Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Coriolanus Snow was voted President of Panem, he wasn’t surprised, of course not. He deserved to be there. Being President one day was always his plan, and it never should have been as difficult as it was. That was the quietly humiliating part of it all. Even if he had ended up exactly where he was supposed to, the fight it had taken was something vicious.

Society never looked too closely at the Snows, he had their legacy and good standing name to thank for that. And why should they? They had behaved perfectly naturally when everything was lost in the bombing of District 13. They had behaved perfectly naturally when his father died and took any hope of recovering their fortune with him. They had behaved perfectly as their private lives crumbled, and Coriolanus Snow did not for a second let his posture sag or his mask slip as he clawed his way through a life that he should have glided through.

His intelligence and academic prowess had earned him scholarships and propelled him through the Academy, and during the 10th Hunger Games his graduation year, his work with Dr. Gaul had led to him (rightfully) earning the Plinth Prize and finally getting his family back to equal footing. Though it wasn’t enough, and it was not for forever. His cousin Tigris was still stitching hems at the foot of that ridiculous and lazy Fabrica Whatnot, his Grandma’am was still slaving over her roses and fighting a battle with her own mind that they could not afford medication for. But, they were able to pay the taxes. They had a fresh meal each day, and on special occasions they had two. Coriolanus excelled in university, and of course he did. He studied political science, and he studied intensely under Dr. Gaul. He worked internships with gamemakers, some paid and some not.

And when he graduated top of his class in university, he’d smiled gracious smiles, he’d schooled his voice into something resembling modesty and thanked his professors. That night, he’d let himself breathe. Laugh with genuine joy because that path in front of him that was so humiliatingly difficult before felt doable now. The world felt wide open to him for the first time in his life. He remembers his grin splitting open his face when he left that stage with his university diploma and the highest honors and the jealousy of his classmates and knowing it all was his, as it should be, and wrapping his shaking arms around Tigris (hoping she didn’t notice his shaking), and breathing.

For the first time breathing, and it all felt so easy. The air moved so simply, into his lungs and out, it glided and glided. And when Clemensia Dovecote threw her arms around his shoulders and laughed “we did it, Coriolanus,” into his ear he had wanted to tear the hair from her head because she had been breathing like this her whole life. She didn’t know what it was to fight for air, and he shouldn’t know what it was. He should have been gliding through life like she’d glided into his arms, he should have graduated with high honors like it was obvious he would and it was of little consequence anyways because it meant nothing. His future should have always existed whether he’d fought for it or not. Like Clemensia’s had. But it hadn’t always existed, and he was thrilled and thankful and shaking and taking his first breaths, and trying to act like everything was normal and a given. Of course Coriolanus Snow graduated high honors, who else?

And breathing was so easy, and addicting, and it made his fury easier to tamp down. So instead of ripping the hair from Clemensia Dovecote’s head, he’d wrapped his arms around her waist and spun her in a half-circle, breathing “we did it,” into the top of her head like he had been breathing his whole life.

So when 10 years later, at the age of 32, he was voted the youngest President of Panem, Coriolanus Snow was not surprised. He was just breathing, and following the path his life always should have been.

-

It was April, winter was still clinging to the Capitol. Snow had fallen last week, and the frozen ground had yet to let it thaw, keeping the streets icy and white. The view from his office was beautiful, though he hardly ever glanced over it the way he used to. His first year living in the President's mansion he would stand at the windows for hours, staring over the Capitol. It was so beautiful, and the scars of the war didn’t litter the city like it did for so many years after it had ended. That had been one of his first acts, as president. Scrubbing the city clean of any messes. Messes meaning destruction left behind from the rebels. Ravenhill had left them there to serve as a reminder of what they had gone through, everything they had lost in the war. Coriolanus also thinks it was left to keep hatred for the districts at a high. But, from his perspective, that was never something the Capitol would struggle with. No one would forget the war so easily, they did not need their streets damaged and dirty to remember.

His eyes were pouring over a message sent to him from Commander Kilo Knotman who was currently positioned in District 12. There was unrest in 12, but then again there was always unrest in 12. Poorest of the Districts, coal miners, and full of stray rebels. Fighting against his peacekeepers was common to hear from his Commander in 12. Yet, this missive from Knotman was not to notify him of continued fighting against his peacekeepers but of strange activity.

Knotman described several reports of guns going missing from the armory at the peacekeeper base at 12, reports of peacekeepers breaking up strange unexplained backdoor meetings at some local bar, and most importantly of all a group of coal miners being intercepted while attempting to flee the district. Now, concern isn't exactly what Coriolanus felt. Concern implied that it was a problem. People fleeing the districts wasn’t something unheard of, it had been tried before. But that's just it, tried. Coriolanus felt an amused smile tug at the corner of his mouth. There was no escaping from your district, no escaping from Panem. It was so silly of them to think there was a place in this world where the Capitol couldn’t reach you. But District 12 wasn’t anywhere near one of the smarter or more civilized districts like 1 or 2, so it didn’t shock him that they’d have such foolish ideas of grandeur.

That being said, a group actually making an attempt to escape meant that in District 12 they were growing towards something resembling bold. Even if they got intercepted and even if they would be found no matter where they go, he couldn’t have them thinking this kind of direct insubordination would be tolerated. While one attempt to flee from a few people in a minor District really shouldn’t warrant attention from the President, Coriolanus would still take action. He could have them hanged, the rebels were, as of now, rotting in the jail in 12 while Commander Knotman awaited word from himself on how to proceed, as this wasn’t something that had been attempted during Coriolanus’s time as President. Still, he wondered whether hanging was the right way to deal with this.

He stood from his pale granite desk, lifting his suit jacket from the back of his chair and slipping it over his shoulders as he went. He strode out the closed door of his office, past the desk of Valeria, his wide-eyed receptionist whose head shot up the moment his door opened, where Coriolanus stopped to inform her that his chief of staff should be waiting for him when he returns.

This wing of the President’s mansion is alive at this point in the day. Smartly dressed advisors and officials filled the hallways, weaving in and out of offices lining the walls, conversing with others who wore badges, uniforms and pins dictating their achievements and positions, representing all the reasons they deserved to be in this place, standing on his floors, working under him. They cleared his path, some bidding him good morning. He greeted some of them by name, some of them his eyes passing over inconsequentially.

The private wing of the mansion is much quieter, it always is. He passes a few avoxes, some carrying what looks like fresh laundry, some empty handed yet moving with purpose towards whatever task they’ve been assigned, their footsteps silent as they pass by him, eyes down and giving him a wide berth. He enters the dining room, where Tigris is waiting, dressed in a simple pale blue day dress. The table has been set with its usual white lace tablecloth, silverware laid out and a vase of white roses at the center. Tigris, sitting with her back rigid and straight, looks up when he passes through the doorway, a smile coming across her face, yet not reaching her eyes.

“Good morning, Coriolanus.” Tigris greets. They have lunch together nearly everyday, though not dinner or breakfast. Somedays Tigris claims to be too busy for lunch, though he has people who work with Tigris which keep him informed to her actions and whereabouts should he ask, and even when they tell him she doesn’t seem more busy than any other day, he lets her pass on their lunches. He doesn’t want it to feel too much like the truth. The truth being that if he wasn’t practically forcing these daily lunches, she probably wouldn’t see him at all. This wasn’t something new, though. Tigris had been pulling farther and farther away from him for years. He can’t remember the exact moment things between them changed, maybe there hadn’t ever been one. She just doesn't understand what it is to lead a nation. She doesn't understand what it takes or how hard he fought or all the difficult decisions he has to make.

“Tigris,” Coriolanus says as he sits, “how’s the design you were working on? You couldn’t figure out which stitch might work best for it?” He prompts, hoping he was right and that it was the stitching of the dress that was bothering her. Really it could be quite tedious when she rambled on about her designs, but at least it reminded him of home.

“Yes. It’s all fine now,” She says, eyes on her plate as she begins to eat. “I found a simple ladder stitch to be most effective.”

Coriolanus tries for the kindest smile he has. “Well, maybe I could see it, you know you never show me your sketches anymore. Maybe you could put them to use.” Her face shutters, as if she knows what he is about to say. “Tigris,” he tries “Be a stylist in the Games this year. You always wanted all of Panem to see your designs, what better opportunity?”

“No. I’ve told you. I don’t want to be a part of your Games.” She says stiffly, poking at the fresh fruit on her plate. He bristles at the word ‘your’. They weren’t his Games for god’s sake, he wasn’t the one who’d created them nor was he the reason they existed. Was he the reason they were the spectacle they were now? Yes, and for that he was proud. But of course, this was just another thing Tigris didn't understand. “Besides, I already put my sketches to use. Over half of the city wears my designs. Panem does see my work.”

She says this to him like she has something to prove. She doesn’t. He knows she is incredibly talented, half his wardrobe was made by her. But she’s a Snow, and snow lands on top. She should be designing bigger things, better things, more important things. She deserves it. “I know, but you deserve more than this, you could have your work on television!” This shouldn’t be a conversation they have 10 times a year, and yet here they are. What number are they at this year, 4, 5?

“I design every suit Lucky Flickerman wears! I’ve personally made more than half of them. He’s on television, and he wears my suits, so there.” He tries to interrupt, but she stops him with a hard look, finally meeting his eyes for the first time since he’s walked in. “I do plenty, and I’m happy with the work I do. I don’t want my name on something I’m not proud of.”

He huffs at that. “Being a stylist in the Games would be an honor,” he sighs “yet you’re the only designer in Panem who sticks her nose up at it. You deserve this,” she cringes away at that, and he doesn’t pause to wonder at it, “more than anyone in this city. Think of the things you could create! You could design for any of the districts you wanted, I mean surely you’d want 1 or 2, but any of those tributes would be lucky to have you.” She scoffs out a dry laugh.

“They’d be lucky to live, Coriolanus.”

“I cannot believe you,” But he can, this is the conversation they have 10 times a year, so really, the shock has worn off by now. “Honestly, I mean, don’t you remember what they did to us in the war-”

“The Games aren’t about the war anymore, and you know it. They aren't about anything at all. It’s all just senseless.” Her deep blue eyes are hard and cold, her pale hand closed around a cloth napkin, knuckles white. He rests a hand over hers, she looks away from him to the wall opposite her. She’s brilliant, really, she could understand it if he made her, but she never wants to listen to him. Not anymore, anyways. She doesn’t understand anything about human nature, about what makes the Games so important. The reason they’re necessary.

He sighs, patting her hand awkwardly. He can’t believe they’ve forgotten how to touch. Him and Tigris. How to exist around each other.

-“It’s okay, Coryo, I’ll keep you warm. Just hold on to me, okay?” She whispers into the dark of the room. It’s so cold, so cold, his feet are numb and his fingers burn with the chill. Her hands, barely bigger than his, wrap around his pale shaky fingers. It feels like ice is seeping into his chest even if the room is dry. Her cold mouth is pressing into the top of his head. -

He doesn’t say anything back to her. They finish eating in silence, only the scrape of cutlery and the shadows of the occasion silent avox keeping them company. It starts to drizzle, he notices, eyes trained out the wall of widows at the back of the room. Soon, Tigris stands and says she needs to get back to work.

- They’re freezing, and somehow Tigris can always make him feel just a little bit warmer. It’s like she’s got a little sun in her chest, he thinks. -

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, Tigris.” He says, walking her towards the door. She nods, glancing in his direction.

“Yes, right.” She smooths her dress as she walks, hands falling emptily to her sides afterwards. “These last few days have been very busy though, I might not be able to make it. I’ll let you know.”

- “We’ll be okay. We’ll be okay, I promise.” She chants it like a prayer as she rocks them back and forth, her arms moving to wrap around his shoulders while he clings to her dirty dress. They will be okay. He’ll make them okay someday. -

He bites the inside of his cheek, pressing his hand into his pocket until his fingers meet the cool metal of his father’s compass. “I’ll send a car for you, anyways.” he says as she walks out of the room and towards the door.

She nods. She hears him. He hates it. “Goodbye, Coriolanus.”

-“I love you, Coryo.”-

“Have a good day, Tigris.”

-“I love you more, I’ll prove it.” She smiles against his hair. She’s shaking from the cold, too. -

The door shuts behind her.

-

When he returns to his office, his chief of staff is waiting for him, like he asked. Clemensia Dovecote was always his academic rival in the Academy. Not, really, of course. He’d always been far above his classmates, but she’d been the only one to come close to him and stay close in grades. He respected her work ethic and intelligence. Her focus, her determination. She understood, too. She understood the difficult life they had both chosen. When they’d continued their good-natured rivalry throughout the university and through political science classes, he'd been glad to have her around as a peer. He liked hearing her opinion. So when he’d been elected, he’d turned to her to be his chief of staff, his most trusted advisor. She’d accepted it gladly, and with a sharp grin that made him calm knowing she’d be at his side.

“Rough morning, then?” Clemensia asked as he strode through the door, raising an eyebrow at his prickled state. He brushes off the comment with an eye roll, retrieving the missive from Commander Knotman which he’d left sitting on his desk.

“Take a look at this, and tell me what you think.” He says as he passes it into her outstretched hand. She scans it quickly, the corner of her mouth tugging down a bit.

“Hm, well, it’s not like they’d have gotten far anyways. Seems like the situation was kept under wraps, and those guilty have been detained.” He waits, he knows all that, it says so in the letter. “What's bothering you? Seems to me the only thing left is to have them hanged. It’s only 12, after all. Hardly anything to worry about. Why can’t Knotman handle this?”

Coriolanus sighs, pulling his jacket from his shoulders. “I don't want to leave it to Knotman. Yes they wouldn’t have gone far, but they still attempted to flee from Panem, that is a serious offense. It’s treason. Also there is still the matter of the missing guns.”

Clemensia looks bored. “Hence the whole ‘being hanged for their crimes’ and wait,” She frowns, looking back down at the paper still in her hand. “It says the missing guns were collected from the group upon capture.”

“No,” He begins, walking around his desk to retrieve another missive from Knotman dated two weeks prior. “Four guns were reported missing, and three were confiscated from the group fleeing north.” he finishes, gesturing to the paper in Clemensia’s hand. “One is still loose somewhere in 12.”

“Okay, I'll give you that but I still don’t see how this is something for the President to be dealing with. Let Knotman deal with it, I’m sure he’s very capable.”

“No, no. This does fall to me. They need to know that they’re not overlooked in 12.” He stops her as she starts to interrupt him. “Yes, alright, they are overlooked in 12, but that stops now. Double the security in 12, I want more peacekeepers, more cameras, more weapons, and a fence around that woods. No one moves there without me knowing. The rebels will be hanged and their families punished.” Coriolanus states. “And,” he turns from Clemensia’s mildly shocked face towards the window and its rain soaked glass “I will be attending.”

“You’ll - what? Attend the executions?” Clemensia balks. “In 12? You want to go to 12 to watch the executions?”

“Yes. I will. Besides, I visit Districts 1 through 4 quite often.” Coriolanus stares at his own reflection in the polished glass of the window.

Clemensia’s face appears next to his in the window. “But not 12, never 12. Coriolanus, you can’t possibly be serious. That District is… brutal. What is going there to witness the executions going to do any - ah.” He waits for her to understand. “That’s just it, there’s no real point. You want to startle them. Show your face and make a scene.”

“They need to know the Capitol is watching them.” He turns away from the window and sinks down into his desk chair. He folds his hands over the cool surface, beginning to make the plans in his mind. “ I’m watching them.”

-

He departs for District 12 two days later. Commander Kilo Knotman has been informed that he will be in attendance for the executions, which he has made clear to the peacekeepers under his charge. The Mayor is also told of his visit, and told that he will be remaining in District 12 for a few days. But all of them are instructed to keep his presence a secret. The train into 12 isnt too long, thanks to the technology of the Capitol constantly developing.

The train hums quietly as Panem passes by the large window to his left. His train car is empty, but lavish. There's a table on the opposite side of the car full of food, though he hadn’t eaten much. It was lunch time, and he wasn’t used to eating it alone. He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much, honestly he eats every other meal alone. Maybe he just likes seeing her eat. It’s been a very long time since he and Tigris didn’t have a full plate, or even half of one, but sometimes he can’t help the relief that expands in his chest when he walks into the dining room to see a full meal waiting for him. When Tigris greets him everyday for lunch, he can’t help scanning her frame just to be sure she’s not the skinny malnourished girl she once was, she was healthy, she was okay. He thinks he’ll never get used to the pride he feels when she doesn’t shove food down her throat the second it’s presented to her, she just eats, she just breathes, she’s not starving. She’s okay.

His eyes pour over the reports in front of him. They're overviews of the work done in 12, reports of how many workers they have in the mines, their hours and wages, the work they do. He’s familiar with this, he reads these kinds of reports for all the Districts but he wants to be sure he hasn’t missed anything. He also reads through files he had requested from Knotman, which were the information from the rebels and their families. He’s not completely sure how to punish the families of the rebels yet, but one of them has a young son and the reaping is only a few months away.

They arrive half past noon in District 12, and he goes straight to the home of the Mayor. It’s a shabby thing, the furniture is all incredibly old and faded, the wallpaper is peeling at the high corners of the rooms, and the hardwood floors are scuffed and creak under his dress shoes. Still, he accepts the house tour from the Mayor who is sweating a little under Coriolanus’s eyes. He’s presented with his room which seems to be the nicest in the house, and instructs his assistant Valeria, who had come along with him, to have his things brought there.

He’s told repeatedly what an honor it is to have him here, and how they hope he continues to visit. His eyes roam over the worn suit jacket hanging over the Mayor’s shoulders, and tries not to cringe as he knows it must be his best suit if he’s wearing it in Coriolanus’s presence. The seams are stretched, what must have once been a decent shade of navy faded to a dull gray blue, edges of the fabric fraying. He meets the Mayor’s daughter, a 20 something girl with an acid sweet smile and a whining voice. He hates her immediately.

The executions take place early the next morning. He dresses in one of his more simple black suits, one designed and made for him by Tigris, she’d given it to him as a gift when he’d been elected 2 years ago. He decides wearing black is the respectful choice, and doesn't want to appear too overdressed in the poorest of the Districts.

As he rides in a nondescript black van, flanked with vans full of peacekeepers in front of and behind it, he adjusts the white rose pinned to his lapel. Hangings were an old practice, an old method of execution. When he first assumed presidency, he thought he might do away with them, have executions be a bit cleaner, just a simple gunshot to the back of the head. But, then he decided it was the gruesomeness of a hanging which people needed to witness. They did not need an execution to be easier to watch, that would not convey the message. So, though they were quite disturbing, the hangings would stay.

The crowd was already gathered in the town square when he arrived. His peacekeepers kept the people in organized groups, all neatly lined up and facing the large wooden stage. Heads turned to watch the 3 black vans come to a stop, and he waited until Commander Knotman pulled open his door. The sun was blinding, but he kept his eyes forward and focused on the faces of the citizens of District 12.

The whisperings broke out immediately. The words “it’s President Snow” passed through the crowd like a wisp of wind. Some kept their eyes trained on him like they doubted he was real, some turned their wide eyes to those next to them, putting their heads close together to make sure others were seeing what they saw, to try and understand what he was doing here.

They drank in the sight of him, and he could feel the unease radiating off of them. He walked directly onto the stage, back perfectly straight and his shoulders back, face completely schooled and masked. He didn't look at them yet, listening to their shuffling feet, their rapid whispers, letting himself breathe it all in for a moment and then moving to the microphone.

“Good morning, District 12. I’m glad to be here with you all, though I do wish it was under different circumstances. The acts committed by the rebels we are here to punish today were treason, and will be treated as such. The rules enforced in each of the Districts are there for your own safety, and to keep Panem from falling into chaos.” His voice was clear over the speakers in the square, his words carefully chosen. The whispers had stopped, and none of them seemed to be breathing. He thinks they were waiting for him to reveal the true reason he was there. He would. “The Districts are safe. The Capitol strives for your prosperity above all, that is why we govern you. Do not think we have abandoned you here in 12. We are watching. Do not be foolish, District 12.”

Some dropped their eyes to the ground, some stared directly at him. He met their eyes, and he spoke with finality. Some looked shaken, like they fully understood his words, and others looked twisted up in their anger. He didn't care what they felt as long as they heard him. Knotman began to read the charges of the criminals, and Coriolanus moved to stand on the side of the stage. The rebels were marched forward, bags over their heads and hands chained.

Someone in the crowd was weeping, but it was hushed, like they were trying to quiet their cries. A man in the front row was visibly shaking, clenching his hands into fists at his sides, his eyes welling. A woman was cradling a baby, tears pouring silently down her pale cheeks, eyes trained on the man on the far left as they slipped the noose over his throat. She pressed her hand over the back of the child’s head, and looked like she was fighting to take each breath. She would be okay.

Knotman finished reading the charges, and the names of the guilty. The whole square seemed frozen for those few seconds. And then, the trapdoor fell from under the feet of the guilty with a loud bang and someone screamed. Coriolanus thinks it may have been the woman with the baby, but he didn't know, his eyes remained focused on the swinging bodies of the now dead rebels. The rebellion in District 12 would die with them, he would be sure of it.

-

Though the executions were done, he would stay in District 12 for a few more days. Just to be sure everyone saw him, and understood the message. He oversaw the installation of 50 brand new security cameras around the District, and worked with Knotman to create new schedules to accommodate the 45 extra peacekeepers he was permanently assigning in 12 starting tomorrow. Next, they discussed the full searching of the homes of the rebels to attempt to locate the missing gun. Coriolanus had instructed Knotman to have the rebels interrogated while they were still alive, but they hadn’t been able to glean any information about the location of the gun. Then, he met with a construction team he’d had sent from District 2, and approved the design for the fence they would be building for the next week around the woods on the outskirts of District 12. Finally, he went to both the major coal mines, met with the supervisors working there.

That evening he was eating dinner at the Mayor’s table, all the meals were supplied by the Capitol, thank god, he had no interest in whatever the Mayor’s kitchen would have made. The Mayor and his daughter (what was her name again - Mayfair, was it?) were both incredibly dull people. All they had to offer was overdone flattery towards him, and boasting about their accomplishments. What accomplishments they had achieved in District 12 he had no idea, specifically because he had taken to tuning them out and sorting through his schedule in his head instead. At least then this time felt enriching in some way.

They had stopped trying to engage him in conversation after a while, whether because they ran out of flattery or achievements to boast about (the ladder wouldn’t shock him in the slightest), and instead Mayfair was droning on about some petty squabble with her boyfriend. The only reason he began listening to this was to internally laugh at the fact that some poor young man was stuck with this girl.

“And he keeps on going back to see that awful Lucy Gray, and I can’t even imagine why he was with her in the first place, daddy, she’s not even that pretty, and she can barely hold a tune, but everyone here seems to think she’s the greatest thing to ever happen to 12.” She paused to take a breath and Coriolanus thinks this might have been the kind of entertainment he’s missing from his life.

“Forgive my interruption, but who is Lucy Gray?” He asks, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Mayfair startles at him speaking, and her mouth falls open a bit when she realizes he's speaking to her. Her father cuts in when she takes too long to respond. “She’s a performer down at the Hob. Her and her family live down by the Seam.”

Mayfair jumps in again once more at the chance to talk about Lucy Gray. “She performs, but she’s no good. No good at all. She and her little ‘family’-” Mayfair makes air quotes and twists up her face when she spits out that word, “are all rude, and strange, and her dresses are absolutely ridiculous. She’s got no class. None at all.” Coriolanus hopes Mayfair isn’t implying that she has class. “I’ve got no idea why Billy Taupe ever ran with them or cared about her in the first place.” She says with a whine creeping into her voice.

He wonders if he’s supposed to know who Billy Taupe is. But, then as she continues to complain about Billy Taupe caring about ‘that silly Lucy Gray’ (he wonders how many adjectives she'll have used to describe Lucy Gray by the time this dinner is over), he assumes Billy Taupe must be the boyfriend.

“Anyways they’re singing tonight at the Hob, and Billy Taupe wants to go, but no way, I can't stand hearing Lucy Gray’s mediocre voice all night long, I think it’ll just kill me daddy, it’s terrible.” Her father hums as if he’s listening, but Coriolanus thinks he might be the one arranging his schedule in his head now. He suspects the Lucy Gray slander is a common conversation topic.

Coriolanus considers Mayfair’s words that Lucy Gray and her family are performing tonight at the Hob. He remembers the name ‘Hob’ from studying all high-profile places in District 12 on the train Ride from the Capitol. It’s a bar near the center of the town, it’s also where peacekeepers reported seeing shady deals taking place, and where many brawls break out between citizens and peacekeepers. He wonders at how it might shake them to see their President standing in that very bar and smiles a little to himself. He thinks he’ll go and see a show tonight.

-

He asks Valeria to go and purchase a ticket for tonight’s show at the Hob, but 30 minutes later she returns to tell him that apparently it’s free entrance for the shows. He can’t believe that they’re not charging money for their performances, even if they’re as awful as Mayfair says, this is District 12, surely they could use the money. He changes into one of his favorite suits, another one designed for him by Tigris, an intricate deep navy blue with barely noticeable swirling rose designs over the lapels. A pearly tie matched the white button down he had on underneath. He makes sure he looks every inch the President that he is. Then, it’s time to leave.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

Lucy Gray had been a performer her whole life. Not always on a stage, though. She had been putting on performances for every person she met, every move she made was just another step in her dance that never ended. She works to charm every person she speaks to, because she wants them to like her, adore her. And they do. Sometimes she wonders if she is just charming and likable. Sometimes she worries she’s some master manipulator who’s got the world fooled. But if she’s wearing a mask for the world, it must be sewn onto her face because for the life of her, she’s not sure who’s underneath it.  

If there’s a version of her who’s not constantly bathed in stage lights and smiles, she’s never met her. And frankly, she's got no interest in someone that boring anyway. So master manipulator or born charmer, either way people like her and that’s all she wanted, so she’s really not planning to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

She was painting her red lipstick onto Maude Ivory’s mouth, because she’d made a big fuss this morning about being old enough to wear makeup like Lucy Gray does. “Hold still, darling, or I'll smear this and you’ll have to go out there looking like a little vampire.” 

“Aren’t vampires beautiful?” Maude Ivory giggles, but stops wiggling in her seat. 

“Well none so beautiful as you, angel, look,” Lucy Gray spins her around so she can see herself in the dirty mirror in their dressing room at the Hob. Maude Ivory’s face lights up like a firefly, learning close to the scuffed surface. “My, you’re pretty as a princess, Barb Azure, come here and look at Maude Ivory.”

Barb Azure walks over while slipping another earring in her ear, laughing at the look on Maude Ivory’s face. “You look all grown up and ready for the stage! Here, how about you help me with my makeup?” Maude Ivory immediately digs into the small bag with their limited makeup products and starts to pull things out.

Lucy Gray sits down to finish tuning her guitar, picking at the strings and humming along with it until she was sure it was perfect. She slips into the dress she’d brought along for tonight, the top corset covered in stitched flowers and the bottom half a multi-tiered red ruffled skirt that ended at her ankles and flared around her when she spun. She was about to lace up her once-shiny brown boots when someone started impatiently knocking on their door. 

“Girls? Are you decent?” Tam Amber’s voice came through the wooden door, while he continued his banging. “This is very, very urgent so-”

“Yes, yes, come in.” Barb Azure called out. Tam Amber practically slammed the door off its hinges in his haste to get into the room. “Slow down, what’s got you all twisted up?” 

Tam Amber’s face was a little pale, and he was doing his little nervous habit of cracking his knuckles over and over again, which Lucy Gray knew was not a good sign, as Tam Amber was usually the steadiest of them all. “It’s - okay, so I was sitting with Clerk Carmine out back and we were trying to get my manolin all tuned up because you know how bad it can get, and then CC got thirsty so we thought we’d grab some water from the bar, and then we ran into ole’ Jamie while we were in there and, well, you know how easy it is to get caught up in conversation with him, and then we - well okay, so then - okay I-”

“Tam Amber?” Lucy Gray cut in. 

“Yeah?” 

“Please just spit it out.” 

He took a big breath. “The President is out there.” 

No one spoke for a good long second. Maude Ivory dropped the beat up brush she was using for the rouge on Barb Azure’s cheeks. Barb Azure, who had far too much rouge on, was stock still with her mouth hanging open. Lucy Gray felt some manic laughter creeping up her throat. 

“The President.” Lucy Gray said.

“Yes.” Tam Amber nodded with a grimace, looking like he was very much ready to throw up his guts, and honestly if he didn’t, Lucy Gray might just. 

“Of Panem?” 

“Yes, Lucy Gray, what other president is there?” He said a little frantically. Lucy Gray, who was just trying to be clear, finally felt that manic laughter escape her. She dropped her laughing face down into her red skirt, and heard Barb Azure let out a long sigh. 

“Lucy Gray do not laugh right now, oh my god. What is he doing here? What the hell is the President of Panem doing in the Hob?” Barb Azure said while Lucy Gray tried to stifle her bubbles of laughter. 

“Probably the same thing he was doing at those executions a couple of days ago!” Lucy Gray said with a grin as she finished lacing up her boots. “Trying to scare us.” She hadn’t been there at the executions, choosing to escape into the woods when the peacekeepers had gone around rounding people up, but Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine had been and they’d told her about seeing the President there and the brief speech he’d given. 

“Yeah, well,” Tan Amber said as he started pacing their little changing room. “It’s working very well.” 

“Wait, so he’s - he’s going to watch us perform?” Maude Ivory said, her bright red mouth now turned down into a shaky frown. Lucy Gray walked over and knelt down in front of her, running a hand through her long blonde hair. 

“I think so. But you know you don’t have to sing tonight if you don’t want to, honey, that would be okay.” Maude Ivory’s brown eyes looked frightened for a moment, but then she shook her head and gave Lucy Gray a smile. 

“No. I want to sing.” 

“He’s just another person in the bar, you probably won’t even be able to see him. You know how dark the crowd can be. Don’t go trying to spot him in the audience either, just sing as beautifully as you always do, alright?” 

Maude Ivory nodded her head. She was so brave, Lucy Gray felt her own spiked nerves settle a little at the surety in her smile. If Maude Ivory could stay strong and not fear a thing, what should she have to fear? Lucy Gray met Barb Azure’s eyes, which were wide and questioning. She nodded her head and reached over to squeeze her hand. “Come on now, don’t say you’re backing out on me.”

Barb Azure shook her head and barked out a laugh, “I’d never hear the end of it.” 

“Oh god, so this means we’re actually doing this?” Tam Amber said from where he was still pacing, heels slamming harshly into the beat up wooden floor. 

“We’re doing this,” Lucy Gray said while peeking in the mirror to make sure her hair was perfect. “He’s probably used to making everyone nervous. Let’s go show him he’s got nothing on us.” 

Tam Amber groaned, but headed for the door, mumbling something that sounded an awful lot like “but he’s the President. ” under his breath.

-

It was two minutes until they went on, and they were all standing together in the back. Clerk Carmine was tapping his foot impatiently (or nervously), while Lucy Gray pinned a few silver star-shaped clips into the braid at the back of Barb Azure’s head. 

“It’s not too late,” said Tam Amber. “We could just say we aren’t feeling well and high tail it out of here.” 

Maude Ivory giggled. “You're such a scaredy cat, Tammy, he’s just a silly old boy at the end of the day.” 

Tam Amber sputtered and threw his hands up in exasperation. “I am not!” 

“Are too.” 

“She’s right.” Clerk Camine chirped in.

“I am not! Shut up, CC.” 

“Nope,” Lucy Gray laughed. “She’s right, you are being a scaredy cat, and he’s just a silly boy. Besides, those Capitol stiffs have probably never had a show like this before, let's make it a life-changing one for our dear, doting President.”

Barb Azure twisted the watch on her wrist over. “It’s about that time, guys.” 

Lucy Gray tugged Maude Ivory into her side and gave her family a grin. “Time to put on a show.”

-

Like she said, Lucy Gray was always performing. But when she actually had a stage to step up onto, felt the warmth of the lights hit her, heard the voices in the crowd, it felt like the whole world closed up. Like time was wrapping its sweet arms around her and stopping everything else dead in its tracks. She couldn’t help grinning like a cat once the cheers started, and the barkeeper introduced them. The lights on, guitar strings under her fingers, she might as well be lounging on the very top of the world.

“Well good evening, District 12!” Lucy Gray said brightly into the microphone. “I must say we missed all your beautiful faces, and call me vain, but it sounds like you might have missed us too!” She laughed at all the cheering that followed. 

Her eyes couldn’t help but scan the room and take in the noticeable changes to the atmosphere. Firstly, there were rarely ever on-duty peacekeepers in the Hob. One maybe, sometimes two, and even when they were in uniform they seemed loosened up and relaxed, guns down by their sides, leaning up against the wall. But there were at least 20 in here, and they looked like vultures circling starving animals, waiting for something to go ahead and die so they could swoop in and feast. Lucy Gray was no fool, obviously their wide eyes tracking the room and guns clutched tightly in their white-gloved hands was to make sure no harm would come to the President. She didn’t see the man himself, to be fair she wasn’t sure what he looked like, but she was sure she’d know him when she saw him. Although there was a large gap towards the back right corner of the bar, like people were avoiding it, there was a group of peacekeepers gathered there, so she was sure that’s where he was. She didn’t let her gaze linger there, not for longer than a half second, but she thinks she may have seen a flash of blond hair. 

“Alright y’all, alright now, my family and I we’ve got some songs caught in our throats that we are desperate to get out if you’ll let us-” she laughed again when loud cheers cut her off, “and it’s no fun if we’re singing and moving alone, so if you know them go ahead and sing with us, and if not just move your feet and enjoy!” 

Lucy Gray felt her fingers start to move over the strings of her guitar, muscle memory taking over as her family joined in and they kicked off the very first song of the evening. She turned to Maude Ivory and they spun around each other and laughed at the thrill of performing as the music filled the space between them. She stepped up the microphone and sang out the first notes of the song, and then she was lost to it all. 

-

They were about halfway through the set, going strong as always, Lucy Gray happy to see that Tam Amber’s nerves had worn off, sunshine painted over his face while his fingers danced and jumped over the strings of his mandoline. Clerk Carmine was the stillest one of them all, focus clear on his face but his eyes were bright as they looked around the room, a small smile tucked into the corner of his lips. Barb Azure had her head back, black boots stomping, and a laugh bubbling out of her while her bass acted as the steady heartbeat of the music. And Maude Ivory, well, she was just like Lucy Gray. She had time’s sweet arms around her, and the whole world in her hand while she backed up Lucy Gray’s vocals. Lucy Gray’s red skirt was fanning out around her while she spun and spun and grinned into the songs that flew from her lips. 

