Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Grandma’am doesn’t live to see the end of the war. She slips away in her sleep and Tigris covers the body with a bed sheet before Coryo can get a good look at it. The phone hasn’t worked for weeks, so she walks down all one hundred ninety two stairs and almost knocks on the sidedoor to Boa’s Parlor, but stops herself. What would happen next? With no adult, they wouldn’t be allowed to live in their penthouse. Would they be forced onto the streets? She doesn’t think either she or Coryo would survive that.

They couldn’t just leave Grandma’am where she was, though. Disease was the last thing they needed. But how to dispose of the body? If she was identified, it’d all crumble anyways. She needed to keep this secret, then the war pensions of both grandpa and uncle would continue to arrive.

The apartment building’s entry has plenty of rubble. She picks up a sizable chunk and starts making her way up the staircase. She forces Coryo into his room and locks it with one of the dining chairs. She shifts Grandma’ams body onto the floor, and kisses the forehead softly, like she did at her parents’ funerals before the war. Then she starts bashing.

Before she knows it, her beloved grandmother’s face is unrecognizable. When night comes, she throws the body out the window and closes it before she can hear it falling. She finally lets Coryo out. They are allowed to cry tonight, just tonight.

Ceasefire comes ten days later. They don’t celebrate.

She hates to admit it, but life gets easier. Not just without the constant worry about bombings, curfew that limited their scavenging possibilities, but also with cans of beans and cabbages split into two instead three portions.

She signs them up for school, not the prestigious and expensive Academy, just the local one. Coryo protests at first, remembering tales told by their now-dead family members of their own youths, but she cannot afford to let him continue that legacy if it means there’s no money to fix the windows. She forges Grandma’am’s signatures on bills and forms and letters until it is almost more familiar than her own.

School is wonderful, she enjoys the few hours a day she doesn’t have to worry about anything other than grades. Lunch brings a free, although not large meal. There’s a few classmates whose surnames she recognizes from etiquette lessons, but most of them are middle class. Some are even working class. She makes casual friends.

Coryo is struggling more than her, when it comes to school. He had ideas planted in him by Crassus and festered by Grandma’am. He refuses to make friends. He often doesn’t eat his entire school lunch, afraid it will make him look poor. They are poor, she wants to scream. Coryo also doesn’t want to steal now that the Dark Days are over. So, she does it more and simply doesn’t tell him where the bread comes from.

She tries to steal from the butcher, just once, because the glint of cleaver in city lights as she gets away from the yelling man is too much. One month, the pipes in the bathroom burst and fixing them eats up almost their entire budget. During school breaks, apart from lunch, she browses the library in search for a solution, anything doable to better their situation. Books themselves are such a treasure to her, when all of theirs were burnt.

She learns first aid for survival situations, like how using your own hair for sutures prevents infections. That day, she tells Coryo neither of them will be getting a haircut anytime soon. Just in case. She leaves a single rosebush in the roof garden, and takes tomatoes and bell peppers from lunch to plant them instead. Most importantly, she learns to make snares.

Coryo is so excited when cabbage soup has meat in it. She lets him enjoy it for one meal, then shows him the remains of the rat she managed to catch. Surprisingly, he’s somehow relieved at the sight. She shows him how to set up the snares, and he takes over in that small part of her duties. Soon, their diet is supplemented by mice, squirrels, small birds, a raccoon. They keep the furs and feathers, too. She is fourteen when a boy from class asks her out on a date, but she turns him down, because she has plans to make mittens from that raccoon. Coryo furthers his own hunting skills. He has no qualms throwing stones at cats, never Boa Bell, but all others are fair game. Not maliciously, without torment for the sake of it. Quick kills, sometimes aided by a knife to the throat. His biology dissection scores are high, teachers compliment his composure and cleanliness.

Neither of them bring their schoolmates home, but they both get invited to others’ houses. Tigris goes to a girls-only sleepover and loves all the flowing, girly outfits they make each other try on. Coryo befriends a shy boy who always tries to be his lab partner. She’s so proud of him.

