inform on a cell of rebels during the war. Scylla’s grandpa, Thalassa’s great-grandpa, was a greedy old worm who had been in the Capitol’s ear from the beginning, but when he got caught in a drone strike he thought was going to be miles away, his issue decided to grow some backbones. The Murrells have been dirt broke ever since, passing the dissolving remains of Triton’s blood money back and forth, marrying into other dirt broke families like the Coves, the Lainihis, the Whelks…

The name Whelk burns right between her eyes like a brand, she wrenches her head to the left to shake it away.

“Sorry-.” Theo mumbles, bringing his mouth from her neck to between her breasts. “Did I bite you by accident?”

It had been getting cold, Thalassa has a late birthday but she can’t quite remember exactly when, only that it made her one of the younger of their class at school. August birthdays are considered to be somewhat late, but Thalassa’s has to be sometime in October or November. The salmon run was long over, she knew because the salmon Scylla cooked had that frozen taste to it, but it didn’t matter.

“Ione will get on you about talking to me.”

“Do you honestly think I care, Annie? If she does, good. She’s always bothering me, it’ll be nice to have a break. It’s nice now.” He moved closer, joining her at the edge to hang his feet over. “When you hit her a couple years ago, that was pretty phenomenal.”

“You could have backed me up when I got in trouble. You could have told Mrs Dulse what she said.”

“Yeah. That’s my fault. I’m sorry. I’m a wimp, not like you.”

“You’re lucky you’re not like me.”

“Really? What exactly are you like? You’re always avoiding me, so it’s hard to tell.”

She turned to him, fist itching to connect with his jaw. “Why don’t you go ask Ione?”

Theo gave her a long, smug smile. “I already told you, she told me to go away.”

That was nice , she thinks to herself as she swallows a feeling of intense foreboding, feels her bare feet touch water, he was so nice to me then .

Chapter Text

“Thanks for coming.”

In the stinging purple light, Cashmere’s cascade of blonde hair looks almost pink as she throws her head back, sucking air in through her nose to clear her passages of white grit. She lowers her eyeline back to him, her pupils dilated, and smiles. 

“Of course. You only turn 20 once. I had to make sure we had the same week. Bijou wanted to see you but she’s got some stuff lined up, plus Ptolemy only wants one from each District during the slow season. Who’ve you got this weekend?”

“Procula, Apophis, a couple Gamemakers, some guy named Septimus Phipps, then Procula again.”

“No FirstLadyness?”

“No.” He doesn’t want to talk about her, shakes a generous teaspoon of blow onto the back of Cashmere’s white clutch and lines it up with his Satis-factory keycard. 

“Good. At least she has the decency to not ruin your birthday.”

He inhales sharply through his nose, his sinuses erupting with a welcome, icy shock. It crawls up behind his eyes and jitters along the surface of his brain, there is a brief moment of feeling like he’s underwater, then the world comes rushing back in bright relief.

“It’s not good. She should have booked. She’s mad at me.”

“For what?”

“Turning 20.”

Cashmere’s laugh bounces off the marble walls of the powder room. “Well, yeah, she’s a fucking pedophile. Maybe now she’ll leave you alone.”

“This isn’t good, Cash. She’s scary when she doesn’t get what she wants, and she’s angry about Annie. She hasn’t booked with me since the Games. I’m worried she’ll-."

“She’s gonna move onto something else, it’ll be okay. Let’s go get a drink.”

“Someone’s gonna die, Cash.”

“No. Nobody’s going to die. Finn, I’m so serious, nobody in their right mind is going to whack a Victor. Especially not before the tour.”

“Livia isn’t in her right mind.”

“The President will keep her on a leash. The last thing he needs is bad PR. I’m not exactly his biggest fan but he’s not dumb.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know. Don’t worry about it right now. You don’t want to work yourself up while you’re rolling.” 

Easy for you to say, he wants to add, you don’t know how she is .

When she takes his hand, her palm is sweaty. They ascend the stairs back to Bacchanal ’s main ballroom in silence, the music so loud it feels like it’s under their skin. The vocals are shrill and furious, the bass unrelenting, it makes him almost seasick.

“You know who this is?” Cashmere shouts, pointing up to the speaker above them. He shakes his head. “Carthaginia Snow. She’s getting into music.”

He’s met the youngest of the First Family a handful of times; a scrawny little thing with eyes the colour of dishwater and an edgy taste in clothing. He estimates she must be about 24 now, and her parents have always seemed eager to distance themselves from her. Before her came Honorata, a carbon copy of a young Liv with intense political leanings, and before Honorata was Septima, a quiet, rodent-faced woman who has become a breeding machine for Nausiphanes Crane, then the oldest, Aquilina, who he has only seen in person once and lives off her birth-ordained millions in relative obscurity. The Cardew-Snow daughters have always seemed like pale, well-dressed half-humans, notable only by merit of their parentage, always seeming to be uncomfortable in their circumstances like they’re itching to get out of their own skin. They dress like their parents; old-fashioned, natural hair, skin and eye colours, clean lines and expensive fabrics, and carry themselves like their parents too. They’ve frightened him since he first saw them, always a bit uncanny but not in the way that Capitol people normally are, like there is something they’re trying to tell him but know they can’t.

Tonight, however, Carthaginia is thrashing in a DJ booth suspended above Bacchanal’ s main stage, her colourless hair hacked to her jaw and either slicked back or saturated with sweat. She is shrieking furiously into a microphone attached to what looks like a massive control panel, her clothing minimal, made out of some oily-looking material.

“It’s interesting.” He shouts back. Cashmere stifles laughter before leading him over to the bar. 

“Oh, good!” she shouts, guiding him towards a precarious stool and waving over a rail-thin man whose bald head is covered in tattoos that glow in the dark. When he turns around, he can see that so do his eyes. “Achaicus, finally, a real bartender in this dump!”

“Caaaaash, baby girl!” The bartender lisps. “How the hell are you, I haven’t seen you since the Games! God, I could bend you over and take you right here, you look like a goddess.”

“Shut up, you horny freak! Not in front of my baby brother!”

“Ah!” Achaicus yelps, clapping his hands together. “Finnick! What are you doing hanging out with this little wench!”

“It happens to be his 20th birthday, you sentient Slitcrawler pustule.”

“What! You’re shitting me, he was 14 yesterday!”

Cashmere gives him a hard squeeze on the shoulders. “We’re gonna need a round of celebratory shots and… oh, I don’t know…”

“Already on it, sugartits. Seriously, it’s so good to see you.” Achaicus reaches across the bar and grabs Cashmere’s hands. “I’m telling you right now, in confidence, I’m quitting next week. I’ve got a job lined up at Casino Juvenal, come see me.”

“What? What happened?”

“You remember Eulalia? That cute cage dancer with the red bob? She was here when you came with Willow, the one who had the fake rubies put into her nipples.”

“Oh, yeah, how could I forget? I was the one sucking on them.” Achaicus gets a dark look on his luminescent face before making a decisive slashing motion across his throat. “What the fuck? You can’t be serious.”

“An Avox found her in the Transfer.” Achaicus gestures with both hands in circles over his chest. “Carved out. The Peacekeepers are waiting to see if anybody tries to pawn some fake rubies.”

Cashmere goes totally still. “You’re fucking with me.”

“Dead serious, doll. You want my advice? You see someone you don’t know, don’t even entertain them. I don’t give a shit what comes out in the tabloids, you tell them to fuck off, or get handsome here to smack them around. Don’t split up either, you’ll want to have a man with you.”

“Has this happened to anyone else? Be serious, Achaicus, you’re freaking me out.”

“Eulalia’s the only one I know personally. I did hear about a girl from Tugurium Row coming up missing and a couple Avoxes, but I mean, what else is new? I don’t wanna scare you, but, like, maybe I do. I’d hate for anything to happen to my Cash.”

Cashmere loses an inch of height. “Holy fuck.”

“Sorry, here I go, killing the mood again. You know, I could use a dart.” Achaicus grabs two glasses, pours the shots in and mixes in a few brightly coloured substances from decanters whose labels he can’t make out in the dark. “Come on out back with me, we’ll talk more.”

“You sure?”

“Iolanthus owes me a favour. Plus, I need some air. This song is ass.”

Down a stairwell with a series of sharp corners, they exit the club onto a darkened patio just above the ground floor, closed in from the alleyway with a rudimentary plywood wall. The cold air and the drugs combined are making him dizzy, and he focuses on finding a small folding chair in the corner. Achaicus pulls out a pack of long clove cigarettes with pastel paper, Cashmere takes one and lights it hungrily. He declines when offered, but can’t help but feel a bit interested as he watches Cashmere and Achaicus suck theirs down. The smell reminds him of Asenath. He wonders where she is tonight, what she would say if he dropped in. He found a package from her the previous day before he left, the same stationary she always uses and the same handsome but useless gifts. This year, it was a monogrammed tie clip, white gold inlaid with abalone, likely to go with the tie she gave him last year that he hasn’t worn yet. He can’t help but think of the Van Elsbergs when he opens those gifts, really any gift anyone from the Capitol has given him. Cashmere and Gloss’s parents were both factory workers until their children brought home their victory spoils, had been since about 10 or 11. Beryl Van Elsberg is a tangle of arthritic joints veined with toxic blood, her husband Lumen is nearly blind with lungs full of jewel dust. 

The drink feels like it should be carbonated, but the syrup weighs it down. It’s very sweet and he can’t put his finger on the flavour, something like straight sugar but angrier. Cashmere pulls up a folding chair beside him, holding out her cigarette. He declines the drag, still wondering if tonight will be the night he tries it. It’s funny. I’m 20 tonight and I’ve never smoked .

“I gotta get out of this neighbourhood.” Achaicus muses, blowing smoke up at the sky. “What brings you two into town, anyway? Just for the birthday?”

“We’re working.” Cashmere confesses with a tilt of her head. Achaicus picks up immediately.

“Right, right. Ptolemy’s got decent security, I’d think?”

Cashmere shrugs. “Cameras, check-in procedures. Still, we had an incident in July. Guy came in, raped a girl, beat her up.” 

He isn’t sure why she doesn’t mention that it was Bijou. Achaicus sucks in air through his teeth.

“Shit.”

“Yeah. He’s banned, but I doubt Ptolemy cares.”

“He doesn’t.” He cuts in. “He mentioned to me during the Games that someone who’d been banned got back in and killed one of the Avoxes in the basement suites.”

Cashmere goes totally still, the ash on her cigarette beginning to lengthen. “When?”

“Maybe around the seventh day? He had me go to his cavea to talk about sponsoring Annie. He had to leave when he got the call.”

He’d found out after the fact that the Avox had been a 20 year old woman from 7, apprehended for distribution of contraband literature, only at Ptolemy’s for 3 months. Willow had looked into her after noticing tattoos on her fingers that people get as a coming-of-age ritual in the Northern part of the District. Nobody knew her name because she was illiterate, but they knew she had been a bookbinder. He doesn’t know particulars, only that she had been shown no mercy. He doesn’t mention this.  

Cashmere loses about an inch of height, her gaze falling to the grimy ground of the patio, littered with spent cigarette filters and bottle caps. Achaicus tightens his lips and shakes his head. 

“Sick people everywhere, I tell you.”

Magistrate Harpocrates Tapper was his fourth after his tenure with Ptolemy officially started.  He wasn’t sure what the title meant, only that it was important enough for him to be able to book as early as he did, and to have him for an entire weekend. He knew Ptolemy personally, that was obvious from the way Ptolemy introduced him, and even that early on, he knew that ones who know Ptolemy well are usually the worst.

“All yours for the next two days.” Harpocrates had announced as they stepped into the foyer of his weekend house. Weekend house was the weirdest part about it then, and he’d been trying to calculate how many of the Brineridge apartment could have fit into the sprawling glass-walled compound. “You go enjoy it until I’m done with my paperwork, then I’ll call you on the intercom. You’re to come downstairs then.”

He had been standing in the wide open library, looking out over the lazy expanse of Palatine Park, when he heard quick, light footsteps advancing up behind him. Heart in his throat, he spun around and came face to face with a dumpy dark-haired boy of about 11. The boy inhaled sharply and held his hands up by his shoulders. He was wearing a starchy red school uniform and there were sugar-green smudges at the corners of his mouth.

“Who…” the boy whispered. “Um… oh, you must be…”

“I’m a guest of Magistrate Tapper’s. I’m here for…”

“Oh.” The boy looked disappointed. “I was hoping you were the new Avox. We had to send Girl back. I miss her. What’s your name?”

He knew better than to out himself as last summer’s Victor if the kid hadn’t already put it together. Must be too young to watch the Games . “I’m Nick.”

“Sporus Tapper.” The boy introduced himself with an attempt at a businesslike air as he thrust out a slightly sticky hand. “Dad’s here, you say? He told me he was away for work.”

“Well, he’s working here. He doesn’t want to be bothered.”

Sporus cocked an eyebrow. “Then why are you here?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“You have a funny accent. You talk like the boy with the big fork who’s always on TV.” This kid must be some new kind of stupid that only exists out here. Sporus narrowed his eyes. “You’re District, aren’t you?” He felt himself nod. Sporus blanched and brought his hands up to his neck. “Are you here to drink my blood?”

“No, why would I do that?”

“The District girl I saw on TV, she was biting on this guy’s neck and licking up his blood.”

So you’ve seen Enobaria’s Games but not mine? “Well… I don’t drink blood.”

Sporus managed a wary smile. “I believe you. Come with me, I’ll show you my room.”

“Oh, I-.”

“You’re a guest. Dad says it’s important to be a good host.” Sporus sighed. “I would have Girl bring us something from the kitchen, but she’s not here anymore.”

“Where did she go?”

Sporus shrugged. “Mummy wasn’t happy with her. She said she sent her back, so I guess wherever she came from. I always wondered where they come from…”

“Avoxes?” Sporus nodded. “The Districts.”

Sporus laughed. “That’s one theory.”

“It’s true. Avoxes are-.”

Sporus gave him a playful punch in the shoulder, a near-perfect approximation of what he must have observed his father doing for years. “You’re funny. Why hasn’t Dad had you over before? You should come to our President’s Day dinner next month. We rented out Fleming Gardens, Mummy said I could make an appearance this year.”

“I don’t know if I should.” Tapper wouldn’t risk it, he’s a big deal but not big enough that he can cart me around and not have people asking questions … 

Sporus waved a hand. “I’ll put a good word in.”

“Thank you.”

Silence stretched through the expanse of the house, he knew he would hear the Magistrate’s voice crackle out of the overhead speakers within minutes. Suddenly he felt very trapped, staring at this treacly delineation of a boy, this thing that was so different from him in every conceivable way but almost exactly the same. He thought of himself at Sporus’s age, gaunt and twitchy with a cough to rival that of a lifelong smoker after one of Gil’s other students had given him gullpox, toes breaking through the canvas of his shoes, limbs gnawed by the insects that had invaded the apartment that spring. He felt his hands curling into fists, suddenly wondering what it would have been like to hunt Sporus through the marsh, a pitfall trap or vine at tripping level, three mean prongs buried in his soft white baby fat. 

That’s a horrible thing to let yourself think about. He didn’t do this to you, he’s never done anything to anyone, out here they don’t start hurting other people until they grow up .

“Are you okay? You look like you’re thinking about something.” Sporus walked over to a chair in the corner, climbed up on it, shoes still on, and reached up towards a box on the bookshelf. “This was Girl.” He brought the box down, nestling it in his lap like a pet. Inside was another box. Sporus opened that and began to leaf through a handful of photographs. “Wasn’t she so pretty? I really do wish she would come back.”

Sporus handed him the first picture. A young, dusky-complected woman with short curly hair in a starched white uniform sprawled on her back on a lush white carpet, her skirt bunched around her waist, her knees forced apart by the same metal bar he’d seen on Rennette when Ptolemy brought him into her suite for a demonstration. His breath caught in his throat. Sporus made a low sound of regret and passed him another picture; grey-green eyes swollen and streaming, pleading at the camera, a ball gag where a tongue should be. By the time he had all seven pictures in his hands, all appearing to have been taken on different days, each one more humiliating than the last, he could feel sweat covering his entire body and Sporus had lost interest entirely. 

“I’m ready for you now.” Tapper’s voice sounded from the far left corner of the library. 

“Dad!” Sporus yipped, abandoning the empty box and running out into the hallway.

His Satis-Factory suite is spinning, the bed feeling like it’s bobbing on choppy water, and every time he blinks, his eyelids feel like sandpaper. He wants to swear off drinking on work nights but knows it wouldn’t work here, he needs to keep himself at least a little ways underwater at all times. It’s the last appointment of the month , he tells himself, and it’s Procula, you could fuck her in your sleep .

Procula is in an almost impossibly reasonable mood when she checks in and, for once, doesn’t appear to have started drinking for the day. The first thing she does is slam her purse down on the end table and grin at him, the lipstick smear on her teeth today somehow does not match her lips.

“I’m going to miss you, babycakes.” She crows. “I’m going to be out East until Annie’s tour, guess why.”

“Why?” He assumes some kind of gentrified approximation of an outdoorsy experience, remembers Blight mentioning something about camping grounds just North of Birch Basin with cabins the size of Victors’ Village houses. He can’t picture anything like that in 6 or 8, 12 maybe, right on one of the borders, but he doubts it.

“I want you to guess.” She gives him a flaccid smack with the pantyhose she’s just peeled off. Entirely not in the mood, he throws her on the bed. 

“I give up.” He pouts. “You’re too good at this.”

Procula snickers. “I’ve been offered a job as the head of costuming for a new movie that’s in production as we speak. I can’t say too much, but the director was so impressed by my work with our pretty girl that he wanted me dressing his cast. I almost didn’t believe it!”

“I can believe it.” He lies. “You’re a once-in-a-lifetime talent, he’d have to be crazy to overlook you.”

“That’s what I said!” She contradicts herself. “Oh, I almost don’t even care to have you ravish me today, I can’t stop thinking about the designs… I leave tomorrow, I have a few loose ends to tie up but other than that…”

“Well, I’m happy for you. It sounds like an exciting opportunity.”

She twists her necklace around her index finger and rakes his shoulder with the nails of her free hand. “He’s paying me through the nose… I’ll be able to have you for a whole week once the tour’s over…” And with my payout from the tour, I’ll be able to be blackout drunk for the entirety of that week … “The movie is called Hometown Glory, it’s about a girl from some bumpkin District who volunteers for the Games when her little sister is reaped. Anyway, the catch is… she’s in love with her own District partner! It’s very moving… lots of inspiration.”

Sounds equal parts boring and depressing . “That sounds fascinating. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“Mimaeus- that’s the director, we’re on a first name basis now- he wants to have as many Victors at the premiere as possible. Lucky for you, I also need a plus one.” She runs her tongue from his collarbone to his jaw. “Oh, and you’ll never even guess who the leading lady is… Bijou Shackelford! I mean, I just knew she would be once she premiered her talent, she’s a born actress. You know, Mimaeus initially wanted you for the love interest, but the First Lady wouldn’t have it. I guess she wants you fresh and rested for the tour, which, yes, it’s probably the best call…” I would have taken phoning in a performance for some stupid movie over her any day …

“So who stole my spot?” He tries to sound jovial, as if he hasn’t just missed out on an actual hiatus from Livia.

“Oh, Faustina’s boy. Metrobius Harrington, delicious piece of work but no substance.” Procula sighs, he can see the images of him in one of her obnoxious costumes, stage-porking Bijou in the woods and dying on the end of a prop spear, running through her mind. “Oh, I just wish they’d gone with you. Metrobius is probably… very talented but… he just doesn’t have your… folksy inclination.”

If you’re so horny for District men, why don’t you just defect already? “Well, maybe next time.”

“Maybe next time…” Procula echoes. 

The second she’s gone, so is he. Normally, he’d just suck it up and stay the night, meet up and black out with whoever else is selling ass that week, maybe even cash in a favour to sleep at the Tribute Centre, but this time the city is chafing his nerves even more than usual and he just has to get out. By late afternoon he just barely manages to get a seat on a passenger train heading out to the West coast and South through 5 and 10, three cars long and bearing a smattering of sundry lower-ranking emissaries, likely on factory inspection assignments. He takes a seat as far out of the way as he can and covers his face with his jacket, ignoring the sick-sweet smell of alcohol sweat. He wishes suddenly that he’d at least planned to leave with Cashmere so he’d have someone to talk to for part of the journey, but hadn’t thought to ask when she’d finish. It’s fine , he tells himself, this one might not even stop in 1. It’ll probably just go through the mountains.

“-certainly don’t envy you, Aprunus.” He tunes into a conversation a few seats ahead. “I thought 5 was a pit, I’ve heard some stories about 10.”

“Where we stay isn’t so terrible. It’s in the desert outside the borders, nice little estate the family built about twenty years ago. Of course, what they say about the smell is true, but the open air does make it a bit easier and we’ve got filters on the windows. I won’t be there long, anyway. They haul me out now and again, but it’s mostly just to keep things in line.”

“Don’t tell me. What is it this time?”

“There’s been some… unrest in one of the hatcheries. Theft, tampering with product, you know how it gets sometimes. There was an accident a few months back and of course the backwards hogfuckers had to take it upon themselves to start raising hell.”

Dry laughter. “Don’t they always?” 

“It’ll be a mild week, I’m anticipating four tongues maximum.”

A clink of glass. “Always the optimist.”

At the final checkpoint before entering 4, the doors swish open to admit the tangy, metallic smell of a maritime rainstorm. He hates rain, but the smell is so familiar he wants to scream. Two Peacekeepers step onto the train, perform a cursory sweep for border jumpers and depart, the train shudders back into motion. He orders one last drink from the dead-eyed Avox pushing the beverage cart, knowing he’ll have time to throw it back as the checkpoint unlocks one gate at a time to admit them through. There will be no-one waiting for him at the station tonight, he can be as drunk and wretched as he needs to be to get through the remainder of the night, which shouldn’t be too much to get through. It can’t be earlier than 11. Shower, more liquor, then sleep off this week, welcome to your twenties, you’re somehow still alive .

The distance from the train station to the village is walkable in most weather, but as he looks out at the deluge from under the shelter on the platform, he realizes he may have made a mistake. The umbrella he leaves in his duffle bag just in case is a warped, rusted thing that folds backwards even in light wind, and halfway into the twenty minute journey he begins to consider the very real possibility that he may be a complete idiot. The rain is heavy enough even to begin with and, paired with the wind, seems to be coming at him sideways, but he can’t figure out from which direction. The umbrella becomes more of a hassle than it’s worth, dead weight thrashing in his grip and collecting heavy drips of rainwater that always seem to land right between his shoulderblades, but he keeps his grip on it just to feel like he has some defense against the downpour. By the halfway point, his jacket is entirely soaked through. He makes a mental note to see about getting a second car for the village to share now that there’s another Victor. He doubts Annie is interested in learning how to drive, has a suspicion that she’s on too much medication to be allowed to even try, but he refuses to go through this bullshit again just because Sligo just had to have the car on hand just in case even though he almost never leaves the Village.

“Lazy idiot.” He carps to himself, getting a mouthful of rainwater in the process. “Can’t go one week without a car you haven’t driven in three months?”

He is taking a towel to his soaked hair and pouring a generous glass of wine when a car door slams outside and voices are heard through the showerhead din of rain. Maybe Sligo actually was using the car, he considers, ready to wield the newly arisen drunk driving admonition like his life depends on it. 

In the porch light, three huddled bodies are making their way towards the Flanagan house. He hadn’t thought to check in with Mags when he got in, assuming she and Macie and Annie were all down for the night, but he can now see that she’s standing in the lit doorway of her house, the chimeric trio staggering up the stairs together. His stomach drops when he sees a Peacekeeper’s off-roader pulling in behind, the driver’s military posture and stiff white uniform. He hears a feminine voice slightly raised in the vague shape of a string of words and immediately knows something is very wrong. 

The car is parked haphazardly between his house and Mags’s, her front door still open. From the front walk, he can see Sligo in the foyer, talking to a hatchet-faced female Peacekeeper who is shaking her head and placing a hand on his shoulder.

“-need to warm you up, honey.” he can hear Mags saying as he ascends the porch steps. Sligo sees him coming but doesn’t seem to have the energy to take issue with his presence, just steps to the side and puts a hand on the Peacekeeper’s elbow so she knows to do the same. 

“You’re back early.” Sligo observes, the vaguest tremor in his voice. 

“What the hell’s going on?” A high, familiar sob rends through the living room, a short one, like she’s startled instead of raving. Someone is shushing, a bubbling sound, pouring, Macie hurrying into the living room from the kitchen holding a mug of steaming liquid.