The crowd was as alive as them, dancing and hollering out the lyrics. Some laughed with their friends on the outskirts of the room, some couples held each other and shared kisses in the dim lighting, and even some of those straight-as-an-arrow peacekeepers were tapping their feet. 

That's when she saw him. Her fingers stuttered over the strings for a split second, but she was thankful her voice kept up the song. 

And it was him, the President. Not because of the expensive suit on his wide shoulders, not because of the peacekeepers around him, or because of the heavy signet ring glinting on his finger. But because he seemed like his own force of gravity, a black hole at the back of the room, sucking in anything that got too close and destroying it. His authority felt like it was reaching out across the room to steady her, to take her by the shoulders and hold her still, keep her facing him, looking at him, it was clearing the warm fog in her head, or maybe making it worse. She wasn’t sure, she couldn’t think about anything really. 

Because she just - she thought he’d be old . She knows he was only elected a few years ago, but she thought he’d be somewhere in his 60s. But he wasn’t, he was young, probably only a few years older than herself. And he was disturbingly beautiful. His hair was light blond, wavy and very neatly styled. And from her spot on the stage she thought his face looked very dangerous, the dim lighting making the sharp parts of his face seem like blades. He was seated, but looked tall, taller than Lucy Gray to be sure, and probably taller than Tam Amber. His whole body seemed tense, like a tiger preparing to pounce. 

He was too far away for her to be sure of the color of his eyes, but something deep in the back of her head whispered blue , they must be blue. Pale, icy blue. Though his eyes were bathed in shadows, she knew he was looking at her. She could feel the weight of his gaze, pressing down on her, so focused, so intense she thought she might just start burning from it. He relaxed just a fraction, his chin tipping up as if in approval that she was looking at him too. 

This was the man who ordered those executions yesterday. This was the man who did nothing to fix the horrible imbalance of wealth between the Capitol and the Districts. Here he was, sitting in the poorest of the Districts where people were starving, rib cages sticking out from too-thin clothes, he was sharing a room with people who worked 18 hours a day, purple bruises under their tired eyes. And he did nothing. These were the people, his people, and he did not care for them. This was the man behind the Hunger Games, the man who sent 24 children to their death every july. And she was standing here, what? Mooning over his looks? She felt nausea twist in her stomach at him, at herself. 

She ripped her eyes away from him, choosing to look instead at the happy faces. Lovely, smiling faces of those who loved their music enough to forget about the twisted tyrant who sat in their bar. Who were dancing, and clapping, and deserved a good show. So Lucy Gray delivered, slipping back into the fog she’d fallen out of for a few seconds, leaning back in time’s arms which had let her go. Back into the music beating in her chest, she leaned into the all-too familiar burn in her fingertips from strumming the guitar, the sound of her voice over the microphone. 

But she could still feel the weight of his stare, and she still felt like she might burn. She didn't look his way again, didn’t want to see his beautiful, sharp face or his dark eyes. The rest of their set felt like forever, but when the final notes rang out and the crowd in front of them broke into applause for the first time in her life she felt relieved that a show was done. She tucked her guitar by her side, thanking the crowd, flashing them another smile before practically running off stage. 

“Are you alright, Lucy Gray?” Clerk Carmine asked as he caught up with her. “You sure seemed in a hurry to get out of there.” 

“Oh, no, darling, I’m fine. I just wasn’t feeling my best. Maybe I'm coming down with something.” She said simply, letting an easy smile smooth out the lines on her face. “But hey, you were amazing tonight! You had a really good show, I’m proud of you.” 

He laughed, swinging his arms as they walked. “Ah, that was nothing.” 

“Well, then, in that case, I expect to see that kind of performance from you every night from now on.” She joked, poking him in the side. His brown eyes sparkled a little, back here in the nothingness of the Hob. She pulled open the door to the dressing room for her and the girls, telling him to grab Tam Amber, and they could leave in about 10 minutes. 

When the door closes behind her, she goes and sits on the chair in front of the mirror. She stares at herself in the mirror for a few seconds, her red lipstick and the black eyeliner. Outside the door she can still hear the laughter and chatter from the main part of the bar, but it all feels miles away. 

She presses her fingers over her temples, soothing a phantom headache, seeing blond hair in dim lighting behind her eyes. A dark suit fitted neatly over broad shoulders. 

She was grateful when the girls poured into the room, catching the questioning glance Barb Azure threw her way and brushing it off with a smile. She joined in their chatter about how it was a good show, the audience was alive. 

“Did ya’ see him sitting way in the back of the room, Lucy Gray?” Maude Ivory asked. 

“Yeah, did you?” Barb Azure said, her voice stressed with a double meaning. 

“Don’t say it,” Lucy Gray couldn’t help but laugh a little, “you better not even be joking about that, Barbie.” Barb Azure barked out a laugh as she began pulling the braid from her hair.

“First of all, I didn't even say anything, and second of all, I’m not joking about it I’m merely…commenting.”

Lucy Gray sighed as she tucked her guitar back into its weathered case. 

“Commenting on what? What are you talking about?” Maude Ivory asked, her head swinging between Lucy Gray and Barb Azure confusedly. 

“Nothing, honey. It was just strange seeing the President, that’s all. Will you pack up the makeup?” Maude Ivory nodded and began to collect the makeup and drop it into the little blue zip up bag. 

Lucy Gray was pulling the bobby pins from her styled hair, her thick, curly brown hair falling over her shoulders and around her face, when somebody knocked on the door. 

Jamie, who owned the Hob and worked as a bartender, called from behind the closed wooden door. “Lucy Gray? There’s, uh, well there’s someone who wants to talk to you.” 

Her stomach fell down to her scuffed brown boots, spine pulling her upright. Her eyes snapped up to meet Barb Azure’s, whose mouth had fallen open a bit. “No way it’s…” Barb Azure whispered. 

“Lucy Gray what if it’s the -” Maude Ivory started. 

“Jamie,” Lucy Gray was up and at the door in a second, pulling it open just a fraction so she could see a sliver of Jamie’s face. His mouth was twisted up in a grimace, eyes worried and apologetic. “Who is it?” 

Jamie didn’t say anything. 

Lucy Gray heard it loud and clear. 

“What’s he want with me?” She asked, fingers gripping the door handle so hard she thought the metal might just crush into dust in her palm. Why? What the hell could the President of Panem have to say to her? 

“I don’t know Lucy Gray, maybe he just wants to compliment the show, I mean y’all were great tonight, maybe it’s some fancy Capitol custom that you say hello to performers, maybe it’s only polite to him.” Jamie rambled back. 

Lucy Gray dropped her head against the door. Her mind felt like someone had paused it, and couldn't think of anything at all, just why, why, why and no, no, no. 

“He didn’t seem angry or anything, he was just, well, determined?” 

“Determined? To see me?” She asked.

Jamie nodded. He leaned in a little closer, starting to speak again.  “I’m sorry, I’d say you don’t have to but, it’s just, he’s the President.” He said a little hopelessly. She felt hopeless. She couldn’t say no, but dear god , she really did not want to ever be any closer to that man than she was when she was on that stage and he was across the room. Imagining him standing in front of her, speaking to her, eyes unshadowed, blue , looking at her -

Just the thought made a manic scream build in her chest. She opened her mouth to let it out and - “Okay, just give me a second and I’ll be out there.”

Jamie’s face fell a little, and he spoke as if he hated his next words, rushing them out of his mouth. “I’m sorry, Lucy Gray, he wants to speak to you in private.”

“ What ? ‘Private’? So he’s coming in here, is what you’re saying.” 

“I’m sorry, really, -”

“It's fine Jamie, just… just send him back. Let's get this over with.” She closed the door, and took a steadying breath. When she turned, Maude Ivory and Barb Azure were watching her with wide eyes. 

Lucy Gray wasted no time shooing them from the room. They protested, saying they weren’t going to leave her, and whatever the President wanted to say he could say to all of them, but Lucy Gray was practically pushing them out the door. Once they were gone, Lucy Gray knew he’d be here any second. She’d left the door of the room open. 

If he wanted to speak to her, it was a performance. Everything was a performance. She could do this. She slipped into her persona, fitting it over herself like her favorite dress. She settled into the air around her, she wouldn’t let him know he’d thrown her off. She fluttered around the room, trying to calm her heart as it pounded against her chest. Deciding to finish putting away the makeup and tidying up the room a little. As she packed the rest of the makeup away, she knew he had entered the room.

He had moved silently, but she felt that familiar sensation. A new force of gravity had entered the atmosphere, sending her head off balance. He stole away the air in the room. His presence wrapped around her like a ghost, cold and unnatural. 

She turned around to face him, a sickly sweet smile pulling at her lips, she would speak first. “Well, if it isn’t the Capitol’s favorite man, I never thought I'd have the honor. It’s lovely to meet you, President Snow.” 

Heaven and hell, she truly was not ready to see this man up close. She had thought he looked sharp, dangerous before. He was brutal. Destructively gorgeous. In this clear, even lighting, his cheekbones were high and elegant, casting soft shadows which led down to his strong jaw. His hair was as perfect as it had seemed, it looked gelled, and like he was trying to smooth back or even hide the way it curled. She immediately wanted to mess it up, thinking messy hair would probably irritate him to no end. She thought it might make him look a little less intimidating, she wondered if he even might look boyish or sweet with blond curls falling over his forehead, would it be long enough that he’d have to brush it out of his eyes? She had to stop herself from trying to picture it. But it was his mouth that made her angry, a hint of a smirk pulling at one corner of his lips which were so perfectly shaped it made his whole face look like he’d been carved by an artist. A sick, twisted artist. 

His eyes were blue. Like the color of a frozen over lake, like a winter sky, like watercolor paints. She hated how beautiful it was. 

When he spoke, his voice was deep and sure, washing over her like a ripple on water. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Miss Baird. That was quite a show.” His strange Capitol accent made his words lilting, pulling softly at his vowels. Like music she’d never heard before. 

“Oh, please, call me Lucy Gray. And thank you kindly, my family and I are just glad we get to share our music with others. No point in performing if there’s no one to watch you, right?”

“I completely agree, Lucy Gray.” She immediately regretted telling him to call her by her name. She felt the way his voice wrapped around her name like hooks sinking deep into her. “So your whole family performs? Or are there more of you who don’t take the stage?”

Why did he want to know? He was no normal man, and it felt wrong giving him information about her family, but she couldn’t refuse to answer. And even if she did, she was certain he’d have no trouble attaining the information. “No, we’re all performers. We’re Covey, we used to move all around performing everywhere.” 

He looks interested in this, one of his brows lifting. “So why are you now living in District 12?” 

“Just the way the cards fell, I suppose.” 

“Hm.” Snow’s eyes dart over her face, before he seems to think of something else which causes that hint of a smirk to return to his mouth. Her stomach flips. “Did you know I’ve been staying at the Mayor’s house?” 

“Uh, can’t say I did.” She responds, the end of the sentence tipping up like a question, quite sure this has nothing to do with her. This interaction felt a bit like a game of chess.

“I met the Mayor’s daughter. She’s got quite the opinion of you.” Lucy Gray can’t help rolling her eyes at the mention of Mayfair. That girl is so sour when it comes to her. She doesn’t even know why, it’s not as if Lucy Gray did a thing to her. If you asked her, she’d say Mayfair should dump Billy Taupe and they should plan his downfall together. But Mayfair decided she’d rather have a cat fight with Lucy Gray over some misplaced jealousy and blame. 

“Oh, Mayfair. I’m sure she’s been talking all kinds of poison in your ear about me, huh? She’s a colorful character, that’s for sure.” She laughed a bit, thinking about President Snow in his fancy suits, probably drinking tea with his pinky in the air, signet ring glinting, listening while Mayfair whined about Lucy Gray. 

“Not nearly as colorful as you.” He says, eyes flashing down to her red skirt before meeting Lucy Gray’s and pinning her in place with that heavy stare of his. Unease twists in her chest at being complimented by this man. Unease and something she does not care to name. “But she had so much to say I thought I might make the judgment myself.” 

“And? What have you found, President Snow?” Her voice had dropped a little.

He took a step closer, his height forcing her to raise her chin a little higher to keep their eyes locked. “I see why she’s so jealous of you. You were stunning, Lucy Gray.” She twisted her fingers into the fabric of her skirt, mouth running dry. She hated it. “So tell me again, what are you doing here?” 

“I told you, it’s just how the cards fell.” 

His voice had dropped too, an edge of rasp creeping into his strange accent. “A girl like you doesn’t belong in the Districts. You could be performing on bigger stages, better ones.” 

Had he stepped closer? She could see the navy blue roses sewn into the lapels of his jacket. She took a step back, just in case. He tracked it, face unreadable. Her head felt full of cotton. This performance felt harder. “District 12 is my home.” She whispered.

He watched her for a few more moments, his eyes soft, watercolor, flooded with focus, depth, and fire , before it all froze over again. He took a step back as well, the air between them heavy with something, straightening his already straight shoulders. “Of course. I hope you’ll still accept my congratulations on your performance tonight.” He produced a long stemmed white rose from god knows where, and held it out to her. 

She’d never gotten a flower after a performance. Food, yes. Money, yes. Never a flower, a rose , they didn’t even grow anywhere near 12. It was beautiful. Pristine and perfect. White. She reached out and took the rose, careful to avoid brushing his fingers. She felt for thorns, but all of them had been stripped away. “That’s awful sweet of you. I’ve never gotten a rose before. Thank you.” Just to unsettle him a little, she plucked a petal from the rose and popped it in her mouth. 

He did look unsettled. One point, Lucy Gray. She smiled a stage smile, backing another step away and spinning on her heel to set the rose on her guitar case. His eyes followed her until he turned to walk towards the door. He looked at her again over his shoulder as he pulled the door open. “Of course. Goodbye, Lucy Gray.” 

“Goodbye, President Snow.” 

Chapter Text

Chapter 3

“Is something wrong with you?” Clemensia’s voice breaks the silence they’d both been working in. They were sitting in his office, her over on the couch, him hunched over his desk, scouring through work reports from the Districts. 

Coriolanus looked away from where he’d been staring aimlessly at a lumber report from 7, into Clemensia’s dark eyes which seemed to be assessing him. He was immediately uncomfortable with it. “No, why would you say that?” He asks tightly.

She was on her feet a second later, walking around the side of his desk to put a hand over his forehead. He swats her hand away, “I’m not running a fucking fever.” 

“Alright first of all, you never swear so something is definitely up. Second of all, you’ve been tapping your pen and daydreaming all morning, and you don’t fidget. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen you lose focus, and we quite literally have gone to school together since we were 6. I have seriously been considering breaking into your wing of the mansion to catch you in the act of putting your batteries in.” He rolls his eyes. “Third of all, and frankly the most alarming, you’re wearing a red rose pinned to your lapel. Not white. What the hell, Coriolanus, I didn't even know you grew any other colors in the greenhouse.” 

“Wow, truly impressive. So many observations. Why don’t you write me a report of all your findings along with a hypothesis, and have it on my desk by Thursday morning.” Coriolanus capped his pen, rolling out his shoulders while Clemensia rolled her eyes to his left. “I’m perfectly fine, Clemensia. Allow me to remind you that it is not in your job description to take care of me. Just do your job.” 

The worst part was that she was right. There was something wrong with him. 

He was assaulted with dimly lit memories. Her voice, clear and smooth, like honey dripping down his hands, sinking into him. She commanded the room with her smiles, her laughter into the microphone. Such sweet, pretty laughter. 

Lucy Gray , his mind whispered. It was a very familiar whispering. 

“It’s not your chief of staff who’s concerned, it’s your friend.” Clemensia sighed. “Alright, whatever. Talk to me when you want.” She collected her things off the glass table in front of the couch, sticking a pen in her pocket. “At least tell me why the red rose.” 

He could see her red skirt fanning around her as she twirled, he could see her red painted mouth in the room at the back of the Hob, like velvet around her words. Speaking to him, looking at him. He wanted all her attention. He’d waited all night for her eyes to be on him. 

“I happen to think red is a perfectly good color, Clemmie.”

-

Over lunch with Tigris that day, it was the same. She gave him weird looks when he snapped out of his musings, her blue eyes flashing in what could have been concern. But he doubts she’s felt anything even resembling that for him in years. It might be too much to hope she’s worried about him. He doesn’t get it. Or he does, she’s the one who doesn’t understand. But as long as he’s in power, he doesn’t care whether she understands why or not. She’s successful, her life is good now. 

He does wish somewhere in the back of his mind that maybe her life wasn’t so good, considering he’s barely a part of it. 

She does not look at him in concern anymore. It’s fine. They’re okay. 

He’d been back from District 12 for 3 days now. Lucy Gray had not left him alone. She met him everywhere. Her voice called him from outside the window, soft and melodic, making him look, rushing to catch a glimpse of her, even just a few stray dark curls pulling out of sight. But she’s never there, nothing but a drag of wind across his windowpane. 

“Well, if it isn't the Capitol’s favorite man, I never thought I'd have the honor. It’s lovely to meet you, President Snow.” 

She was amazing on the stage. She stood its ground like she’d built it herself. She moved as if she knew each floorboard, each crack, every inch of the space in front of her. The light of the room seemed to rush to her, as if she was the sun and all the warmth in the world had come from her. Light bowed to her. Guitar under her fingertips, tan skin glowing, she’d been the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. 

But up close? In this small dusty room in the back of the Hob, standing in front of him, she was beautiful. She existed in the room around her the way a vase of wildflowers exists in a coalmine. Easily the most stunning thing for miles, but it doesn’t belong there.  

“And? What have you found, President Snow?” 

What had he found indeed? What had he found hiding in District 12? 

“Coriolanus?” Tigris’s voice cut through the memory of Lucy Gray in his mind. “Is something distracting you?”

“No, thank you. I’m fine. Sorry, were you saying something?” 

“No.” She says dryly. “You’re wearing a red rose today.” 

Coriolanus groans and leans back in his chair. “What is with everyone and the damn red rose?” he asks, almost to himself. 

Tigris looks even more suspicious at that, but she doesn’t say anything back. He’s grateful for it, he’s in no place to be questioned about his mood right now, because frankly, he feels quite on edge. It’s all Lucy Gray’s fault, her and her ridiculous affinity for eating rose petals. 

He wouldn’t dare admit it, but he’s deeply unsettled by this unexpected turn of events. A District girl consuming his thoughts this way? What would people say?

But then of course, he’s the President. If people knew about Lucy Gray, he could control the narrative. Who got to decide what was and wasn’t acceptable if not the President? And Lucy Gray didn’t belong in the Districts, she was far bigger than them, better than them. Anyone could see it, the way she glittered amongst them like stars against the drab background of a night sky. 

He takes a deep breath, trying to relax. It felt like someone had run a string through the bones in his shoulders and pulled it tight. And it had been like that ever since he left that bar, left Lucy Gray. He wondered what she was doing now. 

A perilous voice in the back of his head whispered that he could check. He could pull footage from the newly placed security cameras in 12. He could see what Lucy Gray was up to, if she had performed since he’d been there. 

“Coriolanus? Did you hear me?” Once again, Tigris’s voice shook him awake. He felt guilty for being so absent, he saw her for such little time each day, and with their broken relationship every second counted. 

“I’m sorry, no, what did you say?”

“I asked how District 12 was, you never mentioned anything about it.” She said, eyes watching him closer than she usually did. He really needed to pull himself together, this was quite out of character for him. 

He grunted. “12 is abysmal. It’s poorly constructed, dirty, and overpopulated. You’re breathing in smoke from the mines from a mile away. But the work we did there went well, the new cameras we installed are of higher quality and report better image and audio. And with the addition of new peacekeepers, Commander Knotman is sure they’ll be able to keep any troublemakers in line.” He was proud of the work they’d done in 12, he was sure the rebellion in that District would be minimized. 

“You know, if you put more money into 12 it wouldn’t be such an awful place.” She said, not-so-carefully. 

“It’s always been like that.”

“Before you were President. You have a chance to make real change here, and besides just because it’s always been run-down doesn’t mean it should be.” She says a little sharply, and Coriolanus recognises the argumentativeness seeping into her voice. 

“Tigris, please. The Districts are beneath us, do not forget that.” He says firmly. 

“They are dependent on us, out there in the Districts. And we let them down. Constantly.” She spits back, hand coming down on the table next to her plate. 

“Enough, Tigris.” He grinds out from between his clenched teeth, staring into her eyes. 

She stares back at him for a few moments, eyes shining with intensity like she’s searching for something. Or trying to send him some sort of secret message. He doesn’t know what it is. Her face crumbles a little, like maybe she didn’t find what she was looking for. She stands, mumbling that she needs to get back to work. 

Their conversations always seem to end this way. 

He’s walking her to the door as he always does when she speaks again. 

“So, District 12 was all bad then?” She asks, a strange probing tone in her voice. It is one he is jarringly unfamiliar with. Or maybe he used to be familiar with it, a lifetime ago when he knew every voice she had, back when they could read each other like books you’ve loved so fully that the spine is cracked, pages yellowed, and the ink of the cover had faded from your reverent hands.

Now they are brand new. Rigid spines, crisp white pages, fresh ink on their covers. He does not know this tone of her voice. 

When he hesitates, she tries again. “I mean, all you did was work?” 

“Well, yes. There was lots to be done.” He says, unsure as to why she’s asking. 

She steals glances at him from the corner of her eye as they walk down the long white marble hallway towards the front door. “Really? Because Valeria told me you went to a bar.” He turns to her with his eyes wide, forgetting for a moment that he’s the President of Panem. Feeling distinctly like a 16 year old again, caught sneaking out with Festus and Clemensia. “And saw a little show.” 

He pulls himself straight, relaxing his face. Tries to not feel like he’s scrambling when he responds. “Why were you talking with Valeria?” 

“We chat.” 

This feels oddly like betrayal from his trusted assistant. Since when has she been friends with Tigris? “Well, Valeria isn’t meant to be informing you of my whereabouts.” He thinks he’s done a good job avoiding the main point of the conversation. 

“Why not? She informs you of mine.” She says as she walks out the front door, slipping into the car waiting for her. 

Betrayal. Complete betrayal. He needs a new assistant. Maybe an entire fresh staff. 

“Nice rose, Coriolanus.” The car door shuts behind her. 

-

He stays late in his office, skipping his dinner entirely. There’s a mountain of paperwork for him to fill out on new laws they’ve enacted in the last month, along with old ones they’ve decided to discard. Some things just await his signature, those of which are marked with bright blue tabs and a little ‘x’ by where he needs to sign, thanks to Valeria. She wanders in a few times, she often works late too. She drops off new documents, brings him copies of things he asked for. Around 7 she asks if he wants his dinner brought here, he tells her no. This wing is dark and empty by this hour, most people left and gone home to their families. 

When Valeria knocks and strolls in holding a stack of papers, a few little blue tabs sticking out, he remembers that she’s an orphan from the war. No brothers or sisters. She’s young, 25 if he remembers correctly. They do this a lot. He stays late, and she does the same. He tells her she does not have to stay late even if he does, but she waves him off saying she’s got nowhere else to be anyway. He doesn’t either. 

At some point she tries to get him to drink some water, which he declines but asks if she’ll pour him some whiskey instead. She sighs, dropping some ice cubes into the drink muttering about how he doesn’t hydrate enough. 

He thinks about bringing up that fact that she’d informed Tigris about his time in District 12, but then he sees her stifling a yawn as 9 draws nearer, one hand rubbing her foot through her tights like they’re aching, (she’d taken off her high heels hours ago), and he just feels glad she has a friend. He doesn’t really know about her personal life, he’s sure she has plenty of friends, but at least he’s certain about one of them. 

He tells her to go home after that, which she protests a little but he insists. He works for a little while longer, but calls it quits just before 10. He slings his jacket over his shoulder, downing the rest of his watered down whiskey before turning off his office lights and locking the door. The west wing is silent, aside from the ever present hum of technology that follows you all around the Capitol and the click of his dress shoes. He thinks again of Lucy Gray. Her voice echoes in his mind, the sound of her laughing into the microphone, thanking him for the rose. 

He hadn’t brought one with him to the Hob, he’d sent Valeria back to the Mayor’s house to get one from the bouquet on his bedside table minutes after Lucy Gray took the stage. He wishes he had been able to get one straight from his greenhouse for her, those always have the strongest scent. But he hadn’t been willing to move from his seat. He didn’t want to miss a moment of it, of her. 

He finds his feet carrying him to the rose garden, as they always do when there’s something on his mind. He doesn’t maintain it himself, he doesn’t have the time for it. But he has avoxes who come in here every morning to water them, cut off any dead roses, and weed out anything that doesn't belong there. They also pull fresh roses for bouquets all around the mansion. 

He wanders towards the back of the greenhouse where there’s a very small section of colorful roses. He’s always thought the colors were nice, but none said perfection quite like white. Now he finds himself drawn to them if only because they remind him of her. He wonders if she would like them.

He twists a fresh plucked red rose between his fingers. He hadn’t thought about romance or anything related to it for a while. Maybe since university. He’d gone on dates with a few girls back then, had even dated Persephone Price for almost 6 months. But in recent years he’d been far too busy for it, and honestly, no one interested him. 

But Lucy Gray had appeared and burned up anything he thought he knew about himself. 

-

The next morning, he barely made it 10 minutes into working before he cracked. He’d had another night of restless sleep, dreaming of Lucy Gray smiling at him, looking at him, he dreamed she didn’t take a step back when he took one forward. 

He dreamed of running his fingers through her dark hair, tasting her red lips. 

Giving her another rose. 

His dreams had been very odd lately. 

But either way, it was getting increasingly difficult to stay focused and he was not in the mood to attempt a whole new day of pretending he was not completely consumed by thoughts of some girl from the Districts. 

So when he settled into his office earlier than usual that morning, he pulled security footage from District 12. 

-

It was tedious work, really. He had to speed through hours of footage, switch from camera to camera, trying different angles and streets. It really was not work for the President of Panem. He could have (should have) had Valeria do it, but he didn’t want this getting back to Tigris. And he didn’t trust anyone else with it. He didn’t want anyone else to see her, to know such an interesting girl was hidden in District 12. He was the one who found her. He didn’t want anyone else looking at her. 

So it took him hours. Two more cups of coffee than he usually drinks. 

But finally, he caught sight of a deep purple dress and dark hair in the marketplace. His breath caught in his throat as she turned to look over her shoulder, giving him a perfect view of her face, smiling at someone behind her. 

He recognized the little blonde girl from the stage as well, though he can’t remember what her name was or if it was even said. They wander through the building, and he jumps from camera to camera following them. There's too much noise in the building for him to pick up anything they might be saying to one another, but the sight of her is enough. 

A sense of relief washes over him, something inside him feeling settled and at peace at the sight of her. She's okay. 

He watches them stop at a stand and buy something, and it takes some zooming in her re-focusing the lens of the camera for him to see what it is. It’s a wire string, and he’s sure it’s for a guitar. 

He immediately hates the thought that her guitar is broken. He hates even more that she has to fix it herself. Really, she should just buy a new one. But he doubts she’d be able to afford it. 

He follows them through the cameras in District 12 back to the Seam. The Seam is on the outskirts of 12, right along the edge of the woods. It’s like the rest of 12. All the houses are small, shabby and cramped together. The whole pace seems covered in a layer of coal dust. He watches Lucy Gray and the young blonde girl leave footprints in the dust as they walk to a small wood house, probably only a 2 minute walk to the woods around 12. Lucy Gray pulls something small from her dress, flashing silver when it catches the light, he realizes it’s a key when she unlocks the door with it. 

Then the door closes behind her, and she’s gone. Just like that. He rewinds the feed 3 times just to bring her back. 

-

So it’s not that it becomes a thing . But, he checks on her. In the morning. After lunch with Tigris. Before he leaves his office for the night. 

He’s just keeping an eye on her. Making sure she’s safe. Okay. And, it makes his mind go quiet. Being able to see her image projected in front of him, so close, it’s almost like she’s there. Like he could reach out and touch her if he wanted. 

That’s how he learns about her routine. In the late morning she emerges from the house for the first time, usually with the little blonde one trailing after her. They go collect eggs from the 5 chickens that live in a beat up coop behind their house. Then she’s hidden in the house until the late afternoon. 

She appears again with her worn leather guitar case a few hours later, in a colorful dress, (he’s seen her wear every color except white, which irritates him to no end as it feels like some kind of personal attack, even though there’s no way she knows he’s watching her) usually with one of the boys who both seem younger than her. It’s usually the boy he’d recognized from the far corner of the stage, fiddle tucked under his chin. 

Her and whoever has tagged along for that afternoon walk for a long time. It’s an hour walk to the more wealthy area of District 12. Wealthy used very loosely. All the nicer places are old, and not well kept in the slightest. Much like the Mayor’s house, he thinks. It’s in the heart of the District, home to the owners of the mines, businessmen who control the flow of trade within the District. He’s seen them when he’s watching Lucy Gray set herself up against a Capitol placed monument.  They all wear the same dingy formal wear, grayed and fraying. Lifeless and wrinkled. 

She plays her guitar and sings for hours, case open in front of her. Some people drop a coin in, most people don’t. Some afternoons, he locks himself in his office and just listens to her play for hours while he works. Her voice is rapidly becoming the soundtrack to his days. Unfortunately a lot of his job is interacting with his employees and advisors, which means he only gets to do it two days of that week. 

The final part of her routine that he becomes familiar with is her performances. She and her family perform twice a week. Friday and Saturday nights. The camera in the Hob is an older one. Not one of the newer ones that was installed recently, so the audio is less than he’d wish, especially paired with all the loud voices and sounds from the rest of the bar. Also the image of Lucy Gray spinning with her black guitar is grainy and unfocused, like a poor mockery of the night he met her. Designed to torture him. 

But still he watches, both nights. He watches from his rooms, in his quiet wing of the mansion, a crystalline tumbler full of whiskey balanced in his hand. It’s empty after Lucy Gray’s first song. 

He sends a missive to Knotman that the camera in the Hob will need to be upgraded as soon as possible. 

-

The following week passes with him chasing scraps of time to check on Lucy Gray. When Thursday night arrives, he has the first rose sent to her.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4

The next time the Covey performed after President Snow cleared out of District 12, Lucy Gray had stupidly high hopes that everything would be completely back to normal. She was wrong.

Not really, because everything is back to normal. Aside from the new round of peacekeepers who haunt every corner of District 12 like armored skeletons, waiting to catch a wrongdoer and drag them underground. Aside from the shiny new cameras lining every walkway, street, alley, and building she can find. 

Aside from the fact that she’d ripped apart the white rose President Snow had given her before she had made it home that night, and now she walks over the wilted stem she’d dropped into the dirt in front of their porch everyday and feels an odd sense of guilt. 

Aside from the way her eyes kept sweeping through the Hob while she stood at the microphone, half expecting to see a wildly out of place suit and blond hair. 

She stomps on his rotting, shredded rose when she walks up to the porch that night. 

It’s early Friday morning when Barb Azure finally gets her to talk about it. They’re walking through the Marketplace, out to get more thread and needles as Barb Azure has taken up mending and stitching things for people in the Seam. Just to make a few extra dollars. Tam Amber had done the same thing, mopping floors and bartending a few nights a week at the Hob. Things are tight, a little more tight than they usually are. But Maude Ivory needed new clothes, she’s growing like a weed, and Lucy Gray sees her face twist up a little every time she shoves her feet into her boots. She wishes leather didn’t cost so damn much. 

“Come on, just tell me what he said. He must have done something to make you rip that pretty rose up into dust.” She says, nudging Lucy Gray as they walk. 

She shrugs, “He didn’t do anything, I promise you this isn’t nearly as interesting as you think it is. He was just…” she struggles for the right words, briefly wondering if perfect ones to describe meeting the President existed. “Out of touch, I guess.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“I don’t know, those Capitol people they just - I mean you saw his fancy suit, and his voice and his words were all proper and smart.  I just feel like they live their lives truly believing they’ve got some level of higher thinking and dignity that we don’t. They treat us like animals.” They stop at the thread stand, and Lucy Gray runs her fingers over some soft light blue thread as she finishes her thought. “Having the worst one of all of them standing there complimenting me, giving me a rose. It just made me mad. I dont want his pretty words or his roses. I want him to be better.”

Barb Azure hums as she selects a few spools of thread, handing over a few dollars to the woman at the stand with a quiet thank you. “So he made you feel lesser, that’s what got you? Oh Lu, don’t let their backwards thinking get under your skin. You know they’re wrong.”

“No, not exactly. That’s the weird part. He was being kind, and I had to thank him for it. The man whose the reason people are starving out here. And I had to say thank you to that man. I don’t want to have to thank him for a damn thing.” 

Barb Azure snorts a little, moving to the next stand and picking through the needles, looking for good, sharp ones. “So you hate that he wasn’t outwardly rude?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”  Lucy Gray muttered sharply.

“Those Capitol people are twisted and horrible in their ways of thinking, and in the way they treat us. He doesn’t need to spit at you to make that true. All he needed to do was waltz into 12, see all the poverty, the pain, and be able to sleep at night knowing he’s doing nothing to fix it. There, that's the outward rudeness you were waiting for.” 

Lucy Gray links arms with Barb Azure as they begin the walk out of the Marketplace and towards the Seam. “I guess you’re right. It’s just -”

“I know.” 

They walk in silence for a while, kicking rocks and little bits of gravel around, a layer of gray dust clinging to their shoes like polish. Barb Azure lets out a little giggle, looking skyward. 

“What’s so funny?” Lucy Gray asks, smiling at the sound of her lovely laughter. 

“It’s just, okay. Don’t judge me ‘cause I know you think it too.” 

“What?” 

“President Snow is a terrible, terrible person. But you can’t deny -”

Lucy Gray cuts her off with a groan, Barb Azure’s laughter flaring up again, louder and more ridiculous than before. “Please don’t say he’s sexy.”

“Sexy? I mean I was going to say handsome, but hey if that’s what you were thinking then sure, let's go with sexy.” 

“I was not thinking that.” Lucy Gray laughs despite herself, shoving Barb Azure a little. The sun climbs higher in the sky, casting a yellow glow over them. 

“That’s what you said, clearly you were thinking it!” Barb Azure shrieks as Lucy Gray throws a handful of pebbles at her. 

“I was not! I just…wasn’t expecting him to be so young is all.” 

“And sexy?” 

She groans again. “And sexy.” She agrees, Barb Azure roaring with laughter to her right. “But he’s still a terrible, awful person.”

“Yes, yes of course. Just one who looks real good doing it.” 

“You’re a bad person.”