She’s even more proud of him when he brings her a mongrel dog with a broken neck. There’s no other injuries on the animal but there are scratches on Coryo. He doesn’t try to hide it, like she’s hidden her worst actions from him. He stalked, he ambushed, he won.

The day after she turns eighteen, she goes down one hundred ninety two steps and knocks on Pluribus Bell’s side door. It takes half an hour of explaining, the old man’s eyebrows raising higher and higher. A week after that, Grandma’am is legally dead, and Tigris is Coryo’s legal guardian.

Grandpa’s war pension is gone without his widow and sons, but she graduates and gets a job at a tailor. It’s nothing special, not a high fashion designer, just a small shop catering to the people who serve the nobility she was supposed to be one of. Coryo threatens to run away when she informs him she’s selling the apartment when taxes are announced. He stays, because she tells him to, and children obey their parents.

She doesn’t enjoy watching the Hunger Games and so she doesn’t do it, unlike Coryo. He critiques the tributes’ techniques, in the same way he comments on the lion tearing apart a zebra in an old documentary they rented from the library. His neutrality changes when with the 10th Games. He hates the spectacle. He hates the interviews. He hates the fakeness and the gamemaker interventions. Says it’s not honest.

Ten days after a girl from 12 somehow sings her way out, he comes back to their small flat with blood under fingernails and taste of copper in his mouth. Before she can even ask, he tells her the woman who broke the games is dead. To her pleasant surprise, it’s not Lucy Gray Baird’s death that’s announced in the news, but Volumnia Gaul’s. The are no 11th Games.

Chapter Text

He loves his little girl more than anything else in the world, even his wife. However, as they are both very busy people, they had long ago agreed that there’s no possible way for them to welcome another newborn into their family. Just the three of them it is, with the occasional visit to or from other relatives.

He’s looking forward to the future, but he does worry that Lyssie is lonely. Both he and Olympias work long hours at the hospital and often spend half the night doing house calls on top of that. Every moment possible they spend with their daughter, but it feels like there just aren’t enough of those moments. Lyssie has always been set on following in their footsteps, performing treatments on her stuffed animals, but now that she’s eleven, she mostly ends up sitting alone at the reading nook. It’s hardly a rich social life. She’s kind, as they taught her, and does talk about this and that classmate if prompted. She just doesn’t put forward any initiative, doesn’t participate in play dates, goes straight home after school.

“Father,” she tells him one day, always the proper little lady, “I think Coriolanus Snow, from my class, has a chronic condition of some sort.” Those are the words she uses, very professional.

“Well, why do you think so?”

“He’s always tired, and he’s stayed thin even now, when most people have recovered from wartime. Maybe it’s low blood sugar and high metabolism, sure, but it’s just that I haven’t noticed his behaviour before, because he’s always been like that. However, yesterday, Festus Creed pulled him by his wrist, and today, Coriolanus was very bruised, overly so.”

“What’s your diagnosis, then?” he asks, because he has an inkling of an idea of his own, but an opportunity to think for herself has always been capitalized on.

“Undernutrition, long term,” she says, in a voice that’s aggressively neutral. Leaving the emotion out of the science, but that tone breaks at her next words. “I think he’s getting worse. Father, please, could you help him?”

How can he deny her anything? He tries to look the boy up in the hospital records, but there’s little there. Next, he goes through the Snow family. He discovers the child’s grandmother passed away only three weeks prior, leaving two cousins, Coriolanus and a girl, Tigris, under legal guardianship of some distant uncle. Following that trail leads him to a dead man. It would seem they’ve slipped the system.

No wonder the boy is starving if there’s no adult in the household. He could simply report it, let the government take care of it. Except, well, from his and his wife’s direct dealings with the President himself, and this new evidence of error, he doesn’t find himself trusting them to take care of the children properly. Additionally, this may be the first time Lyssie has brought up a classmate on her own, unasked. Maybe it was out of medical concern, maybe they’re friends. He wouldn’t want to put a stop to that.