“I know you had no prior knowledge of this-.” the Peacekeeper is saying to Sligo, “-and obviously none of you are to blame, but I need to stress that measures have to be taken so this doesn’t happen again. I understand the situation, I was out tonight, she got lucky. Anybody else would have hauled her down to The Retreat without asking questions, or worse.”

“No, I understand. I completely understand. It won’t.”

He feels a sturdy hand on his shoulder. “Sir, I can’t have-.”

“It’s fine. He’s supposed to be here. Well, he’s back early, but-.”

“I’d just rather-.”

“He’s supposed to be here.” Sligo repeats a bit more firmly. “Do you need anything else?”

“No, that should be all. Miss Flanagan has my number.” The Peacekeeper turns to leave, fixing him in a long, quizzical look before letting the front door swing shut behind her. He stares at the door as the vehicle she came in sputters to life and drives off. He isn’t ready to turn the corner into the living room, to see what he knows is there, to see the state she must be in.

“Peacekeeper found her walking on the road on the way out of town, the one that leads down to WP.” Sligo manages with so little energy it’s almost like the words are just leaking out involuntarily.  “She won’t say what happened. We don’t know where her clothes went.”

Chapter Text

DECEMBER

She tells them every day that it won’t happen again, that she knows better than to try and that she will listen to Ciaran this time, and every day they tell her this is for her own good.

Darya Strand is anywhere from 30 to 40, it’s hard to tell between the sedatives and the fact that there is no reason to try to make her look pretty anymore. Her age is hard to judge when her face is as bruised as it always is from being pounded against the walls. Most of Darya’s family are dead, gunned down in the Pliny’s Inlet Riots 15 years ago, the ones who remain do not visit her. Her curly black hair is hacked unevenly just above her ears, she wears a rotation of three standard-issue nightgowns provided by the hospital. There had been talk of removing her teeth, but her family wouldn’t pay to have the doctor brought out.

“She was just a little older than you when it happened.” says the nurse with the yellow hair and that one rotten incisor that should just be pulled. “Fishing accident. She washed up on Victory Beach, of all places, never came all the way home.”

So did I , she wants to say, but the injections they’ve been giving her make the words slide back down her throat. The nurse with the yellow hair and the rotten incisor brushes her hair and cuts her nails down to the quick so she can’t scratch like Darya once did.

“I would have rather just drowned if it were me.” says the nurse with the yellow hair and the rotten incisor, shaking her head, very quietly. Darya watches from her corner, her expression almost knowing. 

Really, Darya is a fine roommate. She’s quiet most of the time, unless the weather is bad, which it often is this time of year. On those days, she stands at the window, bangs on the shatterproof glass and wails desperately. Maybe she remembers something from the day her boat capsized. She wants to tell Darya that she’s safe here, but knows that Darya will never be safe, that safety doesn’t matter anymore because Darya is very far gone and knows it on some level. 

“You can’t get her a private room?” She remembers someone urging, “this is The Annie Cresta we’re talking about, if the media were to-.”

“No space. We serve all of the Central District and we have limited capacity. Be thankful it’s just the two of them in here. Right after the war, we’d get lucky with five to a room.”

There are crazy people all over the District, and those from the middle strip, Portside and the surrounding cannery towns, Oil Bend and The Slope and Estuary, come to The Retreat. She knows there must be another name, but everyone calls it The Retreat. It happens to different people for different reasons, but the only one she is familiar with is Darya, who drowned and came back and will die here. 

“You won’t be here forever, so I don’t want you to worry about that.” Macie said when she came right at the two week mark. “At the end of December, you’ll be home.” Because they need you for the Victory Tour hangs in the air like smog. That day, the nurse with the sunburn and round glasses had let them stand out in the backyard of The Retreat, where other patients are allowed sometimes, but not Darya. When she asked why, the nurse with the yellow hair and the rotten incisor seemed a bit caught then just said that Darya wouldn’t like it. Darya sits by the window most of the time, pawing at the shatterproof glass and speaking backwards. 

There is work at The Retreat, which she wants to feel comforted by. It’s not unlike Processing, but slower, almost like pretend work, and much more menial. Every evening, a truck comes and drops off hundreds of cardboard boxes. For the remainder of the following day, she and the handful of other patients who are allowed to hold sharp objects cut the tape and fold the boxes in on themselves, pass them down the line and tie them off and put them in a different truck, which drives away after dinner. Nobody gets any money for it, but sometimes a middle aged woman will walk around and ask everyone how they’re liking the work, how good it feels to have a job, how much they enjoy contributing, in a very shrill voice that undulates like she’s talking to small children. The last time the woman came through, the man cutting down boxes across from her shot her a conspiratorial eye roll and she wanted to smile back but she didn’t have a chance before the nurse with the rotten incisor took the scissors from his hands and redirected him down to the end of the line. She hasn’t tried to engage with any of the other crazy people other than Darya since, because nobody cares who talks to Darya because Darya won’t talk back.

On December 21st, Sligo arrives in the car. He hugs her tightly and for longer than he normally would, kisses the top of her head and puts her bag in the backseat. It’s the same bag Macie packed for her after she was dropped off but about half as full as it had been then, she isn’t going home permanently this time, but if it goes well she will next week. Darya is at the window when they pull out. She waves back even though Darya seems to not see. 

“You see someone?” Sligo asks almost nervously, watching her hand out of the corner of his eye.

“She’s real.” She reassures him. “Don’t worry. Other people see her too.”

He doesn’t seem to pick up what she means. “Do they.” He says it like an assessment instead of a question. 

Mags and Macie’s house feels like another planet now, after she’s gotten used to the barren room on the third floor of The Retreat, Darya in her corner quietly humming at nothing, the hourly checks. She showers alone in Macie’s bathroom and nobody complains when she ends up taking half an hour. The soap is buttery and smells like cherries and doesn’t leave the vexatious film on her skin that the standard issue green lye disks at The Retreat do. The shower at The Retreat, which she is only allowed to use with a nurse in the room, leaves her hair dry and crunchy like she’s been in saltwater. Mags brushes and braids it tonight while Macie cooks and Sligo splits wood. 

She missed her bedroom. The bedding from the old apartment, pilly and threadbare but still good, the picture of Mom and Saira, taken by Dad long before she was born, Mom’s earrings and Anamarija’s ring on the nightstand, the little plant on the windowsill, the crack in the ceiling and the wallpaper patterned with coral and tiaré. That first night, she is exhausted and wants nothing more than to sleep, knowing she can sleep as late as she wants and there are no hourly room checks, but the room is too silent. There is no low hum of fluorescent lighting from the hall, nobody awake above or below, no Darya humming at nothing. She wakes up at noon and sees no reason to move until Macie comes up to tell her she’s slept through lunch. 

Finnick is there on the second day, standing in the living room like he’s afraid to touch anything. When she comes down the stairs and sees him around the corner she goes right back up the stairs and stands on the landing, watching him from above.

“-just for the week. I guess it was good timing.”

“Very.” Mags joins him, hanging him a mug of coffee and taking her seat by the window again. “Sit down, honey. You’re making me nervous.” He finds the couch, sits on the edge. “What more do they want you to do?”

“It’s not so much for them anymore. I’ve gotten Mimaeus to write up some more consulting work for me, but I’m mostly worried about Bijou. The work is hard on her.”

“Running around in front of a camera?” Macie remarks from the kitchen.

“Well, it has to feel like she’s doing the Games over.” Mags cuts in. “I’d be a basket case too.”

The word ‘Games’ itches in the depths of her right ear canal, she gives her temple a light slap. Not like the way Darya does it, so quickly and brutally it’s like she’s possessed, until blood streams from her nose and she has to be tied down. They all want to have her teeth removed and her family won’t pay but at this rate she wouldn’t put it past Darya to knock each one out herself.  

Finnick’s attention finds the windowsill. “You lit them.”

“Of course I did, we always do.”

“I wasn’t here. You didn’t have to.”

“It’s no trouble. I know it’s important to you and your ma. I left tonight’s for you.”

On the windowsill, there is a little tree-looking sculpture made of driftwood and tusk that holds eight little candles. She can see it now because Finnick is picking it up and staring down at it with a sad look in his eyes. 

“I wish she was here. I wish she could tell me what to do. Leaving Bijou out there, I feel like I can’t even turn my back to her, the way they all look at her.”

Bijou Shackelford killed Levi Roe. Citrine nags from down the upstairs hallway. She cut his throat open and let all the air slip out of his lungs. 

Mags sighs. “Do you think it’s better if you go back early? We’ll all understand.”

Finnick’s voice breaks. “I don’t know. There’s only so much of it I can take. It’s my sanity or…” She can hear her heart beating in the pause in conversation. “Can I help with dinner?”

“We’re on top of it. Unless you want to go help Sligo split wood.”

“I’d rather split my-.” He catches himself, freezing in place and turning slowly up towards the landing. They make a split second snatch of eye contact before she dives back against the wall. She hears him sigh, a soft sound of the candle tree being set back on the windowsill.

“Let her take it in her own time.” Mags placates. “She needs to eat eventually.”

She knows how stupid she’s being when she marches defiantly back into her bedroom and shuts the door, getting back into the bed that doesn’t smell like Retreat soap or Retreat detergent or Retreat anything and pulling the quilt over her head. I went two weeks without a square meal , she stews, watch me do it again . She writhes out of her sweater and balls it up over her nose and mouth so she won’t smell the spicy fish smell filling the downstairs. Mom and Saira watch her from the framed picture on the nightstand, Saira strong and stocky and Mom long and rangy, her black hair falling to her waist, her wide mouth spread in a big smile at Dad behind the camera. She wonders what would have happened if Mom had never left 6, if she would have been born by another man in another apartment above another licensing office in some rank, crowded city. If she would be one of those living dead people Mom would talk to Dad about when they thought she was asleep, skin hanging off, veins thrumming with bathtub-brewed toxins. One night, over stale corner store beer, she had told Dad and Saira about a woman who would sell herself for spoonfuls of it. She closes her eyes and tries to recall the story, tries to picture this ruined woman, and her mind keeps cycling back to an image of Darya running down a grimy urban street, crazy eyes raking her surroundings, big slavering mouths with gnashing radius and ulna teeth opening up on her forearms, screaming to be fed. 

If Mom never left 6, I just never would have been born . She decides. She likes that version better. 

She doesn’t dream before he comes, which she is an approximation of happy about when she realizes she is waking up. There is a shifting at the edge of the room by the window, just out of her eyeline, near the chair that she tosses her clothes onto when she can’t be bothered to put them in the hamper or back in the closet. Something is set down on her vanity, then something else, two faint thumps like the candle tree on the windowsill, then Finnick is picking up her overnight bag and placing it on the floor so he can sit on the chair. She smells dinner. 

“Mags wants me to leave you alone, but you need to eat. If you want me to go away, I’ll go.”

When she sits up to face him, it scares her a little how wretched he looks. His hair, that muted shade of spicy brown she has always liked, is newly cut, just an inch or so too short. He is drowning in his green cable knit sweater, which she knows Mags made because she has the same one in yellow and she brought it to The Retreat. Once she sat down by Darya when she was being calm, and Darya brought her hand to the sleeve and rubbed at it for a very long time until the hourly check came around and the nurse with the rotten incisor grabbed Darya and put her back in bed. 

“You don’t bother Annie.” The nurse with the rotten incisor said it like it was an order. If it had simply been a statement, it would have been true. 

There is one bowl of steaming gumbo on the vanity and one in Finnick’s lap. Two pieces of bread protrude from the edge of the bowl. She goes to raise her hand, he knows what she’s about to ask and hands her the bowl.

“Do you want me to go away?”

She isn’t sure. She shakes her head. 

She wants to be embarrassed by how quickly she inhales the contents of the bowl, but Finnick seems to be either distracted or pretending not to be watching her. He’s picking at his own serving with one hand and inspecting something small in the other.

“What-.” She wants to ask what he’s touching, but the spice makes her cough. Finnick holds up what he’s been looking at, a tiny dolphin Saira gave her years ago, carved from soapstone. 

“I wanted to see you before I had to go again.”

“Well, here I am.”

His jaw clenches. “I’m really sorry about everything.”

“Why? It’s not your fault.” He shrugs. “I’ll be out soon anyway.”

“I heard. Macie says you’ve been doing really well. You’re probably ready to get out.” 

“I don’t think I’m crazy enough to need to stay there forever.”

“You’re not crazy at all.” His voice is firm. “You were scared, you acted irrationally, you needed help getting over it. That’s not what crazy is. I’ve done crazier things.”

“Like what?”

Finnick laughs. “We’d be here all night.”

There is no clock in the room. The ticking set her on edge. “Is it late?”

Finnick gives her a weak half-grimace. “Pretty late. But it’s okay, I don’t have any plans.”

“Why was Mags waiting for you to light the candles?”

Finnick tilts his head. “Oh. That’s just something we do every year around this time. It’s a religious thing my mom grew up with, it’s from a long time ago. Basically how it started was there was a war way back in the day. Way back, farther back than pretty much anything. So there was the people that my mom and I came from-.”

“But not The Flats.”

“Nowhere even close to The Flats. Long before The Flats, before 4. Some other District in some place that neither of us will ever see. Anyway, the people on the other side of this war came in and fucked up their temple. When they got the temple back, they wanted to light this lamp, but they only had enough fuel to go for one day.”

“That’s too bad.”

“No, it wasn’t. Because the fuel ended up lasting for eight days.”

“Why?”

He shrugs. “That’s why it’s special. Mom and I did it every year, lit a candle every night. There are prayers that go with it too, but she didn’t remember them. We do other things too, like, there’s a week in the spring where we don’t eat during certain times. Around this time of year, Willow’s family bring a tree into the house and decorate it, and Rennette and her siblings paint eggs in the spring. That’s all stuff people did a long time ago. Here, most people just have a big dinner before the New Year, that and Canning Week.” He lowers his voice. “You’re not allowed to do any of those things in the Capitol. I actually read something about it, right after the Dark Days, this bill was passed… what did they call it again? Something about ‘regressive idolatry’.”

“That’s dumb. Who cares if people light candles or bring a tree inside?” She sets the bowl on the nightstand and slides down to sit on the floor. Finnick shifts uncomfortably. 

“You need to be careful saying things like that, okay? It’s okay here because this is a really old house, but…”

“No, I know. The woman at my house might not like it. I don’t know if she’s from the Capitol, but she seems like the type to get all pissed about candles and trees.” She cradles the bowl in her bent knees and pushes a small piece of sausage around. Finnick stares at her. “You’re looking at me like the nurses do. I don’t like it.”

“What does the woman do? Is that why you prefer to stay here?”

She shakes her head. “This house is better. It’s not all her. But she bothers me. That fucked up eye of hers.” Finnick flinches, his lips part. She takes a bite of bread. “My mom came from 6, you know.”

“What about before?”

She shrugs. “6. My dad came from somewhere else before 4 but she was always from 6, when there were still lakes there that weren’t full of scrap metal and grease. That’s why her last name was Flint. There are Flints all over 6 but they’re not all from the same family. She was very proud of it and I never really found out why.”

Finnick leans back in the chair. “I think it’s good to hold onto things like that, even if you don’t know why. Even if it ends up being meaningless in the end, it’s good to…” he trails off. “I don’t know if we should talk about this now. I’ve been drinking.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “There are certain things… topics… you need to be careful of how you talk about them. The candles and the trees and the thing about your mom… as dumb as you may think it is, and believe me, I do too, there are people who really wouldn’t like that we talked about that. So with me in this house, it’s fine. Out there…”

“Are we being watched?” She’s been wondering that since she got back. Finnick goes still, the colour drains out of his face and he sets his bowl on the vanity. She can tell immediately that he’s lost his appetite. He’s wondering how to say what he wants to say. 

He clears his throat. “There are… Fuck me…” He covers his face with his palm, talking to himself the way Darya does. “...idiot… why did I even…” He takes a deep breath. “Annie, you are not being watched. I am being watched. And there are things I have to do-.”

“Just tell me the truth.”

He stares at her for a long moment, then picks up his bowl and crosses over to where she’s sitting. 

“Are you done eating?” She nods. “It’s really late. If Mags finds out I had you up at 3 in the morning, I’ll be in the next gumbo.” He bends down and gives her a limp hug with one arm. “I’ll come over tomorrow and we’ll talk more, okay?”

Before she can say anything, he is down the stairs. Some seconds later, the door swings open and slams shut. 

There is no conversation that follows. Finnick leaves in the morning and she doesn’t find out until Macie is returning home from driving him to the train station, evading any and all questions. Mags shows her how to stitch the panels of the sweater she is making together, punctuated by unrelated small talk. 

“A little long in the arms for you, isn’t it?” she remarks when it’s done, soft forest green wool, not very well done but the recipient won’t know the difference. 

“A friend.” is all she gives back.

She spends the remainder of the day with Sligo, wanting to be with someone who hates Finnick as much as she does now. She knits a sock the way Mags showed her while he cleans the morning’s catch, his hands working with Whimsiwick Standard precision. He would have done well in Processing if life hadn’t had his current lot in mind. 

“I’ll take you back right before visiting hours are up.” He offers, talking through his cigarette. “Get as much time as you can.”

She wants to tell him that she doesn’t care anymore, but knows he had to really push for those extra few hours, a minute later and The Retreat will take it as an abduction, like when that man from down the hall had been temporarily discharged to spend the weekend with his wife and she’d been delayed getting him back by an hour. The dark hairs on his forearms are standing up in the cold air and she wonders why he never wears a jacket, even in the winter. She wonders if they will get snow, if it will set Darya screaming the way rain does. She thinks about anything but Finnick and his candles that nobody can talk about. She takes a cigarette from Sligo’s pack. He gives her a weak protest the way he always does but makes no move to stop her. He’ll never say no to her, he doesn’t have it in him. 

“Did you ever know anybody named Strand?” she inquires. Sligo raises an eyebrow, thinking for a second. 

“Ah. One guy. Anthias Strand, big naval officer. He runs the Lanistarium up North now, so I see him here and there when I go up. Why do you ask?”

“Is he from Pliny’s Inlet?”

“I’m not sure. I think he might be from around here. We’re not close, I’m not exactly his biggest fan, you could say.”

That could mean anything from mild distaste to open vitriol in Sligo’s world. “Why not?”

Sligo laughs. “Because he’s a prick. Dad was a bootlicker, that’s how Anthias got into the Navy. I think he’s done a lot of shit I wouldn’t dream of doing just because he can. Some people move up in the world and think they own it.” He trails off, she wonders if he’s thinking of Finnick.

“Is Strand a common last name?”

Sligo gives her a quizzical look. “I’m the wrong guy to ask.”

She doesn’t ask him any more questions on the drive back to The Retreat, opting instead to let him talk about how she’ll be out next week and they’ll have a big dinner and Saira can come over and Finnick will be back. She doesn’t care about that last part anymore. Let him stay with his precious Bijou in the Capitol or wherever the hell they are, it doesn’t matter anymore, none of it matters. Some part of her wants to cry but she can’t do that now. If she does, they might make her stay another week. Her gift is still warm in her lap, packed into a box, the sweater draped on top, the socks folded into the pocket of her dress. 

Darya is in her corner again, slumped face-first against the wall, one hand probing the floor beside her for something. Her hair is wet, someone has bathed her. 

This was a mistake , she considers for a second, as Darya looks her up and down, making her feel like she’s in crosshairs. Darya stares like the Chantilly mutt, then something in her face softens and she tilts her head. 

She sits on the floor, leaving a good three feet of space between them. She knows Darya has no interest in hurting her, has no interest in hurting anyone really besides that one orderly who doesn’t come by anymore for that precise reason. Lani, a scraggly woman on the box line who came in for Morphling detox and never left, once whispered that he’d known Darya wouldn’t tell anyone if he came in and ‘messed with’ her, got a broken nose and a deep ring of teeth marks in his shoulder for his trouble. Darya’s family won’t pay to have her teeth removed. She hopes they never do.

“This is for you.” she says, holding out one of three crab cakes. “Do you like these? If not, I have other things. I have rice and some chicken.” She watches Darya’s limbs as she takes the crab cake. The sweater may be a bit long in the arms but she won’t mind. “There aren’t any pills in it.” 

Darya bites into the crab cake hesitantly, then again eagerly. Her teeth are in bad shape but they are still teeth and they aren’t rotten, not like the nurse with the rotten incisor, a greying thing with black pores at the root. The crab cake disappears, she hands Darya another one. 

“Please be good when I’m out of here.” She whispers. Darya eats quickly but politely, and she wonders what she was like before. She takes a piece of chicken and moves closer, the ends of Darya’s cropped hair still hold beads of shower water, she takes one of her linen skirts out of her overnight bag and dries Darya’s hair as she moves on to the rice, wishes distantly that she had at least thought to bring a spoon. They’d take it, they’d think she was going to use it as a weapon. If she did, I wouldn’t blame her. “You’ll behave yourself, right?” There won’t be any answer beyond the muted sound of rice between teeth. 

Darya swallows and makes a sound that could pass for assent, a long, guttural “hu-uhh” before taking the now-moist skirt and wiping her hands. She imagines a lanky girl with dark curls eating crab cakes and washing her hands in a sink in the crumbling kitchen of a Pliny’s Inlet apartment building. She wonders if Darya had been religious like Finnick or Willow, if she’d had candles on the windowsill or a tree in her living room, if that was what her family had been rioting for. 

“Are you leaving the chicken for me?” Darya’s upper lip twitches and she looks away. “I ate already. I’ll keep it safe for you to have tomorrow.”

Food hoarding could buy her another week, but she knows where to hide things. She’ll never tell a living soul, but she once kept an extra bit of quail safe for two days in one of her pockets in the arena. Briar had been whining that her feet were tired, she’d been at the edge of her patience. The guilt will keep her up some nights, but a piece of quail couldn’t have saved Briar, just like three crab cakes, two chicken legs and a cup of rice won’t save Darya. 

She packs the chicken back up and stuffs it into the bottom of her overnight bag, retrieving the sweater. She slides it over Darya’s head and goes to maneuver her arms into the sleeves before she does it herself, a practiced, innate extension of both elbows. The cuffs go just past the joint of her thumb. Darya looks down at it and slowly wraps her arms around herself. She slides the socks onto Darya’s bare feet, watches her toes curl behind the deep maroon yarn that matches the scarf she made for herself. She kneels in front of Darya and takes hold of her hands, feeling what was once fresh rope burn coursing along the palms. Darya’s eyes are surrounded by fading bruises, the lids heavy, but the irises are a warm golden brown and they are looking back and seeing her. 

Chapter Text

PORTSIDE

JANUARY

 66 PEACETIME

Cormac Whelk dies halfway through Canning Week. In the morning he complains of chest pain, in the evening, Bronwyn finds him laid out on the beach, cigarette still smoldering in his fingers, glass of homebrew spilled out on the sand beside him. He does not tell Calypso until he absolutely has to. Even though she had no great love for her father-in-law, the way he spit orders at her the way he had at his own wife and treated her children as little more than loud furniture, she knows what a Cormac-shaped gap in the family unit will mean, and she has been in bed all day while the twins act out their first of many heated slap fights just below her ribcage. She doesn’t cry after the funeral, when she can finally manage to sit at the kitchen table with Bronwyn and Scylla and Anuhea and Aoife and seal away the fruits of peak season for the winter, she simply offers her sympathy and reassures him that his new position will be a better one. 

“As long as you’re captaining my vessel-.” Dad would always say, “-named after my mother, you’ll do exactly as I would do.”

He knows he won’t, doesn’t know how exactly, just knows things will be different. He isn’t worried about respect, the crew of Muirreann’s Majesty have known him since his first day in the world, they know he could hold his own on a commercial vessel before he could write his own name. The problem is that he knows there’s something missing, something that Dad could always sniff out in him but never actually pointed out so that he could do something about it. He knows everything he has to do, everything the way Dad would have done it, but still knows deep down that there is something he will do wrong, something that has to be done right. 

His first week as captain ends well, the daily quota exceeded with enough to skim off the top and take home. He wraps his portion in butcher paper, the smallest of what could be spared, and places it safely in the icebox below deck. The sky is darkening as they pull back into port, heavy clouds pregnant with somehow even more freezing rain. The alley by the house has been full of an evil-looking grey-brown soup that Ciaran and Amphie feel the need to play in constantly, Maren trailing after them. Calypso is too exhausted to worry about them, and he can’t pretend like he wasn’t doing the same thing at that age. Still, he worries about the temperature, the disgusting germs that wash up through the storm grates, what they get up to out there. 