-

To be honest, the scene gives her a very deep sense of deja-vu. She was in the little dressing room, braiding Maude Ivory’s hair back into a swirling bun while Barb Azure was playing simple scales on her cello to warm up for tonight's performance. They weren’t speaking, Lucy Gray humming a little, every now and then reaching her hand forward so Maude Ivory could hand her another pin to secure her hair in place. 

That’s when Tam Amber poked his head through the door to give a message that would throw Lucy Gray off for the whole night. Again. 

“Lu, some guy out there says he’s got something to deliver to you.” 

“What? Are you sure? I didn’t order anything.” She says, glancing back to where Tam Amber lingers in the doorway. 

He shrugs. “Well you must’ve. Or maybe someone sent something for you. I don't know, but he’s by the door.” He calls as he disappears down the hallway, presumably to go do some warm up scales like Barb Azure. 

Barb Azure who had stopped playing, and was now watching Lucy Gray with confused eyes. She felt a little twist of anxiety in her stomach, a whisper in the back of her mind that the only person who might send something to her was…she stopped herself from finishing the thought. 

She was being crazy. Maybe President Snow had been strange that night, the room had felt stifling, thick with some heavy air, heavy with something . But it was a fluke, the way his eyes had shined with something like interest when he’d looked at her. 

He was the top of the Capitol food chain, he no doubt despised people from the Districts. Saw them as animals, nothing more. President Snow had forgotten all about her now. 

So she shoved any whisperings in her mind away, plastering a relaxed expression on her face. “Well, I’d better go see what that’s about. I’ll be back in a second to finish your hair, honey.” She says while she pats Maude Ivory’s shoulder. Barb Azure looks like she’s about to say something, but Lucy Gray cuts her off with a mouthed ‘it’s probably nothing ’.

Barb Azure nods, but looks unsure. She hates it because it brings her stress back full force. It’s nothing, it’s nothing. It’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing. 

She sees the man standing by the door, recognizes him as the one here to make the delivery. The sight of him makes her stomach fall right to the floor. He’s dressed head to toe in white, like all workers dispatched by the Capitol are. How he kept the bottom of his pant legs from graying from the ever present dust covering every inch of 12, she’s not sure. 

She’s seen these kinds of workers before, and isn’t quite sure what exactly their job is. She’s seen them do different kinds of grunt work with Peacekeepers, like set up the stage and handle the cameras for the Reaping. She’s seen them unload deliveries of food from the Capitol, rare as they are. 

So when he spins on his heel towards her with a small, white, rectangle shaped box in his hands, with a stiff voice saying; “Miss Lucy Gray Baird?”

She wants to run. But she’s Lucy Gray, dammit. She’s fine. Everything is a performance. 

“That’s me, darling. I hear you’ve got something for me.” She smiles like she was born for it, and she was, like the rain is born for falling, flooding, and soaking into the earth. 

She falls, every inch of her becoming water that falls right to the ground when he pulls a long stemmed white rose from the box. He’s not being careful of thorns that might slice his fingers, because of course they’ve all been pulled away. It’s harmless, it’s beautiful, and Lucy Gray eyes it like the bomb it is. 

She floods the floor, filling the space around her with the water she’s become, drowning out all the noise and people and air. Opens her mouth with no air to breathe in as she plucks the rose from his fingers, she might have said thank you to the man had she been in a place to have manners. 

She soaks into the earth when her fingers trace over the cardstock paper tied to the stem with a glossy white ribbon, she disappears into the ground beneath her, weak and suffocating under the dirt when she reads his looping, elegant hand-writing. Black ink, five words.

Good luck tonight, Lucy Gray.

And it’s from him, of course it’s from him. But still she stares at the name tucked in the bottom right corner, done in the same sprawling font: President C. Snow. 

Her wide eyes frantically scan the room like he might be lurking in some shadowed corner, flanked by peacekeepers, and having the rose delivered to her was nothing but a mind game, meant to distract her, to throw her off - 

But he’s not there, he’s nowhere. And she is left standing alone by the door, people barely even noticing the stone statue she’s become; a girl in a yellow dress, gardenia flowers hand stitched along the hem, worry lines etched onto her smile-lined face, clutching a rose in her pale knuckled hands. 

Somehow the only thought her manic mind is able to form is: What is his obsession with the color white?

She breaks off most of the long stem of the rose, and tucks the blossom and the little slip of paper into the pocket of her dress. When she slips back into the dressing room, Maude Ivory and Barb Azure both turn to look at her and ask what the delivery was. She waves her hand and says they had the wrong person. 

She’s not sure why she lies. But she’ll tell Barb Azure later, of course, she just doesn’t want to stress out Maude Ivory. 

But as she’s doing her makeup, she begins to think there’s probably no reason at all to even tell Barb Azure. It’s probably nothing but a strange Capitol custom. That’s got to be it. And Barb Azure had told her not to let it get under her skin. 

So she won’t. She won’t think about it at all. There’s no need to bring it up to anyone. 

-

That night while she performs with her family, she can feel paranoia brewing inside her like an infection. She sees a few on-duty peacekeepers inside the Hob, and her poisoned instincts tell her that they're watching her to report back to him. Her eyes catch on each and every person who so much as glances at her, and she’s convinced they can see the rose buried in her pocket and that they know exactly who sent it to her. They’ll hate her, call her the President’s lover, and god, if that were true she’d hate her, so she squeezes her eyes shut against all the lights and the people and their vicious thoughts. 

But when they blink open the only thing she can see is the security camera high in the corner, and the way it’s polished where before it was dusty, the way a fresh coat of white paint clings to it where before it was chipping and gray. The way it’s a brand new camera, a perfect twin to the ones which had been strung up all over 12 when the President had swept through like an ice storm. 

The way it’s angled ever-so-slightly towards the stage. 

She closes her eyes again. She wants to close her mind against this fear and - 

Everything is a performance. So she performs, and performs, and performs. And when the set is over, her performance continues. Her family scatters, Clerk Carmine heading to the back, Barb Azure and Maude Ivory to chat with Jamie, Tam Amber to get water from the bar. Lucy Gray chats with a few people she recognizes, thanks them for their kind words, but steadily makes her way to the trash can at the end of the bar. 

And in full view on the newly angled camera, she pulls the rose from her pocket and drops it into the trash. Glances up at the shiny camera, and walks back to the dressing room. 

-

They had dinner at the Hob that night, Jamie being kind enough to give them a few things for free. Everyone had to look out for themselves out here in 12, but Jamie was always kind to them. He’d known them since they were all little, and he’d been there at Lucy Gray’s parents’s funeral. He and his wife Iris had stopped by their home for weeks, making sure they had something to eat. Jamie and Iris weren’t well-off and nowhere close to it, nobody was, but they shared anything they could with the Covey. 

They kept employing the Covey to perform on the weekends at the Hob, and Iris had brought over a few of her old dresses for Lucy Gray and Barb Azure once they were old enough to fit into them. 

Lucy Gray doesn’t want to think of where they might have been had Jamie and Iris not been so generous. 

They’re all talking and swapping anecdotes from the night, Lucy Gray dodges another question from Barb Azure about what the delivery was, and Tam Amber tells a story about how he almost fell off the stage last week which had Maude Ivory laughing herself to tears by the end. 

Jamie walks by to refill their water glasses and brings Iris (who always comes to watch their shows), and they end up sitting with the Covey for a while. She looks around at all of them, her best friends, her family, and she feels a bitter tug at her heart at the one person missing. 

Billy Taupe and her had grown up together. They all had. They weren’t all blood related, Lucy Gray was the only one left of her immediate family, but Barb Azure and Maude Ivory were her cousins.  

Tam Amber’s parents had been best friends with her parents, and when they died Lucy Gray’s parents (who were also taking care of Bard Azure and Maude Ivory at that point), decided to take in Tam Amber. 

Clerk Carmine and Billy Taupe had been already living in 12, and when Lucy Gray’s family was forced to settle there they had all met. Lucy Gray had been little then, barely 10 years old. But she remembers meeting Billy Taupe for the first time. 

He was 12, and covered in dirt. He had been out in the woods all day. They hated each other at first. He thought she was too girly with her bright dresses and dancing all around the house. She thought he was mean, and stupid, and gross for always trying to catch frogs by the lake. 

But they had found common ground, he taught her simple chords on his keyboard. She showed him how to play a few songs on her guitar. They roamed the woods behind the Seam until they knew it like the back of their hands, him leading the way, her humming quietly behind him, the mockingjays carrying on her tune. Barb Azure, Billy Taupe and her learned how to swim in the lake together. She showed him where to find snakes, he showed her how to catch frogs. 

And when she was 14 and he was 16, he’d kissed her on the front porch in the middle of the night. They had then pretended it never happened. 

In their late teens began their ill-fated romance, the moonlight chasing them, the stars declaring it futile and painful. They’d had one perfect summer, which fell prey to cruel hands of winter, hands that hooked claws deep into District 12 and ripped them away from one another. 

In the aftermath, surrounded by sunless skies, skeletal trees, and completely alone in the ice torn outskirts of the Seam, it had all seemed like a terrible mistake. Shrouded in a black dress she borrowed from Iris as she stood in the cold wind at her parents funeral, with Billy Taupe barely able to offer her a hug , she had wished they’d never done it. She’d wished they’d never fallen apart.

They had been rebuilt over the years. They got over the way they had hurt each other with their naivety, their reckless whims, their passion fogged youth. 

Maude Ivory and Clerk Carmine needed parents, needed someone , after the sudden loss, the cold empty bed of Lucy Gray’s parents. Billy Taupe and Lucy Gray had to set aside the memory of creaky floorboards as they met in the middle of the night, twisted blankets around their ankles, wildfire fights, and the tearful, bitter end. They had to put everything away and sing for dinners, dance, charm, and perform to live. Perform to keep their family alive. 

Then, 10 months ago, they had fallen back into it all. Old rhythms, old habits, old love. 

Lucy Gray had thought it would be different this time. They were older, maturity stretched their minds, time had steadied their restless souls. But she was wrong. Billy Taupe was still a little boy, childish, immature, his attention span the size of a button. 

And so he’d been stupid, vain, and tried to have both her and Mayfair. He lost Lucy Gray, and he lost his family to his lies. 

But as Lucy Gray sat with the Covey, she could feel his absence. The silence where his laughter should be tore through her, as if tonight was the first night without him. She glanced over at Clerk Carmine, saw his eyes darting around the room as if looking for his brother. He’d been different ever since Billy Taupe left. 

This family knew loss like the back of their hand. But losing Billy Taupe had stopped Clerk Carmine in his tracks, dimmed his laughter and slumped his shoulders. 

He spent most of his free time locked in his room, and had seemed to lose some of the joy that music brought them. Lucy Gray knew he missed the sound of Billy Taupe’s keyboard in their songs as much as she did. 

-

That night Lucy Gray finds him sitting on the steps behind the house. She watches him for a few moments, sees the way his shoulders slump forward, the way his head hangs. He’s got something in his hands, but she can’t see what it is. 

She debates for a few quiet moments whether or not going to talk to him is a good idea, usually when she finds him like this he wants to be left alone. Which she’d learned after trying to get him to talk to her those first 2 weeks after Billy Taupe left the house. 

She’s about to turn around and go to the room her and the girls share when she sees his hand rise up as if to swipe away tears, and she decides even if he doesn’t want to talk he shouldn’t be alone. 

He glances over his shoulder when the door creaks open, brown eyes glassy and tired. He looks away immediately, scrubbing at his eyes a little, and clearing his throat as if trying to hide that he was just crying.

She doesn’t say anything, just sits down next to him on the wooden steps and stares out into the woods. It’s late, and the woods should look dark and looming at this hour, and they do, but still she feels that all too familiar rope around her waist. One which disappears into the trees and tugs gently at her always and forever. 

When the silence continues stretching between them, he finally speaks. “I’m fine, Lu. Just thinking about stuff is all.”

“I know you’re fine.” She says softly. “I just wondered if maybe we could sit here being fine together.” 

It’s then that she sees what he’s got in his hands, and her heart clenches painfully in her chest for a moment. When Billy Taupe was 22, he’d been drunk and fallen down the stairs to the basement of the Hob. It had been a terrifying moment, seeing him stumble backwards and disappear down the staircase, a look of shock frozen on his face, the loud sounds of him falling hard and fast, crashing into each step. Lucy Gray had screamed and chased down the stairs to where he lay, a bit of blood leaking from his temple. 

She’d been frantic trying to stop the bleeding, her own fear blinding her to the fact that his injuries weren’t that bad. He had been frantic as well, but not because of the fall, not because of his pain. 

There were tears pouring down his face because his keyboard, which had been slung around his neck as he fell, had lost one of its keys. A black key towards the far left of the board had broken off, and Billy Taupe’s hand had shot out to grab the broken key and try to force it back into place. 

They’d never been able to fix it, and couldn’t afford to buy an entire new keyboard either. But Billy Taupe couldn’t bring himself to throw away the broken key, choosing instead to treat it as a good luck charm of sorts, always keeping it in his pocket, fidgeting with it when he was nervous, twisting it in his hand as he tried to fall asleep. 

She thought he had taken it with him when he left but now she sees the chipped black key held steady in Clerk Carmine’s hand. 

“Haven’t seen that little key in a while.” She says, her voice coming out wistful and sad. 

“He gave it to me when he left.” Clerk Carmine murmurs, running his fingers reverently over the smooth face of it. 

“That’s sweet of him, that meant a lot to him.”

Clerk Carmine nods, a few fresh tears falling. He doesn’t bother to wipe them away. “I just miss him.” 

Lucy Gray moves closer, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him into her. He’s almost taller than her now, but he always curls into her like he’s 6 again. He cries harder, shaking in Lucy Gray’s embrace. She whispers small comforts, a hand pressed to the back of his head. 

“He’s not a bad guy,” Clerk Carmine sobs, “I don’t know why he does bad things.” 

The words pierce through her, the honesty of them, the pain and sadness and disappointment which drips from them. Like poison, like tears. She cries with him. She hates that Billy Taupe is a bitter memory now. She hates what he did. She hates that he’s gone. She hates everything. 

They sit there for a long time. 

-

The next night, a fresh rose is delivered to her before the show. When Jamie knocks on their door and tells Lucy Gray that there’s another delivery for her tonight, Barb Azure looks at her with a suspicious narrowing of her eyes. She then stands and says she’s coming with her. 

“No, Barbie, it’s probably nothing.” Lucy Gray says quickly. 

Barb Azure grabs Lucy Gray’s wrist and stops her from walking out the door. “Lucy Gray, what are you not telling me?”

Barb Azure’s eyes are swimming with confusion and a little hurt, which immediately makes Lucy Gray crack. They don’t lie to each other, they don’t keep things from each other. There’s never been a reason to lie. Lucy Gray sighs, not meeting Barb Azure’s eyes as she tells her about the rose she received last night.  

“He - he sent you a rose?” Barb Azure repeats, eyes wide and flicking all over Lucy Gray’s face as if she’s searching for a lie. 

“Uh huh.”

“Like, the President. President Snow. The dictator. The hot dictator.” 

“We have really got to stop talking about him like that. And yes, that one.” Lucy Gray hisses. She goes over to her guitar case where she’d stuck the note that had come with the first rose. She hands it to Barb Azure who scans it quickly, flipping it over as if to check for some sign it’s a fake. 

“Oh my god, Lu. This is absolutely insane.” 

They walk down the hallway, out into the crowded bar, where Lucy Gray scans the faces until she sees the same delivery man as yesterday, clad in white and holding the same rectangular box. She groans and tugs Barb Azure’s hand along with her. “I mean, shit, is he trying to woo you or something? Is the President of Panem sweet on you ?” She says with an incredulous laugh, and Lucy Gray cannot believe this is her life. 

“No, no, no, no, he’s just trying to freak me out or something, that man is crazy. This is some game he’s playing with me, I just don’t know why. And please lower your voice.” 

They stop in front of the man, who recognizes Lucy Gray. He doesn’t look at Barb Azure, like he had absolutely no interest in doing anything except exactly what he was told to do. “Miss Baird.” He says gruffly, opening the box and pulling the rose out. 

She feels a little sting of shock when a blood red rose is held out to her. What happened to his obsession with white? He hardly seems like the kind of man to often have a change of mind. 

She hears Barb Azure mumble another “oh my god.” under her breath, which she ignores in favor of quickly reading whatever is written on the little cardstock paper, tied to the stem with the same glossy white ribbon as before. 

Not a fan of white? I’ll figure you out yet, Lucy Gray. 

President C. Snow. 

Rivers of ice overtook the blood in her veins. He had been watching. He had seen her throw away the rose last night. Was he angry? Was he going to do something? What the hell had possessed her to send a message like that? 

Note to self: when dictators show you kindness, twisted as it may be, be gracious. It may not be best to aggravate those who hold your life in their hands like a small bird. Soon after having that thought, she wants to rip it out of her head and stomp on it. That asshole has enough control as it is. Let Lucy Gray be the one who doesn’t bend to it. 

“‘President C. Snow’? What do you think the C stands for?” Barb Azure wonders aloud. 

Lucy Gray, disappointingly enough, had wondered the same thing. Lucy Gray stares at the red rose, wondering about what could possibly be President Snow’s motive for sending her roses and little notes. ‘I’ll figure you out yet ’? Why? What has him curious about her? What game is he playing?

“What are you going to do?” Barb Azure asks a little gently, and Lucy Gray thinks her anxiety must be plain on her face. Lucy Gray looks into her soft hazel eyes and thinks, pressing the sharp edge of the cardstock paper into her finger. 

He hadn’t seemed angry at her little show with the rose the other night. His note today seemed almost… playful? She wanted him to know that she had no interest in any games he wanted to play with her. Only had interest in him leaving her alone. 

“I’m going to do this.” Lucy Gray says, as her anger turns to electricity which zaps through her, waking up every nerve ending and setting it on edge. 

“Wait, wait, what is ‘this’ ?” Barb Azure’s slightly panicked voice chases behind her as she storms to the same trash can from the night before. She stands in view of the camera, and breaks the stem of the rose into tiny pieces. “Okay, Lu, is this really the best -” 

“I don’t care.” 

“Great. Wonderful. Carry on then, I guess.”

After the stem is gone, she shreds apart the lovely red petals, dropping every piece down into the trash. She then looks back up at the camera, and gives her prettiest curtsy. 

-

The next day, she’s walking home after playing in the Main Square all afternoon when he finds her. He’d been really persistent that first month after he left, now his visits are few and far in between, but always catastrophic. 

“Lucy Gray!” An all-too-familiar voice called from behind her. She froze for the briefest of seconds, rooted in place by a thousand memories which rose from the depths of the earth to latch on to her threatening to pull her down with them, until she was nothing more than dirt and darkness and breathing Billy Taupe. 

She pulled herself free from her mind, forcing her steps to quicken. 

“Come on, I just want to talk,” She heard his steps get closer, but kept her eyes locked on the road in front of her. “Lu, please.”

His hand around her wrist stopped her and she turned to face him, ripping her wrist from his grasp. “Don’t touch me.” She ground out from between her teeth. 

Billy Taupe’s face crumbled, as it always did. He didn’t look well. He was pale, deep bags underneath his eyes, skin clinging to his bones, hunger haunting him more so than usual. He raised his hands a little in mock surrender, but didn’t step away. She did. “I’m sorry, look, I just want to talk.” 

“Whatever you have to say, I don’t care to hear it.” She said, turning on her heel and striding away from him, her heels digging harshly into each gravelly step. 

He started to walk beside her. “Come on, you know I never meant for you to get hurt. I’m sorry things all went down so badly, I never wanted any of it.”

“Never meant for me to get hurt?” She laughs humorlessly. “Oh, did you want me to be excited for you and Mayfair? I really am sorry about my reaction to your cheating and all. My housewarming present must have gotten lost in the mail.” 

“Come on, you know I’m not living with her.” He says, as if that’s at all the point. “And that’s not what I meant - I just - I didn’t mean for any of that stuff with Mayfair to happen, it just did.” 

“Well now, doesn’t that just make everything better? It really just pieces together my poor bleeding heart to know you’re a pig with absolutely no impulse control, and a child who can’t understand the concept of consequences.” 

“I swear if I could do it all over again,” His voice breaks over his words, and she slows to a stop. “I’d never have messed with Mayfair. It’s you, Lu. It’s always going to be you.” 

She turns to face him, and he’s looking at her with his face torn open, emotion seeping from him. She looks into his eyes, so lovely and green, and she feels a part of her shatter at how much he feels like home. He holds walks through the woods, the final nights of summer, gentle music in the early morning, her first love, and her past, all within his forest green eyes. The deepest part of the wood. Sunlight filtering through the trees, fleetingly beautiful in the month of August. 

But he is just that. He is fleeting, and he is her past. 

“Billy Taupe. I have given you far too many opportunities to hurt me. Each time I let you back in, you show me why I shouldn’t have done it.” He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, and she might just swing her guitar at him if he does. “Don’t interrupt me. You were the one who chose to rip apart our family, not me. So go ahead and live with your decisions. If you want to wreck every good thing you have, that’s fine by me. But I will not be someone you drag down with you. I will not let you wreck me. So do me a favor and stay the hell away from me.”   

She turns and walks away again, and is not surprised when he doesn’t follow her. 

-

As she continues her walk home, Lucy Gray drops by the Hob as she’s walking home to say hello to Tam Amber. She just wants to cool her nerves a little. She finds him mopping the main floor, Clerk Carmine already sitting at a nearby table and chatting with him. She pauses for a moment, mentally debating if she should tell them she saw Billy Taupe. 

She decides against it, as it wasn’t a particularly kind chat, and it should stay between her and Billy Taupe. 

She sits with them and chats for a bit, folding her arms on the table and laying her head down. The long walk to the Main Square is necessary, as they’re the only kind of people who have some money to spare for a musician in the streets, but the walk is draining. She loves to play, but sometimes it feels like this world takes the joy out of music. 

Their next meal, keeping their house, keeping clothes on their backs, it all depends on giving a good show. She hopes one day she doesn’t fall out of love with it all. 

She pokes her head back into the little office where Jamie has a creaky wooden desk, scattered paperwork, and an old photograph of him and Iris from their wedding day. “Afternoon, Lucy Gray. What brings you here?” Jamie says, his weary face pulling into a kind smile at the sight of her. 

“I was just saying hello to Tam Amber, thought I’d stop in and see you too. How are things?” 

“They’re alright, it's tight around here, but no more than usual. Just need to make do with what we have, you know?” He says, shuffling the papers into a neat stack. She nods, and his smile turns a little wary. “What’s been going on?”

She’s confused for a few short moments, thinking he may have somehow heard about what happened with Billy Taupe even though it was just 30 minutes ago. But the look in his eyes, the twinge of fright and concern has her realizing what he’s actually asking about. 

He hadn’t asked about anything the President said to her when he was here. Jamie tends to operate on a ‘they’ll tell me if they want to’ kind of wavelength, which has worked pretty well for them in the past. 

“I… I’m really not sure, Jamie.”

He opens his mouth, looking dreadfully curious, before stopping. “Just be careful, will you promise me that?” 

“Of course, I’m always careful.” 

She’s not and they both know it. The concern stays clearly etched on his face, perhaps deeper than before. “You’ll tell me if you need any help, right?” 

She nods, giving him as bright of a smile as she can muster. “Don’t you worry about me.”

He worries. 

-

Friday night comes faster than it ever has before. And sure enough, a new rose awaits her. The delivery man, who tonight she learns is named Nuntius, (which she thinks is a quite unfortunate name), is standing in much the same spot he has the past nights. He spots her right away, giving her a tight smile and a nod as she greets him. 

He pulls out the rose tonight, a deep lavender. She takes the rose, undeniably curious as to what his note will say. His elegant font a shock of black over the smooth ivory of the cardstock. 

You put on such fascinating performances for me, Lucy Gray. Though, I’m starting to think you don’t like my roses. 

Sincerely, 

President C. Snow

She held the sweet smelling lavender rose over a candle until Jamie yelled at her for getting ashes all over his bar. She kept the note tucked away in her guitar case with the others. 

-

Later that night, she tosses and turns for hours, helplessly pouring over his words again and again. 

What he said about her putting on a performance, she thinks he’s talking about throwing away his roses where she knows he can see it, but she also thinks it may be a nod to the first time they spoke. 

“No point in performing if there’s no one to watch you, right?”

“I completely agree, Lucy Gray.” 

She wants to be mad about his entitlement, about his wording. For me, he’d said. She was putting on performances for him, that’s what he thinks. But then she was putting on performances for him. 

That’s exactly what she had been doing. She thought he might take it as a message, as the ‘fuck you’ it was, but it only seemed to set him in his thinking that this was some little game they were playing. She wanted to punch him in his stupid, smug face. 

She pictures him writing those little notes, his soft mouth pulled into a cutting smirk. His pale eyes dance with mischief as he signs his name, President C. Snow. She traces her fingers over the letters, curiosity teasing the edges of her anger. 

What does the C stand for? Something strange, she bets. Something packed with syllables, and reeking of upper class. Something strong and sure, clanging with the resounding bell of authority. 

Her curiosity deepens, as her finger moves to the word sincerely. He hadn’t said anything like that in his other notes. 

She heaves a sigh when she realizes she’s pouring over his notes for clues like he’s left her some kind of puzzle, one that might lead to the answer of why she’s being given his attention and his roses. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

Coriolanus Snow is hopelessly charmed. When he’d seen Lucy Gray stand over the trash can the first time, glancing up at the security camera she had so aptly noticed in the middle of her performance, pulling the rose he had sent her from the pocket hidden in the folds of her bright yellow dress, his mouth had dropped open in shock. He then, knowing himself, expected his anger to set in. 

But when she’d dropped it into the trash, staring daggers into the camera, he’d felt a burst of shocked laughter leave him at her sheer nerve. 

He’d jumped from his desk chair immediately, having stayed late with the door of his office locked to watch Lucy Gray perform, and gone as fast as he could to the rose garden. Grinning like a fool while he bypassed all the white roses, heading for the colorful section in the back where he pulled a red rose for her this time. He carefully removed each of the thorns himself, poking 2 new cuts into his thumb, alongside the old one he’d gotten from removing the thorns from the first rose he’d sent to her. 

The first rose he sent had seemed to upset her, and through the dim lighting of the Hob, it had caused something like fear to strike her face. Her eyes had read his note over and over, as if searching for some hidden threat it contained. His intention had not been to frighten her, but to flatter her. She’d said the first night they met that no one had ever given her a flower for a performance, and she’d seemed unsure that night as she’d picked the rose from his fingers, but he thought that may be because him being there was unexpected. 

So when he sent her this rose, he wanted it to be a little more tailored to her. So he chose the red rose. Perhaps he chose red also because the color has been very much consuming him lately. 

Another girl had trailed along with her, he recognized as another girl from the Covey. He’d seen her on the stage with Lucy Gray, and he’d seen them multiple times on security cameras as they walked around District 12, or played their instruments in the Main Square. From what he knows, this is Barb Azure.

Barb Azure was holding onto Lucy Gray’s arm, saying something to Lucy Gray. He refocused the camera, the footage still a little fuzzy due to it being zoomed in to focus on Lucy Gray receiving his rose. 

She was frowning by the time the rose was being handed over to her, her eyes wide as she took in the shade of the petals. He felt his lips tug up a little as she immediately fumbled for the note tied to the rose. 

It was too loud in the Hob to hear what Lucy Gray and Barb Azure were saying, but he saw it clear as day when she strolled over to the same trash can as before, shredding the rose apart with her hands. Then, with a demure smile, she dipped into a curtsy. 

He had to stand and pace around his desk while taking deep breaths, as it was entirely inappropriate to be hard in his office while Valeria works just on the other side of the door. 

Lucy Gray wasn’t scared of him. She hated him. 

But, then there was something. She looked up and into the camera, and he felt every nerve in his body stand as if to salute her, as if he were right there with her, her dark eyes piercing into his own. Like staring up at the night sky, like staring into the burning sun. He saw a flash of white in her hand. He then watched as she tucked what was most definitely his note into the folds of her skirt as she stormed out of their view of the camera. 

What a strange girl she was. If she did fear Coriolanus, her brazen acts of disobedience, of defiance, done when she knows he is watching her, showed no hint of it. 

She hated him to be sure. But just like him, she was curious. 

-

The problems in 12 had decreased a significant amount since the new cameras, more peacekeepers, and his own presence. He wasn’t convinced the rebels were done and silenced for good though, it seems to him the entire District was laying low. 

He had been in a meeting with his advisors, one of the many standing appointments on his schedule. Clemensia sitting to his right, Valeria in the corner with her notebook open on her lap and her silver pen flying over the page. 

Aelius threw out a comment at the end of the meeting that had him pausing as he strolled out of the room.

 “Oh, Sir? Pluribus Bell wants permission to re-open his nightclub.” 

Pluribus Bell re-opening his nightclub. Pluribus wasn’t someone he might call a friend, but he was someone Coriolanus couldn’t help but trust. Pluribus had been gracious to the Snows when they’d lost everything in the Rebellion. He was one of the only people in the Capitol who truly knew the financial state the Snows had been in prior to him claiming the Plinth prize. 

But Pluribus would need music for the club. That had always been the main attraction for the place, the live music. He’d need a performer. 

He could bring her here, to the Capitol. She didn’t belong in the Districts, and anyone in the Capitol only needed to look at her to see that. They would adore her. 

He pictured her up on a stage in a luxurious nightclub, velvet carpets, bright lights seeking her out, clad in a glittering dress, eyes on him while she sang. 

The image was wonderfully tempting. 

“He does, does he?” Coriolanus asks, as Aelius strides to catch up with him. 

“Yes, Sir, the paperwork is with your assistant for you to approve or deny.”

“Interesting.” 

While he walks back to his office, meeting the respectful greetings sent towards him with nods, Valeria writes out a few last minute notes onto her paper before handing them towards him. He scans it quickly, and then tells Valeria to get Pluribus on the line for him. 

A few minutes later she sticks her head through his open office door. “He’s on line 1, Mr. President.” 

“Thank you, Valeria.” He picks up the phone, tucking it between his shoulder and ear as a few aids crowd around his desk with different statements for him to sign and approve. “Pluribus, what's this I hear about you re-opening your nightclub?” 

The familiar sound of Pluribus’s rumbling laugh through the telephone sends him back for a few moments into the crumbling penthouse of the Snows, in the bitter jaws of winter, hunger ravaging his thin frame, while Pluribus Bell walks in with boxes of lima beans, and a kind face. 

“Well that’s if you approve of it, President Snow.” 

“What sparked this?” He asks, his pen flying over the page in front of him. 

“Well, you’ve done such good for our economy here that I’m finally in a position where it’s possible again.” He responds, his voice raspy and hearty. “And I think the people of the Capitol need to really start having fun again.” 

Coriolanus can’t help but be charmed by this gentle view on the world, and also can’t help but be reminded of Lucy Gray’s smile. “I can’t agree more. I’ll approve your request, of course.”

“Thank you, Mr. President, I really appreciate this.” 

Coriolanus can hear the smile in his voice. “Pluribus, please, you can call me Coriolanus.” He pulls the paperwork from the right corner of his desk, takes his pen to where Valeria has placed bright blue tabs. “Now who do you plan on being your headline performer?” 

-

It was the late afternoon when Sejanus Plinth appeared in his office with a twist of concern around his mouth. Coriolanus had immediately straightened up. Sejanus Plinth had been the only person he’d entrusted with keeping an eye on Lucy Gray. 

“Sir? You said to notify you of any incidents pertaining to Miss Baird.” 

“Yes, and? What is it?” Coriolanus replied, his heartbeat skipping just once. 

Sejanus shifted a little on his feet, clearing his throat before speaking. “Well, I’ve already sent the footage to you.” Coriolanus immediately went to open the snippet of footage. “It’s nothing much, just some disagreement between her and a man.”

“Who?” 

“I don’t yet know Sir, though Miss Baird refers to him as Billy Taupe in the footage.” 

Coriolanus’s skin prickled with annoyance as he watched the altercation between Lucy Gray and this man she referred to as Billy Taupe. 

His jaw went tight and a burst of rage surged through him as he watched Billy Taupe lurch forward to close a hand around Lucy Gray’s wrist. Coriolanus was immediately imagining snapping his wrist, or punching his teeth in. But the thing about the presidency is, you have to be far more strategic and subtle about landing your punches. 

Their argument rang out through the speakers, betraying some past relationship they apparently had. Coriolanus couldn’t help the relief which eased through him at Lucy Gray’s anger to this man, at her clearly wanting nothing to do with him. 

Suddenly, a memory is sparked in his mind at the mention of someone named Mayfair. He recalls the Mayor’s daughter droning on about her boyfriend Billy Taupe. From the footage in front of him, it all becomes startlingly clear that Billy Taupe cheated on Lucy Gray with Mayfair. Coriolanus cannot even fathom how stupid this boy must be. 

But something about the scene hit him somewhere soft, making him ache beneath his annoyance and his anger at the way he laid his hands on Lucy Gray. 

The man was dressed in rags and looked entirely unwell, but he seemed right next to her. Another boy from 12, and, from the looks of it, another musician. He had a keyboard slung around his neck, which his fingers rested over like it brought him comfort, like he itched to play, like it was a simple extension of himself. 

The ghost lines of a smile etched around his mouth told a story of someone who smiled a lot. Coriolanus did not smile a lot. Billy Taupe looked like he knew how to laugh. Coriolanus couldn’t remember the last time he felt a real laugh rattle his chest. 

They looked so right for eachother, the same sides of the same coin. 

The impossibility of him and Lucy Gray seemed so glaringly obvious as he watched her stomp away from Billy Taupe. The thing was, Billy Taupe could try again. He could seek her out again tonight, if he wanted. He could knock on her door, and grovel at her feet. No one would bat an eye. It would make sense. Just two people from 12 working through things. She might even let him in. They could drink and talk for hours into the night. He’d start brushing her fingertips as she gestured broadly through her stories. She would lean into him, their shoulders pressing together. Their heads would get closer and closer, until finally their lips would meet, and he’d- Coriolanus stood abruptly from his desk. 

“Get me everything you can find on who the man is.” He ordered Sejanus. 

“Yes, Sir.”

When the file is set neatly on his desk two hours later, he tries and fails to pace himself before tearing it open. Admittedly, there isn’t much in it. 

Billy Taupe lives a life as mind-numbingly mundane as every other person in District 12. Well, everyone except one. 

His parents died when he was 12, their cause of death not listed in the file. He has one living relative, a brother, aged 18, named Clerk Carmine. He knows about him. The address labeled for Billy Taupe is the same as Lucy Gray’s, which briefly makes Coriolanus’s hackles rise, before he spies a note that Sejanus has made stating that he has not lived there for the past 3 months. No new address has been pinned down yet. 