He pitches his idea to Olympias, who has doubts about him misusing hospital data, and about adopting two children. What if they both have eighteen hour surgery on the same day, they’d go from leaving one to three children alone on their own. Two days later, he comes to her again, and says he’d be willing to transfer to the management side of the hospital, with more regular working hours apart from the odd emergency. For a minute, he thinks she’ll ask him why he hadn’t done that when their daughter was born. If the children of strangers are more important to him than her, when he hasn’t even met either of them. It’s not that, it’s that he knows Lysistrata has always had a good house and a head firmly planted on her shoulders. These children could be very troubled.

Tigris adjusts much quicker than the boy, who she calls Coryo, something unwelcome coming from anyone else’s lips except also Lyssie’s, to his pride. She spends the first two weeks mending every frayed edge she spots in their laundry and only stops after Olympias finally catches her in the act. They have servants for that, just like they do for cleaning their spacious apartment. She has to be trained out of always trying to fix things, but with yet another shirt altered to fit his frame better, he begins to wonder. If Tigris wishes to always be doing something, particularly sewing, maybe it’s just her calling, like medicine has always called to him. On her next birthday, she receives a top brand sewing machine and yards of fabric. That’s what finally makes her comfortable in their home.

The boy is a different story. Coriolanus refuses to acknowledge the him and his wife, not just as parents, or guardians, but even as humans who he shares a living space with. During meals he shares with him, the boy eats very little, though Lyssie reports he often sneaks into the kitchen. The maid finds stashes of food hidden around his bedroom. Aristophanes tells her to leave them as they are, as long as it’s not items that will perish quickly. The child needs help beyond what he can offer with his own education, or that of his wife. He calls his psychologist colleagues, looking for an open weekly spot.

Patient confidentiality means he doesn’t know what exactly goes on in those sessions, only that it goes slowly. Still, it goes. His own relationship with the boy is still non-existent, but he’s seen the boy hesitantly hug his daughter, or share the library couch, both immersed in thick tomes.

Internally, he realizes he had hoped for Coriolanus to be a son to him, the same way Tigris had become something close to a daughter. He doubts the boy will ever see him as a father, though. Apparently, at school, he doesn’t even hint at living with the Vickers, always talking about the old penthouse.

When Tigris turns eighteen, she doesn’t bolt out of their home, but he hadn’t expected her to. She has her own little designer studio and often brings outfits home to show them off to all its inhabitants. It surprises him much more when Coriolanus turns eighteen and he doesn’t immediately move out either. After Lyssie’s own adulthood comes, he once again fully dedicates himself to work. He’s pushing for the hospital director position.

He catches news of some big school assignment being talked about between his daughter and his ward, but thinks little of it until Olympias tells him to pay attention to this year’s Hunger Games. They’re appalling, but what are the lives of twenty three people to the hundreds if not thousands of lives lost each year to the Districts’ poor medical infrastructure? He watches as his little girl is hoisted in the air by a tribute, followed by Coriolanus handing over a guitar to another. He has little idea on what’s going on and wonders what else he missed. He makes sure to catch the evening summaries after that. Both tributes he pays particular attention to do not kill anyone. The boy succumbs to rabies, incurable unless caught very early on. The girl lasts longer, hiding and running all around the arena. She’s in the final eight, then the final four, and she gets the upper hand when the one from 4, only thirteen years old, falls awkwardly and twists his ankle. She could snap his neck, bash his skull in, suffocate him. But she only looks at him, backs away, and runs away for the last time. He’s thrown a trident into her back.

Coriolanus rents an apartment of his own after that.

Chapter Text

Strabo knows his reputation as ruthless and works to maintain it. If the sharks of Capitol smell weakness, his family will be thrown to the dogs in no time. He is not cruel for its own sake, but he is logical and stubborn. He gets results. He looks towards the long-term.

His son is soft, too soft, but he is also only eight and has been relocated from the only home he’s ever known. He’ll grow stronger. He has to. It’s all been for him. If it were just Strabo and Cosconia, they could have stayed in the heart of District 2, lived in luxury. With the Hunger Games threatening to take his son year after year, it’s impossible. Perhaps they can return home after Sejanus ages out.