Calypso, back ashore, is almost as wide as she is tall, the twins tangled up together inside of her. He can barely bring himself to leave in the morning, knowing how hard the last two pregnancies were. He’s managed to browbeat Bronwyn into getting a pass at WP to stay with her while he’s on the water. He can’t get it out of his head that her water could break while he’s miles and miles out, that something could happen and he would have no idea. He can’t fathom how some of these other men have done it all these years, Glaucus with his kids and grandkids, Sev with his wife and son. Never Dad, it was always easy for him. 

He doesn’t want to go to Skipjack’s, but knows that if he were to return home right after docking on a Saturday that Calypso will get on him about worrying too much, and figures that getting her worked up can’t help anything.

“One drink.” He tells Pontus and Harras as they haul him up the boardwalk to the crumbling taphouse that crowns Portside’s main street. His mouth tastes sour as they edge into the shadow of the building, he steels himself for the churn of work-wet bodies and at least one drunken scrap before he can get out. 

The first moment alone he manages to get is interrupted. Scylla, two drinks in already, sits down across from him, her wide hands reddened at the knuckles and her face perpetually chafed from the wind. He wasn’t sure about hiring her after he took over, Dad wouldn’t have liked having a Murrell on his vessel, named after his mother, but she’s been one of the only people keeping him sane out there. She splits her time between Muirreann’s Majesty and WP, only offering him her Mondays through Wednesdays, and maybe that’s part of what keeps her fresh for him. He loves Pontus and Harras and those guys like brothers, but an hour past quitting time, he’d rather be drinking with President Snow himself. 

Scylla sighs. “You hear about the Crestas? Delmar Phyto’s pal and his wife?”

He knows Nereus Cresta in passing, a compact, swarthy man with a confusing accent who was always fun to drink with but never much for conversation. His wife is out of his league, a tall, willowy thing with wide green eyes and black hair down to her waist who works part-time as a cleaner at WP, the rest of the time she’s the other half of the small lobstering business that Nereus wants to expand and trademark as ‘Crestaceans’. She’s not from 4, everyone knows that. Some guy in town said once that she’s a defector from 2, but another guy corrected him, saying she’s from 6. Either way, wherever she’s from she’s gone now. The news leaves a sour taste in his mouth. 

“Boat went down. Middle of the bay, no radio. They didn’t stand a chance.” Scylla continues, not waiting for a reply. “Poor sucker. Everyone was telling him not to build his own vessel, and guess what he did?” she shakes her head. “They’ve got a daughter, Anja or Abby or something, she’s 13, a little-.” Scylla waves a hand in front of her eyes.

“A little what?”

Scylla shrugs. “She’s in Thalassa’s class at school- Annie, that’s her name. Annie. Anyway, she’s a nice enough kid, but a little…”

“Off?”

“Off is a nice way of putting it. She kind of reminds me of Kelp’s brother. Remember how he used to hang around to count the oysters? She’s not as bad, but Lassie says Delmar’s oldest was kind of like her mom at school. Now the Phytos are gone and so are Kari and Nereus… it’s a shit situation.”

“Thalassa would look out for her, I’d hope. She’s a nice kid.”

Scylla shrugs. “I hope so. I know the other kids can be cruel. I’ll keep on her about it, see if Annie would ever want to come for dinner.”

“So she’s going to the community home?”

Scylla shakes her head. “Saira Pollock’s her godmother. She’s living at Harrington Place, up by the cannery. Gonna get Annie in at WP, hopefully set her up for a while.”

“Saira Pollock’s head of Free Range, how’s she gonna raise some messed up kid?”

“I told her I’m around. Me and Eldi and Carretta, we’re all gonna keep an eye on her. And I’m gonna be riding Lassie’s ass, make sure she’s being nice at school. Some of these kids are just awful, Roan.”

Himself, he’d always done fine at school, Calypso and Scylla had been another story. One was too tall, too strong and too hatchet-faced to ever be accepted as a girl, the other had been too small and too emotional to deal with even the tiniest inconveniences, legally blind on top of it all with mast-thick glasses that she was always misplacing. Both were the granddaughters of informers and were too far apart in age to have at least gone through it together. 

The thing he hated most about Dad’s generation was the casual cruelty, that post-war scarcity mindset that he thinks must have come out of having to fight for the barest scraps and living under the constant threat of being turned in if you survived in the wrong way. He doesn’t envy it by any means, but hates the way it has permeated, especially in Portside, especially children. When Calypso was nine, another girl called her an ‘eater’, a term he’d only heard older people say to describe those who couldn’t pull their own weight in the world, who couldn’t have done anything for the cause. Sick people, deformed or disabled or simply with nothing to offer, bad eyes in Calypso’s case, named after what they did to scarce resources. He’d heard someone call Kelp’s brother an eater once, Kelp made sure they never said it again. He doesn’t know this Annie Cresta kid, but knows Nereus wouldn’t raise someone who couldn’t bounce back from something like this. 

The Whelk house has always been the Whelk house because Dad would only ever leave in a body bag because that’s how Mom left and always will be the Whelk house because it’s the best they can afford. He doesn’t mind, now that he’s captain he won’t spend much time there, but he feels bad for Calypso being stuck there all day, nauseous and swollen and overrun with children. It’s a shoebox of a building with bright blue siding that has faded over the years to a grungy teal. There is a makeshift wraparound porch that Grandpa smacked together for Grandma back in the day, likely before the war, back when the Murrels would have sold the Whelks down the river for a few extra cans of sardines. Now Gwen and Nerites live on the other side of town and Scylla visits when she can and Calypso is convinced she’s reaping the comeuppance for her grandparents’ bootlicking with every power outage, every cold shower, every meal of nondescript canned meat on stale crackers. Even their scant good meals seem cheapened by the circumstances; the crab legs eaten in the cold kitchen, the yellowtail seared in margarine on a pan so warped it takes almost double the time. Calypso never complains, and he hopes that will extend to the children. If things do improve, he’ll want their expectations to be low. Maybe being captain of Muirreann’s Majesty will be lucrative for him in the way it never was for Dad. Maybe the next few salmon runs will be inexplicably bountiful. Maybe Calypso will find a good job once the kids are old enough to come home alone after school, maybe she’ll work for Mayor Valonia, or as a liaison for the ambassador, or as a foreperson at one of the fish farms. He knows she’s smart enough, hard-working enough, deserving enough, but, since they’ve known each other, Calypso has always seemed to be plagued by bad luck. She’ll swear up and down, heedless of any logic, that it’s the vengeful ghosts of rebels and poachers turned in by her grandfather, that, even though her parents have since publicly denounced informing and paid the price for it, she will never be free of them. 

By the time he makes it up the porch steps, the rain has begun to pour. Inside, Calypso is sitting in the rocking chair by the fire, swollen ankles propped on the coffee table. Asha is wedged into the sliver of  space beside her, flushed and sweaty, an arm thrown over the distension that will, hopefully soon, be her two younger sisters. When she hears him approaching, Calypso opens one eye and smiles.

“I think her fever’s breaking.”

He leans down to kiss Calypso’s forehead, then Asha’s, who whines in response and buries her face in Calypso’s shoulder. 

“What about you?”

“One of them’s got her elbow wedged up under my liver and it’s looking like the other one’s gonna be dancing her way out.” She sits forward as much as she can, Asha groans. 

“Let me take her.”

“No, Roan, please don’t, I finally got the poor thing down.” Calypso strokes Asha’s sweaty curls back from her face. “Well, I shouldn’t take credit. More like she exhausted herself.”

“I’ll take her to Epione in the morning, I promise.”

“Bronwyn already did. It’s something with her blood, an infection, she said. She’s got some pills and we’re giving her goldenseal and cedar tea every three hours. It should pass in a week or so, it’s not contagious. No cause for alarm unless she seems disoriented or has any breathing issues.” 

Down the alley, Amphie shrieks, followed by Ciaran. 

“Damn it, Bronwyn-.”

Calypso smacks him on the arm. “Don’t bother her, they’re fine. Thalassa’s with them.” She leans back, stroking the back of Asha’s hand. “Was it good today?”

He holds up his share of the wrapped overcatch. “I’ll cook it now.”

Calypso offers him a wan smile and shakes her head. “None for me. It won’t stay in.”

“You need to eat.”

“I had a big lunch.”

“Would Bronwyn say you did? I’ll ask her.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m not a child, Ronan.”

He wants to retort but is cut off by the screen door bouncing loudly off the frame, followed by the slap of small wet feet as Ciaran and Amphie come tearing through the living room and down the hall. Maren is following behind them, coming slowly up the stairs with both hands on the railing, absolutely soaked. Calypso watches them go, her exhaustion palpable. 

“Sorry, Auntie.” Thalassa announces sheepishly, coming up behind Maren and taking her hand. She doesn’t take after Scylla much, he imagines whoever her father was to have been some mincing licensing office worker, maybe a fish farm foreman with soft hands. She’s a reedy little thing, doesn’t seem to be sure of how to carry the curves that have begun to grow in, but she has a sweet face, wide brown eyes and a genuine smile,  and reminds him a bit of his own sister.

“It’s okay, if you could just-.”

“Yeah, ‘course.” Thalassa hurries off in pursuit of her sister and cousin, dragging Maren with her. Maren turns back briefly, extending a hand, her lips parting as if about to speak, but she seems to think better of it and allows herself to be led away. Calypso exhales heavily, the long breath breaking gradually into laughter. She looks up at him, running a hand slowly over the twins. 

“These are the last two.”

He has to laugh too, giving her a long kiss on the temple. “I’ll remember that when you ask me for another one.”

Ciaran had been conceived on a tiny sliver of sand right at the very edge of the estuary, hidden under the footbridge that joined Portside’s main boardwalk to that barren gap where the industrial harbour began. People called it Balls-Deep Beach, half because of what happened there, half because that was supposedly the only way two people could sit comfortably on the sand and both stay completely dry. Once there, he found the second portion of the adage to be something of an exaggeration. The beach was about twelve feet wide, six deep, and the tide was relatively low. Calypso sat on the sand drinking from a very dented flask, it always amazed him how well she held her liquor when she was so small, and how he was a drink away from needing her to carry him home. 

That was the fall he stopped going to school to work on Muirreann’s Majesty full time, and he isn’t sure Calypso has ever forgiven him for that, for leaving her in that place for those final two years, where she would be ridiculed as an eater and a bootlicker, where he had been her only friend, where she knew she wasn’t learning anything she would ever end up using. She hadn’t cried when he had told her, but had afterward. He would see her swollen eyes when she came to the docks to meet him at the end of the day, when he’d been cooking under the sun for eight straight hours and she’d been withering inside listening to presentations from the different departments of WP and watching Hunger Games reruns; Mags Flanagan narrowly escaping a knife in the gut, Phoca Dylan eating her own ring finger, and all the dead girls before and after them. At 14, Calypso watched her own aunt die in one of those reruns, the first time she ever actually saw what happened, and she had started breathing so rapidly her lips turned blue and when she stood up to flee the room she simply dropped bonelessly to the linoleum. That was the first time they had ever spoken, when he’d been assigned to haul her to the infirmary, and he’d taped the snapped left arm of her glasses back together while she vomited down the infirmary sink. They skipped the following class and sat in silence on the pebble lawn under an overcast October sky.

The night Ciaran was conceived was a year later to the day, Calypso would not be throwing up any time soon and he wasn’t so sure he could say the same for himself. It was getting late, all the commercial vessels were in for the night, the sky beginning to darken, he wanted to leave before it got too dark for her to see, before they would have to stumble back to the boardwalk together in a half-blind, drunk, chimeric tangle of limbs. If he brought her back to Nerites with broken glasses, he’d leave with a broken nose. 

Calypso turned her face skyward. When he sat down beside her, she instinctively handed him the flask and he ventured a small sip. It was enough to make him gag, but he didn’t want her to finish the entire thing and make herself sick. 

“Would you ever bring me out?” She broke the silence.

“Bring you out where?”

“On the boat, while you’re working. I haven’t been out on the water in so long.”

“You wouldn’t like it. Not on my work boat anyway, bunch of sweaty men running around hauling nets and yelling at each other. Hot sun, bad food, rough water… My dad’s there.”

Calypso snorted. “Okay, fair.” She stuck a finger in the sand and trailed it lazily. 

“If this is about me dropping out-.”

“It’s not, Ronan. I understand, I know it’s the best thing.” She took a deep breath. “I just feel so stifled here sometimes, then I look out there and everything is so big and incomprehensible. How far have you gone?”

“What, like, the farthest I’ve gone?”

Calypso nodded. “I know you’ve gone North, and South a ways, West obviously, and East is just inland.”

“I showed you the pictures of the salmon run last year.”

“Okay, then forget North.” Calypso turned to him with an intense look in her eyes, her irises twitching slightly the way they always did, which he found endearing but Calypso thought made her look freakish. He tried to think of something, in the winter when he’d sailed down the coast to the Flats. It was a depressing place, a long shoreline with ugly town after ugly town, those big saltpans and the vast stretches of ankle deep water teeming with stooped clamdiggers with straw hats and leathery tans and dead eyes. It was like some angry god had smashed a fist into the land, cliffs shooting up along the perimeter and sea runoff pooling in the middle. Muirreann’s Majesty had docked in the shadow of a clifftop town called Brineridge, birthplace of Phoca Dylan herself, who at that point was still alive, stalking drunkenly through Portside and pulling fillet knives on adversaries only she could see. 

They found a grimy hostelry at the top of the cliff in the middle of town called Littleneck Lodge, as ascetic as Dad could be, he wasn‘t about to make them sleep on the vessel. Harras bought him his first beer that night, and after he’d choked back some bread and started on his third, he began to take notice of the people around them. Behind the bar, a rail-thin girl in her early 20s was weeping silently as she cleaned a drip tray, while a middle-aged man in dirty coveralls pestered her for another round. She seemed to be upset about something else, for some reason he could tell, the look in her eyes was miles away and when she set down the man’s drink, she forced a smile and seemed to respond affirmingly to something he said. She wasn’t pretty, he observed, half out of preoccupation with Calypso at home and half out of objectivity. Her greasy auburn hair fell around her ears in ragged curls and her lower jaw seemed to stick out just slightly, her lower lip was full but the upper very thin, and her eyes seemed to belong to someone decades older. She had almost disproportionately large hands, like the paws of a young dog, and her breasts were too full for her starved frame, they almost looked a bit obscene. He felt a pang of sympathy for her as she swabbed at her upper lip with the back of her wrist and gave a withering, obligatory smile to Dad as he took a seat at the bar with Glaucus. He was relieved and hoped that poor ugly girl would get them drunk, first of all so they would leave him alone, and second so she might make some money tonight, which might make her feel better. Even though he didn’t know her, he was willing to bet she was crying over money. 

That night on Balls-Deep Beach, he told Calypso some story about the farthest he’d gone out into open water. It was true enough, but unremarkable. There was no way to pinpoint exactly where they had been in that blue expanse that went on forever, no way to make it make sense to someone who hadn’t been on a boat since she was 12, but she listened, listened and climbed slowly into his lap, and he felt all the blood in his body making a beeline for his crotch. When it happened, when he replaced Calypso’s virginity with a son, he was staring dumbly into the flat purple sky, tasting whatever had been in that flask creeping back up his throat, and feeling terrified for reasons that he would only be able to articulate twelve years after the fact.

Calypso leans heavily on him as they begin the slow walk to the bedroom, her free hand hovering at the low point of her stomach as if to prevent the twins from sliding out prematurely. He feels terrible knowing he did this to her, knowing how horrible she’s been feeling and how heavy the girls are. He sits her on the edge of the bed like she’s made of glass.

“You need a hand?”

“I’m okay.” she begins to undress. When he stays hovering close to her, she looks up at him and gives him a rueful look. “Leave me alone, Mom.” 

From the bedroom window, he can see across the alleyway to the Haukeas’ house, right into the little fenced-off patch of concrete that they optimistically call a backyard. There are some planters, drowned by the rain, and two lawn chairs under a makeshift awning with an ashtray between them. The house is lit from inside, but he can’t make anything out through the flimsy curtains. If Calypso notices him snooping, which she often does, she doesn’t comment. He can hear her exhale heavily with effort as she shifts back on the mattress and lays down. He turns the light out and joins her, suddenly feeling singularly exhausted. He can still feel the heat from Asha’s fever on her.

Calypso stirs in the dark. “I can’t stop thinking about the Crestas. You promise me you’re being careful out there?”

He wraps his arm around her shoulders. “I work on a much bigger boat than the Crestas with more than double their numbers. It’ll take a lot for us to capsize.” In an attempt to lighten the mood, he shoves his face between her neck and shoulder and whispers, “you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Calypso forces a laugh then sighs. “It’s just horrible. That poor little girl.”

As if on cue, as if in agreement, Asha sobs in the next room, followed by gentle shushing from Bronwyn. The rain hammers the roof, churns in the drainpipe. He dreams of a rapidly unspooling winch, frenetic rain-torrent clicking, rope flying out until it reaches the end and carious silence.

The final stop of Finnick Odair’s Victory Tour is the one day of the week with no rain, but the streets are still veined with grimy water. The marina is draped with banners bearing the image of something resembling that scrappy kid from backwater Brineridge, only now he looks like he’s made of wax, grinning smarmily down at the people gathering in front of the Justice Building. He’d watched the 65th Reaping once he got off the water that night six-ish months ago, watched as the stone-faced, well-built 14 year old with badly cut auburn hair and a too-small suit that must have belonged to his grandfather took the stage and shook hands with his oversexed, Lanistarium-trained counterpart. Since then, he’s seen the kid around town but never exchanged words beyond a terse congratulations that one time he came to the docks with Mags Flanagan to talk to Glaucus. He’d beefed up a bit and gotten his hair fixed, a classy cut threaded with blonde highlights, it even looked like they’d spray-tanned him, the kind of orangeish glow the Capitol women who stay at the resorts up-District always have. All that aside, whatever persona they’d coached into him out there was gone, and he had the aura of a sullen 8 year old in a teenage body that seemed to chafe him like new coveralls. The conversation between Mags and Glaucus ended up being long as they always are, and by the time they’d moved on from the grandkids to salmon season to the price of canvas, (which Glaucus was unhappy with but Mags contextualized with an anecdote from a Victor friend of hers from 8 regarding a factory fire) District 4’s new golden boy busied himself with peeling away the worn lacquer on the No Dumping sign by the slip, eyes dead, hands robotic. When Mags led him down the boardwalk, he stayed close to her, looking over his shoulder every five seconds. He made brief eye contact with the kid as they were leaving, and decided no amount of money was worth whatever he’d seen or had to do in that arena. 

“He won’t be here until the late afternoon, bud.” He tells Ciaran for what must be the hundredth time. “Let’s go back, okay? We’ll have some more breakfast, then we can work on the boat.”

“I just want to see.” Ciaran says decisively, looking up at him with Calypso’s eyes. He’s never been able to say no to his son and doubts he ever will, even when it’s a half-hour walk into town to look at a half-dressed stage for a kid who probably hasn’t even boarded his train home yet. Ciaran’s hand, so small for 7-almost-8, is sweaty and keeps almost sliding out of his grip. “Dad?”

“Yeah, Ciaran?”

“Have you ever played The Games?”

He startles and drops Ciaran’s hand. Ciaran looks up at him, hand still in position, and looks a bit unmoored for a moment before bringing it to the pocket of his too-big coat, a hand-me-down from Oscar Abalone up the street. 

“No. It’s not that kind of game, it’s not something you play. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Why not now?”

“Because it’s a very long conversation and I don’t particularly feel like having it here.” Calypso always said 7 was too young but 8 feels like cutting it close. Ciaran’s birthday is in three months, his first Reaping will be a month after he turns 12, we need to do this at some point instead of covering the TV with a blanket every summer, fuck, fuck fuck … He has a sudden urge to… he isn’t sure what the urge is telling him to do, to flee, to scream, for a wretched split second he imagines his hands around Ciaran’s throat before anyone else can get him, he regrets having brought children into the world at all, he wishes the universe would blink out of existence right then and there.

“Dad…” Ciaran eyes him warily. “You look like you’re about to puke.”

“RONAN!” A voice calls from across the marina. When he looks up, he sees Scylla in her WP fatigues, Thalassa at her left elbow, Amphie at her right, and a mousy girl of an age with Thalassa in an oversized raincoat and a long grey skirt, wet to about 8 inches above the hems, hanging heavy over scuffed boots. His cousin-in-law waves him over, and he takes that excuse to shake the dread away and take Ciaran’s hand again, who falls in step without argument. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Just getting a look at the stage before this place gets all swarmed.”

“We got a big basket of food in the mail!” Ciaran announces. The mousy girl’s mouth manages a tight grimace of a smile, which Thalassa makes herself replicate with slightly more energy. 

“As did we.” Scylla smiles. “Miss Annie here gets one all to herself.”

Nereus and Kari’s fabled daughter forces another rictus and looks down at her feet, kicking weakly at a loose chip of pavement. He almost wants to give Scylla a smack for saying that out loud, I’m sure the kid would much rather have her parents than a gift basket . Annie has a small smudge of something pink at the corner of her mouth that he traces to a bag of cherry candy Maren and Ciaran did away with in about five minutes flat. 

“Saira got one too.” Annie informs the ground. Scylla grins stiltedly. 

“Yeah, Pollock got called into the farm first thing, foreman needs a hand with something, so I figured I’d knock off some errands for her, get the girls out of the house.”

“You can have this.” Annie produces something from the left pocket of her jacket, which he notices are both full, and hands it to Ciaran. He holds the thing, a sea biscuit, slightly larger than average. 

“Ooh, thanks!” Ciaran remarks, slipping the sea biscuit into his own pocket.

“We better go.” He decides, wanting to get inside and forget this excursion ever happened. “Nice to see you ladies. Annie, good to see you.” He leans down to meet her gaze but she won’t return the favour. “You need anything at all, you can come to me and my wife, okay? We live in that blue house with the porch on Jackstaff.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ronan.” She gives him a brief flash of eye contact and begins to walk off, Thalassa trailing her close behind with a nervous spring in her step. Scylla gives him a clap on the shoulder and they part ways. 

“That girl’s nice.” Ciaran assesses, turning his sea biscuit over and over in his hands. It takes everything in him to not reply with something to the effect of ‘ that’s the problem’ .

At the end of the night, when the party is down to the final, drunken twenty percent, and Ciaran is finishing out the night on a bender of sugar and adrenaline, he and Calypso decide to tell him in the morning. Once he is asleep, they sit on the bed facing each other and take turns presenting what they have prepared like high school kids making their case for a fish farm internship. They whisper at each other in the dark for hours, Calypso leaning against the headboard, the twins writhing inside of her, himself cross-legged and gripping her hands. 

“We understand that this is a lot to process, and we’re here if you have any questions. This is scary, I know I was scared when I was your age.”

“Something that helped me was looking around at all the adults that I know and knowing that they got through it and they were all okay. Think about it, me, Mom, Aunt Scylla, Aunt Bronwyn, Grandma, Grandpa, all of them. They all made it and you very likely will too.”

“There are places that train people to compete, our District has one. Most people who go in are from there and they choose it. If, and this is a big if, if you are chosen, someone will probably volunteer to take your place.”

“We will do everything in our power to keep you safe. You are safe with us. You are going to have a very long and very fulfilling life.” 

Chapter Text

“ Welcome, Miss Cresta and entourage, to scenic District 10, the home of our great country’s fantastic menagerie. From milk to snakeskin, industrial to domestic, any and every animal imaginable can be found in this diverse desert District. Your host for this stop is the incomparable Kip Hyde, Victor of the 35th Hunger Games. The youngest son of a family of cattle dog breeders-.”

“No, no, that can’t be right.” Asenath frets, standing up and craning her neck as if to locate the automated voice crackling out of the train’s PA system. “Finnick, you told me Rennette Metzger was hosting.”

“She was.” He ignores the vague prickle of dread at the back of his neck. She was, I watched her submit the paperwork. She was worrying about getting her house ready, I remember her talking about having problems with the guest bathroom sink… 

Annie, way at the back of the train, either doesn’t know what’s going on or doesn’t care, observing the barren vista as it turns to military checkpoint with glazed, dopesick eyes. 

Asenath sighs. “I’m sure Kip is a perfectly nice man, I’m sure he’ll be a fine host, but if they can cut one corner-.”

“It’s not a cut corner, Asenath, she’s probably just sick or busy.” She wouldn’t be at Ptolemy’s, right? She’s his only Victor from 10, he’ll want her to show up at the tour to generate interest, right? Asenath gives him a wary look before going back to her itinerary, scribbling something down. Mags should be here, hell, I’d even settle for Sligo if it meant I wouldn’t have to do this by myself. 