Sejanus’s precise digging has provided him with the information that there was a suspected relationship between Lucy Gray and Billy Taupe about 10 months ago that lasted for about 6 months. Additionally, Sejanus has a note saying that there is also evidence suggesting that they had a relationship years ago. 

Sejanus has included past footage from security cameras in 12. The terrible ones that had been in place before Coriolanus had them replaced. He doesn’t bother to watch any of the footage which apparently has “proof of their relationship”, because he is fairly certain it will make him sick. Or furious. He sets Billy Taupe’s file with the others, the ones he had put together on Lucy Gray and the rest of her family.

A thought sparks in the back of his mind. A cruel one. But one that would effectively serve his purposes. A subtle punch landed. He tells Valeria to get Sejanus in his office. 

When Sejanus appears at the door of his office once more, Coriolanus relays his order to him. Sejanus nods once, his mouth a tight line. 

“Something wrong, Sejanus?” Coriolanus asks, his voice carrying a light challenge. 

Sejanus clears his throat and shakes his head. “No, Sir.”

“Go ahead, soldier. Say what’s on your mind, I’d like your opinion.” 

Sejanus watched him silently for a few moments. He’s not entirely sure how he’d describe their relationship. It felt too personal to say they were friends, but not real enough to call them colleagues. They had been friends when they were younger, but Sejanus had grown distant with him, and Coriolanus with him. The whole thing reminded him a bit of Tigris. 

Sometimes he felt like Sejanus was waiting on him to do something, the same way Tigris did. 

“What is it that you want from Miss Baird?”

The question prickled Coriolanus a bit, even though he’d encouraged him to ask it. 

“Do you think she’s a rebel? That she has something to do with those who tried to escape–” 

“ Abandon, soldier, not escape.” 

Sejanus’s face tightened a bit further. “Yes, of course, my mistake.”

His question lingered in the air for a few moments, Coriolanus forming different possible replies in his mind. Forcing him to genuinely consider what he did want. What was his plan? Drag her to the Capitol? Watch her on a stage and fall deeper and deeper into an infatuation from afar? 

Or did he want to do something else once he was able to get Lucy Gray closer to him? Was it smart to bring her closer? Or would that tempt him into doing something far more drastic? 

He knew the answer. It would tempt him into doing something more drastic. But, he found that he just didn’t care. Coriolanus had never been someone who went about something without a plan. He did not act impulsively. He was no fool. 

But it seemed when it came to Lucy Gray, he was abandoning everything he thought he knew about himself. So, he supposed, just this once, he could figure it out as he went along. 

“What I want with Miss Baird is entirely above your paygrade, soldier. Go.” 

The door shut silently behind Sejanus.

-

Arrangements for the Hunger Games started early. Right now, he was in the stage of employing all those who would work behind the scenes in the games. Of course that would be the Head Gamemaker, and he thought he would keep Persephone Price, as she could be quite brilliant. Employing all lower level gamemakers would be up to her, and she’s done a spectacular job for the past 3 years, so he sees no point in re-considering her position. 

The next thing he wanted to focus on was approving all suggestions for designers who would present the tributes to the sponsors. He was disappointed and completely unsurprised when Tigris’s name did not appear on any of the files he was to go through. 

He had a meeting later that week with Persephone Price to discuss the layout of this year's arena. She had come to him a few weeks before and told him she was considering some kind of a tropical landscape. He thought that might make for an interesting idea. 

In other matters, there was more to be done in 12. Coriolanus had held off on his original plans for the fence around District 12, as he had hoped that leaving the woods open, and more cameras monitoring movement through it might help them to catch more rebels who dared to attempt to abandon Panem. 

But, in the footage relayed through those newly placed cameras, he had found something wildly interesting. Lucy Gray and different members of her family slipping into the trees constantly. The cameras went deep into the woods, and for the miles he could track them, he found nothing about where the group went was constant. Sometimes the young blonde girl, who must be Maude Ivory, would stop only a few paces in and lean against a sturdy tree and scribble in a little ratty notebook. Barb Azure, the older dark haired girl who was often glued to Lucy Gray’s side, would take long strolls through the woods, weaving through the trees, never going the same direction twice. The two boys often tried to try and find the tallest trees they could and climb to the top. 

Lucy Gray, she went wherever the wind took her. 

With this new information in mind, he resolved that the fence must go up around the woods. Only so he had a bargaining chip. 

-

“All of your things are being loaded in your train car as we speak, oh and Aeulius received some blueprints from Pluribus for his nightclub, so I sent those to your tablet as I figured you’d be curious.” He was. Valeria continued, doing an almost jog in her pointy purple heels to keep up with his stride, “Also there’s a few documents for you to finish up about the construction in 12, I sent those to your tablet as well. I notified Mayor Lipp that you’d be there, so he should be waiting to greet you, and of course all arrangements are made for you to stay in his manor again. There are a few different types of metal being sent to 12 from 2, and you’ll need to decide which of them will be used for the fence, Livius recommended you use the first sample, but it’s up to you, and I sent the reports on both types of metal to your tablet for you to review on your ride there, oh and you’ll need to approve the design Laelia sent for the fence, it’s a little rough but, it will do, I think.” 

Coriolanus listened to her steady buzz of information, grateful for how focused Valeria can be. He’s digging through the file she places in his hands about the structure of the fence to be built, when - 

“Also, Miss Baird is performing Friday and Saturday night, so I’ve arranged for your security team to do a sweep of the Hob before you arrive, and asked for a few more peacekeepers to be added, just to be safe. I sent along 6 bouquets of fresh roses from the greenhouse as well, each of them with different color schemes, and of course a traditional white one, but I think the red one is quite lovely.” 

Coriolanus comes to a grinding halt in the middle of the bustling hallway, turning to Valeria with narrowed eyes fighting to go wide. “What?” 

“I’ve also sent along a nicer gift than flowers, in case you’d like to give her something else.” 

He had never felt so distinctly non-presidential as he does right now, staring at Valeria with his mouth parted in shock, completely unsure if he was processing her words correctly. “Give her something else– Valeria–” He could not decide what he wanted to ask first, so he settled with an eloquent, “What?”

She blinks back at him calmly, as if she expected this. “I sent along 6 bouquets of fresh roses, so you’d have options, and a nice gift for Miss Baird.” 

“A nice gift?” He does his best to make his tone seem uninterested. “Why would I bring Miss Baird a gift?”

“Because that is what a gentleman does for a lady he… ah, admires.” Her eyes briefly dart away as she finishes her sentence as if she’d rather be anywhere else or having any other conversation. 

Coriolanus places his politician mask over his features, and lets out a puff of air. “I don’t need your input on Miss Baird, Valeria. I would appreciate it if you cease your meddling and focus on actual things my assistant should.”

She does not bristle at the slight coldness of his voice. “Of course, Sir. With that in mind, you should know I also had Tigris run you up a new suit. You know, in case you wanted to have something to wear for whatever your plans are Friday and Saturday night.” 

Coriolanus clenches his jaw a little, and briefly considers re-assigning Valeria. But damn it she's good. 

-

Valeria rides in a separate train car from him, but as soon as the door seals shut behind her, he bolts up from his seat and towards his luggage car. In it, the gift Valeria had sent for Lucy Gray was impossible to miss. It was a beautiful, oiled black leather guitar case. A red stitching went all the way around the case, giving it a pop of color. Shiny gold clasps held the case shut, and a glossy white ribbon was tied neatly around the perfect gift. 

A burst of pride and surety bloomed in his chest. 

He could give her this. He could give her anything in the world she wanted. 

He needed to arrange for Valeria to have a pay raise. 

-

They arrive at 12 late in the day, and Coriolanus goes to greet the crew sent from District 2 to begin building the fence. He approves final blueprints, the power source that will support the electricity required for the fence, and the metal which will be used for the frame. 

He meets with Livius, who he had pulled in to oversee the project, as he is very efficient and skilled in his craft. Coriolanus trusts him with important projects; Livius usually oversees all main construction within the Capitol. Coriolanus is seriously considering sending him to Pluribus, to oversee the design of the new nightclub. 

As he passes through the District in the sleek black cars transporting him, he feels eyes stick to him. The construction site is littered with eyes peeking at him, at the workers, at the copious amounts of metal and the power lines, trying to understand what’s happening. 

When he arrives at Mayor Lipp’s house, business men in their fraying gray suits watch him as though he is an omen of death, as if they are sure destruction will follow in his wake. It is as if District 12 has gone completely still, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the suffering to commence. 

He wonders if Lucy Gray knows yet that he is in District 12 again. He wonders obsessively what her reaction to the news will be, and he is half infuriated he cannot deliver it himself. 

 -

The next day drags on in a blur. He eats meals with Lipp and his daughter, the miserable Mayfair. Mayfair does not bring up Lucy Gray, and for that he is thankful because he is sure he would have ordered something drastic like her imprisonment if she did. 

He alternates between spending hours completing paperwork, reviewing reports for other Districts about population, then sending messages to his workers in the Capitol to move with the demands of each District, specifically noting what Districts have seen a population shift and food supplies need to be increased. 

He reads over his 14 messages from Aelius, updating him about what is going on in the President’s Mansion, and all new law proposals that have been submitted and are under the process of being reviewed by the court. 

Valeria works silently on the other side of the room, her pen flying over the page in front of her, bobbing back and forth between notes she’s jotting down and clicking through her tablet. 

Around midday he meets with Commander Knotman to discuss how the improvements made to 12 have affected the rebellious spirit ever-present in 12.

Knotman goes over a report with him about the decrease of arrests in 12, and the effectiveness of the newly placed camera in eliminating crime in overpopulated areas. They talk for a few hours, discussing plans and prospects for other crimes the District is still struggling with. 

“Oh, Sir? We received word from your Captain in the Mansion, Plinth.” 

Coriolanus had wondered if he was going to bring this up. “Yes, you should have.” 

“I just wanted to confirm that we were to continue with that operation.”

“Yes, Knotman, you are.” 

He nods his head, looking like he wants to prod more but deciding better of it at the coolness of Coriolanus’s tone. 

“Of course, Sir.”

-

After a tedious dinner with the Mayor and his daughter, Coriolanus is practically buzzing. Energy fills his body, lurking right underneath his skin as night draws nearer. He paces his bedroom floor, the steady click of his dress shoes on the hardwood calming something in him. 

He looks at each of the 6 bouquets Valeria had put together for Lucy Gray, and he decides to bring her the one constructed of all blue roses, most of them a nice, soft, sky color. 

The new suit Tigris had made for him was stunning. It was one of pure black, slim lapels, lined with a luxurious onyx silk, with a matching vest, the only color the silver buttons at his wrists which were stamped with his family crest. The suit was tailored to perfection, and he immediately starts trying to think of a kind gift for Tigris for such a beautiful suit.  

From the bouquet of roses on his bedside table, he selects a white rose, snips off the stem and tucks it into the metal loop stitched into his left lapel. 

He stands in front of the floor length mirror, repeatedly running his hands over his gelled hair endlessly irritated by the curls that try to evade the gel and curl over the tops of his ears. He stares into the glass, trying to see himself the way Lucy Gray will. 

Women have always fallen over themselves to catch his eye, and he’s aware he fits a traditional idea of attractiveness. But is that enough to tempt Lucy Gray? She did not turn into some simpering fool when he was in front of her, and somewhere in the back of his mind lurks the fear she may not find him appealing at all. 

But he can tempt her with other things. Even if Lucy Gray doesn’t want him, she’ll need him. 

-

The Hob is in full swing by the time he arrives. It’s full of people, alive in a way he’s never seen in the Capitol. People laugh with their heads thrown back, bumping into each other, spilling beer over the rims of their glasses, spinning each other around in mad twirls on the dance floor. He’s never seen people so at ease with each other, and cannot imagine finding such joy in another person’s presence. He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt joy the way these people seem to feel it.

But he thinks about it, staring at the couples with their arms looped around each other in the middle of the floor, and he imagines something beautiful. Lucy Gray in some wildly colorful dress, with that sunshine smile, one hand lifted over her head holding his hand, spinning in a kaleidoscope of color, falling back into his arms. He imagines what the weight of her would be like on his chest, her golden brown arms reaching around his shoulders, so willing and wanting for his touch. 

The world comes back into focus when all eyes in the bar turn to him. He sees the way tension overtakes their frames, sees the way walls build in their eyes. Whispers wind through the crowd, and for the briefest of moments he feels guilty for stopping their fun. 

Then he reminds himself who he is. He cares not if they dance or rage or whisper behind their fingers. He simply makes his way to the reserved table in the back of the Hob, flanked by peacekeepers who glare and lay their fingers over the trigger of their guns if civilians get too close. 

The nervous bartender who he remembers to be named Jamie walks over with a tremor in his fingertips. He stops a safe distance from Coriolanus and the peacekeepers and clears his throat. “Hello, Mr. President. It is an honor to host you again tonight. We are so happy to see you all the way out here in 12. Could I get you something to drink?” 

Coriolanus stands and reaches out his hand for a handshake, to which the peacekeepers at his left and right step forward. Jamie hesitates for a moment with his eyes darting left and right before reaching out and taking his hand in a good, firm shake. “It is an honor to be here, Jamie.” His eyes briefly widened as if he did not expect Coriolanus to have remembered his name. “Thank you for your hospitality. Just whiskey, please, neat.”  

Jamie nods his head quickly. “Coming right up, Mr. President.” When he moves back to the bar, a peacekeeper follows him to be sure the drink isn’t tampered with. 

Coiolanus takes his seat again, trying to relax back into the uncomfortable chair. But the tense set of his shoulders, he suspects, will only disappear when the show begins. 

He checks his watch twice in 30 seconds, and stares back at people who gather in far corners of the room to watch him. It’s an interesting mix of emotions he gets from them. Some men and women stare at him with such unmasked anger and hate, their mouths tight slashes across their faces. Some steal frightened glances at him every few seconds, as if they’re trying to always keep an eye on him like he’s a tiger who will pounce the second they turn their backs. 

Then, some brave souls watch him just as curiously as he watches them. 

When his whiskey arrives in a plain glass tumbler, he sips it, and it’s not terrible whiskey. Not the best he’s had, or anywhere near it, but it’s strong and solid. The burn of it feels soothing and grounding. 

After what feels like an eternity, the lights in the main part of the bar dim, and the stage is bathed in light. There are a few whoops from regulars who know that the show is about to start, but Coriolanus can barely breathe. Jamie takes the stage and introduces them, and finally, finally she is there. 

Her presence hits him square in the chest, and his eyes rake over her again and again. Her hair is mainly down, a few pieces pulled back from the front and clipped with shiny brown barrettes. Her dress is an olive green with a matching corset laced up the front with black cord. The skirt has ruffles stitched into the hem, and a white underskirt that makes it fan around her in a sweet arch. 

Coriolanus is rooted to his seat, going absolutely mad, because her eyes find him before she even steps up to the microphone. Her deep, dark eyes bore into him like she’s trying to set him on fire, like she doesn’t want to look away, and he watches a sharp inhale make her shoulders lift. 

But then a slow, catlike grin grows over her mouth. Her goddamn red mouth. She steps up to the microphone and – 

“Well, District 12, how strange it is to see you again.” 

Let the games begin. 

-

She lights up the bar just like she did last time. Coriolanus is familiar enough with the constant scrutiny to recognize a mask when he sees one. He can tell a lot of what Lucy Gray shows is just for the sake of a performance, but, when she’s singing it’s like her truest self emerges. Her wild grin, seeming so wonderfully thrilled by the world around her, that kind of thing cannot be faked. 

It is real and it is her. 

Her voice is clear and bright and strong. He’s lulled into some trance by it, the world narrowing down to nothing but the music and her dark eyes and her siren song. The stress of the past few weeks, the past few years , seems to melt off of him, like he’s ice under a summer sun. 

It is as if she is the beating heart of District 12. They all come alive at her command. His blood rushes through his veins in tune with every strum of her guitar, and he is so immensely floored everytime she looks at him. 

And she does. Over and over, her eyes find their way back to him like she’s a compass needle and he is true north. She watches him like he’s some puzzle to be completed, some riddle with an impossible answer. 

She watches him like she might be just as irreversibly obsessed as he is.

Chapter Text

It was a valiant thing she did last time he was here. Last time, she kept her eyes as far away from him as she possibly could. But this time around, things were different. They were different. 

Now something hung in the air between them. A secret. An intention. But for all the money in the world she couldn’t tell you what his intention was. 

Part of her wanted to flee the stage, and the other part of her wanted to prove he had no effect on her whatsoever. Even if that was a lie. She’d never been so thrown off, so consumed by thoughts of someone else. 

He nurses something that looks like whiskey, pulling the glass up to his mouth while his eyes stay pinned to her. He haunts the back of the room in all black, like some vision of death here to steal her away from the world of the living. 

It makes her breathless. 

When the show is over and she and her family leave the stage, she stands in the dark hallway behind the stage for a few minutes. With her back to the wall, she just breathes for a few moments. When she goes back to her dressing room, she knows that Jamie will knock on the door and tell her someone wants to speak with her. But for now she can just exist here, quietly. 

“You okay?” Lucy Gray jumps a little, but relaxes when she sees it’s only Clerk Carmine. 

She goes to brush it off, tell him she’s just fine, but then he speaks again. “No, like, really. Are you okay?” 

She stares at him, his hazel eyes, and he’s getting so tall, and she wants to cry because she is so confused and she’s terrified and - 

“Lucy Gray!” Maude Ivory comes spinning around the corner. Her eyes are wide in her pale face, and her breaking comes in little gasps. 

“What is it? Is everything okay?” 

“You have to come see this.” 

As they approach the door to the girls dressing room, Lucy Gray’s heartbeat pounds in her ears. She’s so sure that he’s going to be there, behind the door, turning all his vicious attention on to her. 

But when Lucy Gray pushes through the door the only one behind it is Barb Azure, watching her with a worried twist to her mouth. Lucy Gray scans the rest of the room before her eyes fall on it. It’s a brand new guitar case, and it looks like the most expensive one money could buy. The beautiful, pure black leather reflects the lights of the room, the bright red stitching calling her to run her fingertips over it, but what causes the nausea to sink into her stomach is the sleek white ribbon looping around the neck of the case. His stamp over the gift. And because of course there is, a tall vase stands on the table next to the case, holding a massive bouquet of pale blue roses. 

They all stand there staring at the roses and the guitar case, everyone holding completely still as if too scared to break the silence. Or completely unsure of what to say. 

The door swings open behind them before their silence can be broken. When Maude Ivory gasps and her hand flies up to land over her mouth, Lucy Gray feels something cold and icy in her veins. She looks at Barb Azure whose mouth is dropped open, staring at who has just walked in the room. 

“I apologize for the intrusion. I was hoping to speak with Miss Baird.”

A sharp puff of air leaves Lucy Gray’s lips, and she just keeps on staring wide eyed at Barb Azure. She feels shaky on her feet and for a moment she’s sure she’ll pass out. 

But then Maude Ivory is still in the room and she wants her family away from this man, so she pulls her shoulders straight. 

“Lu?” Barb Azure says quietly. 

“Barb Azure how about you and Maudie go get something to drink? I’ll meet you out there in a minute.” 

A crease forms between Barb Azure’s brows, and she shakes her head a little, glancing at the man standing behind Lucy Gray. “Maybe I should stay.” 

“Yeah me too.” Maude Ivory says, and she’s so young and her eyes plead a little, and Lucy Gray just wants her to be out of this room. 

“No, come on now you two, just give us a second to chat, and I’ll be right out. It’s okay.” It’s not okay. It is not okay, because she can feel his presence against her back as if he’s pressed up against her and she might faint when she sees those eyes again. 

Barb Azure gives her a loaded look, trying to tell her a thousand things and Lucy Gray knows, she knows it all so she just jerks her head a little and tries her absolute best to give a reassuring smile. Thank god she is who she is because something in Barb Azure goes soft, and she leads Maude Ivory out of the room, who casts upset glances at Lucy Gray. 

Once the door clicks shut behind them, Lucy Gray is horribly aware of the silence and the small space she is now shut into with this man. It makes her chest tight, it makes her fingers shake. 

She spins on her heel and doesn’t bother to hide the suspicion and distrust that must be painted over her features. His blue eyes hit her like a bullet, piercing right to her core, and he’s there, and he’s so tall, and he’s so close, but she can’t think enough to step back, or to speak a word. 

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Miss Baird.” He says softly, something light dancing in his eyes like it’s a little game they’re playing. He reaches out a hand for her to take. 

She stares down at his hand, glancing up at those winter blue eyes, then back down to his hand. His hands are like a painting, she thinks stupidly, and places her hand in his, briefly obsessed with their different skin tones, the sight of her tan skin against his pale porcelain. His hands are warm and large and engulfing hers, and there's little callouses tucked away on his fingertips and little cuts along his thumb, and raised veins running along the back of his hand, and something in her goes soft and burning at the way it feels to touch him. 

Stop it, stop it, stop it she chants over and over in her head. But it’s all thrown to the wind and shattered on the ground when he pulls her hand up to his mouth, oh god there is no way, and presses a kiss to the back of her hand. 

She only has the chance to think his lips are soft, before she’s ripping her hand away like he’d burned her. His head tilts to the side a little, and he watches her with such blatant interest in his eyes like she’s some novel he wants to read from cover to cover. 

She clears her throat in an attempt to cover her bad manners. “President Snow, the pleasure’s all mine.” 

“Another wonderful show, you and your family did a spectacular job.” 

She wants to grind the next words she speaks into dust under her heels. Trying to remember that you cannot be outwardly rude to dictators. “Well, you’re sweet for saying that. I should thank you also for these kind gifts you’ve been sending me.” She says as she sweeps a hand towards the guitar case and the roses. 

A little smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth and he takes a step forward, and something twists low in her stomach. “You’re very welcome, but you don’t seem very fond of my roses. Why is that, Lucy Gray?” He says, speaking her name in a voice only just above a whisper, his accent making her name sound melodic and entrancing in a way she’s never heard before. 

“I don’t like things I don’t understand. Do you?”

“On the contrary, I find them fascinating.” He glances down at her dress and then back up to flicker around her face like he’s trying to commit her to memory, and something like rage boils inside her. 

“Maybe you could help me to understand why I’m receiving all these lovely gifts?” She prods, trying not to read into every word he says and yet, what choice does she have? 

He watches her carefully for a few seconds, as if choosing his words, then he begins. “I have an acquaintance, his name is Pluribus Bell.” He says as he takes a few steps around the room. Lucy Gray stays rooted to her spot, wondering where he’s going with this. “Before the war, he owned a very successful nightclub in the Capitol. In fact, he was the highest paid entertainer in Panem.” He wanders over to their dressing table, glancing down at the bobby pins and clips scattered around it. He lifts a shiny brown barrette into his hand, flipping it between his fingers. “He closed his doors during the war, and he hasn’t reopened them since. But now, he’s looking to start up his business again.” He looks straight at her like those words are supposed to mean something. 

“Well that sounds like good news for the Capitol. I don’t understand what this-”

“What made Pluribus’s nightclub so beloved was the music.”

Somewhere in the back of her mind, alarm bells rang. Anxiety bloomed rapidly in her chest, her subconscious picking up on something she hadn’t puzzled out yet. 

“He had this gift for finding the most amazing musicians and performers. Now that he’s looking to reopen, he’ll need a headline performer.” He clasps his hands behind his back, somehow pulling his posture up even straighter, looking every inch the President of Panem in the tailored black suit with its strange yet intricate design clinging to his body like snakeskin. Looking like he’s from another world. 

Her breath catches behind her teeth. He’ll need a headline performer , his words hang in the air as they sink into Lucy Gray’s head. He cannot mean what she thinks he does. 

“Lucy Gray,” He takes a step closer. “We both know you’re wasted out here in the Districts. Come to the Capitol, perform for me there.” 

She feels as though the world has tilted underneath her feet. Perform for me. His words feel like they echo around the room, and for a moment she thinks of his hands, and his shoulders underneath his suit, and his roses and– “No.” She rushes out.

His eyebrows raise a fraction, and she wonders if he’s ever heard that word in his life. “No?” 

“No.” 

Cruel amusement takes over his face, barely masking the beginnings of anger lurking underneath it. “So you’d prefer to stay trapped here in this dead end District–”

“Better than being trapped in that city of vipers.” 

His eyes flash and his anger rises with hers. “You could be someone there, I could make you someone.” 

“I already am someone, I don’t need your help, Mr. President.” She grits out from behind her teeth. 

“Don’t you? Are you truly foolish enough to think you don’t need me? Think of your family.” 

She’s starting to understand why people smash glass and punch walls when they’re angry. She wants to burn this room down and take both of them with it. “Do not talk about my family.” 

“Wouldn’t it be nice to know they’re well fed? In a bigger home, comfortable, safe?” He advances on her once more, and she wants to drag her nails down his beautiful face. “I could do that for them, for you. I could give you anything you wanted, and I could take away everything you have.” 

“Are you threatening me?” She asks, taking a step towards him instead of retreating backwards at all her logical mind’s commands. She hates their height difference, the way he looks down on her, the way he looks so fucking pleased about it. 

“I’d call it persuasion.” 

“I’d call it blackmailing. Everyone else might bend to your will, but I will not let you chain me up in your Capitol.” 

He closes the final steps between them, and if she moves an inch they’ll touch, and it’s making something frantic buzz under her skin. “Don’t tempt me, Lucy Gray.” His voice has gone deeper and rougher, and it’s hinting at something dark and sinful. 

Suddenly, the air between them is charged and heavy. His stormcloud eyes dart down to her mouth and he looks hungry, and it’s so mesmerizing, and for a wild moment she wants to stick her hand into the lion’s cage. 

For one sick moment she just wants to know. His mouth parts just a little as if he can taste her curiosity in the air. 

But then reality crashes back down on her and the weight of everything he has said tonight makes her feel like she’s sinking, and suddenly all she wants in the world is her mother. 

“Do not forget your place. I am President of Panem, and I can either make your life heaven on earth, or I can destroy it.” His eyes are sharp and cruel, his voice deadly and low. 

She backs away, glaring daggers at the President. The thin silence between them is shattered when she opens her mouth, voice cold as it’s ever been. 

“I’ll have to ask you to leave now, Mr. President, you can’t have anything else to say to me.” 

Shock etches over his carved marble features, and she’s sure he’s not often dismissed like that. The thought that she may have stolen back some power just then brings her an inch of peace. She glances over at the shiny new guitar case and walks over to snatch it up, thrusting it in his direction. 

“Also, take back your fancy things, I don’t want them.” 

He does not move to take it. “Keep them. They were gifts, after all.” He begins to walk to the door, and she stares at the sharp lines of his shoulders, fantasizing about hitting him over the head with the case. “But, if you change your mind about the Capitol, I’ll be staying at the Mayor’s house.” 

“I won’t.” 

He stops halfway out the door, turning to look back at her once more. Maybe it’s a trick of the lighting, but his eyes look sad for a moment. “You will, Lucy Gray. I’ll be waiting.” 

When the door shuts behind him, Lucy Gray, honest to god, sees red for a few seconds. She snaps back to life at the sound of shattering glass and realizes she's thrown the vase of roses at the wall. 

She stares blankly at the roses strewn across the floor, the glass lying in a puddle of water. She stares at the pale blue roses and all she can see are those ice blue eyes, and oh god, she might just die. She sags down to the floor, sliding her fingers into her hair, trying to think through every possible outcome of the situation. 

Say she continues refusing to go, what if he makes good on his threats? He could restrict their food, he could have them turned out of their house. He could hurt her family. 

Say she does go, she’d be miserable. But her family would be in the good graces of the President. But that’s if he makes good on promises of them being well fed and cared for. 

Or, she doesn’t have to pick either of those options. Maybe she could run. She smashes down the idea as soon as she has it. Those people got caught and killed, and she cannot die. She can’t do that to her family. But she also cannot leave them and go live a fancy life in the Capitol. But she cannot doom them either. The President has backed her well and truly into a corner, and she has never hated anyone so strongly in her life. 

The door swings open again, and she recognizes the gentle footing of Maude Ivory, and the click of Barb Azure’s shoes. 

“Oh, Lu.” Barb Azure says with her voice so soft and gentle, like Lucy Gray is made of glass. “What happened? What did he say?” 

Maude Ivory sinks down into Lucy Gray’s side and leans her head on her shoulder, lacing their fingers together. Lucy Gray slowly pulls her gaze up to Barb Azure, who’s kneeling in front of her. She takes a few deep breaths, trying to collect her thoughts. She wonders whether she should tell them the whole truth, and decides to handle it… delicately. 

“He, uh, he wants me to move to the Capitol and perform at some club there.” 

Barb Azure pulls back a little in shock. “Move to the Capitol?!” Maude Ivory screeches, blinking her honey brown eyes up at Lucy Gray. “Well, that’s ridiculous! You live here! So you told him no, and then what did he say?” 

Lucy Gray peeks at Barb Azure, who’s starting to lose color in her face. “He was disappointed.” She said simply. 

Barb Azure takes in Lucy Gray’s state, and drags her eyes over the smashed vase and roses littering the floor. Lucy Gray can tell the exact moment that Barb Azure realizes there really wasn't an option to say no to him. Her eyes go soft and glassy, and she lets out the littlest breath of air between her shock parted lips. 

“Maude Ivory, honey, how about you go and grab a broom and dust pan from Jamie so we can clean this glass up?” Barb Azure says, her voice calming and even. Lucy Gray wishes she knew how to sound so okay right now. 

Maude Ivory seems to only just now realize that the vase and flowers have been smashed, but doesn’t say anything about it. “Sure, I’ll be right back.” 

They sit motionless until the door clicks shut behind Maude Ivory, and then begins their overlapping words.

“Lucy Gray, tell me this isn’t what I think it is–”

“God, Barbie you should have heard him–” 

They both stop and manage a little giggle before the manic atmosphere descends over them again. “Okay,” Barb Azure starts. “Just walk me through it, tell me what he said.” 

She and Barb Azure stand, and Lucy Gray begins to pace the room, snatching up a light blue rose from the floor and pulling off the petals one at a time. “He said he wanted me to come and perform, and I said no, and then he threatened us.” 

“Threatened us? Just like that? Well, he sure doesn’t waste any time, does he. But, hold on, what exactly did he say?”

She rips at another petal, shredding it under her fingertips. “He said he could ‘either make my life heaven on earth, or he can destroy it.’”  She hears the thump of Barb Azure leaning against the wall. She’s got that look in her eye that she gets when she’s thinking really hard, and something aches in Lucy Gray’s chest. It feels like she’s lost something. 

“So he’s threatening your family if you don’t move to the Capitol?” 

Lucy Gray nodded miserably. “I don’t know what to do. But I can’t–” Her voice breaks a little over the words. “Barbie, I can’t.”

“Oh, Lu,” Barb Azure says, and then she’s wrapping her arms around her and Lucy Gray clings to her like she’s warmth in the middle of winter. Like she’s her best friend in the whole world. “I know, I know.”

They stand like that for a few seconds, and then Barb Azure pulls back to wipe a few tears that Lucy Gray didn’t realize she’d let slip. “We’re going to figure this out, okay? I promise, Lu, we’ll be okay.”

“We will.” Lucy Gray agrees. They spring apart as they hear the steps of Maude Ivory in the hallway. 

-

She doesn’t yet tell the boys about what the President has asked of her, and she doesn’t know how. The boys are older than Maude Ivory, and they might puzzle out the underlying threat the President delivered even if she doesn’t tell them. But really, her family deserves the truth. 

But for tonight, she lets them sleep unburdened. 

She, however, can’t get her mind to go quiet enough for sleep. She tosses and turns for hours before wandering out of the small room her and the girls share. She sits on their threadbare furniture, staring at nothing for a while, her mind racing and yet feeling horribly empty. 

Her gaze slides over to the guitar case, standing ominously in the corner of the room, and she has half a mind to go over there and smash it to pieces. But she can’t imagine wasting something so beautiful and expensive. 

She’s decided she’ll sell it, it’ll probably fetch a pretty price. 

Thoughts of what her future may hold scream in her head. She cannot say no to him for fear he’ll hurt her family. She cannot go because she would never be able to stomach letting him win. She would never be able to live her life away from her family, caged in the Capitol. 

In the back of her mind, she knows what she is going to do. It may not be brave, but she’s never claimed to be. 

“Lu?”

Lucy Gray jumps as Maude Ivory’s voice breaks through her mind. “Hi, honey, what are you doing up?” She says, praying the darkness hid the way she couldn’t force herself to smile. 

Maude Ivory walks silently over to where Lucy Gray sits, and curls up next to her. “Woke up and you weren’t there.” She mumbles into Lucy Gray’s shoulder. For a moment Maude Ivory is 6 asking Lucy Gray to sing her to sleep after a nightmare. 

Lucy Gray looks at the ceiling in an effort to not let the sudden rush of tears fall down her cheeks. “Couldn’t sleep, I guess.” 

They’re quiet for a while, and it starts to rain. Lucy Gray is thankful for the soft pattern, it feels like the universe is trying to comfort her. 

“You’re gonna have to go to the Capitol, aren’t you?” Her voice is barely above a whisper, and Lucy Gray digs her teeth into her lip, failing to stop the tears from falling now. 

“I–” She starts, her voice dying in her throat. “I don’t know. But I have to go somewhere, Maudie.” 

Maude Ivory clutches at her sleeve, and her voice is thick with tears when she speaks. “Can I come with you?” She’s crying because she already knows what the answer will be. 

-

The next morning, Lucy Gray wakes with the dawn. She fell into a few hours of fitful sleep, waking constantly with gasps and strange dreams. 

She dresses quietly, glancing at Maude Ivory and Barb Azure sleeping soundly. She feels somehow like she’s betraying them, cheating the game they’re all supposed to be playing together. 

She’s out the door before long, weaving her way through the Seam. She finds her way to The Coal Mine, a far less successful bar than the Hob, one that she’s heard Billy Taupe and his few fickle friends hang around. She sits down on the ground with her back to the rundown gray building and watches the Seam begin to wake up. 

People begin to walk out of their houses, some to sit on rickety porches and stare at the gray dusty ground, or at the smoke from the mines swirling in the sky. Some take baskets of clothes out of the house to string up on clothing lines. Some lean on their window sills with deep bags under their eyes. 

She’s not sure how much time passes, but the sun is high in the sky by the time Billy Taupe and his wild-eyed friends come around the corner. He draws short when he spots her, then picks up his stride and is over to her within seconds. 

“Lucy Gray?” He says, his eyes sparking with hope. 