The Exterior Districts, so far, have been a waking nightmare. The people who had been observing Annie at the sanatorium were adamant about the tour being called off, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew that was impossible. The obvious solution, or what seemed obvious before it was actually put into action, was to juice her up with sedatives to keep her from making a scene. 12 seemed like as good a place as any to test it out, their host so full of moonshine he could barely stand and their escort so new to the job that she didn’t know any better. He doesn’t like 12, the dirty snow, the perpetually grey sky, the dead-eyed, starving populace. On the way from the train to the Justice Building, he’d seen a girl of maybe about Ciaran’s age, somehow slightly smaller, sitting on the icy roadside trying to hock some threadbare baby clothes. 

It went horrendously. Annie made it about five seconds into the presentation before locking eyes with Awinita’s mother in the crowd and bursting into tears. He and Asenath had been so caught off guard all they could do was stare at each other until time was up. Awinita’s brothers closed ranks around the mother, who by that point had also dropped her resolve, and left the second they were excused. The blonde woman who oversaw the community home and, by extension, Asa’s three younger siblings, had watched with a detached expression. The hysterical woman from Asa’s Final 8 spot and the man who had tried to restrain her were nowhere to be seen. An agonizing dinner with the mayor of 12, his wife (who seemed to be on even more drugs than Annie) and their sweet-faced Ciaran-aged daughter followed, local smoked venison, roast root vegetables and chilled mead, Annie in bed by 9, Asenath following close behind. 

He’d been ready to turn in himself when Haymitch, by some miracle, managed to get a second wind and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Haymitch, for all their similarities, is nothing like Sligo, or at least not when it matters. He doesn’t get the impression that 12 indulges Haymitch like 4 does Sligo. That first night, as they walked in silence down the dirt road into town, he felt a distant sense of comfort in the fact that they were just there together to forget the day. No patriotism, no old-times-sake, just two men not willing to be alone with their thoughts. He has always respected Haymitch’s honesty. They drank themselves blind in an alleyway, he woke up in his bed on the train fully clothed with his shoes still on.

A solid day of re-rehearsal, Procula and her underlings buzzing around Annie like a trio of manic mosquitoes, the dose of sedatives halved. Cerise’s beautiful, somber family of five, Mose’s sister crying so hard she began to vomit off the edge of the podium, Annie managed to read the entire speech with a straight face, then, once back inside, took a carving knife to her wrist, almost took his nose off when he wrestled it away from her. He and Asenath attended dinner with the mayor while Annie slept off the intravenous Morphling solution a medic had to stick in her shoulder. Soy and nuts and spiced local pestfowl, rice wine and peach pie. He did a line of blow (generously donated by Cashmere on his birthday and hidden away specifically for the tour) in the bathroom and spent the night pacing.

He has been to 10 twice. Once for his own tour, then on a special travel pass for Rennette’s 24th birthday, a significant one in 10 for some reason. He remembers that weekend being the first time he saw Rennette happy, or really any Victor happy for that matter. It was like meeting an entirely new group of people. Rennette didn’t cry once, Enobaria was smiling so much he actually got a good look at those fabled teeth of hers, Cashmere sipped at the same glass of wine for two hours because she wasn’t using it to get away from anything. That was 3 months before Willow’s Games, likely the last time anything like that would ever happen. Rennette was face down ass up for two months before to get into Ptolemy’s good graces and two after, all of the Districts from which any of the attendees hailed were subject to meat recalls in the following weeks. Rennette is the youngest Victor from 10, he doubts Ptolemy will sponsor another in case they try to pull something like that again. 

What happened, Rennette? he ruminates distantly. Annie, dead-eyed and heavy-headed, has been dressed in scant teal calf leather studded with silver seashells and lined with fringe. Her hair is slicked back, her bangs coming loose already and falling back over her forehead in quill-like strands. Procula is all but frogmarching her into the common area on buckling knees.

“The leather, I had imported months ago, then we have the seashell detailing, and of course the fringe- oh, babycakes, don’t make that face, she looks absolutely resplendent. I’d like to see you do it better.”

He turns to Asenath, trying to be discreet. “Was I making a face?”

Asenath shrugs, then replicates what he assumes to be the face he’d been making, an agreeable smile dragged down on one end with distaste. 

He knows, even having dropped out of school at 8, that 10 is one of the largest and most productive Districts, with their primary industry encompassing the food, textile, luxury, entertainment, healthcare and transportation sectors. 4 is a smaller District, nowhere near as dinky as 12 or as compact as 3, but in terms of surface area, he almost can’t even imagine how big 10 must be. He knows their Tributes, like those from 11, are often considered to be perpetual runner-ups, with their lifestyles giving them an edge but the poverty and dearth of training always catching up. On top of that, he knows that 10 has the highest rate of amputations out of any District. 

Jasmine Bone, from a hog town on the 10-11 border, comes from a family of four with 13 collective limbs. Her father’s body simply ends below the hips, her older sister’s elbow-length left sleeve tied off at the shoulder. Marcos Fleischer, raised by his reptile farming grandparents at the very bottom of the District, would have been the only person in his household with a full set of fingers. 

Kip Hyde is older than Sligo, a tall, portly man with leathery brown skin, receding grey hair and a weakness for nopal spirits. He has a wife and a grown daughter who raises exotic birds. He hangs out with Ajax and Chaff most years, is good with his Tributes and better at hiding how much it tears him up to lose them. There have been occasional rumours of his retirement, but he will deny them every time, insisting that he won’t leave Rennette to do it all herself until they have another Victor. Every time he says it, it seems more like a jinx. 

From the train station, a town car with an all-leather interior drives them through Farmstead, District 10’s main seat, a quaint town built primarily of clay brick and painted tile. Their Justice Building is different from almost all that he’s seen, a massive adobe structure on the edge of town set into a bowl of earth, lined with seating specifically for Tours and Reapings. The street leading up to it splits off onto a small dirt road crowned with a wrought iron arch which reads FALLOW RANCH, at the end of which the mayor and his family live in a quaint farmhouse. Mayor Buck Fallow has been in office since he won, and the Fallows have been in office since Mags won. From what he gathers, they aren’t popular but don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. The Valonias back home are the same, and he wonders about that sometimes, but can never bring himself to care. 

Annie begins to come around a bit once the coffee she had with breakfast settles into her system, but she still seems like she’d rather lick a bilge pump than look at him, and she keeps her gaze fixed out the window for the entirety of the drive. Asenath tries to cajole her about how decadent the food will be tonight and how beautiful the scenery is and how Mayor Fallow is a very gracious host and Annie deigns to smile and nod as the fancy takes her, which isn’t often. He locates a complimentary bottle of white wine and is able to drink half before Procula takes it and passes it around to Camarina and Aegina. It returns bone-dry. 

For all his valiant attempts to avoid Procula over the past couple months, there’s a certain cruel irony to being trapped in close quarters with her now. For the entirety of his tenure on the set of Hometown Glory as a consultant, he had come up with excuse after excuse to stay as far away from the costume department as possible. He’s beginning to realize that, while time away from Ptolemy’s can occasionally take the edge off being around Procula in her typical day-drunk, self-pitying state, she’s a whole other beast when she’s in her element. 

All he wants is to forget that month he spent on the set of that godforsaken movie, letting the director bombard him with questions about The Games and sitting in on the writer’s room and trying to keep Bijou off the ledge. The last part, by some miracle, had been easy enough. Under the pretense of helping her run lines, he and Bijou would usually be able to section off a few hours to themselves after the cameras had been packed away and the rest of the cast, all Capitol kids between the ages of 16 and 28, had packed themselves away in their own trailers to complain over the phone to their parents about the heat and the insects and the early call times. Bijou avoided them like Slitcrawler the second she heard ‘cut’, and they all looked at her like she was some kind of exotic, venom-armed reptile. There really was nothing like watching them prance around on filming days; 16-to-28 year olds all with sculpted bodies and perfect sets of teeth. The youngest, Caesonia Moss, played a sickly little Ciaranish girl from 9 who the protagonist gets attached to, and he always felt a little nauseous looking at her, remembering Awinita and Cerise. He watched the day they filmed her death scene, when the crew got up and applauded after Mimaeus called cut. That night, Bijou got so drunk she couldn’t walk, delaying production for two days.

He’s dreading the premiere, which will be a month before the 71st Games. Annie will be expected to attend, obviously, after the District 4 girl Tribute character was played by a tall, regal-faced Capitol girl, a long brown wig thrown over her tattooed scalp. He wonders how she’ll react to watching that parody of herself dying at the end of the Gloss-esque District 1 boy’s spear. 

He can feel the press of the crowd from inside as Asenath coaches Annie through her speech for what must be the millionth time. She seems almost fine today, like she’s exhausted herself in the two preceding Districts and has given up on hysteria in favour of stone-faced apathy. She picks at her nails, responds to Asenath’s instructions with the occasional nod and stares at the painted tile floor, her immaculately shined leather pumps, the backs of her hands. For some reason, he’s found himself eyeing her hands since the tour began. They’re not pretty hands, no women from 4 ever have pretty hands, Mom called her own ‘boat hands’ even though she only briefly worked on an actual boat. Annie’s are scarred from the Processing line, prematurely aged by fish farm chemicals and excessive washing. Camarina had originally given her long, sharp-tipped acrylic nails but had to round them off after Annie began attacking herself with them, now they make her fingers look almost clubbed. He can tell she’s just itching to bite them off.

Mayor Buck Fallow pours him a whiskey after a Tour attendant gives them a ten minute warning for showtime. He hasn’t had much face time with Kip yet beyond the obligatory greetings, aware of Kip’s distaste for his elected representative. Kip busies himself with Annie and Asenath, seemingly under the pretense of going through their respective lines. Kip stays close to Annie, a hand between her shoulderblades, they both occasionally glance out the window. 

“It really is unfortunate Miss Metzger couldn't make it.” Mayor Fallow sloshes the ice in his glass. “She was so looking forward to hosting you.”

“Things happen.” He tries to sound nonchalant. “It’s good to see Kip again. Annie’s a bit sensitive still, so I think having a more experienced host ended up being the right call.”

Mayor Fallow nods. “It was an interesting Games.”

He remembers briefly how Annie had looted Jasmine’s body before pulling her out of the creek and can’t quite figure out if that small gesture outweighs stealing her food and supplies. He remembers watching the poor girl die, the same age he’d been when he won, sobbing and clawing at her throat as she tried to draw breath, the way she’d puked into her hands before stumbling off her platform. He remembers her interview, the babyishly-cut dress comprised of hundreds of tiny silk jasmine flowers, the song she sang and the way Caesar had pretended to be moved to tears, the way she hadn’t known where to exit the stage and her District partner had to gesture her off from the wings. He raises his glass half-heartedly and decides to say nothing. Five minute warning. 

It is such an honour to be here today in your great District to celebrate your valiant Tributes and to recognize their noble sacrifice. Although they are deeply missed, the offering of their lives for the greater good is the ultimate honour. I feel so deeply blessed to be here celebrating their lives with all of you, and I hope that, together, we may all remember their sacrifice as we look ahead into the future. Jasmine Bone, 14, from Passel Heights, and Marcos Fleischer, 16 from Granja Rioveneno, have brought immense pride to not only their District, but to all who bore witness to their indomitable bravery and patriotism. May their loss be a reminder of those who came before, and may it bring us together. Panem today, Panem tomorrow, Panem forever.

Thank you. 

He can’t stop reading over the cards, worried to near illegibility as they are, trying to find one word that Annie missed and failing. She pulled it off , he can’t stop thinking as he watches her picking at her plate full of various meats, she barely even flinched .

The Fallow family seem to know better than to push her. Buck’s wife Palomina is almost like what he imagines Procula would have turned out like if she’d grown up in 10, her outdated, provincial runoff of long-dead Capitol trends wearing her more than she is wearing it. Their 15 year old twin sons inhaled their food and left within ten minutes of sitting down and he’s thankful for it, having noticed that they bear a slight resemblance to Magnus Dryden with their stocky builds and military haircuts. Asenath is struggling with her prime rib, Annie is on her fourth glass of wine and still stone-faced, and he is waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“Finnick, I have to say, I am so proud of you.” Palomina announces with her mouth full. “It seems like your Tour was just last week!”

He forces a wan smile. “It feels the same to me.” 

Under the table, he can see Annie’s fist clenching around her napkin. He wants to offer her some kind of comfort but is afraid to touch her.

“Rennette sends her apologies.” Kip chimes in from Annie’s other side. “She had something to attend to. It’s…”

Palomina’s jaw clenches. “It was so unfortunate. But we’re always so happy to see you, Kip.”

Kip offers a stiff nod in response and directs his gaze back at his plate, hand darting out for his wine glass and bringing it urgently to his mouth. Mayor Fallow clears his throat. He counts forty-eight seconds until somebody speaks again.

He waits until he’s sure Annie isn’t going to try anything before he makes his break for it, taking the long way around the back of the house to avoid the room she and Asenath are sharing. I’ll be back before they notice I’m gone, just check in and leave, she’ll probably tell me to fuck off anyway … The ranch is silent, the Justice Building and its dirt amphitheatre seeming to loom over him at the other end of the dirt road, all that clay groaning under its own weight. 

He finds her on the front porch, staring out at the dark scenery, a glass of wine cradled loosely in her left hand. She’s managed to bite off two of those ugly clubbed nails. 

“Annie.” She doesn’t acknowledge him beyond a half-assed lift of her free hand. “You’re up late.”

“It’s not so late.”

“We have an early start.”

“I’ll live.” She turns her head away from him. He advances down the porch steps and turns back to face her. 

“I’m very proud of you. You did well today.”

“I know.”

“If you keep up like that, this tour will be over before you know it. I have full confidence in you.”

She takes a long drink and deigns to look him in the eye. “Where are you going?”

He isn’t sure how to answer, deciding he may as well tell the truth. “To see Rennette.”

Annie nods, thoroughly disinterested. “Have fun.”

He has always liked the Victor’s houses in 10, sprawling split-levels made of clay brick set into the ground, the highest point never cresting the first storey of his own house. It’s hard to tell where one house ends and the other begins, all clustered around a tile courtyard under a canopy of straw awnings, sentried by flowering cacti in painted clay jugs. When he finds Rennette’s door, he knows immediately that he won’t like what he’ll find behind it.

Rennette’s youngest sister Veelee answers the door, and he tries to remember how old she is as he takes her in. She’s a quiet girl, something of a forgotten sibling, who shares her oldest sister’s thick build but none of her beauty. Her hair is thin and flat and the colour of straw, her eyes the colour of dishwater, and her expression always looks like she’s steeling herself for bad news. 

“Mr. Odair.” Veelee greets him solemnly, poking just her head and shoulders around the doorframe. She is wearing something rough and off-white. “I’m sorry Rennette couldn’t make it. Something’s happened. I’m very sorry.”

“Veelee, it’s no problem. And you don’t have to call me Mr. Odair. I just wanted to check on Rennette.”

Veelee gives him a long look before glancing back inside. “Give me one minute.” She departs and lets the door swing shut hard enough to rattle the small stained glass panes that form a small approximation of the Capitol seal at about eye level. His stomach barely has time to clench before Veelee is gesturing him inside. 

The foyer is full of a sweet, earthy-smelling smoke, he can see tendrils of it curling where light is leaking through the drawn shutters. He removes his shoes on the straw mat by the door and follows Veelee in. 

At the far end of the living room, a big round room with a steer-hide rug in the middle, Rennette is sitting slumped on the painted tile floor in front of a large decorative brazier, the source of the fragrant smoke. Her black dress, the circle skirt fanned out around her, is unbuttoned down her back to just below her waist. Her ruddy curls, arranged in braids that circle around her head like a laurel wreath, are beginning to come loose, and when he gets closer he can see that the hair at her forehead is either greasy or slick with sweat. 

A few feet away, her youngest sibling, a boy of 12 or 13 named Colby, is perched on one of the low leather sofas, watching Rennette as she stares into the brazier. His left leg, clamped in a metal brace from hip to metatarsal, is angled out in front of him like a dead branch hanging off a tree, his left arm curled awkwardly in his lap, the hand a small, pale claw. Veelee removes her brother immediately, extracting him from the couch with a hand under his functioning arm, dragging him off into an adjoining room like he’s done something wrong. Colby throws one last glance back, meets his gaze for one long second, and the look seems to beg for something he can’t make out.

“Ren.” He says stupidly, standing over her, unsure of what to do with himself. Rennette inhales heavily and turns her gaze up to him. Her eyes are bloodshot and swollen but bone dry, she has been crying for days. It takes him a moment to put things together, her black dress, her despair, her two youngest siblings wandering the house with a somber, unmoored look in their eyes. There is another sister, she must be about my age …

“We don’t farm pigs in this part of the District.” Rennette chokes out, her throat raw. “Do you know why?” He shrugs. “Our hog farms are all along the borders. 5, 2, and 11. If someone is trying to get in or out, the border guards gun them down, obviously.” She sucks in a thick breath. “Pigs will eat anything. Really, they’re garbage disposals on legs, that’s why so few people in 10 eat pork.” She pauses, staring into the embers at the bottom of the brazier, where a handful of dry white leaves and small hunks of a pale, porous wood smolder torpidly. “I hadn’t even seen a pig until I was 10 years old. The closest farm is 4 hours away driving.” She stares at him. When he can’t bear to stare back at her anymore, he finds his eyes drifting up along the mantle, which seems to have become some sort of altar. A cornhusk doll made to resemble a red-haired, blue-eyed girl with freckles, a big red beating heart stitched in yarn on her chest, photographs of children in Reaping clothes, a 16 year old Rennette on her Victory Tour, her arms thrown around her then-10 year old sister Jersey. 

What have you done? he wants to ask her, but knows he can’t, not when she’s like this. Hell, she may not have directly done anything, the least it can take is a misinterpreted glance, a disappointing fuck… It could have been as simple as a client thinking she wasn’t as pretty in person.

“They knew.” Rennette continues. “They knew Veelee and Colby would be too easy. Veelee’s only 15, she walks a mile and a half to school. Colby… they could just Reap him, they know he wouldn’t last five minutes. It could have been that simple, deny the request, rig the next Reaping…” She breaks off in a long, low keen. “They just wanted to show me how easy it would be.” Rennette closes her eyes. “Annie…”

“She’s with Asenath at Fallow Ranch.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t. I haven’t…”

He sits beside her. “No, I understand. Kip was a fine host, everything went well. Better than I thought it would.”

Rennette’s eyelids are heavy. “There was so little left to bury.”

Chapter Text

She wakes up in a cold blue glow, mouth dry and sticky with hours-old wine, the bottle gone lukewarm on the nightstand. Voices chatter from very far away, sounding like they’re coming from the other end of a long tunnel, seeming to come closer as the room comes back into focus. There is a thin finger of dawn at the very top of the compartment window, and she knows that there is something on the other side of the curtain, but can’t remember how to wake up the rest of the way yet. 

“ So -.” says a familiar voice, perky, male-pitched, “- we’re staring down the end of these Games and… well, I’ve been doing this a while and I have to say I’m completely at a loss for words. Two young forces of nature- District 4’s 14 year old Finnick Odair and District 9’s 17 year old Floretta Samuels- you know, Claudius, we’ve seen showdowns like this before, I know you certainly have-.”

“Every couple decades, right? We get to a standstill. As you can probably all see watching at home, Odair and Samuels are closing in on each other, pushed back into each other’s way thanks to our phenomenal Gamemakers!”

The boy on the screen is bigger than Ciaran but not very big. He’s pretty like a girl with cropped hair the colour of sun-bleached rust and is struggling to walk along the floor of a dense forest. He’s reeling and stumbling and keeps knocking into tree trunks. The camera pulls in close at the back of his head, his rusty hair matted with dirt and blood. Blood covers his clothing, a fitted camouflage bodysuit torn open at the shoulder, and she can see that he’s vomited down the front of it. He is using the butt of a long trident as a sort of walking stick, but it keeps slipping between his weight and the loose soil. 

“Head trauma in the arena is no joke.” says the perky-voiced man, she remembers his face from somewhere but can’t remember where, only that he is filling her steadily with an icy sense of dread. “I’d hate for us to lose our golden boy like this, but he’s taken quite a serious blow. I suspect a concussion at least.”

“To be fair, Caesar-.” says the other man. “-he certainly didn’t take it lying down!”

A square appears at the top right corner of the screen. As the boy loses his footing and goes down hard on his left knee, a frantic, adrenaline-tweaked iteration of him disembowels a boy twice his size with the trident. 

“As we wait for young Mr. Odair to find his balance, let’s check in with the lady of the hour, Miss Floretta Samuels.” A dark, lanky girl with spacy eyes and a thundercloud of short curls sits on a small rocky overhang, cringing as she smears a gash on her thigh with a clear paste in a shiny jar. “Despite some close calls, Miss Samuels has managed to keep her hands clean with zero confirmed kills and is well on her way to possibly her first and only. This promising young lady was recently allied with District 1’s Belle Babineau, who broke with the Career Pack within the first two days of the Games, and District 11’s Ambrosia Jeong. While this alliance was certainly intriguing strategically, it wasn’t meant to be. What could be-.”

“Uh-oh, Caesar. Hate to cut you off, but I think we may want to keep an eye on the arena. It looks like Miss Samuels might have company…”

The boy, barely able to walk in a straight line, is approaching the girl’s perch from below. She draws her legs up and slips back from the edge, groping on the ground behind her for a long knife. 

“Oh, I can’t look! Oh, it’ll be just awful to see him go!”

The boy drops to his knees and vomits weakly, a few small mouthfuls of stomach acid. He puts his hand to his forehead. She can tell he wants to stand up but can’t find the strength. The girl is creeping down the wooded hillside, bringing the rubber soles of her boots down slowly and meticulously. The men are both holding their breath. 

The girl is a foot away from the boy now, creeping slowly behind him. Get up , she wants to yell at him, she’s right behind you, idiot . She raises her knife as if to jam it into the pulpy back of his head like she’s prepping a lobster, a quick death, preferable to boiling him alive. She knows she’s seen something like this before; a small boy with two freshly broken legs, an axe through the back of his neck. His eyes had been open when she looked into them last, his mouth opened and closed once, his body had bucked like a hooked sturgeon before her vision went white with rage. For some reason, she can’t put a face to a name, but suddenly feels like she needs to flee the room. 

“God forgive me.” The girl on the screen whispers. She squeezes her eyes shut and draws the knife at arm’s length, ready for a clean slash to the boy’s throat. 

As if summoning the last dregs of strength in his body, the boy spins around in half a second, burying the tines of the trident in the girl’s diaphragm. She goes totally stiff, coughs blood into his face, then makes a desperate swing at his neck with her knife. He dodges, pulls the trident out and stabs her again, dropping her to the ground. The last stab finishes her. The boy reels again, vomits again, and faceplants beside her. A shadow swoops overhead, the stream of fuel sending a transparent ripple through the fog of the dawn.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you saw it here first! We are proud to present the Victor of the 65th Hunger Games, District 4’s Finnick Odair!”

The woman on the platform outside is far from home, she can tell by looking at her sleek cap of green hair, fur overcoat and six inch heels, which don’t bode well with the ice. Finnick steps out of the train to meet her, they embrace and he leads her inside by the hand.

“I hated your speech.” Chantilly chides from the corner of the room. She is still dead and horrible and she holds her rotting jaw up with one hand to speak. 

“Good.” 

“Chantilly, don’t be mean.” Ciaran chimes in from low in her stomach. “Annie can’t help it. She’s slow.”

“Shut up.”

“Not too slow to stab me. You killed me, you know. I was just a kid and you stabbed me until I stopped moving.”

“You tried to kill me first.” 

“And what makes you so much better than me that you get to live and I don’t?”

“I was faster than you, Chantilly.  I got you and it’s done.”

“Annie.” Ciaran chides in a voice that is too deep to belong to him. “Annie.”

“-Annie, I don’t know if anybody has told you yet-.” She can hear it in her compartment coming in from the hall. Chantilly and Ciaran are both silent, Chantilly fading back into shadow and Ciaran slipping back down her esophagus. “-last resort, I hope there’s something that can be worked out.”

“A last resort?” says a woman’s voice. She slides out of bed, ignoring the chill coming in at the top of the window, and out into the hall. The handle of the door to Finnick’s compartment is lit up red, do not disturb . “That’s a hell of a pickup line.”

“Please, Phigalia. You know what I mean.” He lets out a long sigh. “I can help you. I know about what happened at the Embassy. If you do this for me, I promise-.”

“Can you even make me promises? I have nothing to do with your District.”

“That’s true, but I’m plugged into these things. I know about the bribe. Councillor DeVries has been toeing the line for a while now. I happen to be in deep with people who wouldn’t be happy about what he’s done to you.”

There is a long pause, then a sound like someone’s back hitting a wall. Someone moans through a sloppy kiss. “If this backfires-.”

“Just let me give you my terms. It’ll be more than you even knew you wanted, and I just need three hours.”

Another long, wet kiss. “Two.”

“Two and a town car. They’re here in town, I’m not worried about travel.”

“You know, every time I see you, I have to wonder if you really hate your tongue that much.”

“Don’t worry about my tongue. If I lose my tongue, Ptolemy Notch loses his car.”

“Do you really think I fought ‘valiantly’?” Briar snipes, pacing at the foot of her bed. She wants out of the stupid dress, floor-length forest green stitched with freshwater pearls, itchy tulle cut in leaf shapes around the neckline, but dinner is soon and she can feel her vision sharpening. She wants another pill, or a drink, she’d even settle for a good blow to the temple to get her dizzy for a while.

“It doesn’t matter what I think, I didn’t write it.”

“That’s obvious. Can you even spell your own name? Can you do anything?”

“You’re dead, Briar. I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t even have to think about you after today.”

There is a sharp knock on the door. When Asenath speaks, she can always smell the wine on her breath through the plywood separating them. 

“Annie, come on, last warning before I come in there!”

The salmon on Mayor Pulaski’s dining table still has the eyes intact. The abdomen is flayed away and cooked on a plank of cedar but the head remains, marble-eyed and gaping, and she can see the edges of her reflection in the slick, blind pupils. The section of flesh on her plate tastes like fire and wilderness, it makes her want to gag.

They are all seated in a circle around the round table, the salmon in the center, bowls of things she’s never seen before arranged at the perimeter. Mayor Pulaski sits between Asenath and his wife, then his 15 year old son, then Samara Oakes, Blight’s daughter, 10 years old and enthralled by everything going on. Blight sits between herself and Samara, Finnick on her other side, then Asenath, then Mayor Pulaski. The room is dimly lit and smells like herbs burning, which puts her just slightly on edge when she remembers the entire building is made of wood, or is at least built to look that way. The couches, upholstered in pale wool, have wood accents, the vaulted ceilings are wood, the table is wood, the floor is wood, Blight’s smile is as wooden as a smile can be. His drinks have outpaced hers, and he is outpaced only by Finnick. 

“It’s good venison, isn’t it?” Mayor Pulaski’s wife addresses Finnick. “Caught just up-District in Chinuq. We’ll send you back with a few cuts.”

“That’s very generous. I’m just hopeless in the kitchen, but I’m sure Mags will appreciate the opportunity to cook a real District 7 deer.”

“Or maybe a mince pie?” Pulaski’s wife is looking at her now, her grin growing limper with each second that passes. 

“Your supposed talent, spazz.” Briar carps, deep in her stomach. “She’s talking about your talent.”

She swallows hard, almost sure she can feel a small salmon bone scraping her esophagus. “Baking. Yes. I bake.”

“Oh, you’ll have to find a way of coming out to 4.” Asenath covers. “She has a real gift. I ate so much cheesecake the night before we left, I had to have Procula let out all my dresses on the way to 12.”

Pulaski’s wife laughs. “Well, Annie, I hope dessert is up to your standards. Salmonberry pie, have you ever had salmonberries?”

“They grow up-District from us.” Finnick cuts in. “Maybe when we visit the Peninsula on the way home.”

The snow here is different. The flakes are big and fall in clumps and stick to every surface they can. The cold isn’t dry like it was in 8 but still finds a way under her skin and into her blood, settling in her joints and turning them stiff. It hasn’t stopped since last night, falling and falling like it needs to exhaust itself, turning the grey dawn even greyer. 

Finnick said nothing when he dragged her out of bed. The clock read 4:47 and she hadn’t slept more than an hour’s stretch at a time between the alcohol and the pills wearing off and Ciaran yammering his sugary guilt trips from the base of her throat. There is something about the early morning that almost makes her feel normal again, and for a few minutes at a time, if she lets her eyes unfocus and pretends she is anyone else, she can feel for very brief snatches of time that she is just a girl in a car on a road in a District and nobody knows who she is and nobody ever will know. She ignores the dark edges of the thought, keeps very still so she doesn’t dislodge them. 

Creedsville, a grey, smoke-choked town made almost entirely of wood, ends in a brief stretch of highway that bends into Hitch Landing, where the car stops. The second they pull in, she feels a nauseating pang of familiarity. She knows she has never been here before, knows she likely never will again, and she knows she is here for a reason. 

There are only trailers here instead of houses. Finnick leads her in silence to two trailers whose doors face each other. Between the trailers is a cold fire pit and three small carved benches. On the one facing the empty side of the firepit, a thick-bodied woman with a kind face and mousy brown hair is sitting. She feels her stomach drop and her knees buckle.

“You came.” Holly Bains exhales. 

“I had to pull some strings.” Finnick explains. “We have an hour.”

Holly nods and motions them inside. “I put coffee on for you, I hope it’s to your liking, it’s just instant.”

“That’s what we drink back home.” Finnick forces a light, self-effacing tone. 

“Lammas and Alder Senior always work early, so it’ll just be Mary-Lou and I.” She remembers Alder’s mother from the ceremony. When she sees her through the screen door of Holly’s trailer she is the same; slight and fleece-bundled, her brown curls wound into two short braids. This morning she has a mug of coffee nestled in her lap and has obviously been crying. She stands up when she hears the door opening, freezing there as if she isn’t sure whether to hug or curtsey. Finnick makes the choice for her with a handshake. 

“Have a seat.” Mary-Lou announces to the room. 

Holly moves to the kettle in the dinette. “How do you take it?”

“Black two sugars for me, Annie takes two and cream.”

Holly rictus-smiles. “Oh, that’s funny, same as me.” 

She sits as far away from the others as she can, a small couch at the back of the trailer covered with a worn, pale purple knit blanket. On a shelf built into the opposite wall, there is a school picture of a young blonde girl with her hair in two long braids. The girl stares back at her. She knows the others are speaking but can’t bring herself to tune back into the conversation. She knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t want to be privy to it. 

“She never complained.” Holly explains in the dinette. “Of course, we never had much space but she and Alder were always outside, running around, looking for mushrooms.”

“He used to scare me doing that.” Mary-Lou adds. “I trusted him, you know, I knew he knew what he was looking for, but, you know, I would always think about how he learned what to look for.”

“Are there many poisonous mushrooms in this District?”

“Oh, sure. Mushrooms can grow all over. Around here, the woods are damp.”

There is a long blonde hair stuck to the blanket, a small pair of beat-up rain boots in front of the cabinet in the corner, a soft-bodied blonde doll propped on the windowsill. When she looks across the dinette to the front door, a small black jacket hangs on a coat-stand. She wonders briefly what she would find if she were to go through the pockets, but soon remembers that she can’t, under any circumstances, touch anything in this part of the trailer. It has been sitting this way for a very long time. She knows Holly hasn’t touched anything in here since July, she knows it must be the exact same way in the trailer across the fire pit, she thinks of a little alcove filled with little boy clothing and drawings of mushrooms pasted on the walls and knows Mary-Lou must not even breathe in that room. She wonders if they’ve cleaned since. There are dust motes settled in the doll’s yellow yarn hair, a spiderweb bridging the top of the left rain boot, the whole room seems like it has been holding its breath for months. 

“Before I forget.” Holly stands up and comes into the alcove and suddenly she feels herself go stiff. Being this close to this woman feels wrong, knowing the ruin she has brought to this family. Holly opens a drawer set into the wall and comes back with a closed palm. 

“Oh, Holly…” Mary-Lou shakes her head. 

“It’s okay. There are too many to just keep. I found it while I was straightening up a while ago, when we-.” She looks back at Finnick. “Well, I thought it might be time. Briar didn’t really have friends to make these for.” Holly unwraps a small loop of braided yarn, blue and pink and green. Holly motions for her hand, and when she receives it, she ties the loop around her wrist. 

The first thing she says all day is, “I can’t.”

“Please.” Holly whispers back. “She’d want you to have it. Even under the circumstances, I could tell she was happy to have a friend.”

So was I , she wants to say. She stares at the bracelet, almost willing it to feel wrong, to take on an inordinate weight. For the first time in days, Briar’s voice is silent.

Chapter Text

There are pockets of his memory, weird little dark pits that he has always associated with the crevices under tide pool rocks, where things fall sometimes. One memory sticks out, a dog-faced moray peeking out and snatching back in, he is twelve years old and Gil Caravel is standing across the trailer’s dinette table from him and just staring. No words are spoken but he knows he has done something incomprehensibly wrong and he has never known what, only that Gil stood there and stared at him and that as Gil stared, Mom was laying naked and drunk on the pullout couch behind the divider. A sickly hermit crab of a memory, the cormorant he watched die, strangled by fishing line, at Brineridge Lookout the day Gil was too hungover to train and Mom took him on a walk along the clifftops. A razor-edged zebra mussel, Liv’s tongue down his throat away from the cameras at the 16th birthday party the Capitol threw for him to promote Augustus’s Victory Tour. He knows tonight will have to find some way of slithering into one of those pockets, it can’t be something he carries around. 

Men who look like Gloss van Elsberg don’t buy sex. The funny thing is, as weird as he finds it that he would have no problem sleeping with Gloss and knowing how many people shell out for the privilege, Gloss doesn’t seem like a sexual being at all. He is stiff and nervous and so pretty he almost can’t be fuckable, as if fucking him would be like fucking a necklace or a decorative lamp. He is his sister with male muscle and a dusting of flaxen facial hair. They have the same dense white-gold curls and wide green eyes and delicate bone structure, they dress the same, order the same drinks, eat from the same plate and self-flagellate the same way, their focus always drifting up to the TVs above the bar at the same time, watching as Annie breaks away from Asenath and begins to slash at her own throat with the dull-edged ceremonial dagger presented to her by Mayor Filigree. They cringe in tandem, shake their heads in tandem, and drink in tandem. He’s almost disappointed that they were born two years apart. 

To his left, Bijou snaps her fingers in front of their collective eyeline. Since Hometown Glory wrapped, she seems like she’s found her edge, closing in on her 5th drink and still upright, decked out in leather and mesh like she’s ready to turn tricks on Tugurium Row. He knows it’s all for show, that once she washes the makeup off her face and the grease out of her hair that she’ll be back in her Ptolemy-approved barely-legal uniform tomorrow. She’s been forcing a depth to her voice that he can tell she’s been rehearsing, punching him and Gloss in the shoulders and remarking on Cashmere’s rack whenever the opportunity presents itself. He lets her because he feels like it may be good for her to get this out of her system. She hates the taste and smell of the cigarettes and has bruises on her knuckles and whatever she’s put in her hair is raising a red glow of irritation along the edges of her scalp. Whenever she sips her whiskey, neat, because she doesn’t like ‘that girly shit’ anymore, he’s worried it’s going to shoot right back out of her mouth. 

“Stop watching.” Bijou orders. 

Cashmere shakes her head. “Sorry.” Her eyeline finds his, he can see that she wants to say something but can’t come up with it. “Finnick, I really am. Sorry.”

“No, I get it.” He shrugs. “Can’t look away from the trainwreck.”

He knows everyone at the table wants to argue, but really can’t. He offers Bijou a sip of his cocktail, which he’s noticed her eyeing, he leaves it between them for her to chase her whiskey with. 

“Ptolemy won’t touch her for at least another year.” Gloss asserts. “Does she have a lot of collateral back in 4?”

“A godmother and some family friends up North. More than me. I don’t want to get too comfortable.”

Cashmere sighs. “There are Victors who got passed over for one reason or another. You said yourself Ptolemy wasn’t too into Annie.”

“That was before his third choice killed his first and drowned along with his second. He blew a lot of money on Citrine, he’ll want to recoup.”

“But she’s obviously not well.”

“People could get off on that.” Gloss cuts in, his tone dark. “Like that Avox in the budget suites with one leg. Power trip thing.”

Bijou shudders. “There has to be a loophole. Tell him she’s crazy, violent, you know?”

“That’s my angle as of right now. Let’s hope he goes for it.”

Cashmere tilts her head pensively. “It’s worked before. That’s why Brutus was never an asset. Enia told me he put a guy back in 2 in a coma for three months, don’t remember why, but after the news broke, he was pretty much untouchable.”

“Great, so Annie just needs to almost kill someone. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled about that.”

“Have you…” Cashmere grimaces. “...had the conversation yet?”

He shakes his head. “She’s so drugged up, she barely remembers where she is and once the drugs wear off she’s either taking more or trying to take herself out. If it were up to me, I’d have her committed again once we get home. She needs…” He can’t finish the thought.

“Not committed.” Bijou breathes. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“It’s complicated, Bijou. It might be better. After she was away for a while, things got easier.”

“Until the Tour.” Cashmere tacks on. “You know, maybe when you get home-.”

“I doubt it. She got a little better after 7, she was almost fine until 3, then I think it set in again.” He takes a long drink and feels it slide down his throat, knowing it won’t give him whatever he feels he needs. “I don’t know. This is more than I can deal with.”

“Well, then don’t deal with it tonight.” Cashmere gives him an amiable kick under the table. “We’ll find something to do.”

“I appreciate it, but we’ve got the Capitol tomorrow. I need to be on it.” He shoots Bijou a glance. “You too, maybe that should be your last one?”

Bijou throws back her whiskey, stifling a gag. “Relax, dad.”

“No, he’s right.” Cashmere says defeatedly. “Someone’s gonna need to hold Enobaria’s hair back tomorrow night.”

“Don’t worry about that, she’s off the sauce this month.” He gives the table a pointed look. “Horemheb’s Tour almost killed her, I did most of the talking at his victory dinner, she’s returning the favour.”

They all remember Horemheb’s Tour with a little too much clarity. District 2’s dark horse, the inoffensive Lanistarium flunkee who won by total accident and toured his great nation half-comatose. He remembers standing in the vomitorium, choked by the meaty, astringent smell of IpeQuik and stomach acid, and feeling like he was guarding the last threads of Enobaria’s dignity as he gathered her long maroon braids away from the porcelain culvert so she could purge herself of the 15 units of alcohol she’d taken to the face before dinner came out.

He feels a pang of dread. He’s held it together thus far, more or less, but he feels something nagging at the back of his mind. He isn’t as attached to Annie as Enobaria was to Horemheb, nobody could ever presumably match that, but the Tour hasn’t been easy by any metric. He has an ache in the general zone of his liver when he wakes up, he’s stopped enjoying the feeling of being drunk and is beginning to consider it something of a safety measure to face consciousness, the definition in his lower abs is nearly gone even though what food he does manage to eat never stays down for long. It seems logical, that watching the poised, purposeful girl he met on the train platform wither into a dead-eyed lightning rod of blind panic would take its toll, but he isn’t like Sligo or Chaff or Augustus or Haymitch. Yet .

Bijou bunks with him on the train that night to get an early start. They buy a bottle of wine for the road and stumble back together in near-silence and, when they return, Annie has been drugged to sleep hours ago and Asenath is shuffling back to her compartment after having gotten up for water. 

“It’s still early, though, huh?” Bijou remarks, tossing her small bag into the far corner. 

“We were up early. That, plus Asenath’s been… doing what I should probably be doing.”

Bijou shrugs. “Maybe Annie needs a woman’s touch? I know I did. Gloss was my mentor but I’m way closer with Cash because she was always there.” She takes a swig of wine and scans the room. “You have smokes?”

“I don’t smoke.”

She nods slowly, smirking. “Right. That’s kind of your thing.”

“Is it a thing? I would say it’s more of an absence of a thing.”

“Well, Cash was saying she’s always found it kind of odd that you won your Games at 14 and now you’re 20 and you’ve never smoked but you’ve been around Victors for 6 years and never even tried it. It’s kind of fascinating. Are you allergic or something?”

It smells like Gil and Procula and Livia . “It just never appealed to me.”

Bijou shrugs. “Well, different strokes.” She collapses on the bed, flat on her back, to stare at the ceiling. “Your first Victor. Crazy, huh?”

“Not that crazy. I think you’re just young. You were, what, 9 when I won?”

Bijou rolls her eyes. “I was 11.”

“No.”

“Uh, yeah. I’m 17 now, you’re 20. You’re 3 years older than me. Not even, I’ll be 18 in April.” She kicks her shoes off and shifts back on the bed to lean against the wall. “You just grew up too fast.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Bijou smiles bitterly, pulling her knees up to her chest and chewing on her lower lip. “Gloss told me we’re all 17 going on 47…”

“Do you remember how he explained it to you?” He blurts out, regretting it the second the words are in the air. “The… Ptolemy, I mean.” 

Bijou eyes him sadly. “It’s… kind of an open secret at our Lanistarium.” Her left hand wraps around her bare foot, a childlike reflex that makes him nauseous. He’s suddenly reminded not only of how unbearably young Bijou is, but how close in age they really are. She’s absolutely right about them being close in age, in any other universe, they would have gone to school together. “Most of our dropouts are actually the younger girls. The older ones think the rumours are bullshit until they find out they aren’t. I was the most recent from 1 since Cash, she doesn’t go back if she can help it. Sometimes I think about telling all the kids about it.”

“Bijou-.” He leans forward, trying to put on a voice stern enough to make her listen. “Don’t. You have too much collateral.”

She sighs. “I know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.” Her other hand picks at the edge of the bedspread. “I would feel complicit.”

“That feeling goes away.”

“Well, sure, when they die.” Right after the last word leaves her lips, she sucks in a breath. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, obviously, it’s not- you’re aren’t-.”

“It’s okay.”

Bijou is quiet for a long moment. “It was so cold in my arena. When people bled, steam came out of them, like when you can see your breath in winter.” She wipes at her eyes with the heel of her hand, smudging her tarry makeup. “I still dream about killing Levi, the way it looked like his soul was spilling out. In my dreams, he does the same to me. I wouldn’t blame him.”

“Bijou, morals are different for us. You’d never do anything like that again, you’ll never have to.”

She raises her head but doesn’t meet his gaze, opting to stare at the far wall. “I’m afraid I’m still capable of it. I still remember how it felt. It wasn’t entirely terrible until a few days later. If he would have lived, if they all would have… I killed five people. I made that decision five times over and I would have done it more if they hadn’t gotten away-.” Bijou lets out a shudder. 

“You’re running in circles, Bijou. Maybe we should stop drinking.”

She shakes her head. “I need to sleep somehow. I’m sorry.”

He tries to change the subject and somehow fails. “You want to hear something fucked up? My mom went to the 51st Reaping pregnant with me. Her name was in about 60 times. I mean, we have a Lanistarium back home but it’s  a joke now and it was even worse then. She probably would have gone if they called her. I volunteered 14 years later, I won. I don’t know what to make of that.”

Bijou makes a low noise. “I hate that we have a Lanistarium. I know the other Districts probably think we have a leg up and, yeah, of course we do, I mean, look at how many Interior Victors…” she trails off and shakes her head. “I’m gonna personally know every single kid who comes through here for the next, what, five years?” 

“I never thought of that. I wasn’t a Lanistarium kid. Sligo checks in with them sometimes but it’s some guy from the Navy who runs it. I mean, Sligo was a dockhand, Annie worked at a fish farm.”

“Citrine couldn’t wait to go.” Bijou gives him a doleful look. “Since Signet. She knew she had to get in there, get her family out of the fucking gutter. A lot of people don’t think about us like that, but there’s poverty here like you wouldn’t believe. A lot of us are way better off, my family certainly are, but the Singers volunteered because if you win, you win, if you die, your family saves money. It’s the same with Eisen.” Her voice breaks when she says his name. “You probably hate him.”

“I don’t hate any of them.” You killed Levi , he wants to say, he trusted you and never would have hurt you and you murdered him and there is no way I can hate you because I would have done the exact same thing . “What, do you hate Annie?”

“God, no! I couldn’t, I just…” Bijou bites her lip. “I want people to know that he wasn’t a bad person. He was an angry person, he could be mean if you pushed him, but really at his core it was just a lot of trauma. They thought he could put it to use.” She smiles bitterly and wipes at a tear that’s managed to crest her lower lash line. “You know, before the Games, I got to talk to him and Citrine and it was just like we were at the Lanistarium again. She turned in before we did, then it was just me and him. He told me he’d always thought I was really cute, and, you know, I told him I felt the same, not because I felt obligated but because I did.” 

“Oh, Bijou…”

She stares at the floor, her voice beginning to break again. “You can’t tell. Ptolemy would-… I’m supposed to be a virgin, that’s part of my angle. Eisen… if he would have won…”

This conversation is beginning to turn his stomach. “Bijou, you’re ruminating. Let’s get some sleep.”

Bijou breaks, letting out a high sob and clapping her hands over her face. “I can’t keep doing it, Finn. I can’t keep watching them die. His face… God, Finn, I always see his face.”

His first Victory Dinner as a mentor almost feels like he’s going back into The Games. Feronia, even though he hasn’t had any real facetime with her since his own Victory Dinner, is the same as she was back then, gushing and cooing about how precious he is and how cute he’s going to look as if she isn’t aware that he’s aged. She dresses him in a choker-collared dinner jacket made of nacre-white satin with sleeves that vent open at the elbows, clunky faux-coral bracelets and tight pants in the same mother-of-pearl white. He tries to engage her in conversation about her last charge, about how tragic it was to lose him, about how much he’s been missed the past six months, but Feronia seems to be pretending like she’s never known anybody named Ciaran Whelk, never marketed him as Finnick 2.0, never watched his head leave his shoulders in real time. After a while, he becomes too nauseous to speak and lets her do what she needs to do, leaves with a curt thank-you and bee-lines for whatever alcohol he can choke down in transit. 

From the way Annie’s dressed, he’d be almost inclined to think he was accompanying her to their wedding. Her dress, low cut and form fitting and adorned with clusters of pearls, is the exact same pearlescent satin as his own, her wrists manacled with the same fake coral, her skin lacquered with the same angry spray tan. Her episode in 1 has left a long, slim welt along the right side of her throat, but doesn’t appear to have broken the skin. Procula seems to have arranged her hair to cover it, but Annie has tossed it back over her shoulder, the burned-in curls spilling awkwardly down her back. 

She glimpses the flask in his hand and makes a ‘gimme’ gesture. He hands it over. 

“2 hours, max.” He offers. Annie raises her eyebrows, takes a good, long shot and hands the flask back. “It’s more intimidating than it really is.”

She replies with a dull scoff. Their town car pulls up. He begins to pray under his breath.

The Presidential Mansion, looming heavy and ancient over The Corso, is lit up in an obscene strobe of shades of blue and green, balconies packed and courtyard seething with bodies. Annie stares out the window at it all, her face impassible, blue light reflecting off her jewelry, the oil slick of pearlescent makeup on her face, the sweat at her hairline. On the opposite bench of their limo, Asenath is drowning in layers of cerulean tulle, overdone as usual, her red-black split-dye stuffed into a wig cap and replaced with a cascade of waist-length ringlets the weak blonde of sea foam. Her eyebrows are bleached the same colour, her lips glossed teal, he thinks she looks like a washed-up shipwreck victim. Her dress is so voluminous it fills up the leg room of the car, seeming as though he and Annie are wading shin-deep in it. 

“Really, I can’t stress enough how immense of an honour this is.” Asenath yaps as they ascend the ponderous front walk, lined with meticulous shrubbery within which sporadic partiers are chatting or taking pictures or throwing up. “I know you will, Annie, but please remember decorum, class, sophistication.” To their left, a drunk woman in all fringe with a plunging neckline stumbles on a snapped stiletto, a pale breast spilling from the open front of her dress, and braces herself against a tree as IpeQuik foams at the corners of her mouth. Asenath bristles and picks up her pace, the stylists bringing up the rear, positively salivating at the chance to be that sloppy by the end of the night. 

He’d forgotten, in the year since he’s attended one of these, how utterly obnoxious people can be when they’ve spent their lives marinating in wealth. At his own Victory Dinner, he’d been accosted by at least 13 drunken middle aged women, all of whom had lucked into their invitation one way or another, and half of them either left the party soaked in some variety of internal fluid or were escorted out by security. He once heard some older Victor, possibly Zenith or maybe Seeder, remark that Capitol people behave the way they think District People do. Someone else, he feels like it must have been Blight, had tacked on that it was because District people drunkenly humiliate themselves on dirt roads or in trailer parks but Capitol people do it in mansions. 

He’s relieved when Asenath and the prep team take Annie off for her final interview with Caesar, giving him an opportunity to scope the place out. Bijou, barely dressed in baby pink lace, stands by the fountain with a painfully sober Enobaria, two Capitol women between 40 and 60 and Augustus, whom the former are hanging all over. He swallows his dread about interacting with them and makes his way over. He makes a big show of kissing Bijou and Enobaria on both cheeks before turning his attention to the two interlopers. 

“Pomponia, Vespasiana, I’d like to introduce you to Finnick Odair, the man of the hour.”