She stands from where she was sitting, brushing the dust off of her dress. “I need help from your friends.” She nods her head to the friends who are still approaching, but slower. 

His eyebrows scrunch. “What do you need from them?”

“Are they still planning to run?”

His mouth drops open a little. “Lucy Gray you cannot be serious.” 

At that moment Billy Taupe’s friends arrive, and she turns her attention to them. They sport the same hunger ravaged frame that most people in District 12 do, that same sickly look that accompanies all. She lowers her voice as she talks, glancing up at the security camera on the next building over. “If y’all are still planning on going north, I want to join.” 

“Going north is an investment, sweetheart. If you want in, you've got to contribute to our cause.” The taller man says. He’s got cruel eyes, she thinks. 

“I know that.” She hisses. “I have money.”

“Well then, welcome to the club, girlie.” The man says, glancing down at her skirt. She clenches her jaw a little at the nicknames they give her.

The taller man introduces himself as Spruce, and before the shorter man can speak, Billy Taupe, who has been watching the interaction with his mouth dropped open like a fish, cuts them off. 

“Hold on, just- Lucy Gray, can I talk to you for a second?” He says, leading her away from them. 

She sighs, but goes along with him. “What?” She says shortly.

“What the hell are you thinking?”

She scoffs, already turning away from him. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.” 

“What about the Covey? What about Jamie and Iris?” His eyes are wide and he looks like he’s about to reach out to her. 

Her eyes sting with the burn of sudden tears. She darts her eyes away from him, not wanting him to see her vulnerable. He doesn’t get to see her like that, never again. 

“Just tell me what’s going on, please.” He says quietly. 

She draws in a shaky breath, matching his solemn tone. “I don’t have a choice, Billy Taupe. Just leave it alone.” 

She moves back over to Spruce and the other man, who immediately start laying out their escape plan for her. They plan to be gone within the week. Spruce confirms that it’s just her joining the escape from District 12, and her throat closes up a little as she answers. 

“Yes, just me.”

There’s a moment of silence before Billy Taupe breaks it. “No. I’m in, too.”

Lucy Gray turns furious eyes on him, building up whatever life-changing insult she was going to throw at him. 

And then the peacekeepers descended. 

-

Admittedly, she’s never been inside the jail of District 12. It’s what she may have expected of it, though. Poorly constructed, and frankly looks like she’ll catch some disease if she touches anything. She’s careful not to sit on the rusty metal bench bolted to the floor in the cell she, Billy Taupe, Spruce, and the unnamed third man were tossed into. 

The peacekeepers had been hidden around the corner, apparently, listening to their whole conversation. Lucy Gray thought, though, that they had been especially rough with Billy Taupe. 

Spruce was droning on about how Lucy Gray had set him up, and she had nowhere near the brain power to even think about arguing with him. 

She thought of nothing but the Covey. Guilt burned through her chest as she stared mindlessly out the barred window of the cell. She’d messed everything up. How could her life have gone so wildly wrong so fast? 

All because the most wretched man to ever step foot on this earth decided she was his next target. And she had handled it without a shred of grace. Were they to be hanged, like the group of men from before? If that’s going to happen to her, she prays to whatever deity might exist that her family doesn't have to witness it. 

They’re there for less than an hour before a peacekeeper with dead eyes calls her name. 

“Lucy Gray Baird?”

She steps forward, ready to hear the news of her sure death sentence. But he merely pulls a set of sturdy silver keys from his belt, and unlocks the cell. She stands there still for a few moments, unsure as to what’s happening. The peacekeeper looks at her like she’s stupid, and after a few moments he gestures her forward to get her moving. 

“What’s going to happen to me?” She asks, dreading the answer. 

“You’re being released,” He says. “By order of the President.” 

Chapter Text

He had been down at the beginning construction site, speaking with Livius Grant when one of his more permanent security guards, Kori, received the missive. Kori had cleared his throat, and with a quiet “sir”, placed the message into his hands. 

It was from Knotman, and the operation he had given to Sejanus had been completed. Billy Taupe had been incarcerated on good, strong evidence, and would be sentenced to death. They had gotten him on attempting to flee Panem, the perfect crime for another public hanging. 

He had given the order in a fit of anger, and though it humiliated him to admit it even in his own mind, jealousy. This man he had never even met had once possessed something that should have only ever been his. It made his blood run boiling hot in his veins to think of Lucy Gray with anyone else. Something primal inside him with snapping jaws and vicious lust wanted to kill Billy Taupe himself because he knew the way Lucy Gray tasted. 

If he had it his way, Billy Taupe would die screaming. 

But at the end of the day, all his decisions cannot be driven by emotions alone, he is a politician after all. The incarceration of Billy Taupe and the threat of a noose was simply a bargaining chip. 

What he had not accounted for, however, was the list of names of the rest of the group of rebels who were arrested. The note was crushed in his white-knuckled fist and his conversation with Livius abruptly cut short as he gave a tense order to Kori.  

He left the construction site immediately, and returned to the Mayor’s house. He bypassed the miserable Mayfair who attempted to greet him and stormed into the upstairs sitting room where he and Valeria had taken to working in their spare time. She was kneeling in front of the coffee table, papers spread out in front of her, sticking blue tabs to them. 

She looked up surprisedly when he entered the room, most likely having not expected him to be back so soon. He was trying to steady his breathing, bathed in anger and feeling like lightning had gotten trapped under his skin. He paced the room in long strides, trying to make sense of the news he had just received. 

Lucy Gray had tried to run. She had been caught with Billy Taupe, the two of them probably making some lover's oath to run away together. Together. Away from him. She had tried to run from him. 

He couldn’t pin down what made him more furious. That she had tried to escape the second he tried to pull her closer, that the thought of being in the Capitol with Coriolanus was such a revolting idea she'd rather risk being hanged than live it, or that she had gone to Billy Taupe. Planned to run with him. 

He wanted to rip Billy Taupe apart. He wanted to possess Lucy Gray in every sense of the word. 

He tore at the tie around his throat, suddenly feeling suffocated. 

“Mr. President?” Valeria says cautiously. He turns to her, noting the way her eyebrows are arched and mouth parted a little in confusion. 

“What?” 

“Did something happen to Miss Baird?” 

He blows out a sarcastic breath of air, a headache forming behind his eyes, his chest tight with anger and wanting. “Miss Baird ,” He starts, his voice clipped and tight, “tried to flee Panem.” 

Valeria mumbles something which sounds suspiciously like ‘oh boy’ under her breath, before delicately posing another question, flipping her silver pen between her fingers. “I see. What did you do to prompt her to this drastic decision?”

Coriolanus sputters, eyeing Valeria in betrayal. “Why do you assume I did something to inspire this?”

She stares at him with an unimpressed look for a few seconds, and Coriolanus wonders when his assistant started giving him such an attitude. “Well, you seemed a little upset last night after speaking with Miss Baird, and I thought it would have put you in a better mood, so I’m assuming the conversation didn’t go well.” 

“I assure you I am not the problem here, she is being entirely unrealistic.” 

“Sir, I realize this is not my place, but can I ask what you did say to her? You know it’s always wise to receive an outside opinion on things, especially where feelings are concerned.”

Coriolanus heaves a sigh, fighting the instinct to tell Valeria to go back to her paperwork and stay out of his personal life, but then he thinks about how he felt like he was drowning last night. The conversation with Lucy Gray had gone so unlike he thought it would, so unlike he wanted. She had been angry and guarded with him from the moment he stepped in the room, her dark eyes lit with fire, her beautiful voice dripping with poison. It had made his mind furious, and his instincts clouded with the urge to crowd against her and take her rage flushed face between his hands. Like maybe if he brought her close enough she’d see things his way. 

He doesn’t understand how the conversation turned to a battle so fast. 

Valeria, he thinks, might know. But the thought of asking her advice makes his skin crawl, she’s younger than him and it’s not as if she understands his position. She could never see the situation for how it is and he’s sure her advice will be flowery and unhelpful, inapplicable to the strange relationship he and Lucy Gray continue to construct. 

She would think him cruel for threatening her family, and somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that it was, but he had no other option. How else would he keep her close?

So he sits down on a worn leather armchair, staring out the window with the shiny brown barrette he snatched from the dressing room enclosed in his fist. “You’re right, Valeria. It’s not your place.” 

Then, he waits. 

–

As he suspected, it does not take long. 

He hears her before he sees her. Can hear the muffled voices of peacekeepers, mainly Kori, speaking outside. Then, the door to the Mayor’s town house swings open, so fast that it slams against the wall, the hinges screaming. He hears Mayfair screech out “What are you doing here?” But the steady beat of her footsteps do not falter. 

Then, she speaks. “Where is he?” His whole body pulls straight, coming alive for her.

Valeria is looking at him with suspicious eyes, before she gets up and disappears around the corner, and he hears her taking the stairs calmly. 

“Miss Baird, the President is through here, if you’d like to speak with him.” 

Mayfair’s grating voice cuts in again. “The President? Why would he ever want to talk to her?”

Coriolanus is too busy trying to smooth out his hair and straighten his suit from where he’d wrinkled it by ripping at his tie. He’s schooled his face into something resembling calm by the time Lucy Gray comes storming around the corner. She looks lovely today, with her deep purple dress and her hair pulled away from her face, though he doubts she wants to hear him say it. She always looks lovely, he thinks. 

“Lucy Gray. How nice to see you again.” He says mildly. 

“Cut the bullshit.” Coriolanus has to force himself to not openly show his shock at being talked to like that. He also has to force himself not to laugh. A President should not encourage that kind of disrespect, and yet it’s strangely enjoyable when she does it. “Let Billy Taupe out of jail.” 

His mood immediately frosts over. “Rebels are hanged for their crimes.” 

Horror creeps over the anger on her face. “So you’ll hang me, too?” 

“Of course not.”

“Then why him?” She asks incredulously, the beginnings of panic seeping into her voice. 

“Why do you care what happens to him?” He shoots back. “Still in love with him, are you?” 

She breathes in a quiet gasp, eyes wide and unfocused as she pieces together his words. He worries that may have shown his hand a little. “You’ve been stalking me?”

“I’m diligent when it comes to the care of my citizens.” 

She lets out a bitter laugh. “Care of your citizens?  You’re letting your ‘citizens’ rot in jail as they wait to be hanged because they tried to run from the hellish conditions you force us to live in.” 

His head feels like it’s full of water, his lungs feel full of smoke. “Is that why you tried to run, Lucy Gray? Living conditions? Or was it so you could be with your boyfriend?” His voice comes out cruel and jeering, and it’s happening again, their conversation has turned to war and blood. 

“I tried to run from you.” He knew this, but it feels like all the air leaves his body for a second at hearing her say it. “Just let him go, he’s got nothing to do with this.” 

“Why should I?” 

And there it is. The words hang in the air and he can tell the moment she realizes there’s only one right answer. Her shoulders slump a little, but her eyes stay fiery and bright, pinned on him. 

“Fine.” She says it softly, as if the word stole something from her. “I'll go with you to the Capitol and perform in your little puppet show, but I have conditions.” 

Coriolanus feels slightly lightheaded as he rushes out “Yes, what are they?” 

She takes a steadying breath, a hand coming up to push back the little curls escaping her bun. He wants to knock her hand away and do it himself. He wants everything. “Billy Taupe and the other guys will be released, unharmed.” 

Coriolanus nods, but must interject. “They’ll be released, but they must keep silent about their capture. The rest of District 12 cannot know I make exceptions.” 

“Okay, fine.” She says. “My family will be taken care of. You said you can keep them safe and well-fed, and I’m going to need some way to contact them or be given proof that you’re following through. Also, I’ll be allowed to come home to visit them whenever I want.” 

“Done.” 

“The electric fence, too, I want construction to stop immediately.” 

He was expecting to hear that one. “The fence will be built–”

She takes a breath as if to cut him off. 

“--but, I will be sure that power will not be run to a certain section of it so your family will still be able to access the woods.” 

Her eyebrows crinkle above her dark eyes. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? You could be tricking my family into getting burnt to a crisp.” 

“Now why would I risk your trust like that?” 

“Don’t for one second think you’ll ever have my trust.” She says viciously. 

He wants to smile. He’ll win her over yet. He’s sure he can do it. He was the youngest President to ever be elected in Panem’s history. What’s one little District girl? “Your family will be able to easily cross the fence, but the rest of 12 will not. I’ll make sure to send only my most trusted soldiers to show your family the safe part of the fence, and they will test it themselves to be sure no harm comes to them.” 

She looks unsure still, but nods stiffly. 

“Any more conditions, Lucy Gray?” 

She takes the smallest of steps closer to him, her eyes cutting and her jaw set. “Yes. Once we’re there, you’ll leave me alone.” 

“No.” 

Shock makes her pull back a little. “Yes. ” 

“No, I will not.” He says simply. He won’t. He can’t. She’ll be so close to him, he can’t imagine ever being able to stay away knowing she’s in the same city as him. Right within his reach. He won’t have to live off of unfocused cameras and relentless dreams. She’ll be in his city, his Lucy Gray, singing for him in her pretty dresses, just waiting to be swept off to the President’s Mansion. 

“Then I’m not going.” She says stubbornly. He wants to roll his eyes as she turns on her heel to storm out the door. She really is quite dramatic. 

“Then I’ll see you at the executions tomorrow.” 

She makes a frustrated noise and spins back around to face him. “You’ll have what you want. I’ll be singing in your club, in the Capitol. Why can’t you leave me be? What more will you want? ”

Her words linger in the air, her eyes guarded with something like dread as if she doesn’t want to actually hear his answer. So he says nothing, just stares at her, this woman who has disrupted his entire life and then hooked him on the thrill of it all. The curve of her jaw, the expressive arch of her eyebrows, the radiance of her skin. He flashes back for a moment to last night, pressing a kiss to the back of her hand and the way she tore her hand away right as his lips brushed her skin. He must have deluded himself into seeing the flash of heat in her eyes. 

“Do you truly find my admiration for you so revolting?” He forces his voice to come out lofty, and uncaring, but somewhere in the back of his mind lurks fear and vulnerability. 

“You give me your ‘admiration’ as if you cannot believe someone from the Districts could have impressed you. As if your admiration should be my most treasured possession, but believe me, Mr. President, it is the deepest insult I’ve ever received.” She bares her teeth around her words, as if she wishes she could grow fangs and inject deadly venom into her voice. 

The familiar burning anger Lucy Gray inspires in him courses through his veins, and he barely registers the way he closes the distance between them. It’s as natural as breathing, the way he gravitates towards her, constantly possessed by the instinct to be near her. His sweet compass needle, and her relentless true north.  

“Lucy Gray,” He grits out, fully prepared to tell her she needs to learn to watch her tongue, but nothing comes out. Their eyes stay locked in a standoff, her chest rising in shallow breaths, him barely breathing at all. The longer they stand there, tense and silent, the more his anger melts into confusion. He is the President, why would she not want or seek out his good favor? He could change her life. He could give her everything she’s ever wanted, and yet she looks at him like he’s signing her death sentence. 

It makes him want to be angry again, the way Lucy Gray makes everything so confusing. He’s never stumbled across a problem he couldn’t solve, a riddle he couldn’t answer. He thinks, for a moment, that Lucy Gray must be some kind of karmic backlash for a mistake he’d made. Designed to torture him, complete with every tool and trick it would take to drive him mad. It makes him want to be angry, but it must be the impending insanity teasing the edges of his mind, because all he feels is some inexplicable urge to keep her close to him forever. 

“The train to the Capitol will leave in 3 days, at 9 am sharp. Pack whatever you’d like, but anything you need will also be provided. I will see you then.” 

She staggers back a few steps, as if she’d just escaped a spell, and bolts out of the room. 

–

An hour after Lucy Gray has left, Coriolanus hasn’t accomplished much but staring aimlessly at the documents in front of him. Valeria knocks a little on the doorway as she walks in, her tablet and a few files in hand. 

“Mr. President,” She greets, clearing her throat a little. “I wondered if you’d like to talk, perhaps to Tigris? I could get her on the line.” 

He barely glances up from the papers spread out in front of him. “I do hope you’re not meddling again, Valeria.”

She hums a little under her breath. “I don’t meddle, I assist.” 

“And you think I need assistance right now?” 

“With all due respect, Sir, I think you need a lot of assistance.” 

He looks up at her with narrowing eyes, attempting to ignore the way he’s wound tighter than a fist. He stays silent, unwilling to argue with her and unwilling to tell her he doesn’t need her help when it comes to Lucy Gray. 

“How did you feel about the Districts during the war?” 

The question startles him, and for a moment he tries to construct some kind of political answer. They were on the opposing side of the war, so his opinion of them was low, or their beliefs and actions did not sit right with him, or… but in the end, he gives her nothing but honesty. 

“I hated them. All of them. For everything they did to us.” 

“What did they do?” 

Frustration prowls under his skin, she knows what they did, she was younger than him, born into it, but that doesn’t mean she was not fully educated on the times of the war. “They attacked us. They starved us.” He grinds out. 

“Yes.” She says. Her voice comes out gentle on her next words, as if she’s calming a frightened animal. “I know you to be an educated and understanding leader and man. But, I cannot imagine that you will ever forget the anger and hate you harbored for those who starved you and abandoned you.” 

His stomach sinks, her point taking shape in front of him. His mind wars, hatred for the districts and care for Lucy Gray, leaving his head swimming with countless thoughts. He remembers the bitter bite of hunger, and the freezing hands of winter. 

“Some people, though, are kind and loving and could learn to forgive,” She paces the room to place more files in front of him. “if they are given the right reasons to.” 

–

Coriolanus tosses and turns for hours after he has turned out the light, though not from the scratchy bedsheets, or the springy mattress of the Mayor’s guest room. Valeria’s words from earlier lurk in the corners of his mind, curling like candle smoke which vanishes the moment he reaches out to grab it. 

If they are given the right reasons to, she’d said. But, what more did Lucy Gray need? He was offering protection, the well-being of her family, and a chance at the Capitol. A chance for a new life, a brighter one. How had that not earned him even an ounce of her affection? She and her family would be taken care of, they would never miss meals, they would never fear their safety, they would not have to sing and dance to keep their home, they could do it simply for joy if they wished. They would be warm in the winter months, they would be okay. She would be okay. 

What more could he give her than the ability to breathe and live so easily?

He shuts down his train of thought, sure that path of existential questions would lead him to only more frustration, and he forces himself to be logical.

No use whining about how all his advances so far had only inspired some kind of perpetual resentment in her, instead he must try a different route. 

When Lucy Gray arrived at the Capitol, he had originally thought he would have her live in the President’s Mansion. Of course, he’d give her her own wing. He had thought the East Wing would do well, as it was an almost entirely empty area of the Manion, due to his choice of not marrying. 

But somehow, he thinks Lucy Gray may not take this well. 

The urge to set aside what she may think and put her there anyway stirs in his chest. Because he could. All of Panem lives, breathes, and dies at his command. All the power in the world at his fingertips. No matter how much she might hate it, she would still eventually have to fall in line and do what he commands. She wouldn’t risk her family by angering him. Even if she went kicking and screaming, she would go. 

He could make it so. 

But, there is something he wants so much more than her obedience. 

He wants her to have secret smiles she gives only to him. He wants her dark eyes sparkling with joy when she sees him in the crowd at one of her shows. He wants her to be playing a melody on her guitar while he drinks his morning coffee. He wants to see her with her hair messy, his bedsheets barely covering her hips. He wants her to want him back. 

So if having his good favor and his protection had not swayed her, he would have to try to give her something else. Frivolous things such as roses and the guitar case had seemed only to upset her, so perhaps gifts such as those would need to wait. 

But he could give her something more sturdy, more enduring. A home. He could find her a place to live. Maybe she might like having somewhere that is entirely hers. He decides he’ll run it by Valeria before he makes any final decisions. 

–

The next morning he waltzes in to where Valeria is seated at the breakfast table, stirring sugar into her coffee. “Good morning, Valeria.” 

“Morning, Sir.” She mumbles, her eyes tired. Valeria has never been much of a morning person, he’s always found the first hour of the day she spends doing something simple like organizing his itinerary and drinking copious amounts of sugary coffee. 

He takes a seat next to her, and begins answering the 6 new messages he has from Aelius. In one of his responses, he is sure to ask Aelius to pass on the news to Pluribus that his headline performer will be in the Capitol in a few days time. 

“Valeria,” He starts, “I was thinking we should find somewhere for Miss Baird to stay in the Capitol. Somewhere nice, and near Pluribus’s club.” 

She’s quiet for a few moments, and he continues. 

“Would that be- do you think that is adequate?” He immediately starts biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from sounding weaker than he already does. 

Valeria is looking at him with her eyes slightly wide over the rim of her coffee mug. “Where had you originally planned for Miss Baird to live?” 

“The Mansion. The East Wing, specifically.”

She inhales slowly, raising her brows. “Then, yes, Sir. I think that finding her her own place to stay is a good start. Adequate.” 

He nods to himself, a small swell of pride in his chest. He can only hope this gift is one Lucy Gray will find acceptable. 

“Would you like me to start looking at listings?” She says, pulling her pen out of her messenger bag to start writing in her journal. 

“Yes.” He says, standing. “But someplace with lots of natural light, I think. Also, if possible, somewhere near the park, perhaps overlooking the lake, as she does enjoy the outdoors.” He pauses before walking out the door. “Maybe somewhere not too far from the Mansion.” 

The corners of Valeria’s mouth are twitching a little like she’s fighting back a smile. “I can do that. Also, perhaps it would be beneficial if we found a few places that fit this description, and then we could let Miss Baird pick from those options.” 

“Yes, she would like that, I think. Maybe it will make her feel…” He feels completely at a loss for words. He can’t pretend he understands anything about the way Lucy Gray’s mind works. “Happier.” 

Valeria stops fighting off a small smile, and Coriolanus leaves the room before she can comment on how soft he’s becoming. 

–

The order is given for the two men who were with Lucy Gray the other morning to be released immediately. Kori has a discussion with them on the importance of keeping their mouths shut about their capture and quick release, and is sure to make them aware of what will happen to them if they decide to speak about it. But, Coriolanus tells them to hold Billy Taupe back until he arrives at the jail. 

He buttons the front of his gray suit as he enters, flanked by peacekeepers who keep their finger on the trigger of their guns and their eyes wide and alert. He is met with Kori, who gives him a nod and gestures to the next room where Billy Taupe sits alone on the rusted metal bench of the cramped cell. 

Coriolanus enters the room alone, Kori shutting the door behind him as he had requested. Billy Taupe’s head shoots up as the door shuts, and his mouth drops open as the color drains from his face. 

His whole body goes rigid as he stands and Coriolanus cannot help the pleasure he feels at seeing Billy Taupe look like a fragile little deer who wants to flee from the hunter. 

“Billy Taupe Clade, isn’t it?” 

Billy Taupe swallows hard before nodding. “Yes.” He responds, barely audible. 

Coriolanus extends a hand, but not past the bars, so Billy Taupe has to move forward and reach through the bars to shake it. He wouldn’t dare insult the President by refusing a handshake or pulling away from it before Coriolanus does. 

Coriolanus grasps his hand and squeezes until he can feel the bones in Billy Taupe’s hand grinding together, his skin going white and bloodless underneath Coriolanus’s grip. Billy Taupe, to his credit, does not pull his hand away or flinch, but Coriolanus does not miss the slight furrow of his brow or the tightness of his mouth. 

“I assume my peacekeepers have already spoken with you about the importance of keeping quiet about your capture and release.” Coriolanus begins as he pulls a steel key Kori had handed to him from his pocket. 

Billy Taupe clears his throat before speaking. “Yes, they did. But.” His eyes dart away as Coriolanus cuts his sharp gaze straight into Billy Taupe’s eyes. “But they didn’t say why.”

“Why what?” Coriolanus pushes the key into the lock and twists it, not yet opening the door to the cell. 

“Why are we being released?” 

“A deal was cut for you.” 

Billy Taupe says nothing, but his eyes are swimming with questions. Coriolanus pulls open the door to the cell and motion for Billy Taupe to leave the cell. As soon as Billy Taupe is out of the cell, Coriolanus’s fist flies and he is on the floor, holding his nose which streams blood down over his teeth and chin. 

Billy Taupe’s face is gaunt with shock, his nose clearly broken. He groans, mumbling ‘what the hell ’, under his breath. He looks up at Coriolanus, and for a moment he tries to find what it is Lucy Gray saw in this man. 

He wasn’t unattractive, but there wasn’t anything special about him. His messy dark hair, his green eyes, his lean frame, his smile lined face. Why? Why did this man with his unremarkable face and his mundane life which amounted to nothing, why did this man get to have Lucy Gray? Why does he know what it feels like to touch her? Why does he know how it feels to call her his? Why had she ever wanted him? And what’s more, why did she not want Coriolanus now? 

Surely he was more attractive? He had endless wealth and power and influence and yet, he did not have her. The madness, the inexplicability of it all drives him to take Billy Taupe by the collar and smash his fist into his bloody jaw. Billy Taupe coughs a little, spitting out a tooth and cradling the side of his face. With Billy Taupe’s collar still enclosed in his hand, Coriolanus pulls him up a little so he can speak low, calm, and deadly. 

“Now that we know each other a bit better, allow me to make myself clear to you.” He snarls “You are never going to go near Lucy Gray again. You don’t speak to her, you don’t look at her, you don’t even think about her. Because if I get word that you’ve so much as breathed near her, much less put your filthy fucking hands on her, I will kill you myself. And believe me, it will not be a death nearly as humane as hanging.” 

With that, he snatches Billy Taupes right wrist, and twists until the bone snaps under the pressure. 

Billy Taupe cries out and pushes himself across the dirty floor and away from Coriolanus as soon as his collar and mangled wrist is released. His harsh breathing rattles through the air as Coriolanus straightens out his suit and runs a hand through his hair. 

“It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Clade. I look forward to your cooperation.” Coriolanus says as he walks towards the door. “Or your lack of it, as I think I do so love to make good on my threats.” 

Chapter Text

Lucy Gray was not very familiar with goodbyes. Although so many people in her life were gone, they had all left so suddenly, without warning, without a moment to spare for her to say she loved them. Billy Taupe would have been the only goodbye to ever cross her lips, but even that had ended suddenly with blood and tears and screaming. Throwing his things out of the house, stinging insults, and promises to never let him near her again. 

But these goodbyes were something different. A slow, painful march, each moment delicate as lace and mournful as a dove. Every sliver of happiness tinged with the bitterness of a deadline. 

It begins with the boys. She asks if they’ll go on a walk with her, and Tam Amber makes a humorless joke about how they should enjoy the woods while they can before the Capitol steals that, too. She’ll be sure to tell them that they won’t be able to take the woods from the Covey. They carve a familiar path through the trees, and Lucy Gray begins to talk. 

She tells them about the offer from the President, and how it really wasn’t an offer. 

She pauses when the steps of Tam Amber and Clerk Carmine, who had both been very silent this entire time, stop. She turns around and Tam Amber is staring at her with his mouth dropped open, blinking rapidly and shaking his head a little as if the words won’t process right. As if he can’t make sense of it. Clerk Carmine, though, the look on his face makes her stomach sink. It makes her want to immediately say that she will find a way around it, that she won’t go. 

His eyebrows bear the slightest wrinkle above his hazel eyes, eyes which are welling with tears that fall silently down his cheeks. “This can’t be real.” He whispers, so quietly it’s as if his voice refuses to go any louder. 

“I’m so sorry.” She says back, matching his solemn, silent tone. 

He starts shaking his head back and forth, and staggers back a step. “No, Lu, you can’t – you can’t just leave us, you can’t go, you can’t just go–” 

She tries to get close to him, and he retreats from her again like she’d done something unforgivable. “I’m sorry, CC, I am so sorry, I wish I didn’t have to go, I wish it wasn’t like this, but I – I don’t have a choice.” Tears spill down her face, and it feels like her heart has caught fire, air feeling harsh and sharp in her lungs. 

Clerk Carmine looks haunted, ghosts of so many lost people swimming in his eyes. A sob rattles his chest, and he chokes out a few more words before he turns and flees into the woods. “How could you do this to us?”

The words pierce through her like a gunshot, leaving her moving to run after him to beg his forgiveness. To beg him to pull the bullet out of her chest. 

She’s pushing branches out of the way, ready to charge after him, when Tam Amber finally speaks. “Just let him go, he needs some space.”

Lucy Gray’s body loses all its life, slumping against a tree like a marionette whose strings were just cut. She looks wearily over to Tam Amber who holds himself unnaturally still, but his hands are closed into fists by his side, and if she looks closer, he looks like he might be shaking. 

“Tammy,” She murmurs, “say something.” 

He moves suddenly like her voice released him from a trance, moving forward and crashing into her like an ocean crashing against smooth, time-worn rocks. His long arms embrace her so warmly, and she weeps rivers into his shoulder. 

When he speaks again, his voice is thick and jagged and ringing with desperation. “He said he wants a performer, right? I’ll go, Lucy Gray, I’ll go and…” 

“No.” She whispers. 

“And I’ll be okay, really, I can do it, I’ll go and you can stay and –” 

“You can’t.”

“No, listen to me, they need you. Everyone needs you.” He pulls back a little, taking Lucy Gray by the shoulders as she tries to commit the exact shade of brown his eyes are to memory. “CC, Maude Ivory, Jamie and Iris, they need you. Shit, District 12 needs you.” 

The color of coffee, she thinks, the smallest splash of cream added. The color of tree bark after it rains. “He doesn’t just want a performer. He wants me.” The words taste like ash in her mouth. 

His eyebrows crinkle a little, and horror creeps into his voice. “What do you mean ‘he wants you’?”

She’s silent for a few slow seconds, watching color drain from his face. “I don’t know what exactly he wants but I know he wants it with me. And even if it didn’t have to be me I’d never let you go, you know that.”

“Lu, if I could go for you–”

“I know.” 

He wraps his arms around her again, and his voice breaks over a sob when he whispers, “I’m going to miss you so much.” 

She takes deep breaths, breathing in his scent and trying desperately not to forget anything. His height, his warmth, the sound of him crying in her ear. 

–

Maude Ivory was next. This goodbye felt like a part of her was dying. Maude Ivory had always been so much like Lucy Gray. The love she had for music and color and life. Her charm, her wit, her brown eyes. She had always been Lucy Gray’s. When her parents had first taken Barb Azure and Maude Ivory in, she was just a baby. And from that moment on, she was Lucy Gray’s. Lucy Gray sang her lullabies at night and held her little hands as she learned to walk. She taught Maude Ivory to sing and play guitar, had danced with her and played with her and kissed her little blonde head. 

She had grown up in Lucy Gray’s image, shrouded in sunlight and love. To say goodbye to her felt like Lucy Gray was saying goodbye to herself, the girl she was supposed to be. 

And so, when Maude Ivory crawled into Lucy Gray’s lap in their little bedroom and wept into her shoulder, Lucy Gray wrapped her arms as tight as they would go around her and cried. Ever mirroring one another, coiled around each other like snakes around tree limbs, crying matching tears from matching eyes, Lucy Gray mourned the loss of her little Maudie. She mourned the loss of herself. 

“I’ll visit,” Lucy Gray swears like the oath it is, “I promise I won’t be gone forever.”

“Don’t go Lu, please don’t go.” Lucy Gray squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the anguish in Maude Ivory’s voice. She should never bear such pain, and Lucy Gray was sick to her stomach for being the reason for it. She thought, for a moment, she might murder President Snow for forcing Lucy Gray to become the reaper of Maude Ivory’s peace.

“I’m so sorry.” She whispers into the afternoon air. 

Maude Ivory and Lucy Gray cry for a long time, until Lucy Gray runs out of tears and Maude Ivory falls asleep. Lucy Gray stands as gently as possible, lowering Maude Ivory to the yellow bed sheets and pressing a kiss to her freckled cheek. She pulls away with the salt of tears on her lips. 

So, she would leave behind her dreams of romantic, time-stopping love in Maude Ivory’s little heart. She would leave behind her joy and her dreams in Maude Ivory’s wide, toothy smile. She would leave behind her ability to see light and goodness in everything in Maude Ivory’s honey brown eyes. 

For surely those things would not be hers as long as she lives in the Capitol, under President Snow’s thumb. 

–

Lucy Gray really doesn’t drink very often. After seeing Bily Taupe get so dangerously drunk over and over again, the bitter burn of alcohol just stopped being worth the high. But today, she feels she wants the burn more than anything. Something tangible to chase away the brutal ache of sadness which lingers deep in her bones. 

She lets herself into the Hob, it’s just past dinner time which means it’s nearly full in there. They’re supposed to perform tonight, but Lucy Gray thinks her vocal chords might have shriveled up and died. So their performance for tonight has been canceled. 

“There she is! Lucy Gray, where’s your family at?” A regular, Vinny, shouts as Lucy Gray walks behind the bar. “We’re about ready for a show!” He holds up his glass in cheers to her, beer splashing over the rim of his mug and over his hands, but his smile still pierces all the way up to his tired eyes. Vinny is a coal miner, no family, no wife, spends all his nights drinking away his money. But he’s a good man, and she’d sing for him if she could. 

She feels like there’s fish hooks in her face, pulling at the corners of her mouth when she tries to smile. “Sorry, Vinny, we won’t be singing tonight. But we’ll be on tomorrow, will we see ‘ya there?” 

“Can always count on me!” He laughs, saluting her before turning back to his group of friends. She will perform with the Covey tomorrow night. It might be her last ever performance in District 12. The thought makes her feel cold and rootless.  

She grabs a bottle of bourbon from behind the counter, and walks until she reaches the little dressing room. Bourbon had never been her favorite drink, but it did it’s job and she couldn’t stand whiskey, vodka always seemed like it should preface fun and wildness, and wine was a recipe for weeping and moaning. Bourbon, though, bourbon meant anger. It meant bitterness, resentment, and hatred. And after leaving behind Maude Ivory and her sleeping, tear-swollen eyes, Lucy Gray felt that those things were all she had left in her. 

She slumps down in the chair in front of the vanity and kicks her feet up on the surface of the wood, carelessly tossing the bottle cap in front of her. She stares at her face in the mirror for a long time, wondering why. Lucy Gray knew she was pretty. Beautiful, even. But that was for District 12. People tended not to have the time to make themselves pretty around here, but she was a performer and her life hinged on people wanting to look at her. Her beauty had never been something she took joy in, it was her currency. It was necessary. Nothing more, really. 

Surely in the Capitol, there was nothing to do but make yourself pretty all day long. Those women must be stunningly, unrealistically beautiful. It could not be her face that had made the President behave this way. It was more than that, but she couldn’t make sense of it. If she had a thousand years to puzzle it out, she would not understand.  