Both women turn to each other and make a deflating sort of noise, somewhere between a squeal and a groan, before leaping forward and barnacling onto his arms. The one to the left seems to be wearing an amalgamation of small metal components that begins in a high, tight neckline and ends at her mid thighs in a fringe of very thin silver chains, her hair a wooly foam of pale bronze. Her friend on the right has ironed her naturally curly silver hair flat and glossy, her dusky face dotted with white ink tattoos of some constellation he can’t name. She is dressed in a standoffish shade of mustard yellow, the fabric of her floor length gown is so light he almost can’t feel it when it brushes against his exposed forearms. They keep chittering back and forth at each other with variations of the phrase ‘the man of the hour’ interspersed with drunken cackles. Left introduces herself as Vespasiana Holt, ambassador to District 3, and Right introduces herself at Pomponia Milledge. No title , he observes, must have won an embassy raffle or something . 

“Oh, you’re such a doll in person!” Vespasiana gushes, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “You smell phenomenal. I could just bite your head off!”

“Spasi, let him breathe!” Pomponia cuts in. He can immediately tell she hasn’t been matching her friend’s alcohol consumption. While Vespasiana’s breath smells like it could sterilize medical instruments, he can tell Pomponia is only performing drunkenness, fawning over him and kneading at his biceps but all with a certain air of irony. He can’t decide whether he’s comforted by the fact that she doesn’t seem to be entirely taken with him or profoundly uncomfortable with it. 

Vespasiana’s hand roves just South of his belt and he feels his whole body stiffen. She draws back and goes to grope again but stumbles sideways, Pomponia catching her around the waist, a quick, entirely sober extension of the arms. 

“Come on, dear.” Pomponia cajoles. “Let’s get you some water.” She begins to haul her friend off in the direction of the open bar, but turns back briefly, her green eyes boring into his. “And Finnick, is Asenath Glass here?”

“Yes, she’s just upstairs with Annie, but she’ll be down momentarily.”

Pomponia smiles, it doesn’t reach her eyes. “Oh, wonderful. She’s an old friend.”

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”

Pomponia’s smile withers, her eyes stay locked on him as she hauls Vespasiana away. 

Augustus lets out a long, relieved breath. “I never thought I’d see the end of those two.”

“She’s been flapping her gums about your escort all night.” Enobaria quips. “I kept telling her I’ve met Asenath, what, twice? She just kept at it, asking where she was, what she’s been doing lately. You think she has a little crush?”

He thinks of Asenath sweaty and spread-eagled on his living room couch, the way she sucked on his neck and clung to him once they’d finished. Pomponia looks like she has a good 10 years on Asenath and doesn’t give the impression of being a very attentive lover. If it’s Asenath she’s after, why’s she hanging out with the ambassador to 3? She’d have better luck bugging Neptunia. He hasn’t seen his own District’s ambassador yet and prays he can avoid her tonight. The Presidential Ambassador to Four, a bulky woman with shoulder-length turquoise hair named Neptunia Cox, has always reminded him vaguely of a shark, between her thick build, small dark eyes, sharp, perky nose and pallid skin. Those things paired with the fact that she’s demonstrated her ability to end lives quickly and easily on several occasions have cemented her as a regular feature in his nightmares. The thought of that woman being within twenty feet of Annie Cresta almost has him bolting for the vomitorium.

He’s four drinks deep when dinner is brought out. His place setting is between Annie and Asenath, with Bijou to Annie’s left and Neptunia Cox’s empty plate setting to Asenath’s right.

“Her Esteemed Sliminess won’t be gracing us with her presence.” The relief in Asenath’s voice is palpable as she hands him a platter of shrimp armoured with fried coconut. “Needleworm outbreak at WP. Perfect timing, if you ask me. She knows I’ll have my raise one way or another.”

“Oh, needleworm, delicious.” Annie slurs to herself, inspecting the lobster tail on her plate with as much of a critical eye as she can still manage, three spent champagne glasses lined up in front of her.

“What’s a needleworm?” Bijou interjects from Annie’s other side. 

Asenath waves a hand. “Oh, don’t worry. I made sure everything here is wild-caught.”

“Must have cost a fortune.” Annie slurs again, breaking off in a loud, almost cartoonish hiccup.

“Annie, the cost isn’t for you to worry about.” Asenath chides. He decides to trust the shrimp and silences himself with a mouthful, already tasting Ptolemy through the spiced pineapple marinade. Most Victors earn back the cost of their big night within their first two months, and he’s been spying a telltale fleshy shadow lurking on the uppermost balcony all night. He’ll excuse himself just before dessert, slip up there to negotiate and back down before anybody even notices he’s gone. He knows Enobaria still has her wits about her and Bijou will do whatever he asks, it’s all a matter of Asenath drinking just enough and the rest of the party overlooking his empty seat. Annie seems drunk enough to forget why she’s here and doesn’t seem interested in eating enough to soak up her diversion. It’ll be fine , he tells himself, I’ve handled worse .

“Don’t look up right away-.” Asenath hisses in his ear, punctuated by an elbow in his ribs. “-but that woman at the Interior Affairs table has been staring at me since we sat down.”

He aims his head down at his plate and works his eyes up and in the direction of Interior Affairs, peopled by the ambassadors to 1, 2 and 3 and their guests. Sure enough, on Vespasiana’s left, is Pomponia Milledge, eyeballing Asenath with an expression he can only identify as somewhere between pity and repulsion. It’s not the way someone looks at someone they consider an old friend, but what’s even more confusing is the fact that Pomponia has a notebook open in front of her and is scrawling furiously, knocking off paragraphs and flipping the page without even taking her eyes off her subject. Asenath flicks her head upward to stare back and Pomponia slaps the book shut, turning back to her dinner.

“Weird.” He offers in reply.

“You don’t know the half of it.” Asenath grumbles, bringing her fork down into a crab cake emphatically. “I have no idea who she is but I see her almost everywhere. Outside the Embassy when I’m getting off work, almost every time I go out with friends, there she is, and you’ll never believe this, but I swear I saw her rooting through my garbage bins a few months ago!”

“Oh, come on, Asenath-.”

“I’m serious! The woman is off her nut, I have no idea how she got an invite to this , of all things.” She turns to him, face drained of blood. “What, did you talk to her?”

“Briefly. She was with the ambassador to 3, I was doing a lap-.” Asenath shudders. “She did ask about you, but I told her you were busy.”

“What did she say her name was?”

“Pomponia Milledge, but she didn’t mention a job.”

Asenath makes a miffed, pensive face that verges on something to accompany constipation. “I bet you anything she doesn’t even have one. Just some Games Groupie, I bet. I need another drink.”

For all his elaborate schemes of sneaking upstairs when nobody is looking, it all falls into his lap when an Avox sidles up between him and Annie with a typewritten piece of cardstock embossed with the Presidential Seal. From the look on Bijou’s face when she glances across Annie, he can tell it’ll be a group conversation.

Honoratus Finnick Odair, please proceed to the personal offices of His Eminence, President Coriolanus Snow, Summa Rector of Panem and Terra Viventium, in auditorio cum Prima Domina Livia Cardew Snow, Ptolemy Notch, Himeros Notch et Bijou Shackelford, victoria praevius .

They’re all very ugly people, he realizes as he gestures Bijou in first and shuts the office door behind him. His Eminence looks like he’s gotten his lips done recently, and they fold awkwardly as they skin back from his teeth like a slipshod vulvoplasty, his teeth are just slightly pinker than teeth should be. He’s seen enough old pictures to know what the Summa Rector should look like organically and nearly none of it remains; the lips pumped, the nose carved down, the slackening flesh inflated to keep him young. Her FirstLadyness seems to have gone almost in the opposite direction. She’s had work done, to be sure, but none of it seems to have taken. She seems almost a thousand years old and he knows it isn’t because she’s aged uniquely poorly, but likely because of that omnipresent look of disgust she wears, like she’s shrivelling under the weight of her own venom. Ptolemy and Himeros, as usual, are disgusting but both in opposite directions; the clod of rancid cooking fat and the dessicated bones it melted from. Bijou eyes them both warily. He recognizes the Avox hanging in the corner, her arms shaking as she holds a platter bearing three bottles of liquor like a breathing bar cart, the dark-haired girl they’d been having their way with the night he was up in the cavea grubbing for money he’d put in Ptolemy’s pockets to begin with. All the flesh seems to have melted off of her and her hair is clean and bobbed to her ears. Cherry , he remembers her being called, and repeats it a time or two in his head before he realizes that Cherry is definitely not her real name and begins to feel sick. Ptolemy, drunk and sweating and stinking of something he can’t place, lurches forward, seizes Bijou’s wrist and pulls her down into his lap. 

“Good of you to join us.” President Snow leads in. Draped on a loveseat against the far wall, Livia looks him up and down disgustedly before snapping her fingers for a top-off. “Now, let’s not waste any more time. District 4 has a new female Victor and she’s a uniquely expensive one. Longest Games in a decade at 13 days and the third most extensive medical treatment following extraction, not to mention residual expenditures such as pharmaceuticals, housing, Tour expenses.”

“Plus my expenses.” Ptolemy chimes in, his right hand already jammed between Bijou’s legs. “I invested in Citrine Singer and she wound up feeding mutts.”

Snow waves a hand in Ptolemy’s direction. “Have some class, Notch, Miss Shackelford is here on business with me, not with you.”

Ptolemy freezes, then nudges Bijou off his lap. She crosses the office back to where he’s standing, straightening her dress. He tries to give her a reassuring nudge when she steps close to him but Livia’s eyes lock onto them both and he knows better than to even acknowledge that Bijou exists at all. Him even being in the same room as a young, beautiful woman is a transgression. He feels a sharp phantom pain low in his stomach. 

He swallows hard. “Thank you for having us, sir. I’m honored to be here and, yes, I am very much looking forward to working out a plan for Annie’s continuing contribution to our proud tradition.” He can almost smell Bijou breaking into a cold sweat. “Having observed her for the past six months, while I can vouch for her tenacity, her character and, most importantly, her beauty-.”

“Beauty.” Himeros scoffs, obviously plastered. “She looks like a bird in a wig.”

“Ptolemy, shut it up.” Snow deadpans. Ptolemy gives Himeros a doughy smack and raises both hands in surrender. 

“-it’s become apparent to not only myself but to the rest of District 4’s Victors as well as our escort, medical professionals in our District and various professionals in the Capitol that Annie may not be fit for service for another year or so.”

Beside him, Bijou nods slowly. He feels the back of her hand brush against his wrist. 

Snow eyes him beadily, tongue roving obscenely between his lips. He can’t bring himself to look at Livia but can feel her glaring. “Are you qualified to make this diagnosis, Odair?”

“I’m not qualified for anything, Sir, it’s simply my opinion and the opinion of those close to Annie.”

Snow looks down at a folder that’s been laying open on his desk. “I see here that Miss Cresta was institutionalized at the Portside Psychiatric Centre from November 18th to December 27th. It says here she was apprehended by local law enforcement wandering a back road, incoherent-.” His thick lips push together before he speaks again. “-unclothed. Local health authorities identified a psychotic episode.”

He feels a low thrum of rage begin to fill his bloodstream. He watches the corners of Ptolemy’s mouth pricking upward slightly, Livia all but foaming at the mouth, and remembers the way Annie had stared through him that night when he finally got within sight of her. Her extremities were almost blue from the frigid rain, her hair plastered around her drawn face, a hickey on her collarbone. Mags and Macie had wrapped her in blankets, taking turns jabbing frantically at the weak fire in the fireplace. She looked like something that had died far out at sea and washed up weeks later. He had decided then that the girl he met on the train platform had been dead for months. He stayed until Mags dismissed him, watching the sodden changeling in the living room as she watched the weak fire and spoke under her breath to something only she could see. He never asked what had happened. A week after she was admitted, her dress, sweater and shoes were returned, left on the Flanagans’ porch, washed and folded. 

“It’s not unheard of.” Ptolemy cuts in. “So long as she’s not violent.”

Snow flips another page over. “She has good collateral. We have a godmother, Saira Pollock, age 47, employed at Whimsiwick Pisciculture. Teesha Phyto, 19, and her sister Pearl, 12, both employed as guides on the whale-watching vessel Kahutia , their parents Delmar and Kalani, both 45, the former a commercial shipwright, the latter a hotel maid.”

“Sir, with all due respect-.”

“Odair, I’ll thank you to let me finish. Leyla raised you better than to interrupt, I would hope. I understand your concerns regarding Miss Cresta’s history and, I assure you, it has been taken into account. However, this is simply procedure. Victors are expensive, especially when they draw their Games out to nearly two weeks and delay closing ceremonies. The Guild is hemorrhaging money. We all pay our dues.” Snow turns to Ptolemy. “What say you?”

Ptolemy coughs phlegmily. “Well, we all know she’s not ideal, but I’ve got business to conduct. Say, let’s split the difference. We’ll give Annie until after the next Games. Bring her and the new Victor in together, have Finnick train them both. Better for me both ways if I get to keep my Golden Boy around more. We’ll do a package deal.”

“Are you sure you can wait that long?” Snow arches an eyebrow. “That is one less asset for you.”

Ptolemy shrugs. “We’re gonna be in the slow season for a few months. Besides, my Tiny Terror here is pulling overtime to make up for her little movie. Finnick, you too. I’m gonna double you up for March through May.”

His stomach drops. Livia’s eyes are burning pinpricks. “Ptolemy, I don’t know if-.”

“Or we could go downstairs, grab your little nutjob and have a little initiation party for her now. I would like to take her for a spin myself, see if girls from 4 really do taste like the ocean.”

“Fine. I’ll take the first offer.” In his mind, all he can see is the ceiling of his Satis-Factory suite and all he can taste is sweat. “After that, Annie is yours.”

“Let’s hope I can put her to some use.” Ptolemy sighs. “That nose…”

Snow trains eyes on him. “I’ll meet with you at the end of spring to discuss this further. Be prepared to hear from me soon by mail. You’re dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Not you, Miss Shackelford. I would like a word in private.”

He can feel Ptolemy looming behind him as he stumbles over the threshold and makes for the spiral staircase that leads back into the fray. 

“Oh, you’re in such a hurry to be rid of us, aren’t you?” Ptolemy calls from behind him. He turns around and prays that the murderous feeling in his chest isn’t coming through on his face. “Listen, kid, it’s nothing personal. Just the cost of doing business.”

The hand that claps him on the shoulder is so moist he can feel it through the jacket. “Apologies if I seemed that way. I’ve had a long Tour.”

“Oh, don’t I know it. Walk with me a minute.” He can’t refuse, halving his pace and allowing Ptolemy to steer him towards a more discreet stairwell. “I know I’ll be overworking you and, trust me, I know it’s not ideal. So I’m willing to let you do a little bit of… off-site work for me.”

“What is it? House calls? Dates?”

“Yes, and some…” Ptolemy tilts his head pensively. “Some advertising.”

“Advertising?”

Ptolemy stops walking, reaches into the lining of his jacket. He retrieves a familiar velvet bag through which a hooped outline can be made out. His neck begins to itch. “Everyone’s going to have their eyes on you tomorrow for Annie’s homecoming speech. I’d just like them all to know who you belong to and where they can find you.”

“You want me collared tomorrow?”

Ptolemy licks his lips. “Make it the rest of the month.” Ptolemy presses the bag into his hand. “Fair compromise.”

He can hear the clarion smack of stilettos on marble approaching him, and almost pisses himself with relief when he connects the sound with Asenath.

“There you are. Finally. We’re leaving. I’ve made the rounds, Annie’s talked to everyone she needs to talk to, I sent her back with Procula.” Asenath freezes when she sees Ptolemy and takes a stiff step back. “Let’s go.”

“Asenath. Asenath Glass, my word, look at you.”

“Ptolemy.”

Ptolemy takes another step towards Asenath, brings a meaty hand up to her face and cups her chin, brushing his thumb along her lower lip. “Always such a beauty. If only your father could see you now, rest his soul.” Ptolemy shakes his head. “Finnick, always a pleasure.”

As he passes Asenath on his way back to the front staircase, he pauses, leans over and inhales deeply through his nose. Her body tenses like she’s getting ready to vomit.

“I don’t want you getting mixed up with that guy.” She snipes on the drive back, sitting bolt upright like she’s covered in some kind of disgusting slime. “Sickest of the sick, I tell you.”

“I’ll try not to.” He placates, the collar in his pocket feels like it weighs a ton.

In the morning, he wants to be happy to be home but knows there is no returning to the Portside he left. Even though the Tour is blessedly over, he knows there is something even more awful on its way that he won’t be able to run from. The collar is chafing worse than it ever has. He wouldn’t be surprised if he ends the day with a neckful of blisters.

He’s never met this Phyto family, only ever met Saira Pollock twice when she’d come for dinner on Annie’s weekends away from the nuthouse, and now their necks are lined up on the chopping block as collateral for a Victor as unpredictable as the system she’s fallen into. There is no way this ends well. 

Annie is slumped on the couch in the foyer of the Justice Building, drugged out of her mind, wearing one of the dresses that Mags wore on her own victory tour. Floor length cerulean satin, timelessly cut, tailored with tulle around the base to accommodate the foot or so of height Annie has on its original owner. Maybe Procula has a shred of class after all . Mags and Asenath are talking in hushed voices in another room, occasionally glancing in at Annie. When Asenath notices him watching, she crosses the room and slams the door. Bitch . 

He smells Sligo before he sees him, a noxious combination of cigarettes and liquor and boat fuel. As if everything else going on wasn’t enough, Drunk Uncle is back and ready to make his own issues everyone else’s problem, as if they all don’t have more than enough to deal with. 

“Aren’t you a pretty little piece of ass.” he prods.

“Leave her alone.”

“I wasn’t talking to her. Man, what a shitshow.” Sligo looks him up and down, eyes zeroing in on the collar. “The hell is that thing? Asenath’s got you all tarted up-.”

He slaps Sligo’s prying hand away from it, getting an acrimonious look in return. They stare at each other for what feels like an eternity, Sligo takes a step back, eyeing him with a mix of suspicion and derision. Sit this one out, old man, do us all a favor and go take the boat for a spin and crash it . 

“Alright, let’s get this over with.” Asenath announces, coming back into the room with Mags a few steps behind her. Her forehead looks especially shiny, he can’t tell if it’s by choice. “I don’t want to do it anymore than any of you but we have to and once we do, we’re done. We can all get as plastered as we want and go home and forget about the whole thing. Sligo, button that GD jacket up before I have a coronary. You and Finnick need to-.” she looks at him and freezes. “Ew, Finnick, lose that ugly necklace.”

Fuck . “I can’t.”

“What, another hickey?” She rolls her eyes and crosses the floor towards him, unclasps the collar before he can think to stop her. “There. Now get her up and get her out. Seriously, the two of you are going to make me crazy-.”

“Asenath, just… give it to me. We don’t need to do this here, it’s just… I need to…” he holds out his hand, down low in a last-ditch attempt to be discreet, “just-.”

“No fucking way, I’m not letting you go out in front of a dead baby’s parents looking like a hooker. What the hell is P.N anyway?” She's inspecting the collar, turning it over in her hands, showing it to Mags like she’s never seen tacky jewelry before. Then her face switches when she reads the inscription on the inside, first confusion, then shock, then disgust. She throws it at his feet and wipes her hand on her dress, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. 

“I personally thought it was a nice touch, but you’re the expert.” Sligo butts in. Asenath keeps staring as he puts the collar back on. She’s trying to figure out what to make of it, she knows she can’t really be angry but she is. Mags is sitting on the couch with her arm around Annie, who is now leaning forward with her head in her hands like she’s about to puke. 

“Are you done?” Asenath doesn’t say anything. “Great.” He puts an arm around Annie’s waist and hauls her to her feet, her head rolls back and Mags cringes. 

“Damn it, Sligo-.” she waves him over. Sligo hurries forward and drapes Annie’s left arm around his shoulders. Her face contorts, her eyes are unfocused, thrown even farther off balance by the strip lashes Procula glued to her eyelids. 

“Mmhmmhahaa…” Annie slurs, pawing at Sligo’s lapel with her ridiculous nails. “ Fuuuck .”

Asenath darts in front of them to hold the door open, shooting him another look that he can’t quite place, a look that says we’ll talk about this later , or maybe I’ll yell at you about this later . 

The turnout is blessedly low. It usually is, with mollusk season in the Flats and the fish farms expanding inland, so he’s mildly thankful for that, but it’ll still be televised. The Whelks are a lot closer to the stage than he’d hoped, and Annie blanches when she sees them; Nisha squirming in Calypso’s arms, the sisters staring up at her with their mouths hanging open, Ronan dead-eyed and holding a framed picture of Ciaran grinning at the camera, holding up a snow crab that’s almost as big as him. 

“It is my immense privilege-.” Asenath begins, visibly uncomfortable, glancing at the collar, then at Annie, then at the Whelks, “-to introduce the victor of the 70th-.”

“No…” Annie sobs, retracting her arm from Sligo’s shoulders to rake her face with her nails, her knees buckle and he and Sligo try to anchor her between them. “No, please, God-.” she starts to bang on her forehead with the heel of her hand. 

“We’re fine.” Sligo growls at her under his breath as he grabs hold of her arm and arranges it behind her back, pulling her upright. “You’re fine. Be quiet.”

Asenath shakes her head. “-the victor of the 70th annual Hunger Games, District 4’s very own Miss Annie Cresta- damn it.” she drops a cue card, “-I’m sorry, I’m just-.” she holds up a hand and leans in way too close to the microphone, her communicuff knocks against it and sends a shriek of feedback through the speakers. “-my hands. Sweating. Uh… Okay. victoroftheseventieeeeth-... right, okay. I know I can’t be the only one who was utterly inspired by her…” she squints at the cue card, “-indef… in-de-fatigable? Indefatigable. Displays. Of… of… of bravery and patriotism.” Annie throws her head back and makes a noise like she’s been shot. “Yeah, me too.” Asenath quips, then, with a horrified expression, claps a hand over her mouth, the same hand with the godforsaken communicuff, and the speakers wail again. Annie wrestles her arms free, drops to her knees and covers her ears, hyperventilating. 

The crowd isn’t moving, isn’t talking, doesn’t even seem to be breathing. Calypso’s mouth is hanging open, she has a hand pinning Nisha’s head to her chest to block her ears. Maren is pulling on  Ronan’s sleeve, leaning up to ask him something, but he’s prioritizing moving the other three girls behind himself and his wife. 

Asenath puts her other hand over the microphone and turns to them. “Go. I’ll finish. I can’t do this to her.”

“But what about the-.”

“Get.” Asenath snarls through gritted teeth. “Her. Out of here. Now.”

He makes eye contact with Sligo, and for the first time in years, they are on the same page. 

Chapter Text

MARCH

Portside is too familiar. Some days she thinks about taking the car and driving until she hits something unfamiliar, but she never learned to drive and they probably won’t let her now. She watches Sligo when he takes the car, the car that everyone in the Village shares, that Mags was gifted way back when by the Mayor of District 6 because hers was the first ever Victory Tour, that makes weird noises but still runs, for drives out to the little inland cannery towns and through the uninhabited stretches of green nothing that separate the residential areas from the border checkpoints. She watches what he does, the things he pulls and pushes and manipulates, and tries to remember them into her own body. Sometimes at night, she will lay there and hold both hands out in front of her the way he does and try to recall all off what he did in order to remove the car from the Village and place it in Estuary, that grimy little town an hour away where they visited four grimy little houses and Sligo left an envelope of cash and a basket of food with the grimy little occupants of each. Each time, she had waited outside. Even when Sligo told her that the people in those grimy little houses would be so happy to see her and so honoured that she had come to see them personally, she knew they would look at her the exact way everybody in Portside did. 

She has never known exactly what to do with herself, really ever but much less in public, but now can’t even remember how she used to pretend. The whole place is so agonizingly familiar. She remembers every board of the boardwalk, where they are chipped and where they are uneven and which ones are more loose than others. Every building along the main strip, she can place a memory from when her parents were still alive; the bank where Mom would cash her WP checks, the licensing office they lived above, the library, the coffee kiosk, the liquor store… 

Calypso Whelk works in the licensing office now. She sits at her desk and sobs until her boss sends her home. Ronan Whelk’s vessel docks outside the bank and there is a memorial plaque on the slip that just reads CIARAN . She wants to avoid it all together but that slip, where Muirreann’s Majesty and Little Leilani dock, is where she feeds her seal every Sunday. He’s a scraggly little thing who has been showing up forever. There’s something wrong with him and she doesn’t think he knows how to hunt. She can’t remember when she first saw him, only that every Sunday she finds herself at the slip with whatever food she can find, throwing it down to him. 

Sometimes she goes to the library. She used to like Thalassa Murrel, even though she has always been sweetly condescending and overprotective and is unfortunately also related to Ciaran. Thalassa works at the library now and she always tries to avoid her when she goes in after running out of things to do. She pretends to read whatever is in her way, sugary romance novels and Capitol-approved war dramas in the fiction section, Capitol-approved accounts of the Dark Days written by informers and bootlickers in the history section, small scale pisciculture guides and textbooks if she gets desperate. Some of them hold her attention more than others. She remembers always wanting to write her own stories as a kid but only ever finishing them in her head. She had nothing she felt the need to write about, endlessly rehashing the same melodrama about a plucky, misunderstood girl in a dinky town she feels she has outgrown, often named some variation of Anna or Anya or Alina. There was always some turbulent romance planned for the protagonist, some epic obstacle… To her horror, she remembers while picking through a melodrama with a similar set-up to the one she had tossed around in her own head for so many years, that an early draft she’d clunked out when she was really young saw the protagonist winning a Hunger Games of her own. She had gone home that night and sifted through her belongings, the box of old notebooks that she had, for some reason, decided had to come to the Flanagan house instead of the storage house. She found it- untitled, the date placing it somewhere just before her own first Reaping, the protagonist frets over her sickly younger sister and volunteers in her place. She falls in love with her District partner. In some self-indulgent twist only a lonely 12 year old can conjure up, the Capitol make an exception and let them both take home the win. They live happily ever after. It reminds her of that stupid movie Finnick worked on. Mags has been receiving letters about a press tour, they pile up on the kitchen table. 

She is reading through one such ancient draft- not the one with the Games, a later one but somehow even more prescient, a girl locked up in The Retreat, wooed from outside her window by a fictional carbon copy of Theo Lotyde- when Finnick comes back. It’s late but not quite, dinner is over but it had been early because Macie wanted to have drinks with a friend in town and Mags wanted to watch some old movie on TV. She’d been invited to watch too but knew Mags wouldn’t let her have more than one glass of wine and she had, several days prior, made her first purchase with her seemingly endless supply of money on her shiny new Cardew Trust bank card; a bottle of vanilla rum like Mom and Dad used to drink. She doesn’t like Capitol movies anyway. The men all look like Finnick and the women all look like Bijou. They kiss and fondle each other like it’s the last thing they’ll ever do and sometimes it is. She hates when the women in the movies get sick and die because of how sad it makes the men and she knows that she is sick now too but nobody will ever cry and fawn over her and love her in spite of it. She hates those beautiful women and their painted-on gauntness and their elegant tremors and the shiny blood they cough up. She hates the beautiful men and their unflinching loyalty, their big protein-pumped arms around their frail counterparts, their faces contorted but still perfect.  

“Come sit, it’s starting.” Mags says, her voice carrying up the stairs.

“Oh, good.” He sounds exhausted. She takes one more sip of rum, it’s starting to hit her but she’ll slow down, and creeps to the top of the stairs. “I just didn’t want to be at home.”

“You just get back?” A pause, enough time for him to nod solemnly the way he always did. “Oh, kid. You just relax, and let me-.”

“No, don’t get up. I’ve got it.”

“Finn-.”

“No, I’ve got it. Do you mind if I eat some of this?”

“Please. Annie actually ate some, you’ll be happy to hear.”

Stop talking about me. “Oh, good. You want anything while I’m in here?”

“Actually, I’ll take another glass, why not?” Dishes clink, liquid sloshes, the springs of the couch compress. “Thank you, honey. You’re welcome to spend the night.”

Finnick yawns through the first few words of his reply. “Might have to take you up on that. I’ll be out in the morning.”

“After breakfast. It’s the weekend, I think it’ll be nice.” She pauses. “But I do have to say, be careful around Annie, she’s still delicate.”

“No, I understand.”

Mags sighs. “She turned in early, so she should be okay tomorrow. It’s always one extreme or the other, but she’s been better this week. I’ve been watching how much she drinks, I think it’s helping.”

“You think that was why she was all…”

“Could be. When you’re as medicated as she is, you need to be careful with alcohol. She’s had a glass of wine with dinner tonight, we’ll see how she is in the morning.”

She won’t end up in The Retreat again. She made that promise to herself before the Tour and is intent on keeping it. She’s gone to see Darya once, at the end of February, and Darya looked at her with something that she decided was recognition. She brought a blanket she’d knitted in the period of time right after the Tour when she was too crazy to leave the house, she’d laid it over Darya when visiting hours ended and Darya looked down at it and smiled. As she was leaving, an orderly who had previously talked to her the way someone might talk to an especially stupid three year old had told her to ‘have a good night, Miss Cresta’ and for some reason she had wanted to scream. She wonders sometimes, if she can’t keep her promise to herself, who will pay to have the doctor brought out to have her teeth removed. Darya has kept hers thus far, the one thing she has over the people who made themselves forget her. 

She knows as well as Mags does as that the rum was a stupid idea, but she is telling herself that it was worth it, to take the edge off and put even just a modicum of something other than grey apathy into her mind. All through breakfast, her blood feels itchy and the look on Finnick’s face makes her want to die. She hates him in a way she doesn’t even understand, all she can see are those beautiful Capitol movie men crying over their poor beautiful dead women. All she can think of is him and Bijou, that pretty little murderer who was just so sweet at the Victory dinner, so fucking charming and so accommodating and so fucking kind, and then she went off with him to do God knows what. She wants to cry and doesn’t. The coffee makes her blood itch even more and she excuses herself to go to the library even though it’s early enough that he’ll probably be there when she gets back. 

She buys two cans of beer at Lotyde Family Liquor, taking advantage of the fact that none of Theo’s stupid family are there, just that young boy they hired to watch the cash. She doesn’t know his name and doesn’t want to. He’s 15 going on 45 and she dreads the day she may have to mentor him. 

The Portside archives are at the very back of the library, and there she finds the birth records for Portside, which includes Pliny’s Inlet even though it’s a separate municipality outside of Portside Proper. She isn’t sure if Strand is Darya’s maiden or married name. She begins at the oldest birth date that she can imagine Darya having, placing her at about 45. She knows she’s probably younger and just hasn’t been taken care of properly but wants to be sure. She drinks as she leafs through, finding Sligo’s birth announcement- Sligo Everett Altomar, born to Derry Altomar and Cordelia Langoustine on February 27th in the 25th year of Peacetime - and a birth announcement for a Darya Coho. She writes it all down- parents, date, year- in one of the old notebooks that only had three pages used. Eight years later, a Darya Abalone. 

Someone inhales behind her as if getting ready to speak, and she turns to see Thalassa Murrel standing behind her, shifting nervously. Thalassa is very tall and very pretty and should never be nervous because everyone loves her and nobody will look at her sideways since her cousin died. She doesn’t take after her mother or her aunt or her sister, her hair and eyes are both a demure brown and her face has a perpetually intrigued expression. 

“Annie. Good to see you again.”

“Hi, Thalassa.” She makes sure to stuff the can in her bag. She’s not allowed to have it here.

“Archives, huh? Are you researching something?”

“It’s for a friend. Do you know anybody with the last name Strand?”

Thalassa thinks it over. “Nobody other than Anthias Strand, the Navy guy. And I don’t know him, I just know who he is.”

“Do you know if he’s from Pliny’s Inlet?”

“He’s from around here, so he could be. My ma might know.” Thalassa’s face softens into that soppy look she gets before she starts fussing. “And everything’s good with you? How are you feeling? You look nice, well-rested.”

“I’m okay. And you’re sure he’s the only Strand you know?”

Thalassa looks taken aback. She shrugs. “You might find something in there. I’ve only been to Pliny’s Inlet once.”

“Hm. Okay. Thanks, Thalassa.”

“Of course. You need anything, I’ll just be at the front desk.”

Thalassa walks away. Two pages on, she finds a Darya Wrasse. 

They are pulling the toothpick remains of Waylon Ballast’s skiff from the water on Victory Beach when she gets back after lunch, Finnick and Sligo and Kelp and Pontus. Macie is there too, talking into Sligo’s radio, Lysandra pulled up on the beach, her hull still slick with water. 

She likes Pontus Herring very much, always has. He’s a tall, heavyset blonde man with a patchy beard and kind green eyes, older than Finnick but younger than Ciaran’s parents, she guesses 27 or so. That night at Skipjacks, the last time she saw Theo, Pontus had asked her at the door if she was sure she wanted to go home with him and she had said yes. He smiles at her when he sees her in town and is one of the only people who has ever done that. Since she was a kid, he has called her ‘Miss Annie’. 

Kelp Aukai captains Little Leilani. She doesn’t know him well but other people seem to. He had seemed sad at Ciaran’s funeral, and she knows he has a brother who must have something wrong with him. She’s never met this brother, but more than once has been compared to him, even before she lost her mind. All she really knows about Kelp is that his vessel is named after his daughter, who was scouted by the Lanistarium and volunteered two years before Finnick and never came home. 

Waylon, she’s only met a few times in passing. He lives outside of Portside, wears a wedding ring and is always sunburned. He seems to know Sligo well enough, but she imagines they’ve probably come across each other fishing around the area. He’s peeling off his drenched clothes and drinking ravenously from Sligo’s flask, sitting in the sand and staring at what’s left of his boat.

“Well, at least it wasn’t anything bigger.” Kelp is saying as she approaches. Waylon mops his brow. When Finnick sees her, she notices a very subtle flinch running through him before he forces a smile. 

Macie puts the radio back in Lysandra and hurries over. “Hey, Annie, Mags was looking for you. She’d like a hand with dinner.”

“Okay. What happened?”

Waylon doesn’t notice Macie gesturing for him to not speak. “Fuckin’ dolphins. Three or four, just started ramming me.”

“It’ll be fine.” Macie placates, nervous. “I radioed the Peacekeepers, they’ll come and get the accident report. Everything’s fine.”

Everything but the vessel. She wants to be annoyed by Macie but is more annoyed by Finnick, the way he walks off to aimlessly nudge at the remains of Waylon’s skiff with his foot and stare at the water. You can’t even look at me, can you? Am I so repulsive now? Are you afraid to catch something?

“I’m sorry about your boat, Waylon.”

“Ah, it’s alright, Miss. She’d seen better days anyway.” He shakes his head, takes his flat cap off and runs his hands through his thinning orange hair. 

“Fuckin’ dolphins.” Kelp echoes, making his way over and tossing a waterlogged tacklebox at Waylon’s feet. “You do something to piss them off?”

Waylon sucks his teeth loudly. “I think they were after my catch. I had a whole shitload of pompano circling me, I’m salivating, getting ready to pull ‘em up then-.” He drives a fist into the opposite palm. “Inna’s gonna be pissed.”

Macie sighs. “We’ll send you home with something.”

“Got a bunch of whiting on ice with your name on it.” Sligo concurs. 

Waylon shakes his head. “Come on, man, you’ve done enough.”

“I insist. After the PK’s take your statement, I’ll pack them up for you.”

“I’ll do it!” Finnick cuts in. “I’ve got them.”

“Hell no.” Sligo protests, “I don’t want you rooting through my ice box.”

“Let him.” Macie insists, knowing Sligo won’t give her any shit. “You saw the wreck, they’ll want a statement from you too.”

Sligo glares at Finnick. “One smelt out of place and I skin you, kid.”

“Understood.” Finnick mumbles, taking off towards the houses. Pussy . It doesn’t take much to catch up to him, even though he’s walking quickly, and he seems to sense her gaining on him. She can see the muscles in his back clenching through his sodden shirt. “You should go help Mags, Annie.”

“I know. I will.”

He turns briefly to face her, looking almost sick. “You alright? I know you kind of have a history with-.”

“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine.”

“Good.”

“Are you fine?”

“Wonderful. You really should-.” She reaches Sligo’s porch before he does, speeding up as they begin to close in on the house. She knows she’s making him uncomfortable and wants to really make him squirm. “I know where the ice box is.”

“I know. But Sligo doesn’t trust you.”

That earns her something between a scoff and a laugh. “Do you?”

She shrugs. “If he says you took something, you have a witness.”

He gives her a wary look as he bends down to open the ice box. “He’s really gotten to you, hasn’t he?”

“No. I just know how he is. He’ll invent a problem because it’s you, so now we both know. The whiting are wrapped already. On the bottom. I wrapped them yesterday.”

“Hm.” He extracts the package, labelled with the date and species, and holds it up with a limp smile. “Well, you did a good job wrapping them.”

“So I’m not totally useless?”

His attempt at a smile withers. “I never said that. Who said that?”

She feels her throat getting tight and tells herself that there’s no goddamn way she’ll cry in front of this bootlicking candy-ass. “You didn’t have to.”

She turns and marches up the road to the Flanagan house without looking back. She hears him beginning to call after her and choking on the first syllable. 

When Finnick doesn’t join them for dinner, she isn’t surprised and doesn’t care. The lights are all off in his house, so he’s either in town sticking himself in anything that breathes or in his precious Capitol with his precious Bijou. As she sets the table, she imagines him drunk outside Skipjack’s, eating shit on the rain-slick front steps and humiliating himself. She imagines him putting the moves on some girl she went to school with, some dead-eyed fishwife like Mollie Canals or Mora Lainihi, and imagines her laughing nervously and walking away. 

“That Waylon.” Sligo remarks, passing her back the plate of cornbread. “One proud piece of work if I ever saw one.”

“Leave him alone.” Mags chides. “He had a close call, he probably wants to be with his family. Be glad he took the whiting. How’d the statement go?”

Sligo shrugs. “Typical. The woman who took care of Annie took it, she’s not so bad. Didn’t give Waylon any shit, which I’m glad for. He didn’t need any more stress.”

“Vigintia.” Macie cuts in. “That Peacekeeper’s name is Vigintia.” 

She pushes the beans and rice around her plate, separating the beans from the rice from the pale disks of rockfish sausage. “What’s the statement for?”

Mags finishes chewing. “Well, civilians haven’t always been able to get boating licenses. When there are accidents, the Navy will want to know if there was anything that could have been done to prevent it. The Peacekeepers take statements when there’s an accident, the accident gets reported, and the Navy compares it with similar incidents to see if there’s a pattern. If they need to place buoys or discourage people from fishing in areas with high wildlife traffic. The pod of dolphins that came after Waylon might be known to congregate somewhere. They’ll probably place a marker to keep people from fishing around there.”

I should know this. Why am I so stupid? “That makes sense. They never asked me to give one when my parents died, so I wasn’t sure. But I hadn’t seen it happen, so maybe that’s why.”

Sligo almost chokes. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“Well, I just…” She shrugs. 

“They all think you’re too big of a pussy to talk about something that’s already over and done with.” Someone chides at the base of her skull. A girl’s voice, a nattering one with hard r’s and nasal a’s. “Nobody respects you, Annie, Finnick least of all.” Chantilly, you little cunt, leave me alone -. “They all can’t wait until you’re locked up like Darya and they can all forget about you-.”

“-mine is probably still in the archives collecting dust, so good luck.” She tunes back into the conversation as Sligo is silencing himself with a mouthful of sausage. Mags answers him with a bitter laugh.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“The archives?”

Mags, Macie and Sligo all turn to look at her like she’s lost it, which is nothing new.

Macie shrugs. “They get backed up. The reps for the District are pretty busy with the Navy and the fishing quotas.”

“But they keep the accident reports in the archives? Like the Portside archives?”

“I would assume…?” Macie looks at her aunt for clarification. Mags shrugs.

“Where else? They’re public record, they keep them with the marriages, obituaries, birth announcements. Sligo, you mind passing the wine?”

At the Retreat, she remembers when Macie would bring her books to pass the time with. She had asked for yarn and knitting needles, but neither made it past security. The needles could be made into a weapon, the yarn, possibly to fashion a noose if she was desperate enough. Her favourite dress, the white one Saira made for her high school graduation, was rejected because of the lace-up bodice, her earrings because they were worried she would slash at herself with the hooks. She had little reason to wear anything other than a nightgown and even less reason to do anything but read. She read out loud and sometimes Darya would listen. When the weather was bad and it would set Darya off, she would read the same chapter of the same book in the gaps of time where the rain would stop, and Darya would sit on the window seat and stare at her, eyes streaming and jaw slack. 

It was a novel, a cheap paperback Mags must have picked up when she was 20 or so, judging by the date of publication, called The Two Lives of Claudia Bosun . It was about a Capitol woman who defects to 4 while on vacation with her abusive husband, sneaking out of her resort and starting over in a podunk port town. The plot was thin, she attracts the attention of a misanthropic deep sea captain who initially wants nothing to do with her but falls hard when he realizes how much she resembles the wife he lost in a hurricane years prior, they marry despite their differences and everything is perfect. She’d gone into it hoping something horrible would happen, imagined the husband showing up and demanding his wife back, the captain standing his ground, maybe getting his tongue cut out for his trouble or worse. She imagined Claudia getting hauled back to the Capitol, leaping from her penthouse balcony or swallowing a whole bottle of Morphling tablets, something gory and cathartic. She was ultimately disappointed, but every time the weather got bad she would read aloud the chapter where Claudia gets her first good look at Murchadh and every time Darya would stop screaming and sit there and listen. 

Before she leaves for the library in the morning, she puts the book in her bag. She doesn’t know why, has no intention of going all the way to the Retreat and no delusions of handing the book off to that horrible rotten-toothed nurse and telling her to read pages 104 through 122 to Darya when the weather gets bad, but she wants to have it on hand. 

The boardwalk is the exact same again, the same flakes are set up outside the same houses, the same people loiter and avoid eye contact with her. Muirreann’s Majesty is gone for the day, as is Little Leilani , and Calypso Whelk is crying behind her desk at the licensing office. Her seal is under his usual slip and she drops some leftover sausage for him and watches him dive for the pieces. She wonders if he knows who she is, knows who has been feeding him for the past few years, or if he just knows that if he waits there, food will fall within his reach. 

She does everything as she always does, waves a cursory hello to Thalassa and walks to the back of the library and through the glass door marked PORTSIDE ARCHIVES . She finds the marriages, the birth announcements and the obituaries. She finds a large folder jammed in beside the obituaries and flips it open. The pages are sectioned off in small squares, each one holding a pale yellow slip of paper with spaces to be filled in. Date, description of the accident, name of the vessel… The accidents are in order by date beginning with 23 PT, the first accident listed is a grounding in The Flats, a cargo vessel, no fatalities. She flips to the approximate time Anamarija II wrecked and finds it, October 9th, 65th year of Peacetime, sinking and subsequent loss of life, Victory Bay, Portside, District Four. Vessel: Anamarija II. Fatalities: Nereus Cresta and Kari Cresta, nee [redacted]. Statement given by Hadal Breach, witness.  For some reason, it doesn’t upset her. She knew it was there and now she can see it, some evidence that other people knew what happened and cared enough to write it down. She’s never met a Hadal Breach, never even heard the name before.

It takes her a while to find it, and even longer to make sense of it. She balances the folder on her knees and takes her notebook out of her bag, copies the report word for word.

April 29th, 50th year of Peacetime, collision between Naval vessel and civilian craft, subsequent person overboard, Harrington Delta, District Four. Vessel: Palmyra, (registered to Panem Navy) Savage Siren (registered to Merrick Abalone). A note written in by hand: person overboard recovered May 2nd, 50 PT, Darya Strand, nee Abalone, found alive, awaiting additional statement.

When she’s finished, she sits there for a few minutes and stares at the yellow card, remembering Lanna Abalone, the girl she’d gone to school with who has Darya’s light brown eyes and long, narrow face. She’s met Lanna’s mother, but no aunt or cousin. 

The sky is changing when she leaves the library, pregnant rain clouds hovering low above Portside, the sky bright behind them, the air smells wet and cold and just slightly florid. She waits until Thalassa is out of sight to avoid any kind of interaction. She can feel her breath snagging just below her larynx and knows she is miles past the point of conversation. As she passes the town centre, passes the last house on the boardwalk, the flake in the front yard, the man who lives there laying strips of fish to dry, she gives the feeling a name. Rage. I feel rage . Her hands begin to shake. She can’t figure out why that is what her mind has landed on, pity might be more appropriate, or even closure, but she keeps imagining Darya drifting through the surf, comatose and clinging to life, her memories and her intelligence and those first 18-or-so years of her life washing away. Those navy vessels are big, she was lucky it didn’t crush her like a bug. 

She hates herself for getting so attached to this ruin of a woman, this ghost she was forced into close quarters with. It would be so much easier to write her off, to revile her as an eater and a drain on the District and something to shut away and reluctantly maintain. The nurse with the rotten incisor had once wound her hand back while she was washing Darya’s hair as if to slap her. She knows she only had such an easy time at The Retreat because of who she was. She thinks of Lani, a reasonable, bright-eyed former junkie, sobbing at the front desk and begging to see her daughter and the orderly telling her she hadn’t cut her boxes down quickly enough. She remembers that man from down the hall whose wife visited sometimes and how sullen and silent he would get after she left. Her thoughts keep circling back to Darya. She wishes she didn’t care, that she could forget her like everyone else did. I’m only marginally less crazy than she is and I’m the only person who loves her . There’s no way I can kill myself in good conscience.  

There it is. She kicks at a heavy clod of wet sand and digs her fingernails into her upper arms. The rage is coming from the fact that she can’t ever leave unless Darya dies, and if Darya dies it will somehow be even more wretched. 

She is picturing a canoe like Ciaran’s as she ascends the porch steps. She will want it open, she wants to make Darya look pretty, brush her ragged hair and dress her in something other than a standard issue nightgown. One of my nice dresses , she decides, the long yellow one I wore in 6 to meet the mayor . She will be the only one there. She will set the casket on fire herself.

She descends the porch steps and makes for the beach, digging The Two Lives of Claudia Bosun out of her bag. She flips to the bookmarked chapter, sits on the sand and begins to read out loud.

In the morning, she drinks coffee and smokes on the front porch with Macie and talks about nothing. The world feels flat and grey even though the weather is good, the sea is a bright roil that throws Lysandra around playfully, and Sligo is sitting up straighter than he normally does and doesn’t appear to have a drink on him. Macie is pleased about the cake order she’s put in at the bakery for Mags and Seth’s anniversary, which Mags still observes even though he’s been ash on the ocean floor for decades. It grates on her, how happy everyone is, when she knows Darya is back at The Retreat, pacing and mumbling to herself and possibly wondering where she is. She wants to visit but can’t look Darya in the eye, because she is the only person Darya will make eye contact with at all. She pictures her poor friend’s grimy fingernails and greasy hair, the cafeteria gruel they make her choke down three times a day and her dark, lonely room. She wonders if Darya will have a new roommate now that she’s decided she’s never going back to that place, if they will be good to her, if they will read to her and let her sit next to them and stroke the sleeve of their sweater. Her cigarette tastes stale, the coffee bitter. 

Finnick comes out of his house, dressed smartly and wearing that stupid rictus grin of his. He has a distinct way of externalizing his martyr complex, walking around like being alive is some unpleasant task that he’s beatifically pushing through. It drips off of him and stinks like sweat. He reminds her of the plucky orphans in novels, suffering with an enlightened smile, so much so that she wonders if he has a stack of such books hoarded away in his house, studied and annotated.

He reminds me of Ciaran in his Caesar interview , she snipes in her mind. Feronia built his whole personality and now he doesn’t know how to turn it off . 

The thought of Ciaran makes her skin begin to itch. She’s medicated the little twerp away for now, but he always seems to find a way back, popping his little head around corners to reprimand her in a voice that will never drop. Be nice, Annie and you’re being selfish, Annie and sometimes are you sure about that, Annie? She wonders if the voices in Darya’s head are as obnoxious as he is, or if they’re all garbled and broken like her own. 

“Morning.” Finnick greets them, taking the stairs two at a time with a spring in his step that makes her want to hurl her coffee mug at his head. “It’s gorgeous out.”

“You got any plans for the day?”

He shrugs. “I’m gonna give Bijou a call soon, we’ve been meaning to catch up, come up with some talking points for the press tour.”

The name sends a cold prickle down the back of her neck. Macie nods. “I forgot about that. Right before the Games, my God.”

Finnick sighs. “Yeah, it’ll be a shitshow, but we’ll get through it.” When he looks at her, she wishes her body would collapse in on itself and disappear. “Should I pick anything up for tonight?”

“If you want. I’m thinking I’ll do branzino as usual. They ate it at their wedding.”

“Sounds good to me.” He smiles stiffly and raises a hand as he backs down the steps. “Alright, well-.”

Macie waves as he leaves. She stares at his shoulderblades through his insubstantial linen shirt and resists the urge to put her cigarette out on her palm.