In the back of her mind, the thoughts she has not let herself think are screaming and clawing and raging to get to the front of her mind. She decides to think about them fully now, because if not now, when?

What does he want with her? That seems to be what everyone wants to know, and she never gives a clear answer. Partially because there isn’t one, and partially because the fragment of the answer she does have makes her sick. 

He wants her. That, he does not hide. She can see it in his eyes, the way they are uncaged, desperate, drinking her in like he’s constantly trying to satisfy himself on the sight of her alone. She can hear it in his voice, the way he speaks her name, holding it in his mouth like maybe he can taste it. She can feel it in the way he moves, always crowding towards her, stealing her space, feeling energy radiating off of his skin without them sharing a single touch. 

He wants her, and with the set of his shoulders and the confidence he radiates she can tell he believes he will have her. She will not let him. Come hell or high water, she’ll never let him. He will never truly have her the way he wants her. It may be the only power she holds against him. The only card in her hand, the only chess move she knows. 

She’s only a few deep drinks into her bottle, when the doorway in the mirror behind her is filled. Iris stands there, looking like she already knows everything. 

Maybe Iris has always looked like that to her, though. Like she holds all the understanding in the world in her eyes. “Lucy Gray, I remember when you were 10 years old with little butterfly clips in your hair and now here you are, drinking bourbon straight from the bottle in my bar.” 

Maybe the bourbon is already warming her thoughts, but she finds herself chuckling. “Yes, well, time flies, and all that.” 

“It does.” She says, dragging a chair next to Lucy Gray and slinging her feet over the desk too. They sit quietly for a few moments, and Lucy Gray can feel Iris deciding the best way to begin the conversation. “So, what’s he like?” 

“Who?” Lucy Gray says, trying to pretend like she doesn't know who Iris is talking about. Iris gives her a pointed look, to which Lucy Gray pushes out all the air in her lungs. “He’s… he’s – I don’t know he’s just… he’s so much, you know?” She’s sure Iris will not know, as she herself isn’t very sure what she’s saying. 

“How so?”

She stares at the reflection of the door in the mirror behind her and remembers when he first filled the doorway, his navy blue suit with the roses sewn into the lapels and his own personal gravitational force. Like some rip in time and space which had been dressed up in expensive fabrics and blond hair. “He takes up all the air in the room,” She says, still staring at the empty doorway, sure he’ll appear if she keeps speaking about him. Aren’t there urban legends about that sort of thing? “He’s intense, and cold, and everything I thought he might be, and also somehow different. I didn’t expect him to care so much about things, or want things the way normal people do.” 

The sound of Iris making a little noise under her breath drags her back to reality, and she clears her throat a little, taking another drink. “So, what is it he wants?”

She says it like she already knows. 

Lucy Gray hasn’t ever really spoken the words out loud before. Not to someone who might understand what they mean. 

“Me.” Her breath catches a little in her chest, and she takes another drink, grateful for the way it hurts. “I don’t know what exactly he wants, but it’s… it’s me, Iris, I can feel it.”

Iris is quiet for a little while, and Lucy Gray coils a piece of her hair around her finger until it cuts off the circulation. “Lucy Gray, this is dangerous. If you don’t give him what he wants you’re risking –” 

“I know what I’m risking, alright?”

“But, you’re risking losing yourself, too.”

“What?”

Iris turns to her, and lays a hand over hers, gripping hard enough for Lucy Gray to wince. “Don’t let them break you.” She says fiercely. “You are good, warm, brave, and fearless, and everything fuckers like them aren’t strong enough to be. It is terrifying to be the only one of your kind. Do not let them turn you into something else just because it’s easier.” 

She feels like Iris is peering around dark corners of her soul, spying fears Lucy Gray had tucked away and never found the words for. Fears that had not yet materialized into something real, just hanging in the air around her like the slight charge in the air before lightning strikes.   

“Whatever it is President Snow wants, never give him the satisfaction of changing you.” 

Lucy Gray feels the words crash through her like stones through water, and feels them sink into the very foundation of her mind. She knows Iris is right. She cannot, will not let them change her. 

She takes another drink, passing the bottle over to Iris’s waiting hand. “Here’s to giving those assholes something to talk about.”

–

She wakes up the next morning with a pounding headache, briefly mourns the time in her life where she could drink all night and wander off the next morning without a scratch. She’s still at the Hob, slumped over the desk, back stiff from sleeping in the chair all night. She lifts her head to peek in the mirror and is horrified to see her hair twisted up like a bird’s nest around her head, and dark bags under her eyes. 

She sees that Iris has left her a glass of water, and a thin fleece thrown around her shoulders. She clutches it tight around her and stares into the emptiness of the room. She already misses this place, even though it’s not gone. Her chest aches and splinters around all the things she will lose, and all the new, strange, foreign things that will take the place of this warm and loving life. 

How does one reckon with all the things they will have to let go of? How do you find peace when everything you love is gone? What is the best way to say goodbye? To walk the floor and remember the good times, trailing your fingers along the walls, shedding the tears that memories conjure? Memories that are now haunting and cruel when you think about them, because they will never repeat themselves? Because you didn't really appreciate them at the moment?

Or do you just walk out, because no amount of reminiscing or pieces of wood and cement under your fingertips will change reality?

Lucy Gray walks out, the thin fleece still bundled around her shoulders. 

–

When she walks through the door to the Covey’s house, she is immediately bombarded by Barb Azure and Tam Amber. 

“Jesus, Lucy Gray, there you are.” Tam Amber says, his shoulders slumping as he drops his head into his hands. 

“Where the hell were you? Why didn’t you leave a note?” Barb Azure hisses, her voice coming out angry but her eyes are glassy and fearful. She looks like she hasn’t slept. 

Guilt rings in her ears and apologies climb up her throat, but before she can speak them Barb Azure is flinging her arms around Lucy Gray in a no-breathing-allowed hug. 

Lucy Gray does understand why she shouldn’t stay out all night without letting anyone know where she’ll be but, also, she’s done this before so she’s unsure what has everyone so wound up until– 

“I thought-” Barb Azure whispers, “I thought they might have taken you early.” She sounds little, and lonely, and scared. The way children sound when they ask you why the thunder is so loud and angry.

Lucy Gray is so sick of the sadness and the misery and the bitterness, but it washes over her, fresh and renewed and unyielding. She soaks it all up like soil in the rain, and feels it consume her. 

She lays her hand over the back of Bark Azure’s head and whispers back, “You know I’d never go without saying goodbye.”

“I know, it’s just…”

“I know.”

Barb Azure pulls away slowly, and finds a way to laugh a little, tugging at one of the knots in Lucy Gray’s hair. “You look like a mess.”

Lucy Gray cracks a smile, and drags a hand through her hair. “Not to worry, darling. I’ll be polished and braided for the show tonight.” 

Barb Azure shakes her head a little, and Lucy Gray glances over at Tam Amber who has his hands propped on his hips and is shifting on his feet like he can’t remember how to stand still. 

“Tammy, you weren’t too worried, were you?” Lucy Gray asks, keeping her voice light. 

“As a matter of fact I was.” He grumbles. Then he looks over his shoulder quickly, and his face is lined with gentility. “Uh, also, CC is out back. Maybe you wanna, you know, talk to him. I think he’s ready to talk now.”

Lucy Gray is horribly relieved, having sort of been accepting that Clerk Carmine might just avoid her until she leaves. She moves away from the warm circle of Barb Azure’s arms, eyes trained on the door leading to the back porch.

When she pushes it open, Clerk Carmine is sitting out on the steps, and she has a sense of deja vu, remembering the night a few short weeks ago where she and Clerk Carmine spoke out on the porch about Billy Taupe. 

The world was simpler then. They never could have known. 

“Hey, honey.” She says softly as the door closes behind her. He stands quickly and spins around, his eyes tired mirrors of her own. 

“Lu,” He croaks, and then he’s hugging her and for a moment she feels okay again, she feels like the world might not be falling apart because Clerk Carmine is forgiving her. He’s crying again, and Lucy Gray makes little shushing sounds, and accepts all his weight when he leans heavily on her. 

“It’s okay,” She’s saying before he has a chance to speak, knowing he is going to apologize, and knowing he never needed to apologize. “It’s okay, I’m sorry.” 

“No, what? I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” 

“Don’t apologize, you didn't do anything wrong.” 

“Yes, I did, I shouldn’t have acted like that, I was just–” His own crying stops him from going any further, and he doesn’t need to go any further because she knows, god, she knows. “It just hurts so bad. I didn’t want it to be real.” 

She takes a deep breath, a breath that feels like knives dragging up her lungs, because someone has to be calm, they cannot both be breaking. “I didn’t want it to be real either.”

They stay like that for a while, neither of them breaking the hug, neither of them wanting to let go. It feels like the moment she lets go of him she’ll get ripped off the planet, as if his arms are the only thing holding her steady in District 12. 

Lucy Gray is reminded of when he was 11 and got briefly lost in the woods. After a tiff with Billy Taupe he had gone charging away from the lake, where they all had been spending the day. Lucy Gray had let him go, thinking he only needed a bit of space and they knew the woods well, so really it shouldn’t have been a problem. But after an hour passed, Lucy Gray had just about burned a hole into the dirt with her pacing. Feeling some odd twisting in her gut, she had just kept repeating herself to Billy Taupe, saying she had a bad feeling and let’s just go check on him. Billy Taupe had waved her off each time, saying he was fine and just being dramatic. Finally, Lucy Gray couldn’t stand waiting for him to come back and had decided that if she only just saw him she’d feel better, so she went on to the same path Clerk Carmine had disappeared down. 

After she couldn’t find him anywhere on the main path, panic set in like a wildfire. It consumed her, and before long she was calling his name and abandoning the path. It was pure luck really, or maybe some kind of miracle. Somehow, she’d found him even though he was miles off the path and further into the woods than even she had gone. 

If guardian angels were real, then Clerk Carmine’s had taken her hand and led her straight to him. When she found him, crying sitting against a tree, he had bounded into her arms and she had cried into his hair. Through his sobbing he explained that he had gotten lost and couldn’t find the lake, and he didn’t mean to, but he accidentally got off the path. She couldn’t find it in her to scold him, only to tell him that he wasn’t ever allowed to leave her side again. 

But she was the one leaving now, wasn’t she? It was cruelty she didn’t know herself to be capable of. 

Now they stand on the back porch, but it feels like they’re still in the depth of the woods, hugging fiercely as the sun rises fully in the sky, with quiet promises to never leave each other again. What a liar she’s become. 

“I feel like we’re losing you forever.” Clerk Carmine murmurs. 

She pulls back, gripping both of his shoulders, putting her face close to his. “Listen to me, okay? Never. You’re never going to lose me, I will always come back. I made a deal with him, he’s going to let me come back to visit and I will, every chance I get.” 

He nods at this, his eyes pleading. “Please do that.” 

“I will.” She whispers, wiping away a few of his tears. “I will.”

They settle down onto the porch steps, and stare out into the woods, watching the clouds form strange shapes in the sky. She tries to commit this place to memory. Even knowing she can return home to see her family whenever she wants, it doesn’t ease any of the pain. It doesn’t make going away any gentler. 

After a while, Clerk Carmine speaks again. “What do you think it’ll be like? The Capitol, I mean.” 

It’s a good question, one she really hadn’t given any thought to. “Strange, I think. I don’t think I’ll understand half of what they’ve got up there. I’m sure it won’t have a soul like this place does.”

“I wonder what the people will be like? You think they’d be nice to you?”

She hums, tilting her head to the side as if she can peer through the trees and get a glimpse of her future life in the Capitol. “I bet they’ll look at me like I’m an animal in a cage. They’ll like me from a distance, where all they can see are my colors, and I’m perfectly harmless behind bars.”

“Jesus, Lu, that’s morbid.”

“You think they’ll be different, then.”

“I think…” He trails off, his eyes far away. “I think, honestly, that they’ll love you and they won’t understand.”

“Won’t understand what?”

“Why you hate them.” 

Moths flutter around the trees, clinging to the leaves just starting to return from the harsh winter. “They must be lonely, then, not understanding why we don’t adore them.”

“Yeah.” He mumbles, suddenly turning to her with a fierce look in his eye. “Maybe you can change something up there. Maybe you can show them something new. Make them understand what it is not to be lonely.” 

Change. The word feels large and unknown and impossible. She hadn’t dared to think about it. That she could change something, that is. But now the word clangs around in her head like a butterfly fighting the cage of its cocoon. 

–

She wastes away the day walking with Maude Ivory through the woods, taking all their favorite paths, finding snakes and naming them. The day is gone so fast, it feels like it’s getting pulled out from under her like a tablecloth. But instead of leaving everything on the table undisturbed, she feels like she’s shattering, panic closing in on her, sadness radiating from her, infecting anyone she gets too close to. 

Maude Ivory clings to her side, like she’s trying to soak up every last minute they have together. Lucy Gray is doing the same thing, squeezing her soft hand which is tangled with hers every few minutes. 

The only goodbye she has yet to say is Barb Azure. They dance around one another, avoiding their inevitable collapse, and Lucy Gray left this goodbye for last because she’s entitled to a little cowardice, and she thinks this goodbye might cause some kind of rip in her soul that she’s never going to be able to mend. How does one say goodbye to their best friend? She and Lucy Gray have always been two halves carved to fit the other. Maude Ivory is made up of the same fabric that builds herself, but Barb Azure is everything Lucy Gray isn’t. 

When Lucy Gray is reckless and impulsive, Barb Azure is thoughtful and a steady hand in the storm. When Lucy Gray is terrified, she is strong. When Lucy Gray is devastated, Barb Azure can spin joy into existence, seemingly out of thin air. 

And now, Lucy Gray will have to be everything. 

The show the Covey is performing tonight will start at 8 and go for a little over an hour. The day swirls around her in a blur of colors and shapes and suddenly she is standing in the dressing room at the Hob where she had been just last night, as Barb Azure fixes the white laces on her pale pink dress with daisies on the ribbon that ties around her waist. 

Jamie had poked his head through the door not two minutes ago and spoke a few words which felt like rain pouring over the weak embers of their moods. He’s out there, because of course he is. Of course he’s stealing her final performance in District 12. Maybe she can perform here again when she comes home for visits, but still, it’s the principle of the thing. 

She leans into Tam Amber’s side as they wait to take the stage, and she swears she can feel him in the room. She can feel the change in the atmosphere, his disruption of gravity making the world tilt under her boots. 

Jamie’s voice rings out through the microphone and she can feel her feet moving, legs taking her on the stage and her eyes start to burn as she looks out over the crowd of grinning faces. Lovely, wonderful, tired faces of the people of District 12. 

She thinks wildly, when she spots him in the depths of the crowd with his steady hands and his sharp eyes, that he looks like moonlight masquerading as a man. Wrapped in charcoal colored fabric and pale skin, shrouded in the hazy smoke and flickering candles of the bar, some god of tragedy or of revenge or of beauty had taken the moon itself and cursed him to be a man. And now here he stood, watching as she slung her guitar around her neck, looking at her like she was the only one who could break his curse and allow him his rightful place of watching over the world and the sun and commanding the tides and the bitter darkness of night. 

She moves the cabo on her guitar absentmindedly, the room narrowing down to him and her, and their constant power play, feeling nothing but the bottomless well of anger inside her. Her fingers nearly shake with it. He looks like he might be fighting a smirk, one corner of his mouth twitching. He is so unreasonably lucky that she can’t start fires with her eyes. 

“Well District 12, you know I’m nothing but an old vanity, but it seems you just can’t keep away from me!” No harm in making a few jabs, is there? It’s really the only fun she can have now. “I’m sure you’ve got better things to be doing, but it seems you just keep crawling back to me,” She can’t be sure, but she thinks he might be clenching his jaw. “That must drive you wild.” She says demurely into the microphone, watching the way he knocks back the rest of his whiskey like it’s water, feeling her anger melt into pure adrenaline at the way his whole body is lined with tension. 

After all, making him angry will be her only joy in the Capitol, she might as well start early. Barb Azure had always said she was an adrenaline junkie. 

She barely registers the crowd howling at her words, and continues to speak. “I’m sorry to say that I’m going to be in the wind for a while, so drink up the sight of me while you can, because I’ve got hell to raise elsewhere.”

This is addicting, this is a high, she shivers as she watches his eyes flash in what looks like a warning. “And please, District 12, don’t let how badly you want me push you to alcoholism. It’s so very unbecoming.” 

He leans back in his chair shaking his head slightly, and says something to a woman she hadn’t noticed standing behind him. It’s the same woman from the Mayor’s house, with the pin straight red hair stopping neatly at her shoulders. The woman is staring at Lucy Gray with her mouth dropped open, and doesn’t realize at first the President is speaking to her. The woman nods her head a little and disappears towards the back of the Hob, presumably to the door. 

Lucy Gray begins their set with Nothing You Can Take From Me, one of her personal favorites, one she usually sings with sweet edges and pretty vocal slides and joy. Now she strums her guitar hard and stares into his eyes, pushing her voice with growls and nearly yelling the lyrics. He looks transfixed, he looks angry, he looks like a barely leashed tiger, and how in the world could she look anywhere else? If any of the Covey find it odd, they do not say a word about it once she’s finished with the song. 

The night drags on with their gazes locked, the room suddenly feeling like a chessboard, every glint or flash in his eyes a secret message she desperately tries to decode, every word she speaks into the microphone meant to anger him, meant to fan his flames, and somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks she might be psychotic. At the edges of all the smoke, music, and chess moves she wonders why she’s doing this. Why is she trying to set him off, winding him up like a jack in the box? 

But she ignores logical reasoning and questioning glances from Barb Azure and just keeps on singing and playing the game. 

When the set closes out, she says her goodbyes to the crowd. “Goodnight, District 12! I’ve certainly had fun with you tonight.” She says, grinning and casting her eyes around the room for what feels like the first time since she took the stage. “Don’t miss me too much, I won’t stay away forever. Until next time, darlings.” 

He’s standing and moving before she’s off the stage, and as she takes the steps down to the floor he’s striding over to her and her heart starts screaming. She can see the way one corner of his mouth is pulling up in cruel amusement at what he’s about to do and he wouldn’t. It’s like she spoke out loud, because the little raise of his eyebrows whispers back ‘oh, but I would.’ 

Before she can flee to the back, away from the eyes of District 12 who would not understand, he steps up in front of her and presents her a long stemmed red rose. The whispers break out immediately, washing over her like waves on the shore. ‘Why’s he giving her a rose?’ ‘Are they–?’ ‘Is she his whore or something?’

Peacekeepers hover everywhere, eyes trained on her, on him, and all she can hear is the whispers and the blood rushing in her ears, because he’s taking it. He’s taking District 12 from her. He’s turning them against her at this very moment and he knows it, and no matter what happens now, whispers will follow her forever. The words ‘his whore’ ring in her ears and she knows he hears it when he gives a little breathy laugh and glances at the direction the whisper came from. 

“You look so beautiful tonight, Lucy Gray. What a flawless performance.” He says clearly, making his voice silky and it feels like his voice runs over her skin like phantom hands. The rose is still held out to her and in a daze, her world breaking apart, she reaches up shakily to take the rose. 

Everything is a performance, she says in her mind, but even in her head her voice is breathy and shaking and she might collapse because they hate her. They hate her and she can feel it, and that cannot be happening because everyone loves her, they love her, they like her, they have always wanted her and adored her and it’s all slipping away, he’s stealing it all, he’s ripping it to shreds and she might be screaming. Or maybe that's just the blood in her ears, pounding and rushing. 

When she closes her fingers around the rose his hand moves fast, striking like a cobra to catch and twist her hand around so he can press a gentle kiss to the back of her hand. Checkmate , his pale, icy eyes whisper. Checkmate. 

The whispers grow and grow and their words are harsh and full of hatred. Hatred for her. Her head is swimming and air won’t fit in her lungs, and then they’re moving and his hand is pulling her behind him, and he’s leading them away from the lights and the eyes and she is barely aware of seeing the shock ridden faces of the Covey, Barb Azure’s eyes solemn and apologizing. 

He brings them right to the dressing room, and as he’s shutting the door behind them, she comes back into her body, the sudden silence pulling her back into reality. Fight exploding in her chest, her hands fly to push him back against the door, but with an agility and speed she didn’t expect, he catches both her wrists and draws her closer to him. 

She bites off her gasp, letting the fire of her anger guide her words. "You– ” She hisses. “How could you? You absolute asshole, you maniac, you bastard–” 

“Now, now, Lucy Gray, what’s got you so upset, hm?” His voice is soft, almost mocking, and she feels hot and unsettled and she’s sure it’s just her rage. His eyes are a dare and she wants to fucking play. 

“Don’t play stupid,” She bites out, pulling at his grip with all her might, his hands like iron bands around her wrists, like chains ready to drag her to the Capitol. “It makes you look like a fucking coward.”

Some of the amusement leaves his eyes. “You need to learn to watch your tongue,” He says sharply. “It’s gotten you in enough trouble tonight.” 

His words are pure gasoline. “Trouble? Oh, was that your little punishment for me then?” She’s pulling hard and fast at her hands, trying to swing her fists at his chest. His chest, which is starting to rise and fall quicker. “You don’t own me.”

He scoffs. “I own everything.” 

Arrogance drips from his voice, she’s so mad, she’s burning. “Let me go,” She growls. “You’re never gonna have me, you asshole, you’re never gonna fucking have me.” 

He lets her go, and she pulls back from him, but sways forward like some invisible hand is tugging her closer to him. “I thought we agreed we weren’t playing stupid.”

“God, you are so unbelievably entitled–”

“Well I am the President, so–”

“Fuck you.” She snarls. He looks a little exhilarated, and she feels it too, that jump in her blood, like those falling dreams that happen in the middle of the night. “So what was that, then? A political move? Turn District 12 against me for, what?  Your approval ratings in the Capitol? How brilliant you are, President Snow.” 

“I’m only showing them what you are now. More than them, bigger than them. You’re Capitol now.” He says it like it’s supposed to be a gift. 

The words are like splinters in her mind. “I’m District. I always will be, which makes me no less than you, and you cannot change that just because that doesn’t suit whatever image of me you built in your head.” She jabs her finger against his chest, momentum building in her voice. “I am not some damsel you need to save. I am not yours, and I never will be.” Her breathing comes out harsh, and she drops her hand back to her side. 

“You’re a goddamn anomaly.” He says, his eyes searching her like she’s got secrets hidden in her facial expressions. “I don’t care if you asked to be saved, but you do need to be saved.”

“No, I don’t–”

“You do. You’ll drown here. Lead a little life, and die in the same 10 miles of land you never got out of. I’m getting you out, I’m giving you everything, I’ll show you everything. I’m giving you a grand life, a changed one. I don’t care if you don’t want my saving. It’s happening either way.” His voice is even and calm, but something fierce and fiery lurks in his eyes, and she cannot stop watching it. 

“This isn’t saving,” She grinds out. “This is imprisonment.” 

He leans in closer to her, enough that she inhales the scent of him, and it’s warm and sweet like vanilla and smoky amber, and she cannot resist inhaling again, her lungs suddenly opening wide to breathe him in. For a second she thinks he may have caught it, his eyes going dark and shadowed. “Then what a gilded cage it will be, Lucy Gray.” 

She can’t think when he’s standing this close, when she’s breathing him in, when he makes his voice low like that, and she should say something. She should tell him to fuck off again. It’s like her mind is stuck in honey, it’s like the fire in her body is slowing and rolling like waves. 

“I hate you so much.” Her voice comes out airy and barely above a whisper, which is not what she wanted. 

“I know,” He whispers back. Her head tilts back to keep looking at him, and she realizes belatedly it’s because he’s moving closer, and that is bad, that is wrong, why isn’t she disgusted? Shouldn’t she be throwing up because he’s so close to her? But all she’s doing is staring at him with her eyes wide, and his fingertips brush over the back of her hand and she’s a lit firework, she going to explode–

“Stop.” She says, finally,  both hands shoving him away and he goes, straightening the cuffs of his suit. She steps back in two wide steps, until her lower back meets the edge of the desk. “I think you’ve done plenty damage for tonight, Mr. President. So, if you wouldn’t mind leaving me the fuck alone for my last night here.” 

He doesn’t move yet, instead dragging his eyes over her in a slow, all-the-time-in-the-world manner. She swallows heavily, and he tracks it with sharp focus, his lips parting on an exhale, before his eyes snap back up to hers. “You can’t run forever.”

She stares back at him and all his cold beauty, the moon twisted tragically into a man, a devil hell-bent on her damnation, a man with intelligent eyes and teeth filed into fangs. “From you, I think I could.”

His gaze pierces into hers for a few long, silent moments, before he turns towards the door. 

“I’ll never forgive you.” He looks over his shoulder, and she continues. “For what you did out there. I’ll never forgive you.” 

Strange, how sometimes his eyes can go from jagged shards of ice to soft, sad oceans in a matter of seconds. Strange, to wonder if he feels emotions like normal people do. 

“I’ll send someone to come and get you tomorrow morning. Be ready by 8:30.” 

The door clicks shut softly behind him and it is only then that she feels somewhere near normal again. Their conversations are never long, but draw such rage and misery from her, and it leaves her feeling drained every time he finally goes. 

Despair rises like smoke in her chest, seeping into every crevice of her soul. District 12 is calling her the President’s whore at this very moment. She can feel the loss of their love like a missing tooth. Constantly seeks out the ache of it every few seconds, unable to do anything but prod at the loss and remember when it was once there. 

How many friends had she made over the years that stood in that crowd tonight? How many of them were spitting her name out of their mouths now like she dripped with poison? She’s not foolish enough to think anyone will consider her side of the story. She is a woman after all, and all everyone ever needed was to be pointed in the direction of the stones. They wouldn’t question if they should be thrown or not. 

It is Barb Azure who walks in the door, because of course it is. Who else in the world? 

“Lu, they’ll forgive you.”

Ah, the ominous ‘they’. Lucy Gray is already shaking her head and she’s crying again and she is so sick of crying. It’s all she’s been doing for days and everything hurts and it feels like her whole world is going dark because every good thing is ending. “They won’t.” She sobs. 

She’s not sure when Barb Azure wrapped her arms around her, or when they sank to the floor. But the ground is cold underneath her legs, and the tears are cold on her face. “They will, I swear, I won’t let anyone think that– I won’t let them, okay?”

“Okay,” She whispers. 

“Lu…” 

“It’s fine. I’m going to be fine.”

“You’re not.” Barb Azure says with all the sadness in the world.

“I am. I’m serious, really, I am going to be okay. I’ll figure it out. It’s.. I’m going to handle it. I’ll be okay.” Isn’t it true that you can tell yourself  something enough times and you’ll start to believe it? 

“Look at me,” Barb Azure says fiercely. “You will be okay. If anyone in the world can do this, it’s you. You’re the best of us, Lu.” 

It feels like something that has been pulling inside her for days now finally breaks. “No I’m not, I, I can’t do this Barbie, I don’t know how to do this,” Her breathing comes in these awful gasps that tear themselves out of her lungs. “I don’t think I can do this.” 

“What is it you think you can’t do?” She asks gently. 

Lucy Gray looks up into her kind eyes helplessly, because it’s all of it, it’s…

“Is it the performing part? Is it being away from us? Or is it him you’re scared of?”

Lucy Gray squeezes her eyes shut. Barb Azure has always known her better than anyone in the world. Sees her from every angle, knows every thought that crosses her mind, however fleetingly. 

“I…” 

Being speechless is not common for Lucy Gray. This is all so wrong, and cruel, and she thinks she might not recognize herself if she caught sight of a mirror. 

“It’s him, isn’t it?” 

“I don’t want to talk about him. Please.” She says quietly, feeling like a little girl. Thunder crashes somewhere, but maybe that’s only in her mind. 

“We won’t, then.” 

–

Chapter Text

The car ride back to the Mayor’s house is tense and quiet. He can practically feel the words Valeria is itching to speak. Every few minutes she takes in a breath like she’s going to say something, but lets it die in her throat. 

He watches things blur past, helplessly drawn back to his conversation with Lucy Gray. It drives him mad, the way he cannot tell what she’s thinking, what crosses her mind when she looks at him. It prowls under his skin, makes him unsettled, and impatient, and desperate, wanting to tear himself open to remove the not knowing. 

Perhaps it’s wrong of him to think, but Lucy Gray when she’s angry is truly a sight to see. For some people, anger shows in their eyes, they glow and glare with it, some show it in their voice, the way it fluctuates and pierces, some show it in their fists, drawn back and ready to swing. But Lucy Gray, she’s everything all at once. It must exhaust her, he thinks in the back of his mind, because it engulfs her, looking like it’s ready to explode out of her fingertips. 

She moves like lightning, fast and striking, looking like she cannot decide whether she wants to rage against you, pushing up into your space, or like she wants to pull entirely away from you, and punish you with the lack of her warmth. Her eyes gleam like candlelight, flickering with countless emotions. Pinning you in place, like when one uses mirrors to concentrate the rays of the sun, burning things to ash. Her voice rising and falling like waves, words out of control and trying to draw blood, rushing to keep up with what must be a wildfire of an inner monologue. 

He’s not sure he breathed the entire time he was alone with her. He almost wanted to let her beat her fists against him if only because it was the first time she initiated physical contact with him. Here he was, craving the scarps he was able to steal, little moments in time like holding her wrists steady and feeling the shape of them and the way her bones moved under her soft skin. Drawing her closer because in that moment, her guard had slipped and she hadn’t thought to pull away from him yet, and for a few precious seconds she was so close he could have leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers. He could have tasted her anger on his tongue, felt her electricity against his body, been the steady glass bottle holding the swift lightning. 

For a moment, he thought she might let him. For a brief second he could have sworn that she wanted him just as viciously as he wanted her. He is nothing if not guided by logic, and logic says her pupils were dilated and her breathing was labored and… 

But no, because it was more than that. He could see it, he could feel it, the way the anger had shifted steadily into lust as he inched closer to her, she had wanted him for a moment, he was sure of it. Logic says so. 

But, he thinks sourly, logic may say one thing, but Lucy Gray always says another. 

He brings a hand to his temple, trying to soothe the ache in his head. All he can hear is her voice on a terrible repeat in his mind, you’re never gonna have me. 

She’s being dramatic, of course. Of course. She can’t truly mean it, because she just doesn’t understand yet. Once she’s in the Capitol, surrounded by all its beauty, she’ll see things differently. She’ll see him differently. 

Valeria inhales, but once again, blows out the breath and says nothing. 

“Just say it, Valeria, you sound like a ceiling fan.” 

The words immediately fell out of her mouth, her eyes cutting over to his. “Why did you do that?”

He does not need to ask what she’s referring to. “I was sending a message.”

“What message was that supposed to be?”

“That she’s–” 

‘ I’m District.’ She hisses, her beautiful, whiskey colored eyes lit with such unchecked fury.

  “She’s–” 

‘I always will be, which makes me no less than you, and you cannot change that just because that doesn’t suit whatever image of me you built in your head .’ He wants to kiss her until he dies, and he will die a happy, happy man. 

“She’s more than them.”

“Those are people that she cares about, that she loves. Have you considered complimenting her in a way that does not at the same time insult them?” Valeria sighs, her voice strained like she’s trying to stop herself from yelling. 

“Ridiculous.” He huffs. “There isn’t a way to compliment her that doesn’t insult them.” 

She stares at him with her mouth open, eyes squinting like she’s trying to understand some hidden joke he might have been making. “Sir,” She takes a deep breath. He feels distinctly like he’s about to be scolded. “You need to learn to be romantic, and not mean.”

He rolls his eyes, turning away from Valeria to the window and the shapes passing it. “Being ‘mean’, as you put it, is my only option.”

“Why do you think that?” She asks, and her voice has lost some of its edge. 

“This is just the only way.” 

“Well –”

“Enough , Valeria.” He cuts in, his voice hard and unyielding. 

Valeria goes back to her ceiling fan breathing, and he goes back to thinking of Lucy Gray and all her fury.

–

Coriolanus rises before the sun the next morning, itching to get the day started. He can barely control his excitement at the prospect of Lucy Gray moving to the Capitol today. His hands are guided by muscle memory, tying the tie at his throat, smoothing the layers of his deep maroon suit, doing the buttons at his wrists neatly. 

He tries to picture where Lucy Gray might be at this exact moment, what she might be thinking of, if she’s even awake. He tries to plan every moment of the day in his head from start to finish, trying to foresee every possible outcome, all the ways in which something could go wrong. 

Lucy Gray will be picked up and brought to the train station at approximately 8:50 am, where the train from the Capitol will be waiting to bring them home, which should give the peacekeepers plenty of time to load her things, and board the train. She will have her own separate train car, as Valeria had suggested she might appreciate the space. 

Coriolanus will be sure to give her the three listings Valeria had picked out of available apartments in the Capitol that she might like for her to choose from. He hadn’t yet seen them, though Valeria had said she’d have copies of them given to him as well so he could be sure the options were suitable for Lucy Gray. It would be optimal for her to choose one of the listings before they arrive at the Capitol but she could take all the time she needed. He had sent a message to Aelius two nights ago to book her the nicest room The Sanctuary, (the grandest hotel in the Capitol), had to offer. She’d stay there for as many nights as needed, until the apartment she chose was adequately furnished and styled. 

Pluribus’s nightclub would not be open for another few weeks, which would give her plenty of time to get comfortable with the band Pluribus would provide her with. Also, would give her time to find her footing in the Capitol. 

“I hate you so much,” She whispers, and the words chase through his blood, his mind, because they sound like something so different from hate. There’s something so torn open about her in this moment, like once her anger opens the floodgates of her emotions, everything she’s ever felt comes rushing out. Something searching in her gaze, so sharp and unsure, and if he wasn’t suffocating in his own want, he might have called her out for hers. 

“I know.” He whispers back. Anything louder might shatter this unnamed moment, might destroy the secret blooming between them. 

He stares down into his coffee with the splash of cream swirling through its surface. His mind wanders back and forth between thoughts of the future and past moments with Lucy Gray. He’s never felt so out of sorts, so out of control. Everything had always been so controlled and careful now it’s as if he needs a fence for his thoughts. 

He should have her tried for the treasonous act of attempting to bewitch the President, he should drag her to his Mansion and never let her leave. 

—

Valeria appears in the dining room of the Mayor’s house soon after he does, though her hair has yet to be straightened, and she’s squinting like the sunlight is hurting her eyes as she scans the table for coffee. 

As usual, she does not acknowledge his presence until she’s stirred 7 spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee and taken a sip. 

“Morning, Mr. President.” She says, partially muffled from the rim of the coffee mug. 