Sligo guts and scales the sea bass and she and Macie score them and rub them with herbs and stuff them with slices of lemon and line them up on the grill outside. For a woman who is celebrating an anniversary with a dead man, Mags is in high spirits, two glasses of wine deep and laughing on the back porch with Galatea and Adina, two women of her age who are managing to mask their apprehension about the crazy person in their vicinity. A framed picture of Seth Bowline in strapping middle age rests on the table beside his wife. Adina, whose husband is also dead, seems to like Sligo a little too much, and he plays along, making cracks about how young she looks and overfilling her wine glass. Finnick stands at the edge of the yard and smiles awkwardly and occasionally comes over to look at the fish as they cook. His mind is somewhere else entirely and she hates him for it, imagining all the compromising positions he must be picturing Bijou in as he lurks around and picks at appetizers, never seeming to finish them. Are you too good for the food, too? She stews as he rotates a devilled egg in his fingertips and gnaws at the edges. I’m sorry, your majesty, that we couldn’t provide you with braised giraffe snatch in this backwater shithole. You’ll have to eat slop with the rest of us District scum . 

She watches him all through dinner as he picks at his branzino and performs cordiality, all the while looking like he’s in pain. He talks about the movie, which she tunes out in favour of listening to the dull pulse of the dining room clock, and about the Victory Tour, which she unfortunately has to contribute to. She knows she is sane enough today to be able to discuss what details of the Tour she remembers, but doesn’t want to give him the inch and feigns distress when she feels like he’s had the floor for too long. He gives her a dejected look as Sligo changes the subject to fishing quotas and seems like he wants to continue. She avoids eye contact and pours herself a second glass of wine, just so he knows how sane she really is. 

Mags allows her one more glass after the guests are gone, and they sit together on the living room sofa and look through old photo albums. Two dark-haired girls stand on a rocky beach in ill-fitting dresses made from old sails, the pen scrawl beside them reads Moryana and Morag, 9 and 13 . Below, the older girl walks through the splintered remains of a small marina. Mags, 13, at the site of the Breakwater Bloodbath. We found 4 Capitol shells and one of their black boxes . On the next page, a tall man who looks very much like his daughters in old-fashioned clothing, a loose white shirt beneath an embroidered vest, and a small dark woman with a round face and small black eyes, her hair wound into two braids and threaded with ribbons. They are embracing and grinning at the camera. Carrick and I, taken by our Mags. Numen rest his soul . The man shows up again on a handwritten newspaper obituary- The Jetty’s End Journal- Prefect Carrick Flanagan of the Jetty’s End Men-o-War, loving father to Morag and Moryana, devoted husband to Belisama (nee Fisher).  Prefect Flanagan was senselessly taken from us by a Naval sniper.

“I thought the war was over by then.” She remarks stupidly as Mags trails a finger along the edge of the clipping. 

“It was for them. They were still sending people to clean up the rebel cells.” Mags flips the page. “And there we are.” A young Mags stands in a white dress beside a tall, pale boy in a vest like her father’s. “Me and my Seth. We were married six months before I was Reaped.”

“My God.”

“I loved him. It was an arranged marriage but I did love him very much.”

“I’m so sorry he’s gone.”

Mags puts an arm around her. “We had a good life together. We got more time than most people do. He lived to be 56, in those days, that was old. He died in this house with more money than both of our families ever saw combined with his wife and his niece.”

“And your sister?”

Mags sighs. “Radioacitve tripsiopleurism. Macie was 7. That’s when we took her in.” Mags closes the album. “Let’s get off the subject.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“It’s okay, dear. It’s life. It’ll happen to all of us. Let’s just be happy we’re both out of the way of things that can speed it up.” Mags holds up her glass, she touches it with her own and they both drink. “We have to enjoy life for those who can’t, don’t we?”

She manages to nod. “Did you ever feel like he was still there?”

Mags smiles. “All the time. I see him in the spring squalls, the orchids by the road, I see him in you, in Finnick, everyone who…” She trails off and tilts her head. “...who he wanted a better world for. Don’t let me get sentimental, Annie, it’s no fun for either of us.” She holds her hand up to her eyeline, turns her wedding band with the pad of her thumb. “You just make me one promise, okay?”

“Yeah?”

“Whoever he or she is gonna be, all that matters is that they understand you, even everything that’s dark and complicated, and they love it just as much as the things that are bright and easy. That’s what matters, especially for us.” Mags turns to her with a warm smile. “Just try to find them in my lifetime, alright? I want to make sure they’re good enough for you.”

She lets Mags wrap an arm around her and kiss her on the forehead, pretending against all logic that such a person exists.

Chapter Text

Eudora Spears, a wiry woman with bad skin and lank beige hair, is the only teller he’s ever seen at the Portside branch of Cardew Trust. He knows there are others, but he’s never seen them. Eudora is related to the Whelks somehow, but he can’t remember how, through Ronan’s mother’s side or something, he doesn’t particularly care to find out as he tries to avoid her when he goes in. 

He deposits Ptolemy’s cheque in one of the decrepit self-service kiosks in the back. It groans as he turns it on, chews up the cheque in a series of mechanical crunching noises and displays his piddling balance of tips. He withdraws all of it. The only real payoff of Victorhood is the fact that he will never have to worry about money again. Tips from Ptolemy’s, given primarily as a means to keep assets happy as if they have a choice, are widely understood by Victors to be disposable, thrown around their respective districts. He plans on giving a good chunk of it to that scrappy looking girl whose name he’s never caught who clears the seaweed off Victory Beach with a rake almost twice her size. 

A bell on the door rings. A small, dark-skinned woman in an ugly red-and-blue dress and a WP windbreaker walks in, her short black curls in disarray from the wind. She looks vaguely familiar as he watches her in the small mirror mounted at the top left corner of the kiosk, but he can’t remember where from.

“Hi, Eudora.”

“Coral, look at you, all dressed up. What’s the occasion?”

“Oh, no occasion. It’s nice out, the first day in a week I haven’t been covered in fish guts. Just depositing today. Actually, if you could give me back 15...”

“Alright.” He prays the damn machine will finish his transaction quickly so he can avoid getting sucked into this asinine discussion. 

“I’ve still got some of those cured meats from our Victory Tour basket. I want to buy some cheese, maybe some fruit if Pesca has any. I’m thinking Ben and the kids and I’ll have a nice dinner on the porch, it’s warm enough.”

“Hm, that’ll be nice.” Eudora kisses her teeth loudly. “Victory Tour… I’m glad that whole racket’s over with. If I wanted to see a basket case I’d-.”.

“Be nice. ” Coral warns. “She might be able to hear you.”

There is a long pause before Eudora spits out, “oh, not again. The little whackjob… I’m serious, I’m about to start putting out traps.”

Coral rolls her eyes. “Please, she’s not bothering anybody.”

“She’s bothering me . I don’t want her around here. She’s creepy, look at her.”

“She was on my line at WP before she won, really, she’s not that bad. Remember Aljie Aukai? She’s the same as he was, she won’t bite.”

Eudora glares. “Don’t compare her to Aljie. She knows better. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was faking it.”

“Eudora, please. Faking it to do what, exactly?”

Eudora pauses, can’t come up with anything. “She shouldn’t be loitering. The Flanagans have so much blood money, why don’t they just hire someone to watch her if she’s so compromised? You know, Ronan and Kelp pay through the nose to moor their boats there, she might as well be trespassing.”

Coral sighs loudly, shooting him a sympathetic look when he makes the mistake of looking over. Through the front windows, he can see Annie sitting alone at the end of the slip that Little Leilani shares with Muirreann’s Majesty . Beside her is a can of sardines, a quarter of a pack of bacon and one of those vacuum-sealed sleeves of Whimsiwick frozen prawns, sweating in the balmy March weather.  As nice as it is outside, she’s not dressed for it, opting for a long white dress with worn straps and nothing overtop. He won’t begrudge her that, the winter was colder than usual this year with heavy precipitation and she’s probably sick of sweaters, but he wishes she’d cover the barely-healed purple ladder-rungs up and down her arms. On top of that, she isn’t wearing shoes. He doesn’t like the way she’s rocking back and forth, the way she keeps punching the wood of the dock. She looks crazy .

“I got her.” he says to Eudora, who eyes him suspiciously.

“Sad.” He hears Coral say as he opens the door. “It’s very sad.”

Annie is whispering something when he sits down on the slip beside her, staring down at the water almost desperately. He can make out vague expletives that trail off when she looks over at him, her eyes are so intense it scares him a little. 

“I know they want me to leave.” Her tone is apathetic, her fingers knotted tightly in the fabric of her skirt. “It won’t be much longer.”

“What are you doing?”

“Why do you care?”

“Just wondering.”

Annie pauses before reaching over and popping the can of sardines open. “I’m waiting for the seal.”

“You’re… waiting for a seal?”

“I feed him twice a week. He got hit a few years ago.” She eats one of the sardines. “Now he swims weird.”

“Maybe that’s not a good idea.” he offers. “He might start relying on you. What if you don’t come one day? Or the wrong person gets here before you do?”

She ignores him. “You can go. Mags said I’m allowed to come here by myself.”

“I was just… passing by.” He can’t bring himself to tell her about the conversation inside but knows if she’s not gone soon it’ll look bad on both of them. Annie starts to rock more urgently.

“Stupid idiot, where the fuck are you?”

“Does he have a name?” Annie stops rocking, releases her vice grip on her skirt, and turns towards him with one of the most irritated expressions he’s ever seen, like she’s so fed up with his idiocy that she’s about to feed him to the seal herself. “No?”

“They need to eat about fifteen pounds of fish every day. I don’t even think he gets that, but he hangs around here because the crews drop stuff. Poor little asshole. He tried to bite me once.”

In the murky green water below the slips, he sees something grey dart awkwardly around the edge of the piling to the left. A mottled tube of a body glides out in front of the slip, prompting Annie to move forward. A small, wall-eyed harbour seal breaks the surface of the water, his little canine mouth opening an inch or so like he’s happy to see them. He can see why Annie wouldn’t want to let it starve, it’s cute enough and smaller than other harbour seals he’s seen. He isn’t sure how long they normally live but this one is likely fully grown.

“Took you long enough.” Annie admonishes as she leans out over the edge of the slip to dump out the rest of the sardines. The seal goes for them immediately, and once he’s eaten them all, Annie begins to peel off individual strips of bacon and flick them down towards him. He manages to grab the first two and the fourth in his mouth, but the third ends up plastered along the side of his head.

“I didn’t know seals liked bacon.”

“Mags said I could have it. Here, idiot, your favourite. I’ll see you Wednesday, try not to drown.” Annie opens the pack of Whimsiwick prawns and dumps it out for the seal. He’s quickly joined by a few needlefish and a ragged-looking tarpon. Annie stands up slowly and watches as the seal grabs as many prawns as he can and convulses off through the gathering needlefish and under the dock. She collects the food containers, folding the bacon and prawn bags around the sardine can and tossing the greasy bundle in the trashcan where the slip meets the boardwalk. She pauses, staring in the window of the bank, where Eudora is staring back with a petrified expression.

“We should probably-.” he goes to put a hand on her shoulder but she smacks it away. 

“Do not. Touch me.” Annie capitulates, staring at him like she’s about to rip his face off. “I’m serious.”

“I’m just saying, I’m heading back to-.” 

Annie backs up against the bank window, making Eudora flinch inside. “Touch me and I’ll break your arm.” She pulls at a loose thread in her skirt and stares at him before backing along the edge of the building, where the blue siding of the bank meets the yellow siding of the licensing office. She trails her hand along the wall, over the drain, along the windowsill and over the sign that lists the office hours. Through the window, he can see Calypso Whelk sitting at her desk, staring listlessly at a vase of withering deer orchids. When Annie passes the window and casts a shadow over her eyeline, she looks up and shoots them both a look of disgust. Annie, thank God, doesn’t turn around to look at her, just continues staring at him until she sees something over his shoulder that makes her lock up. She knots her fingers in her skirt and stares saucer-eyed until he turns around to find himself face-to-face with a deeply unimpressed-looking Ronan Whelk.

Before either of them can say anything, Annie has taken off down the boardwalk, not bothering to look back. Thanks , he glowers at her back, if this meathead kills me, it’s on you . He forces a cordial nod, trying to remind himself that he’s been in worse positions than this, ignoring the fact that none of those prior altercations had been with adults. 

Ronan watches him for a long moment before jerking his head towards the building. 

“I… uh…?”

“The door.” Ronan deadpans. “You’re blocking the door.”

“Sorry.” He tries to leave, but Ronan has already begun stepping around him and he finds himself cornered. They both stand still again, and for a second he considers the very real possibility that he’s just fucked up very badly. Ronan only has an inch or two of height on him, but has been working 12 hours a day, 6 days a week since he was 13 and looks like he’s started to settle into the I’ll-Liquefy-Any-Spray-Tanned-Bootlicker-Who-Crosses-My-Path stage of grief. 

He’s palming the outside of his pocket trying to find the outline of his keys when Ronan rolls his eyes and shoves past, making sure their shoulders connect on his way. He pauses, hand on the door, then turns back with a look in his eyes that’s somehow equal parts calm and incensed.

“Look, man, I don’t think it’s a secret that I don’t fucking like you. At all. I think you’re an arrogant bootlicker, I don’t like the way you prance around Portside like we’re all supposed to care that you didn’t bite it six years ago, and I’m sick of your bullshit sympathy. That girl tried her best for my kid, I’ll give her that, and she has the sense to stay out of our way so I suggest you do the same.”

Is that a threat? He doesn’t care to find out, not when he’s staring down a solid wall of labour-hewn muscle vibrating with rage. He forces a shit-eating grin.

“I don’t prance, Whelk.”

Ronan grits his teeth, a vein rising in his neck. “If my wife wasn’t in there, I’d knock you the fuck out right now."

Ronan spits on the sidewalk and makes his way back into the licensing office. He circles around Calypso’s desk, wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head. They stand there, not moving, for a good minute. He notices as he starts to leave that Calypso is crying.

The walk back to the Victor’s Village feels longer than it usually does. Early spring in 4 always brings with it a slight putrescence as the beaches thaw and everything that’s been frozen is wet and rotting. Mom died in April, he remembers, five weeks from now it’ll be five years.

He can see Sligo out in the middle of the bay, line in the water, cigarette in his teeth, bobbing precariously as he talks to himself, or maybe to Lysandra, whatever semblance of her still haunts the boat bearing her name. He wonders briefly if Sligo is as crazy as Annie and just better at hiding it. He hopes against hope that Annie won’t end up like Sligo.

He follows Annie at a safe distance back to the Village. She’s walking quickly, talking animatedly to someone who isn’t there, gesticulating as if she’s ripping them a new one. She stops twice, once to look behind her, at which point he darts behind a fish flake laden with cod at the edge of the marina. She stares in his direction for a while, then resumes walking. The second time she stops is on the beach, where she wades knee deep into the water, soaking her skirt to stare at Sligo in Lysandra . She either doesn’t notice that she’s getting her dress wet or doesn’t care, letting the waves lift and drag the fabric around her calves. Finally Sligo sees her, he turns and waves and begins making for shore. Annie starts walking again.

He’s just passed the edge of the Village and is watching Annie unlock the front door of the Flanagan house when he realizes he can hear his own phone ringing from the porch, and barely makes it in to answer. He knows immediately that it’s a call from the Capitol, steels himself for Ptolemy, feels sick when he hears an entirely different voice.

“I’ll cut to the chase, Odair-.” says President Snow when he picks up. “Livia died last night.”

Shit. Something’s about to happen. She wouldn’t just die without screwing me one last time . “I’m so sorry, sir. Livia was a singularly-.”

“Oh, don’t bother, son. You’re a terrible actor. Anyway, Egeria and I are going over the will and you’ve come up a number of times.” The disgusting old hag, I hope it was excruciating . “Livia requested your presence at her service, specifically as a pallbearer. I’ll be sending a car out for you now, be ready to leave by 8.”

Great . “Of course. Is there anything else you need?”

“No.” Snow replies flatly. “I’ll have Procula find you something to wear and we’ll reconvene tomorrow evening. There’ll be a dinner with the Cardews and a few others, and please keep a level head, your tendency to overimbibe hasn’t gone unnoticed. It’s not a good look, son.”

You have your wife to thank for that. “Of course. Sorry.”

“Alright. We’ll talk later.”

Snow hangs up before he can have the last word, leaving him with a queasy ringing sensation in his head. The room is swaying like it’s on water, he braces himself over the sink and throws up an evil-tasting mixture of coffee and raw stomach acid.

He has just gotten his bearings when he hears the scream from across the road. Guttural, desperate, a headless-Ciaran scream. 

He has always hated hospitals. 

He had been 11 the second time he had gullpox, which is said to always be worse than the first time. At 5, he’d contracted it and not remembered, Mom theorized it had happened while waiting in a breadline between two particularly ragged looking families. 6 years later, his immune system worn down by the first round, he had been running laps for Gil when he felt something change deep in his chest, that sensation of onsetting sickness that is both uncomfortably warm and frigid at the same time. He felt itchy, cold sweat at the back of his neck and a heat deep in his throat, then his strength began to fail. He stumbled to a stop, leaned over with his hands on his knees and vomited up his piddling lunch, half a can of sardines and three crackers. Gil hollered about how he’d be dead by now if he was in the arena, hollered when Mom came over to feel his forehead, and he still heard him hollering as they started the walk home. He doesn’t remember arriving back at the apartment.

They put him in a room with three other gullpox patients; a young mother, her incessantly caterwauling newborn, and Marlin Cliffe, an older boy who was also being trained by Gil and seemed to just lay there catatonic all day. Mom would occasionally talk to the young mother through the germ-screen, whose name he came to find out was Rita, and ascertained that she had no husband. She and her son Blen had both never had gullpox, but Marlin had had it twice. His skin, like Marlin’s and Rita’s and Blen’s, sprouted boils with white heads that cracked open and leaked milky pus and hurt like hell. Rita and Blen were on the mend, but he and Marlin ran scorching fevers and coughed up cloudy phlegm and sweated and seized and, at one point, he stared up at the ceiling and prayed for death. His brain had begun to swell, Mom told him after he’d been home for a week, she’d been told not to get her hopes up. After a long period of unintelligible delirium, he woke one day and saw Marlin’s body sealed in a germ-tight bag, Rita gone, and Blen sleeping fitfully in his crib. It took him a few days to realize that Rita was dead, and only when Blen had tested negative were her parents allowed to enter the room to retrieve their scrawny, pox-scarred grandson.

“It went to her heart.” A nurse told Mom as she filled out his discharge paperwork, as he clung to the hospital wheelchair that he was sure he could feel spinning. “She was ready to go home one day, then three hours later she just flatlined. Only 19 years old. Real tragedy.”

When he finally finds the room Mags has been admitted to, Annie is sitting on the floor in the hallway, curled against the wall, making these horrible choking noises with her face hidden in her knees, her white skirt pooled around her, still damp at the hems. He doesn’t ask, just sits beside her, trying to figure out how to open. She doesn’t want to be touched. He places a hand between her shoulderblades anyway, there is a tepid film of sweat on her skin. 

“It’s okay now.” he whispers. “The doctors here are good. And you found her at just the right time.” Annie knots her fingers in her hair viciously, he wants to pry them loose but is scared of taking her nails across his face. “You know that? It was a really good thing that you were there.” Annie sits up, her face is flushed and the hair that frames it is plastered down with sweat and tears. She hiccups, then slams her head back against the wall, then again and again like she’s trying to knock herself out. He shifts in front of her, holding her face in his hands. “Stop that, don’t do that, you don’t have to do that.”

Annie’s mouth opens and closes a few times before she gets the words out. “She won’t wake up. I can’t wake her up.” It’s the same thing she’d been saying when he found her kneeling next to Mags on the living room floor, sheet white and so paralyzed with fear she hadn’t even started crying yet, hands hovering in space over her surrogate grandmother’s slack body, shaking so much it looked like she was playing invisible piano keys. “She won’t wake up, she won’t wake up, she won’t wake up.”

That was when Macie walked in and dropped her groceries, and he’d yelled at her to start the car, and she’d yelled back asking what the fuck was going on, and he’d yelled again to start the car, then Sligo came up the front walk, then Annie started to scream, announcing once again that Mags wouldn’t wake up.

What they think happened, he manages to ascertain after threatening a particularly bored-looking intern, was that Mags had the stroke around the moment Annie got back to the Village, around the time his phone began to ring. Annie walked in, maybe didn’t see her at first, maybe didn’t put it together, Macie says the anti-psychotics slow down her responses, then he heard the scream. 

“This kind of stroke-.” he tries to hold Annie’s head still but she keeps trying to slam it back, eyes squeezed shut, teeth clenched. “Ann, look at me- this kind doesn’t always kill people. You found her at the perfect time. She’s going to be okay and it’s because you found her.” He tries to maneuver his arms around her but she’s completely locked up, he settles for an arm around her shoulders and a hand between her head and the wall. “Let’s go get some water, give me your hand.”

“She won’t wake up!” Annie sobs, louder this time, people are starting to stare. 

“Shh… She’ll wake up soon. She’ll be okay soon.” He tries to wrestle his arm around Annie’s waist to stand her up but she keeps fighting him. God, she’s strong. She barely eats and hardly ever goes outside, how the hell is she so strong?

The door to the adjoining room swings open right as Annie manages to elbow him in the gut and Sligo comes out looking equal parts concerned and haggard. He zeroes in on Annie, then gives him a look so full of vitriol he can almost taste it.

“Get the fuck away from her.” Sligo orders. “You’re making it worse.”

“We were just talking.”

Sligo seethes. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you thought you were doing, can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”

“Stop yelling.” Annie complains into her knees, hands over her ears.

“Ann-.” Sligo kneels in front of Annie and takes hold of her hands, managing to pull her to her feet. She’s fighting him too, but less. “Let’s go, you’ll feel better if you-.”

“Annie, you don’t have to-.”

“How fucken’ dare you speak to her.” Sligo barks, wrapping an arm around Annie’s shoulders. She keeps her hands over her ears, eyes shut, teeth ripping at her lower lip. “You just don’t know when to give it up, do you? Fucken’ pathological, if you ask me.”

He stares at Sligo for a long beat, at Annie’s face, the way he’s holding her, and decides he’s over being the bigger person.

“Coming from you.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sligo strokes Annie’s hair and glances back into Mags’s room.

“I’m not you. She’s not Phoca.”

He’s almost forgotten what someone’s face looks like in the moment they decide they’re going to kill someone. He hasn’t seen it in person since 65, the way their features flatten out and their eyes glaze over. He barely has time to identify it before Sligo has let Annie go, letting her stumble backwards, and grabs him by the throat. There is a slip of time as the hospital hallway seems to eject the two of them and he’s been thrown to the rough pavement of the parking lot and Annie is once again screaming, standing in the doorway and clinging to the threshold like she’ll get sucked into the fray if she comes outside. He keeps his eyes on her as Sligo brings a fist up and, just as quickly, brings it down right between his eyes. The world disappears in a bright red cacophony of bursting blood vessels and pavement and obscenities and saliva and screaming.

Sligo lands another punch, this time catching him in the jaw, throwing his head sideways and causing the opposite side of his face to grind against the pavement. There is a knee in his crotch and another crushing his ribs, and he can feel the familiar sensation of another concussion when he realizes, delirious, that despite having won the Hunger Games, despite having taken four lives, he has never been in a fist fight. It’s satisfying almost, as the bridge of his nose shifts concerningly under Sligo’s descending knuckles, almost like some rite of passage. This , he thinks to himself through the hot screech of pain, is how regular people do violence .

Sligo raises his fist for another blow, but doesn’t manage to land it. Three pairs of hands have hauled him back. The screaming tapers back into sobbing. Someone descends beside him and two small, sturdy hands find his shoulders.

“Shit, are you okay?” Macie hauls him into an awkward sitting position, he feels one of her hands dab at the blood streaming from his cheekbone. “God, your face… He was completely out of line.”

He leans forward and lets his mouth bleed steadily onto the ground as he considers the fact that everything that has happened to his face was mostly warranted. He talked about Phoca, nobody talks about Phoca.

His right eye is swollen shut, and his left can only make out a blurry approximation of Annie as she stands in the doorway, a nurse is trying to drag her back inside.

“Finnick-.” Macie urges, “come with me, you need to get this looked at.”

“No, I-.” Macie pulls him upright, and he stumbles backwards the second she lets go. “I need to go.”

She stares at him, mouth open half an inch, hand running through her hair and fuck , she looks just like those old pictures of Mags…

“You can’t.” he can tell she’s trying not to sound desperate and failing, “please, you can’t leave now.”

“It’ll be worse if I don’t. They said she was out of the woods-.”