“Good morning, Valeria. Did you sleep well?” 

She eyes him for a few seconds, as if contemplating the question. “Excited to go back to the Capitol today, Sir?” 

He turns back to his own coffee, his mind flooding with Lucy Gray and his sparkling city. “I am.” 

She nods, humming under her breath. “I’ve got the apartment options for Miss Baird, if you’d like to see them now.” 

He nods and she pulls a few files from her bag in the corner of the room. The first apartment has plenty of space, lots of glass and granite, a large kitchen with marble countertops, several sitting rooms, and 4 bedrooms. The location is very close to Pluribus’s club. He sets it aside. 

The second apartment is too open, not enough closed off areas, and it’s simply… boring. Lacking is life. Lucy Gray would hate it. He sets this one aside too. 

The third apartment, this one is right. It’s a penthouse, almost every room harbors floor to ceiling windows, and the master bedroom has a wide, slanting skylight. The doorways are arched, the ceilings high, the floors a dark hardwood. The best part, though, the lake. Valeria had done well. Half the penthouse faces the lake, and you can see the little paths carving through the park in the center of the city. It’s lovely, and surely it will make Lucy Gray happy. 

“That one’s wonderful, don’t you think?” Valeria says, finishing off her coffee. She’s barely holding back her smile, satisfied and hopeful. His own hope is palpable, catching in his throat, filling his lungs. 

“It’s perfect. Do you think she’ll like it?” He asks absentmindedly, his eyes tracing the way the windows allow natural light to saturate the space, sunlight practically jumping off the pages. 

“She’ll tell us.” Valeria responds, tucking a smile into her coffee. 

–

He checks his watch 8 times in 3 minutes. 8:49 am. 8:49 am. 8:50 am. 8:50 am. 8:50 am. 8:50 am. 8:51 am. He rolls his shoulders back, pulling them straight, clasping his hands behind his back. When the black car sent to retrieve Lucy Gray has still yet to turn into view, he turns to Valeria with an exasperated look. She mimes taking a deep breath, giving him a pleasant smile paired with sharp eyes. He glances at his watch for the 9th time, it reads 8:52 am. 

The sound of clashing gravel tears his eyes away from his watch and to the car now finally in view. His chest fills with something warm and frantic, and he wants to speed time, let go of anything that doesn’t concern her. 

He’s moving before he realizes it, desperate to get to her before anyone else in the world can, and the car has barely stopped before he’s pulling open the back door and trying to force his posture back to its normal state of perfection. The first thing he sees is the bright navy of her skirt, and the coldness in her gaze. 

Her eyes are red-rimmed and tired, but not tired enough to forgo piercing him with the blade of her glare. She’s a bit pale, looking like she’s seeing ghosts from the corners of her vision. Her soft mouth parted just barely with something resembling shock. As if she never thought reality would crash into her the way it was in this moment. Her eyes drag slowly to the hand he’s held out for her.

He wants to break into her mind and read all her thoughts, he wants her to tell him everything herself. 

Her eyes linger on his hand, before she steps out of the car herself and around him. He almost smiles. That’s his girl. Kori, who had been sent to retrieve her, is out of the car and reaching for her bag before she stops him. 

“I’ve got it, thanks.” She mumbles. The bag is small, made of some loud floral fabric with two fraying handles. Then she pulls her guitar case from the back, and he is displeased to note it’s not the one he gave to her. 

But, of course, after their discussion in the Hob a few nights ago, he hadn’t expected her to use it. “Nice guitar case.” He says, not even sure why it comes out of his mouth. 

She turns to him, and he isn’t expecting the lazy, sweet smile that pulls on her lips. It makes his blood go hot. “You know, Mr. President,” She drawls, taking a few steps towards him and he goes, her advance triggering his own like a fire chasing the fluttering moth. “All the emotions of the morning have got me so exhausted, would you be a doll and take these for me?” She pushes her bag and case into his chest, and he catches it all before it falls. 

He stares at her for a few moments, a little shocked, a little amused, and for a moment he forgets everything. He leans down a fraction, fully prepared to kiss her pretty mouth so he can convey his sheer fondness and insatiable lust for her. 

But then the half second passes and he can hear the world again and he can see past her to the train and Kori and Valeria, who looks like she’s biting her cheek so hard it must be bleeding. So he puts his head right on his shoulders and looks back to Lucy Gray, and the tightness in her jaw. How nicely his hand would fit around that jaw. 

He tears his eyes away from her, because it’s becoming entirely inappropriate for him to even look at her. “Of course, Lucy Gray.” 

After Kori sweeps through and takes her things from his hands, they begin boarding the train. Lucy Gray walks in front of him, and as she’s about to take the final step, she comes to a sudden halt. Her hands braced on either side of the doorway, gripping so tight her knuckles went white. He can see her shoulders rising and falling in deep breaths. 

Coriolanus takes the next step, putting himself right behind her. She doesn’t seem to notice. He’s about to say something mocking, but then he’s reminded of Valeria the night before with her stressed voice, like she was begging him to listen. Romantic, not mean. 

But what the hell was romance and how did he do it? 

But the moment is slipping, so he says something truthful instead. Leaning down to place his words just next to her ear, he whispers quietly, “Hesitating isn’t in your nature.”

He hears her intake of breath, but doesn’t move away from her, how can he? Right here, he can inhale her, lavender, honey, and something that must be a narcotic, because it makes his thoughts stumble and slow and narrow to nothing but her. He doesn’t feel his hand move, but he feels it when it grazes the fabric of the flowy white shirt she’s tucked into her skirt, and he feels for a split second the warmth of her waist before she’s springing away from him and whipping around with wide eyes. 

He cannot help his visible satisfaction at the sight of the red flush in her cheeks. He steps into the train, tracking every movement of hers. He presses the button to his right, and the door to her train compartment slides open. 

“Your train car is through here,” He says, his voice a bit coarser than it normally is, gesturing through the doorway. She watches him with dilated, suspicious eyes. “There’s food and drinks for you. All of your things are in the luggage car but should you like them with you, simply let Kori know. He’ll be just outside this door.” He motions towards the door to his left. “My assistant Valeria is in this car, and mine is just past hers, if you need me.” 

“Don’t hold your breath.” She says, attempting for snark but her voice is thin and breathy to his ears. 

“Make yourself comfortable, we’ll arrive at the Capitol in just under 3 hours.” 

She storms past him into her train car, and he slides the door shut behind her. 

He turns around to go to his own car, coming face to face with Valeria who’s giving him an unimpressed look. “Mr. President, please do keep it together when in public.” 

“Stop meddling.” He says, striding to his train car. 

“I’m assisting!” She throws back. 

—

“Sir?” Valeria chirps from the doorway of his train car. He glances up from the paperwork open in front of him. “I just spoke with Miss Baird about the apartments.” 

Well, if she didn’t have his full attention before. “Yes, good, which did she choose?” 

She smiles a bit, raising an eyebrow. “Which do you think?” 

“Well I’ll call Aelius and—” 

“Already purchased, Sir.” 

“Do I ever tell you how good you are?” 

She shrugs. “Whether you say it or not, I know.” 

He shakes his head a little, saluting her as he turns back to his paperwork. 

“Oh, and Tigris is on the line for you.” She says, nodding her head to the phone on the table next to him. 

“Why?” He says with a suspicious narrowing of his eyes, unease twisting in his gut. 

“No idea, Sir.” She says, looking away. 

“As my assistant you can’t lie to me.”

“Well I’m sure I don’t remember seeing that in the job description.” She says calmly. 

He rolls his eyes and waves hand at her and she disappears through the automatic door, which hisses into place behind her. He taps his pen a few times on the desk while he tries to recall the last time Tigris called him. 

His first year of Presidency, maybe. Or maybe she had stopped calling long before then. 

He picks up the phone, and greets her. “Tigris, how are you?”

“Fine. You’re bringing the girl to the Capitol?” She says quickly, the words shooting her mouth so fast that her voice bleeds with accusation, hope and wariness. 

“‘The girl’? I’m sure I don’t know which girl you’re referring to.” He says casually. 

She sighs on the other side of the line, and he cannot help but smile and recall the way she used to sigh and tell ridiculous stories about her day at work when they were teenagers at the small dinner table with splinters in it. They talked about everything back then. She always could make him laugh. 

“Oh, Coriolanus, don’t be ridiculous. Let’s not pretend I don’t know about the performer from 12.” 

His mouth drops open a little, staring at the space where Valeria was a minute ago. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She huffs across the line. “Come on, you’ve been off your game for weeks and the only correlation is your visit to 12 and that singer. And then you’ve gone back to 12 even though you didn’t have to, and now I hear you’re bringing her back with you?”

“Valeria told you, didn’t she?”

“We chat.”

“Yes, you’ve said. Stop talking with her.”

She clicks her tongue. “No. I like her.”

He goes back to reading the paperwork, making notes here and there on things he wants amended before he signs. “Yes, well, she’s my assistant.”

“And I’m your cousin. When were you going to tell me about this?” She doesn’t actually sound upset, but there’s something about her tone which sounds so foreign to him. Perhaps it’s a lightness that he hasn’t heard in a while, maybe never. 

“Will now do?”

She groans into the phone, and it reminds him of Lucy Gray, causing a smile to pull at his mouth. “So you… like this girl?”

“Okay, we are not discussing this.” He says, immediately regretting answering the call. 

“Yes we are. Coriolanus, you're bringing a girl from District 12 to the Capitol and you think you just don’t have to answer any questions?” He did think that being the President might give him that power, but perhaps that was wishful thinking. “First of all I’m your cousin so you have to tell me–” Ah, she’s playing the family card right now. Interesting since they haven’t hugged in about 4 years. “And second, you’re going to have to tell the people of the Capitol when they start asking questions, and they will, so you might as well get comfortable with responding.”

Something dangerously close to embarrassment creeps up the back of his neck at the thought of telling Tigris about Lucy Gray. It’s one thing for Valeria to have decoded how he feels about her but outright telling Tigris? 

They’re not… like that anymore. They do not laugh and tease and playfully punch shoulders. He was certain that if he opened his mouth to tell her how he really feels about Lucy Gray, his voice would die in his throat over and over again. Would hers do the same when searching for a response?

“She’s a performer, as you said. She's coming to the Capitol to sing in Pluribus Bell’s club.” He says in the end, which is not a lie. 

“Uh-huh, and of all the singers in the Capitol and even Districts 1 and 2, why this girl from 12?” 

“Well,” He starts. “She’s very talented.”

“And beautiful?”

“And please, District 12, don’t let how badly you want me push you to alcoholism. It’s so very unbecoming.” Her smile, so wide and sparkling, it makes his chest ache. She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. It makes him forget everything. It makes him forget her jokes and teasing. He’d let her do or say anything she wants, as long as she does it with her eyes on him. 

Beautiful? Beautiful didn’t even scratch the surface of Lucy Gray. “I’m not sure what that has to do with her performing abilities.”

“Nothing.” She hums. “But it might have something to do with you meeting her once and deciding to move her to the Capitol.” 

“I’m firing Valeria.”

“You’re so dramatic–”

“No, this is a security leak–”

“Oh yes, because we can’t have the masses finding out you have a crush.”

“I don’t– ” His collar feels itchy. “I’m not sixteen, I don’t get crushes.”

When he and Tigris were teenagers, she used to catch him on things like that from a mile away. She could hear it in his voice, see it in his eyes. Sometimes, a fear gathers in the corner of his mind, a fear that nobody will ever know him the way Tigris did. He remembers the way she howled with laughter when he took Clemensia Dovecote to a dance when they were 17. They went as friends, but Tigris dearly loved to laugh. 

“Uh-huh, sure, and how did you get this girl to want to come to the Capitol?” She asks and he can hear rustling across the line. “Also, what colors does she like? Can I dress her for her performances?” Her voice brightens with the idea. He thinks that’s a fine idea, who could make her better and more lovely dresses than Tigris? “Actually don’t answer that, I’m doing it either way.”

“That’s wonderful, Tigris.” He says. It is wonderful. They haven’t spoken this much in years. He didn’t realize how much he missed the sound of her happiness. 

“So, how?”

“How what?”

He hears rustling again, and can imagine her switching the phone to the other ear. “How’d you get her to agree to coming to the city?” 

He clears his throat to give himself a second to think. “I’m a politician. I’m persuasive.” Not a lie, so a good answer, he thinks.

There’s a long, silent pause from Tigris. “Coriolanus.”

“Yes?” 

“How did you get her to agree?” Her tone has lost it’s lightness so fast that he might have imagined it’s existence in the first place. 

“I told you, I’m persuasive.” He says quickly. 

“Oh god, please tell me you didn’t threaten her.” He’s quiet for a few seconds, because threaten is a strong word, and he didn’t even formally threaten her, merely implied, so really, threaten isn’t the right word to describe it, but– “Oh my god, you did.” 

“I persuaded.” He stresses. 

“Oh, Jesus, I mean Valeria said it was bad, she didn’t say it was completely hopeless, Coriolanus, come on, I’m begging you to have a shred of decency.” She rambles, her voice sharp and whining at the same time. 

“I was perfectly cordial!” He says defensively. 

“Oh so you threatened her, but you were a gentleman about it?”

He groans. “I did not threaten, I–”

“Persuaded, I heard you, you just sound so goddamn stupid I refuse to keep hearing your voice.” 

He sighs, unsure as to why everyone talks to him like he’s not the President of Panem. “Well, that effectively shuts down this conversation then, doesn’t it?”

“No, you’re going to listen to me now.” She grumbles. “Apologize.” 

“Apologize? For giving her a better life?” He says incredulously. Honestly, what a ridiculous idea. 

“No, apologize for wrecking her life.” Tigris says slowly. 

“And you say I’m dramatic? Her life is not wrecked, it’s changed. Change is a good thing, Tigris. This is the best change she could have hoped for.” 

Tigris is quiet for a while, and for a second he thinks she hung up. “You’re taking her away from her family.” She says quietly. “If I were her, I’d hate you forever.”

“Aw, Coryo! You look so handsome in your tux!” Tigris says in a cooing voice, laughing as she straightens his bowtie. 

“Shut up.” He mumbles. Secretly happy. Secretly the happiest he’s ever been. He’s never worn clothes so nice, so new feeling. The fabric is so smooth and silky, like rose petals, like nothing he’s ever felt. 

Tigris made it herself, and he can tell by the shakiness in her smile and the way her eyes are a little watery that this matters so much more than she’ll ever say. She got to make this, designed it and stitched it together with a gorgeous fabric. She created something. Something beautiful, and that’s the only thing she’s ever wanted. He would do anything to be sure he could give her that freedom and joy for the rest of her life.

“Remember the dance moves I taught you!” She says, miming a few of them. They’re both laughing before she can even finish one move. 

“If I do that, I’ll be shunned.”

Her laughter echoes through the shell of the penthouse. 

He does recall the closeness Lucy Gray seems to share with her family. Her happiness revolves around theirs, the way she’s always tilting her head towards the girl her age, Barb Azure, and whispering with matching smiles. The way adoration shines between the little blonde one and Lucy Gray, the way the boys tether themselves to her as if she is an anchor and they are adrift. 

The way she tethers herself right back to them. 

You’re taking her away from her family, Tigris’s voice echoes in his head. He hadn’t considered it that way, or maybe the thought had crossed his mind, but he’d put no real stock into it. People say goodbye to family all the time. It’s life. But, then he can remember what it felt like to share the gentleness of familial love. Then he can remember Tigris fixing his bowtie and ruffling his hair. He can remember clinging to her during freezing winters. 

He remembers the constant aching in his chest through the years where their relationship crumbled. The way he felt like all the air was knocked out of him the first time she called him Coriolanus. 

Feeling like a part of him had died. A part carrying softness and an ability to love so freely, to laugh without burden, a part of him carrying lightness. Coryo. 

That name was never spoken again.

Has a part of Lucy Gray’s family died? Has a part of Lucy Gray died? 

“Coriolanus?” Tigris’s voice rings through the speaker, unsure and distant. “Are you there?”

“I’m here.” He murmurs.

She sighs, slow and tired. “Apologize to her. She deserves to hear it.” 

And that’s something, isn’t it? That word. Deserve. Is there anything in the world that Lucy Gray didn’t deserve? Is there anything he wouldn’t give her? 

—

When the Capitol finally glides into view, he goes to Lucy Gray’s train car. He means to tell her the plan for checking her into the hotel, and maybe discuss arranging a meeting with Pluribus Bell. 

But when he opens the door to her train car, he pauses. Lucy Gray is so close to the window, her nose is practically touching the glass. Her hands are planted firmly on the sill, and she looks like she isn’t breathing, her eyes wide and wonderfilled, her mouth parted in shock. 

She’s staring at the Capitol. His city. It’s stunning, he knows, but as he follows her gaze out the window, he feels as if he’s seeing it for the first time. Countless skyscraping buildings constructed of glass and silver and bronze. It glitters in the midday light, the sun rising high over its center, creating the illusion of a halo surrounding it. It looks, from here, like some faraway kingdom you might read about in a storybook. Ethereal, unreal. 

It makes his chest tight to watch her watching it draw closer. It makes him strangely sad to think she’s never seen anything like it before. Lucy Gray should see all beautiful things. Should feel at home and welcome among them, being something glittering and unreal herself. 

But it is something, to look through her eyes and see it for the first time again. 

“Do you like it?” He finds himself asking, quietly, barely above a whisper. 

She doesn’t seem surprised to hear his voice, she must have heard him come in. “It’s… it looks like it’s made of diamonds.” 

“Yes,” He stamps down a smile, for surely that would break the fragile moment. “I suppose it does. When it’s snowing, the entire city sparkles.” 

She stares for a few moments longer, and the city draws nearer. A small line appears between her brows and her eyes go distant and bitter, the wonderment in her expression retreating behind her guarded exterior. “Well, what a glittering life you lead, Mr. President.” 

“We.” He corrects. “What a glittering life we lead.” 

She shakes her head, anger hardening her face. “This isn’t ever going to be my life.” 

He shrugs, gazing at the buildings as they cruise into the streets. “Call it what you want, then. But it’s time to go.” 

He looks around the room to notice she did have Kori bring her guitar to her, and wishes he had cameras in this room to know if she played anything. He wonders where she might have sat, if she strummed simple notes on the guitar, or if she only held it close to her. Does it bring her comfort? 

Has a part of her died? The question keeps creeping back into his mind. He wants to ask, but that’s not very gentlemanly, and frankly after the conversation with Tigris, he’s left feeling…unsure.

For the briefest of moments her face contorts into something like fear at the prospect of leaving the train and entering the city, but it’s gone as fast as it appeared. He must have imagined. 

She nods, picking up her case and setting her shoulders. Pride blooms inside him at her resilience, at the thought of presenting her to the citizens of the Capitol. 

When they exit her train car, Valeria, who’s already waiting by the door, raises her eyebrow just a fraction before it drops again. 

“Sir, we really did not think this through.” She says quickly. 

“What didn’t we think through?” It’s quite rare for him to make that kind of mistake. 

“It’s—” She runs a worried hand through her hair. “In your 3 years of Presidency you’ve never been seen in public with a woman who you were related to or working with. Walking out of the train from 12 with Miss Baird, it’s just, people are going to talk and we haven’t prepared a statement from you, and we haven’t prepped any responses to questions you might be asked.” 

“Just hold on now,” Lucy Gray jumps in with a strained laugh. “It’s not like I’m going to dinner with him, if he’s asked any questions he can just tell the truth. That I’m a performer from 12.” 

“A performer who shared a train with the President.” Valeria says skeptically. “A performer hand picked by the President, from 12 of all places, no offense,—”

“Yeah, none taken.” She hums. 

“And she’s going to walk out there, next to you,” Her voice is starting to edge into her panic squeaky tone. “And all eyes will be on you two, and my god, Sir, how did I not think about this? I’m so sorry, I should have handled this better—” 

“Valeria, calm down.” He says, his voice solid and leaving no room for argument. “I’ll not answer right now, and if they have questions about her who she is or her proximity to me, we’ll take them up at a later date. For now, we focus on getting Miss Baird to The Sanctuary, and keeping crowds away from her.” 

He turns to Lucy Gray, who’s trying to peek out the windows as the sounds of the crowd outside get louder when the train comes to a full stop. “Lucy Gray, when we get out there, you stay close to me.” It’s unwise, for their purposes. Her being close to him will only create a gas fire of rumors that she’s romantically linked to him. He should be directing her to stay close to Valeria, but he can’t force himself to put her anywhere but by his side. 

She looks uncertain, brows furrowing a little, mouth tight when he tells her to stay near him. She tries glancing out the window again, and his hand rises to turn her face to his on instinct alone, but he forces his fingers to fall before they can brush her chin. “Look at me.” He says firmly, a tone quieter, just for them to hear. Her brown eyes crash into his, and he feels it in his chest. “When we get out there, there’s going to be a lot of people and they’re going to be loud and very, very curious about you. If they ask you questions, do not answer. Don’t look at them, just focus on Kori, he’ll be in front of you, and get to the car.” 

“I’m not a child, I’ll be fine—”

“I know you will. But you’re going to be fine, and stay close to me while you do it. Understand?” Her lips part a little, eyes darting over his face like she’s seeing something she’s never seen before. She needs to stop looking at him like that because he has enough trouble around her without her having that curiosity in her eyes like she wants to know. What he wouldn’t give to tell her whatever it is she wants to know. “Understand?” He repeats, even quieter. 

“Yes.” She whispers back, taking a step back and looking over his shoulder. 

He turns and nods to Kori, who opens the door and lets the noise and brightness flood in. 

“President Snow!” 

Cameras flash. Voices overlap in a wild symphony. 

“President Snow, over here!” 

The path is clear, Kori is straight ahead. Peacekeepers line the walkway, holding back crowds. 

“President Snow! Why are you spending so much time in District 12?” 

Journalists push their recording devices as far towards him as they can. More cameras flash. 

“President Snow, who’s the mystery girl?” 

He can feel her, when she presses close to him. Her shoulder against his arm. Lavender. Honey. His head aches. 

“Marry me, President Snow!” 

Voices fly from every side. His fingers brush the back of her hand. 

“President Snow, what are your plans for District 12?” 

“I love you, President Snow!”

“Who’s the new girl, President Snow, is she from 12?” 

“Mystery girl, look this way!” 

Eyes down. Lucy Gray is breathing heavily to his left. Her eyes are down, too. Good girl. 

“President Snow, who designed your suit?” 

He chuckles a little, deciding this is the only question he’d answer. He turns to the journalist, Carmen is her name, she’s a fashion reporter, often reporting on Tigris and all her talent. “Tigris Snow, of course.” More questions rage like tidal waves. 

They make it to the car, and Kori pulls open the door. As Lucy Gray gets in, his hand moves to her lower back instinctively, like he’s constantly existing in a state of trying to keep her all to himself. The intentional physical contact is all they needed, really. The camera flashes go mad, the shouting increasing as if someone had turned their power up. 

“Oh, god.” Valeria sighs, somewhere behind him. 

–

She’s silent in the car, staring out the window, pressed as far away from him as she possibly can. He thinks of the way she was almost clinging to him in the crowd. No amount of shying away from him now can change that. 

The Sanctuary isn’t far at all from the Mansion, so it lies towards the heart of the Capitol. It comes into view, with its illusioned, shimmering glass, and its massive silver doors. 

“This is The Sanctuary. It’s the grandest hotel in the Capitol. You’ll stay here for a few days while—”

“Yeah, Valeria told me.” She says, looking straight ahead. 

“She thinks of everything.” He says, nodding to himself.

“She seems too smart to be working for you.” 

That startles some amusement out of him. “Do you think so? Where do you think she should be working?” 

She’s quiet for a moment, and he thinks she might not answer. “For someone good.” 

He watches the side of her face, and for a second all he can think of is how tragic this is. What a tragedy it was for the universe to create this woman, and place all possible obstacles between them as if she wasn’t crafted for his own two hands. “How treasonous you are, Lucy Gray.” 

Her eyes trace back to him, and for a second the air between them feels alive and pulsing, coiling around them and drowning out anything else. The wariness in her eyes makes him feel like something dangerous to her, like he is a shark and she is bleeding in open water. Only a matter of time before he attacks. 

When they walk into the hotel, the only commentary she makes is a small gasp. He files it away as a compliment. From what he can tell by stealing glances at her from his peripheral vision, her favorite part is the chandelier. Her gaze stays stuck to it as they pass under it, even pausing a little to stare at the way the diamonds catch the light. 

They make their way to the check in desk, and the man behind the desk does not immediately notice them, clicking through a tablet. When he glances up, he goes entirely rigid. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry President Snow, welcome,” He rushes out, his eyes wide, and briefly darting to Lucy Gray. Coriolanus fixes him with a straight faced stare. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Valeria says from behind them, coming up to the desk, her phone at her ear. “We’ve got a reservation under C. Snow.” 

He springs into action checking them in, and handing over the key with shaky hands, points them towards the elevators.

At the elevator, Lucy Gray freezes in place when it opens. Coriolanus and Valeria step in, and Lucy Gray just looks at them. He places a hand in front of the doors so they won’t close. 

“Miss Baird?” Valeria prompts. 

“I don’t-” She glances around the elevator, unsure and…frightened? “What is this?” 

The words move through his brain slowly, not processing. Had she truly never encountered an elevator before? But then, he supposes, when would she have? It’s not as if many places in District 12, if any at all, had that sort of technology, or even two story buildings. 

It made him sick a little, but he wasn’t exactly sure why. 

“It’s an elevator,” He says slowly. “It will take us to upper levels in the building.” 

“Why can’t we just use stairs?” She says, in a voice that sounds slightly distressed, still scanning every inch of the elevator as if it hides danger. 

“This is faster. It’s very safe, Lucy Gray,” At seeing her still indecisive, he goes on to attempt to make her laugh. “Do you truly think I’d have faulty technology in my city?” 

She gives him a dry look, rolling her eyes a little. “You and your city.” She mumbles wryly. But she does step into the elevator, looking a little less uncertain that she did. 

It makes his head feel strange. He feels a nudge on his arm, glances to his right, and Valeria smiles with a little nod. Good, she mouths. Still Lucy Gray is tense the entire ride, her hands clenched into fists by her side. She practically runs off the elevator when the doors open. 

Lucy Gray heaves a big sigh when he tells her they’ve gotten her the Presidential suite. He tries not to grin. “What can I say, it’s the best.” He responds to her annoyance. 

Valeria hands her the keycard, and shows her how to use it. Then she opens the door, and Lucy Gray walks in. 

She doesn’t say anything, just wraps her arms around her middle, and begins walking through the space. She lingers in strange places, like lamps and the rugs, kneeling down to feel their softness with her fingertips. She runs her hands over granite countertops, tracing the marble veins through the stone. When she peeks into the master bedroom, sees the steps leading up to the king sized bed, she leans against the door frame, and only then does she look at him and finally speak. “Things like this just aren’t real.” 

“They are here.” He says, with pride echoing through his chest. 

“Right.” She huffs. She looks like she’s gearing up to say something else, but then her face goes tired and cold. 

Valeria mumbles something about needing to take a call, and he’s grateful when the door shuts behind her. Lucy Gray doesn’t seem to notice, still looking at the bed and its many layers of blankets. 

“Lucy Gray,” He starts, but his voice trails off. She doesn’t look over. “I wanted to say that…” 

Apologize, Tigris says. For wrecking her life. I’d hate you forever. 

Had a part of her died? A part of him had. 

This is ridiculous. He can do this. He is the President of Panem. It’s a speech, right? It’s like anything else. 

Before speeches in public he sits alone, centering himself. He takes deep breaths and rolls his shoulder with them. He thinks about what he’s going to say, he thinks about why they’re important to say. 

Breathe in for 3 seconds, hold for 4, out for 5. Roll your shoulders back. Straighten your posture. Hands behind your back. What are you about to say? Why is it important? 

“Lucy Gray, I’d like to apologize.” His voice is steady, strong. Bulletproof. Her head whips around, and her face is incredulous. 

“Apologize?” She parrots, like she’s sure she heard him wrong. 

“Yes. I didn’t consider any personal struggles you might go through, when I asked you to come to the Capitol—” 

“Forced me, you mean?” 

“I prefer ‘persuaded.’” She scoffs, he carries on. “But I’m sorry. For separating you from your family.” 

She stares at him for a long time. What is she searching for on his face? “Is that all you’re sorry for?” 

“What else should I be sorry for?” 

She shakes her head a bit, as if clearing it of a wild thought, and laughs a bitter little laugh to herself. Her mask of cold and unfeeling slips back over her features.  “Will you leave me alone now?” 

He clears his throat. Feels like he’s messed this up somehow. Lucy Gray, his anomaly, his sweet compass needle. “Yes. Oh, and here.” He gestures to the phone sitting on the bedside table. “This is your phone. If you lift it and press the ‘1’, you can call my personal number. The ‘2’ will give you Valeria. Anything you need, you can call me.” 

Her dark eyes assess him. 

“Or Valeria, of course.” He doesn’t move, just watches her watching him. The space between them feels like it’s closing but he’s sure he’s not moving. She isn’t either. 

She lets out a soft breath. He takes a step towards her, to what? Say goodbye? He isn’t sure. To do something. He plans to figure it out once he’s there. Her hair is catching the light in a mesmerizing way, bringing out rich shades of gold. He thinks he might wrap it around his fist, and drag her into him. He advances another step. 

“What’s the ‘C’ stand for?” She questions suddenly. It feels like she’s trying to cast a shield between them. Her face is a little flushed. Her throat rises and falls on a swallow. 

He cannot stop watching it. “Sorry?” He says, unfocused. 

“You signed all your notes President C. Snow, and down there, they said the reservation was under C. Snow.” She shifts on her feet. “So, what’s it stand for?” 

He chuckles a little to himself, and her eyes dart away from him. “You don’t know my name?” He questions softly. 

“How should I? It’s not like anyone ever says it.” 

“Yes, well, titles are more important.” 

Her nose wrinkles in visible disagreement with him. “No, they’re not.” 

“Mine is.” He doesn’t expect his voice to come out as sad as it does, and she looks like she’s trying to peer into his soul at the sound of it. It’s true. His past self, who he might have been for the first 29 years of his life, that person is not who he is anymore. He is the President. 

Coryo. 

He is President Snow. That is where he ends and begins. It was always the plan. It should carry no burden, or air of sadness about it, and yet he feels heavy. 

“Are you going to tell me or not?” She asks. 

“Yes, how rude I’ve been. Please excuse my manners.” He steps just an inch closer. “My name is Coriolanus Snow. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lucy Gray Baird.” 

Their eyes meet in some vicious collision of the ocean and earth.

Chapter Text

Coriolanus. Core-ee-oh-lane-us. Coriolanus Snow. My name is Coriolanus Snow. She turns his name over in her mouth for a long while after he leaves, sweeping out of the room with his long strides, his movements controlled and precise, his scent lingering in the room around her. 

It’s midday by the time she’s alone in her room, but she still pulls the white curtains over the window and sleeps. She tries to sleep in the bed, but it’s all wrong. She feels like she’s sinking into it like quicksand, like she's laying on a marshmallow. The blankets feel like water slipping through her fingers from the high quality of the silk, and there’s some fabric she’s never encountered before, but it’s the softest thing she’s ever felt. It’s like holding a cloud in her hands. 

After a while tossing and turning in her marshmallow bed, she finally moves to the couch, dragging the cloud blanket with her. It’s still too comfortable to make her relax, but it’s more cramped, and the stiffer pillows with their cotton-thread embroidery remind her of home. She's not used to sleeping alone. Her heart screams quietly in her chest.

She falls, after a long while, into a fitful sleep. 

She dreams of him. His voice echoes in every paint-dripping-through-water sequence she sees. She sees flashing silver and gold and she hears his voice whispering about sparkling snow. 

She sees glass boxes and metal boxes and feels a lurching disorientation, as if the world is falling away beneath her. 

She sees the bright snap of cameras, and the moon getting swallowed up by a deep maroon. 

He hears his voice. My name is Coriolanus Snow. 

When she shoots up from her cloud blanket and the small, stiff pillow, she barely makes it to the bathroom before throwing up the little she’d been able to eat before she boarded his train. 

She stands from the toilet, scrubbing at her cheeks for tears that aren’t there. She moves to the counter and startles for a moment when she peers into the mirror. She’s never seen an image reflected in a mirror so crystal clear, at least, not anywhere but the lake in the early morning, before anything has disturbed its surface. It’s like a perfect piece of water, one never touched by anything but vain faces. 

She gently grazes the surface of the mirror, half expecting little ripples to interrupt its polished glass. There are none. Just a little blurry circle where her index finger had been. She is grateful to see it can be made imperfect. 

She then decides she will touch everything. 

The cabinets and their painted wood. Really, how was it possible they could afford all this paint? All this wood? Even if a thousand Districts starved, surely it couldn’t pay for even one of these buildings, if they were all made this way. 

She touches the walls and the floors and the paintings on the walls and the rugs on the floors. She tries to find any places where the wood creaks, a sign of age, a sign of the lives that have passed through the space. But no floorboard makes a whisper of sound. All silent under her socks with their little holes. 

She stares for a long time at the shower. She’s seen one before. The Hob technically has one in the basement, but it’s never worked, it’s never been anything more than a chunk of rusted metal sticking out from the wall. She has a feeling this will be different. 

This shower has a door. A door. As if it’s its own room! There’s 4 bottles of different soaps in there, a shiny, rust-free shower head, and a handle which points straight down, an H carved on one side, a C on the other. She stares at the little carved letters for a few minutes, refusing to believe that it could mean she can have hot water in a matter of seconds. 

Her hand trembles a little as she reaches for the handle and pushes it towards the H. Water shoots from the metal top so fast she can’t pull her arms away before her sleeve gets soaked by a line of water. 

She’s not even mad. 

It’s burning hot water. 

A laugh bubbles out of her. Hot water. Whenever she wants it. She tears her shirt and skirt and practically flies into the shower-room with its glass door. The water scalds her skin, but she can’t even bring herself to care. It feels like she’s burning alive, but she does not turn down the heat. She can’t shake the awful feeling that it will turn icy any second. Surely they don’t have an endless supply of hot water? 

But no matter how long she stands in the water, the temperature never falters. She examines the bottles lining the back wall. Her heart skips a beat in her chest when she sees the word printed over the center of the second bottle from the left. 

Her mothers image, perfectly preserved in time, flashes behind her eyes. Her widows peak, her bright, joyous smile, her deep hazel-green eyes. Her chest groans beneath the weight of that old, familiar pain. That never-ending longing, the relentless tide of grief, which sweeps through her day in and day out, the urge to cover her ears and sink to the floor and scream and cry until her mother just comes back . Because she cannot do this without her. She cannot live when her mother, her mom, is cold and dead and in the ground. 

But she’s felt this feeling before. She feels it constantly. People say it gets easier. It doesn’t. You just forget what you used to feel like, and you learn to live with your broken self. Your half-self. The ghost who lives your life and wears your clothes and sleeps in your bed. 

She leans against the side of the shower and takes deep breaths while the worst of it passes. It’s harder to get a sudden reminder. It’s one thing when it’s her mom’s birthday, or she plays her favorite song. It’s a whole different ball game when she’s not expecting it. 

Shampoo. When her parents were younger, the Covey used to move. Like, really move. They’d float from District to District, performing anywhere that wanted them. Big stages, small ones, roadsides, and porches. Lucy Gray doesn’t really remember it. She remembers some things. Flashes of places that definitely aren’t 12, instruments and faces she’s never seen again. The old trains, before President Snow was elected and completely changed the game with all his fancy new technology. 

Something she remembers completely, though, her mother and her shampoo. She can remember it so vividly that if she closes her eyes, she can still smell it. It was breezy and warm. Coconut and vanilla. Her mom had been obsessed with shampoo, and every District they went to, she would steal as many bottles as she could. 

When they settled in at 12, she remembers her mom whispering to her about how all the shampoo she had hoarded was only going to be for the girls. Lucy Gray remembers roaring with giggles. The shampoo had run out when she was 14. 

Her and her mother spent months trying to come up with a way to make it themselves. It was never like the real stuff, but soap, milk, and rosemary oil was usually what they used. They would go wander out in the woods to find the loveliest, brightest smelling flowers to press oil for the scent. 

Lavender flowers were always her favorite to use. 

She’d left her lavender shampoo at home for the girls. She scrubs the Presidential Suite shampoo into her scalp. It smells of lemon. 

She’s not sure what conditioner is, so she ignores that bottle and uses the lemon soap and a washcloth for her body. 

Thoughts of her mother linger in the air around her. For the thousandth time, she wishes she could speak to her mom, even if it was only for a few minutes. She falls back into the old habit so easily, the one where she makes bargains in her head, thinking of all the things so would give up. Promises things like she’ll never cry again, never make any mistake or do anything wrong, she’ll never want for anything again, only for a few minutes with her mother. 

She makes these promises to no one but herself, doesn’t even voice them to the air around her, because she’s not delusional, and speaking promises to empty rooms will not make her mother appear. 

But, god, she wants. She wants her mom to tell her what to do, what to see, what not to see. What she’s supposed to say when Snow gets these lines in his face like he’s nervous as he looks into her eyes and says that he’s sorry . 

This is a horrible thing for him to do, because it’s much easier for her to believe he is not capable of empathy. She is still not fully convinced. 

The water pounds against her, and her hands rise to drag through her soaking hair, and wipe at her traitorous eyes. Sick, twisted, traitorous eyes. They keep seeing things, catching things she doesn’t want to catch. She closes her eyes tight, pressing the heels of her palms to them, but he’s still there, moments from earlier lingering in her mind like the smell of rain after a downfall. 

The corner of his mouth as he flashes her a half-smile, one that is boyish and mischievous and almost…charming. Charming the way she found Billy Taupe charming when he’d shake the lake water from his hair, giving her a sneaky grin and heated eyes. 

The bewilderment and undeniable want on his face when she dropped her things into his hands, sweetly calling him by his title. 

She doesn’t leave the shower when she’s done, instead wastes time washing her hair again. She sits on the floor and draws little watery shapes on the glass door until the hunger cramping her stomach becomes too hard to ignore. 

Three white towels softer than a lamb are hanging outside the glass shower, she wraps one around herself and leaves the others. She’s not sure why one person should need so many. She’s about to change back into her clothes when a knock rings through the suite. 

She pads cautiously to the door, keeping the towel tight around her, dread crawling her spine at the thought of it being him behind the door. It’s late, she’s not exactly sure what time, but the sun has started to set, casting the room in a honey-gold glow. If it’s him, what could he be here so late in the day for? A perilous whisper in the back of her mind supplies a reason. A very real reason he might be turning up outside her door as the day falls into night. Her heart starts to race, blood rushing in her ears like ocean waves crashing. She crushes the thought to dust in her mind. 

But still, she wonders.

Would he still be in his dark red suit, buttons all done, every inch of it smoothed and laying perfectly tailored to his body? What would his voice be like tonight? She’s quickly learning there’s more shades to his voice than she had previously thought. Besides his arrogant, self-assured smoothness, there’s a firm one, one which brokers no arguments, and demands you fall in line. 

“Look at me.” Snow says, something in his voice sharp-edged and precise. It grabs her attention and holds it, briefly quieting the restless anxiety which had been building in her since the Capitol came into view and the crowds started swarming.“When we get out there, there’s going to be a lot of people and they’re going to be loud and very, very curious about you. If they ask you questions, do not answer. Don’t look at them, just focus on Kori, he’ll be in front of you, and get to the car.” 

She’s slightly agitated at being treated like an idiot. “I’m not a child, I’ll be fine—”

“I know you will. But you’re going to be fine, and stay close to me while you do it. Understand?” Her mouth goes dry, his words ringing clear and true and familiar in her mind, so similar to what she’d said to Clerk Carmine when she’d found him crying on the steps weeks ago. She’d told him she knew he was fine, but that they were going to be fine together. She’d never thought there could be a similarity drawn between President Snow and herself. But she was staring right at it. A protectiveness. One she understands very well. “Understand?”

“Yes.” She breathes back. It’s as if a layer had been peeled away from him. She felt, for a moment, like she was about to see something very important. Some strange tilting of her world. As if everything had changed now. Then she looks away from him, back to the howling crowds outside the windows, and she blinks away the odd sensation. She must be light-headed from the stress. 

A fresh knock has her contemplating if she should race to put her clothes back on or try and pretend she’s not here or simply open the door. She decides she needs more information first. “Who is it?” 

“Room service!” Comes the chirping reply. Lucy Gray ponders what exactly room service entails, and why they’re here. “I have your dinner, Miss Baird.” The person behind the door clarifies at her brief silence. 

She dresses quicker than she ever has and flies to the door. When the cart, because it’s a full cart, gets rolled into her room, it takes her a good long while to be able to form a full thought.

This amount of food could feed the entire Covey for days. Maybe it’s an exaggeration. But no, it’s not, because there’s 5 different plates bigger than her head, each offering a different meal. Chicken, steak, lobster, lamb, and some kind of fish that she’s uncertain of what it is. The serving size is outrageous, she’s not even sure she could finish one of the plates. Not to mention the smaller plates dotting all open spaces on the cart. Potatoes, steamed vegetables, fruit, and sauces with colors so rich she’s not convinced you’re meant to eat it. 

There’s water and wine hanging off the side of the cart, as well as one regular glass and a perfect crystal wine glass, long stemmed and a rim thin as paper. 

The boy who’d rolled the cart in, because he is a boy, Lucy Gray guesses maybe 15, stands next to the cart awkwardly with a look on his face that swings between confusion at her awe, curiosity, and anxiety. She puts a smile on her face, realizing she had been staring slack-jawed like a fool. “Well, I’m not sure how I’ll eat all of this, but thank you kindly for bringing it up…”

“Vic.” He supplies, seemingly excited by the prospect of being useful. “I mean Victor. But, my mom calls me Vic. And my brother, and like, all my friends.”

Victor. She tries not to be nauseous at the name or what may have inspired it. “Well, Vic, my friends call me Lucy Gray.” She says, approaching the cart with her brows lowering, running her fingertips over the edge of the wine glass. “So, did he poison it, then?” 

Vic glaces around for a half-second, as if there must be someone more important to answer this question. He’s got a sweet face, with blue eyes wide as the dinner plates in front of her. He looks like he hasn’t really grown into his height yet, his face still soft with youth. She thinks fondly that Maude Ivory would have a crush on him. “Uh - what?” 

Lucy Gray leans her head down a little to inhale the food, her mouth dropping open a little at the magnificent scent. She can’t take another breath fast enough. “The President. Did he poison it?”

A shocked noise jumps from Vic’s mouth and he looks like he’s making fish faces at her, his mouth opening and closing in shock and confusion. “Um– Miss Baird, the President was very clear about the treatment you were to receive, if anyone is going to poison you I don’t think it would be him.” He says slowly, and she’s curious as to what the President may have said to the staff about this supposed ‘treatment’ she was to receive. “Besides,” Vic continues, eyes brightening. “I’ve heard he’s got assassins, like, real assassins. How cool is that? I bet if he wanted you dead poison isn’t how he’d do it.” 

“Well, Vic, that’s very nice to know.” 

Vic grins, and it’s sweet and young and any nausea she has about his name fades away. He’s only a boy. “Did you need anything else, Miss Baird?”

“Lucy Gray.” She corrects. 

“Oh, I couldn’t, Miss Baird.” He says quickly, shaking his head back and forth as if to clear her name from his thoughts, like it scares him. 

“Why not? I’m calling you by your name, it’s only good manners.” She says playfully, trying to bait Vic into loosening up around her. 

He shakes his head again, peeking towards the door like someone might be listening. “You’re to be treated as an honored guest.” 

“Ah, I see, so the President said you aren’t allowed to call me by my name.” She says with a nod, her tone solemn with mock-understanding. 

“Well,” He says, thinking. His head lolls back and forth a little as if re-playing earlier events in his mind. “I mean, no, but–”

“Good, then. I’m telling you to call me Lucy Gray.” She pours some of the water into the normal glass, and holds it up to the light as if she might be able to see any possible contamination. Vic looks very uncertain. 

“What are you looking for?” He asks, cocking his head to the side, a little amusement creeping onto his face. It makes him look more like a child. As he should, she thinks. 

She flashes him a smile, swirling the water a little in the glass. “Poison.” 

—

She wakes with the sun the next morning. Sits on the floor in front of the huge window and cries as the sun rises over the city. It’s so stupid, and she doesn’t even have a real reason for crying. Or she does, but there’s a thousand reasons and she’s not even sure what her reason is. She might be crying about the fact that she didn’t even know windows could be like this, and it’s so amazing to have this sheet of glass as a wall, showing her the entire world. She might be crying because the red-orange light spills over the city like water, like gold running through the streets. She might be crying because she and Billy Taupe used to wake up early to watch the sunrise over 12. She might be crying because she didn’t say goodbye to him. She might be crying because she misses her family, the color of Tam Amber’s eyes, the dry wit of Clerk Carmine, the humming of Maude Ivory while she brushes her hair, the barking laughter of Barb Azure. She misses the way the sun rises over 12. She hates the beauty of the sun rising over the Capitol. 

Vic appears around 9. He rolls in a fresh cart and takes away the one she mauled, and he tells her about everything on the cart. He tells her that usually he drinks apple juice in the morning but the cook insisted on sending up water, coffee, and orange juice. He makes sure she knows he tried to talk the cook into sending her apple juice. She thanks him for fighting on her behalf. 

She’s tearing into the hashbrowns on one of the plates when the ringing pierces the air. It startles her enough that she knocks her glass of orange juice over, and she swears as she rushes to set the glass upright. Her head whips around and she stands to chase the sound through the rooms. She follows it all the way to her bedroom, and cautiously approaches the bedside table and the odd box perched atop it. It’s got a piece that looks like it detaches, and is tied to the box with a spiral cord, as well as numbers going from 0-9 next to the piece that (might) detach. She remembers Snow gesturing to it, talking about speed numbers or something.

The ringing chime continues, steady as a metronome, and she tries pressing the 1 button to stop it. It does not. She tries 2. Nothing. She tries smashing her hand over all the buttons. The ringing box is unbothered. 

She lifts the curved piece, and it detaches easily from the rest of the box, and silences the ringing. It’s hovering a few inches above where it had been resting while she studies the machine a little further, trying to figure out what it does. Then a voice comes from the curved handpiece. 

“Hello? Miss Baird?” Valeria’s voice. It’s quiet, so she pulls it closer to her ear to hear her voice better. She wonders if it’s a recording of some sort. “Miss Baird, are you there?” 

“Valeria?” 

“Yes, hi, did you sleep well? I hope the room and food has all been to your liking.” She says, and through the odd handpiece she can hear other people and sounds, as if she’s surrounded by noise. 

“I - well, yes, thank you, but how? How, um-” Lucy Gray stumbles, so unsure of where to start in her confusion about how they’re talking right now. Valeria breezes right past her incoherency, efficient as ever. 

“Wonderful. Well, if you’re up for it, you could have a visitor in a few hours. Does that sound okay to you?” 

“A visitor? It’s not him, is it?” Lucy Gray says warily. She’s barely processed the last time they were in the same room, she’s not eager for another encounter so soon. Perhaps she could barricade her door? She’s eyeing the dresser as a good option while Valeria huffs a quiet laugh through the speaker. 

“No,” Valeria says, still laughing a little. There’s another faint sound over the handpiece speaker, one very similar to the ringing that had come from hers a few moments ago. Valeria must be at work. “He’s much too busy today. He has to make up for all the work he missed while in District 12. But, I’m sure if he did have a second of time he’d — No, Dev, out, he’s in a meeting with the VP right now.” Her voice is much sharper when speaking to this Dev person, and quieter, like she’d pulled the handpiece from her mouth. “No, he’s meeting with Price then. I’ll reschedule you. Well, frankly, that’s not my problem or his, so out. I’ll email you. Out .” 

Lucy Gray finds herself smiling a little when Valeria heaves a put-upon sigh. 

“Sorry about that. Anyways, no, it’s not the President. It’s the designer who’ll dress you for your shows.” 

Lucy Gray twirls the curling cord around her fingers, eyebrows scrunching. “I thought you said I wouldn’t start performing for another month or so.” 

“You won’t,” Valeria replies. “But she wants your measurements so she can have plenty of options for you by the time you debut.” Valeria’s voice goes a pitch quieter, a little mischief shining through her voice. “And between me and you, she’s dying to meet you.” 

“Who is she?” 

“She’ll introduce herself.” Valeria says smoothly, and Lucy Gray is curious and slightly nervous at the dodged question. “So, you’re up for it then?” 

She chews the inside of her cheek a bit before she answers. On the one hand, she’s not jumping at the chance to meet another one of Snow’s worshiping citizens, but on the other, she’s nothing but a vanity who loves pretty things. She’s curious as to what a Capitol performer might wear. “Why does she want to meet me?” 

“Miss Baird, everyone wants to meet you.” 

—

The knock on her door came exactly two hours later. After her call with Valeria, she’d wandered into the bathroom to deal with her messy curls and hair wash her face. She had to settle with just pinning a few pieces back and finger combing them as best she could, as running a brush through them would have turned them into a complete bird’s nest. 

She’s not sure if it’s fair to make a judgment on someone based on the way they knock, but this dressmaker seemed… enthusiastic. Lucy Gray pulled open the door and didn’t even have time to plant a smile on her face before the woman was past her and through the doorway, and a flurry of girls and carts of fabrics were being rolled into her room. 

Lucy Gray whirled around to see the woman standing in the center of the room with a warm, bright smile on her face. She was beautiful in a way Lucy Gray didn’t often see. She was tall and willowy, angular and ethereal in a way that made her look angelic, or simply not of this world. Something about her was achingly familiar, yet she was sure she’d never met her before. 

She had blonde hair so light it was almost white, which was artfully swept from her face in swooping, sleek curls. Her skin pale as starlight, her eyes the exact shade of iris flowers blooming in early April. “Oh, look at you, you know, you are just as lovely as Val said! I’m so glad to be finally meeting you, Miss Baird.” She reaches out and shakes Lucy Gray’s hand with a strong handshake. 

Lucy Gray loves to meet new people. She always has. Somehow, she thinks this woman and her may have been friends in another life. Something about the shade of her hair and the way she holds herself creates a strange sense of deja-vu in Lucy Gray, like they already know each other, and surely that is divine. How can you know someone when you’ve never seen them before? They must have been made to know one another. 

But a glance over her shoulder at all the rich, expensive fabrics make her angry and aching with the wonder of how many people wouldn’t freeze to death on the streets of 12 in January if they had even one piece of clothing made with such fine material. 

“Pleasure’s mine, though I can’t say I know your name half so well as you know mine.” Lucy Gray says, tilting her head a bit. 

“Oh, yes, of course. I’m Tigris.” 

Curious to not offer a last name. But, maybe she wants to be called by her first name and not her last, which Lucy Gray understands, so she can’t entirely fault her for that. “That’s a strong name.” Lucy Gray says. “I like it.” 

“I like yours, too.” 

“Then, please call me Lucy Gray. Everyone here is calling me ‘Miss’, and I can’t get them to stop.” Lucy Gray says with a roll of her eyes. 

Tigris laughs, waving her hand through the air like she’s shooing off the thought. “Yes, well, I’m sure Coriolanus threatened everyone into doing it so don’t be too upset with them.”  

Shock hits Lucy Gray right in the center of her chest at Tigris’s casual use of the President’s first name, and her careless references to threatening. If her encounters with the screaming crowd and Vic were anything to go by, the President of Panem was revered. Adored. Yet, Tigris did not speak of him fondly or, frankly, respectfully. She wonders briefly if Tigris has been sent to trap her into disrespecting the President, so she can run back to him and whisper in his ear. The immediate liking she had taken to Tigris dampens into distrust. 

“Well!” Tigris says, getting distracted when one of the girls who had brought in the mountains of fabrics hands her a large white leather book. Tigris flips it open to reveal it as a sketchbook, one bursting with drawings and little squares of fabric, scraps of chain, lace, and buttons taped to its pages. “No time to lose,” Tigris gestures to the couch, and they sit. “Tell me what you like.” 

“What I…like?” She parrots, confused. She had assumed that the designer would only take her measurements and then just give her dresses to wear, like costumes. 

“Yes.” Tigris says, the book resting open in her lap. “What colors, what fabrics, what dress styles, that sort of thing. I’ll also have you look through some of my past designs and you can point out things you like or don’t like, that way I can draw you some dresses you’re sure to love.” 

Tigris flips the sketchbook open to a certain section of pages, one which is covered with designs for dresses. Lucy Gray is immediately enchanted by each and every pencil line. She doesn’t speak much, but watches closely while Tigris flips through the pages, pointing out interesting aspects of each dress. They’re all wonderful. 

The most beautiful ideas ever. Each pencil gray sketch excites her, each one interesting and lively in its own way, each one something she would be thrilled to wear. Each one unique and daring and sweet and eye-catching, and she says so at each turn of the page. Tigris weaves questions into all of Lucy Gray’s marveling, and is patient when she asks questions or reaches her fingers over to brush her fingers over the dry white pages and their lead drawn potential. 

“I love every color,” Lucy Grays says in response to Tigris asking about her favorites. “They’re all beautiful.”

“But if you had to pick a few favorites…” 

Lucy Gray hums, brushing her fingers over the ruffles drawn on the hem of the newest sketch Tigris reveals with a turned page. “Purple—I love purple, and you don’t see lots of it in 12– and yellow, and blue, of course, and pink, but the lighter shades of pink. If I had to pick favorites.” 

There’s a younger girl off to the side with dark brown hair in a tight bun who’s writing down everything Lucy Gray says, which makes her vaguely nervous about answering questions, even though in every other situation, they’re questions she’d be thrilled to answer. “Perfect, wonderful.” Tigris says, posing another question. “And the styles? Are there any elements you’d like to see in your own dresses, things you know you don’t want?” 

“Well, I like things that twirl well, if that makes sense, skirts with tiers and that sort of thing. Embroidery, and just, lots of color.” Lucy Gray found it odd and uncomfortable to ask for things in this way. It was so rarely up to you. What was available was what you got, what was affordable, what was realistic, what was time-allotting.

The pen in the dark-haired girl’s hand flies, and Lucy Gray is hit suddenly with another thought as Tigris stands and says they should move on to measurements. “Wait,” She says. “Hold on, I won’t be able to pay for any of this, at least, not until I’ve performed a few times—”

Tigris cuts her off with a laugh. “Don’t be silly, Coriolanus will cover it.”

The thought makes Lucy Gray’s stomach turn. Everything was earned, that’s just how it was. These events unfolding before her, they felt like a poorly disguised trap in a fable she would have been told as a child. Never trust things given freely, especially beautiful things. Diamond cities aren’t real, priceless dresses don’t just fall into your lap, a home all for herself with windows for walls don’t just build themselves beyond some golden road. 

It was like glittering jaws closing around her, it was some unusual inverse of everything she was meant to believe. The trap had been presented to her clearly, perform in his city or else , but the stained glass and jewel tones her life was now being shrouded in was creeping up on her like shadows after sunset. All the trickery was entering the story after the fatal deal had been made, and what a strange thing it was. 

Lucy Gray stands, still contemplating Tigris’s words, but moves to the center of the room as she instructs. Tigris moves around her with all the grace of leaves in the wind, wrapping her in the yellow ribbon-like measuring tool over and over again, jotting down every number she reads on its surface. She watches Tigris’s face, trying to read the thoughts behind her eyes when the lights catch them, trying to understand why parts of Tigris pull an uncomfortable ebb and flow of deja-vu through her. 

When it is revealed, it makes ice frost over her spine, it makes her stomach sink faster than water into dry soil. 

It’s a young girl’s fault, and Tigris clearly thinks so when her face goes hard as stone. “Miss Snow?” The girl pipes up, throwing her light brown ponytail over her shoulder as she raises a silver box with different necklace chains displayed on a bed of navy fabric. “Did you want to measure jewelry sizes as well?” 

Air hisses in through Lucy Gray’s teeth as she cuts her eyes to Tigris, Tigris Snow. “Snow?” 

Tigris’s mouth pulls into a straight line, and suddenly it’s so ridiculously obvious that Lucy Gray cannot believe she didn’t see it the second she laid her eyes on Tigris’s immaculate blonde hair and her ivory skin. The way she carries herself, almost regal. Royal. As if the blood in her veins runs with some divine rightness that the rest of them can only dream of. The way her jaw goes tight when something hasn’t gone the way she planned. 

Tigris takes a breath, like she’s steadying herself for a fight. She meets Lucy Gray’s eyes with hers open and gentle, and nods her chin once. “Yes. Snow.”  

Lucy Gray bites down on her tongue a little, building a new wall in her mind. Tigris is not to be trusted, she’s related to him, she must be his sister. Of course, that’s why she’s dressing Lucy Gray, that’s why she has what must be the loveliest fabrics in the Capitol, that’s why she has the otherworldly air about her, that unattainable beauty. 

“But Lucy Gray, listen,” Tigris says, moving to try and meet Lucy Gray’s gaze again. “I’m not—”

“Not what?” Lucy Gray cuts in coldly. 

“Myranda, Jola, Daphne, out.” Tigris’s voice reminds her of a striking serpent, the way it snaps from her lips as her head turns to the side, and the girls file out in a matter of seconds without a whisper of sound. Only once the door shuts completely behind them does Tigris turn to face her again. “I’m not your enemy.”

“Really?” Lucy Gray laughs with a bitter edge. “You sure look a lot like him.” 

“Careful. Talking like that will get you killed here.” Tigris warns, continuing to hold different colored fabrics up to Lucy Gray. Some veil has been torn from their conversation, a new depth taking shape. 

“Being District will get me killed here.” 

Tigris’s eyes meet hers, bright and focused. “Any other District member, sure.” Her mouth cuts a straight slash across her face, not quite a smile, something about it searching and sharp-edged. “Maybe not you, Lucy Gray. Maybe not you.” 

Lucy Gray doesn’t know what to say, or if she did know what to say she wouldn’t know how to say it. She turns her head away so she can stop seeing his ghost in her features, all that graceful lethality. 

“You’re different to him.” Tigris continues.

She shakes her head a little, staring straight forward towards the window-wall. “Stop.”

“You’re different to him.” She repeats, like Lucy Gray is dumb enough not to have realized that already. “I mean, I don’t think you understand what this–”

“I don’t understand? ” Lucy Gray parrots incredulously, rounding on Tigris and the silk fabric spilling from her hands. “No, Tigris Snow, you don’t understand. You don’t understand anything, you don’t – have you ever even been out there? In the Districts? Have you ever seen their faces, the streets they sleep on?”

Tigris looks away, her mouth tilting down. “No, I haven’t.”

“You haven’t. I do understand, I understand that I’m not different to him, he just thinks I’m beautiful and those are not the same thing. He just wants to dress a District girl up in pretty things and remind himself of his own significance. He’ll grind me back into the dirt when he’s done with me.” The words are ashy and vitriolic on her tongue, and Tigris seems to flinch away from them.  

Her midnight eyes are sad, and the way they express her feelings more than any contortion of her face reminds Lucy Gray of him. His watercolor eyes, changing and swaying and swirling and whispering. It’s quiet between them for a moment, the air tense and tight as if it’s holding its breath. 

Tigris breaks it with her voice gentle and careful. “Maybe. Or maybe this changes everything.” 

Tigris Snow leaves very soon after she speaks the words, the young girls sweeping through the room as Lucy Gray stands frozen in the center of it all, gathering all the fabrics and notebooks and yellow measuring ribbons. Tigris says goodbye to her, and casts a final glance over her shoulder before she disappears through the door, that same searching curiosity on her face. “I’m glad to have met you, Lucy Gray. No matter what.”

Then the door is closed and Lucy Gray is alone again in the perfection of the Presidential Suite. 

She paces the floor for a while. She turns to her guitar, curls around it on the soft threads of the elaborate run, tries desperately to comfort herself with familiar melodies. But all of them make her eyes and throat burn like she’s going to start crying again and she just can’t. It reminds her vividly of the weeks after her parents death. She had practically hidden from her guitar, it startled her in the middle of the night when the terrible echo of the gunshots drove her from sleep. It’s strings called to her sadly, like it missed her as much as she missed it. But it had been a long time before she could force herself to rebuild the callouses on the tips of her fingers.

So she rests her fingers over the strings for a while, and gives up on her favorite melodies. She ponders Tigris Snow, replays the look in her eyes, replays the way she spoke the word: different. 

You’re different to him. 

The words are uncomfortable in her mind, scratching at the inside of her head like sandpaper. Her fingers move without her command, and she begins to pull a simple tune from her guitar. 

My name is Coriolanus Snow. 

Core-ee-oh-lane-us. What an odd name, she wonders what it means. She wonders if that’s even a thing people do here in the diamond city. Do they name their children for a reason? Coriolanus. What does that name mean?

E minor, A. E minor, A. 

Lucy Gray had been named for a ballad. Was there an old ballad that used to be sung about a boy named Coriolanus? 

E minor, A. E minor, A. 

It suits him in some ways, she thinks. It’s important sounding with its sprawling syllables, certain and strong. 

E minor, A. E minor, A. G, G. 

But then, there’s something about it missing, or just not exactly what she might have pictured. Something maybe in the way his voice went so light when they were in that death-trap elevator, do you truly think I’d have faulty technology in my city? For the briefest moment, it had made her feel…uncertain. 

E minor, A. E minor, A. 

“How treasonous you are, Lucy Gray.” He says, an almost-laugh coming from his half-smile mouth, and his eyes lit with something playful and rakish.

E minor, A. E minor A. 

“When it’s snowing,” He whispers, wistful and soft, “The entire city sparkles.” For once, he wasn’t upsetting her. 

E minor, A. E minor, A. G, G.

She stops her slow strumming, silencing the strings under her palm. Thoughts like this are an unnecessary poison, a derailment she doesn’t need. Him having brief moments where he seems human doesn’t change all the thousands of other moments where he seems like he’s held together by metal and wires.

In fact, they make him far, far worse. 

She stands, setting down her guitar and goes to the ornate door and its golden handle. She pulls it open, planning to go outside for a few moments, just for the clarity of fresh air, but she’s stopped by a white-wearing peacekeeper, who materializes in front of her before she can take a single step out the door. 

“Miss Baird.” The man says in a curt greeting. He’s tall and broad, with a pointed chin and stern dark eyes. “Is there something I can do for you?” 

She raises an eyebrow and begins to step around him. “No thanks, darling, I’ve got it under control.” 

He stays firm, making it obvious he’s not about to clear her path. “I can have whatever you need brought to you, no need to leave your suite.” 

“What’s your name?” 

“Lysander, ma’am.” 

“Lysander,” Lucy Gray says kindly. “Am I a prisoner?” 

Lysander shakes his head once, hands held calmly behind his back. Lucy Gray does not miss the gun strapped to his waist, in the fashion of all peacekeepers. “No, ma’am.” 

“Wonderful. Then if you’ll excuse me.” 

Lysander does not move. 

Lucy Gray sighs. “Is this one of those magic word moments?” 

Lysander does not crack a smile, his stern dark eyes staring at some aimless point over her head. “What can I have brought to you, Miss Baird?”

“Fresh air and sunshine, could you have that brought up to me, darling?” 

“I can open one of your windows, if you’d like.” He replies, tone calm and cordial. 

Lucy Gray slouches against her door frame, peering up at him through her lashes. “I thought I wasn’t a prisoner. Are we lying to each other now, Lysander?” 

He barely glances down at her. “I doubt prisoners get to open their windows, Miss Baird, it could certainly be worse.”  

“I have a question.” 

“Of course.” 

“If I run out of here,” Lysander’s eyes dart to hers, and with militant focus he begins to watch her body language. She keeps herself loose and uncaring. “Are you going to drag me back or just follow me?” 

He does not respond, save for the slightest raise of his eyebrows. He stays where he is, blocking her doorway with his hands knit behind his back. 

Lucy Gray knocks her head back against the doorframe, thinking. “I’d like you to send Victor up here, he’s the boy who brings me my meals.” 

“Are you hungry, ma’am? I can have the cook prepare you anything you’d like if—”

“No, thank you, just Vic.” 

— 

She has Vic show her how the machine works. Vic tells her it’s called a telephone. She tells him as much as she can remember about what Snow had said, something about speed numbers. Vic translates, telling her about speed dial and how to start a call. 

His eyes sparkle a little, his mouth dropping open a little as he whispers. “Are you really about to call the President?” 

Lucy Gray winds the cord of the telephone around her finger for a moment, torn at her fondness for his young wonder, and her disdain for his admiration. She sheds herself once more of her sudden wave of dislike for Victor, for his Capitol mindset. He’s just a boy. “Sure am.”

“Can I stay here while you talk to him?”

“No, honey, I’m sorry, I’ll need to talk to him alone today. Another time, alright?” Vic pulls a bit of a face, but still gives her a friendly wave goodbye and a promise to see her later with her dinner.

While the sound of Vic shutting the door sits in the still air around Lucy Gray, she hovers her finger over the 1 button, trying to force herself to press down and trying to steel herself for anything. He might be anyone at all today. He might be threatening and acidic, he might be calm and condescending, he might be sharp and witty, he might be smooth and charismatic, he might be as cold-blooded and lawless as moonlight.

Who are you this very second, President Snow?  

She presses down. A dull note rings in her ear for a second and then quiets. Then begins again and ends. Then begins once more before it’s cut off. 

She breathes in. 

“Lucy Gray?”

She breathes out. 

“How are you?” His voice is strange over the speaker. Some dimmed version of it, not as clear as she’s used to. Some part of her hates it, finds it a pale intimidation of the real thing. She immediately abandons the thought. 

“Call off your dogs.” Lucy Gray says.

She hears a slight sound, and can picture him shaking his head as he clicks his tongue. She rolls her shoulders, trying to clear her mind again. “I see you’ve met Lysander and Alekos. I thought you might like that.”

“Alekos? Who is– nevermind. I don’t want bodyguards, I didn’t agree to that.” 

“Well,” He begins, and his voice makes her conjure an image of him in the room. She can see his ghost in the doorway, pulling his dark crimson suit straight at his wrists, pinning her with his snow-storm eyes. “I’m doing well, thank you for asking. Though there’s enough meetings on my schedule to make me rethink my career path.”

“I’m sure we’d all benefit if you did that, Mr. President. Call. Off. Your. Dogs.”

He laughs quietly in her ear, she pulls the telephone away a little, breathing in and out. “In the several conditions you made, bodyguards were not mentioned, so perhaps you should have thought through your terms more carefully.” 

Her mouth falls open around a shocked scoff. “How was I supposed to know you’d get me a babysitter?” 

“You weren’t.”

She grinds her back teeth together, focusing on not bursting a blood vessel. “I don’t want to be watched. Get rid of them.” 

“No.”

"Y es. ” 

“No. You’ll barely notice them, anyways.” 

“Really?” She drawls. “Because I'm noticing that I’m not allowed to leave my room.” 

There’s another little sound over the phone, and she can see it as if he’s right in front of her. The little tilt of his mouth he does, that sound, not amusement, not sarcasm, but some blend of it. “Yes, I would hate to not be allowed to leave the most lavish suite in the city. My cruelty is unending, I know. How do you like it, by the way?”

“Don’t change the subject.” She nearly growls. 

“I’m not,” He says with mock-sincerity. “We’re still discussing this tragic imprisonment, that’s the word you used the other day, wasn’t it? Only now, we’re discussing that awful cell you’re being forced to stay in.”

“You’re not funny.” 

“Well, I don’t get paid to be.” There’s a muted noise in her ear, it sounds like papers being shuffled. She wonders what he’s doing. She could ask. She won’t. There’s a few beats of quiet between them, and she can hear him breathing, in and out. “How are you, Lucy Gray?” 

She looks around the room at her marshmallow bed, the window-wall, the bathroom with the hot water. She’s responding before she thinks to stop herself. “I’m okay.” Her voice comes out quiet. Sadder than she thought it would. She’s normally quite good at masking her tone, but sometimes, around him, things just pour out of her. 

“Good.” He breathes. 

She sees crimson flashing in the corner of her eye. It’s only a red bird soaring through the afternoon sky. “I want to go outside.” 

“Tomorrow.” The tone of his voice reminds her of high-ceiling rooms. Airy, endless. “I promise you.” 

“What makes you think I’d believe your promises?” 

“You believed them enough to come here, didn’t you?” Their chessboard lays itself out once more, in shades of gold and silver. Her hand closes tighter over the telephone. 

“Don’t push your luck. We’re not done with this babysitting situation.” 

“I wouldn’t dare to dream you’d give up that easily.” 

She says, watching the bird draw scarlett slashes over the sky. “I’m going outside tomorrow. Whether you keep your promise or not.”

That sound again. That tilt of his mouth. She tries over and over again to stop picturing it. “Of course.” 

The bird disappears into the sun. “Goodbye, President Snow.”

“Goodbye, Lucy Gray.” 

She slams the telephone down before she can hear him breathe again. She flies to the window, placing one hand against the cool glass, and another to her pounding heartbeat. 

You’re different to him.