His son goes to the best school in all of Capitol and returns to their mansion in crumpled clothes. Strabo doesn’t acknowledge it. Kids can be cruel, but his son will stand up for himself eventually, and then an important lesson will be learned.

That doesn’t happen. Instead, from behind his office door, he hears Sejanus tell his Ma all about his new friend, Coriolanus Snow. Strabo, of course, knows the Snows are bankrupt. How could he not keep tabs on the finances of his main competitor? He knows there is a sole old woman left of that clan, her and her two grandchildren. It takes over a year for Coriolanus to end up at their house, or at least for it to happen when he’s not out on business. He’s the image of a young Crassus, alright. The dinner is an awkward ordeal for both of them. Strabo mostly chooses to observe, noting down mannerisms inherited from father to son.

He knows the boy knows he has something Strabo doesn’t have: an established legacy, attached to those four letters that make up his surname. Plinths will never be seen as equals in Capitol. Equal enough, just a bit below, just always second place. But not equal.

Strabo may be seen as ruthless, and he may think of himself as calculated, but in the end, he’s just a father. He doesn’t like to see children suffering, which is why he tunes out Sejanus’ late night cries of homesickness. He’s an orphan himself, and he doesn’t know what might happen to this pathetic boy if his grandmother was to keel over. But his cousin is only three years older than Sejanus, an aristocrat, and when he asks around, reported to be a gentle creature. Someone who wouldn’t abuse or overpower his son. He sends a proposal to the Corso penthouse and it comes back signed. His grandchildren will have both the past and the present munition empires in their blood.

Or maybe he just wants to make sure Sejanus has a friend for an in-law. Maybe it’s something else entirely, that Strabo has been trying to leave behind in District 2 with every train he takes back to the Capitol.

The elderly woman passes only a few months later. He pays for the funeral. Before the state can decide what to do with the children, he steps in with a bribe or two. Future daughter-in-law, he explains, and asks Tigris whether she and her cousin would like to live with them. She agrees after a short chat with Coriolanus. Only when collecting their belongings does he witness the extent of their poverty. Plastic tarp in place of glass panes, empty kitchen, peeling wallpaper. It reminds him of his own youth. He dismisses the thought.

The girl tears up at the sight of her new room, pink and flowery with a large plush tiger. He allows himself a smile, the gift could be considered too childish for a thirteen year old, but she embraces the stuffed animal. She is located on the opposite wing to his son’s room, to prevent any rumours of impropriety, and let her have her privacy. Coriolanus’ room on the other hand is right next to Sejanus’.

The boy is nowhere near as open as his cousin. Never lets his guard down, at least around Strabo. Always looking, always judging, always seeking. He’s intelligent, he’ll give him that. Top grades in all classes. One day, he is cornered in his own office by a preteen.

“Sir, with all due respect, neither Tigris nor Sejanus have any interest in the business. I’d like to put myself forward for your consideration of direct heir.”

Strabo tells him to get lost, though not in those exact terms. He comes back home early after one of his trips to find Coriolanus sitting on the floor of his sanctum with books on weapons from his own collection opened. The boy has the audacity to look unabashed. Maybe it’s okay for Sejanus not to have perfect marks in Maths and Physics, after all. A silent understanding is reached, but nothing is confirmed.

Sejanus and his fiancee get along well. They chat quietly and laugh at inside jokes. Maybe they’re not a love match like he and Cosconia had been, but there’s a solid foundation there. His son’s friendship with the other boy growing under Strabo’s roof grows too, though the relationship between the cousins seems to have drifted apart somewhat. It might just be them getting older, no longer so dependant on each other.

Tigris’ seventeenth birthday party ends with a big fight, fortunately after almost all the guests have left. He sees Cosconia usher the last of the visitors out as voices grow louder and louder and he makes his way towards the source.

“-away from him, Tigris! He doesn’t deserve you!”

“Coryo,” two pleading voices in synch.

Coriolanus stands in between his only remaining family member and his best friend, physically keeping them apart. There’s a wild kind of anger in him, very unlike the composed persona he’s always kept up around Strabo. An animal scared into attacking, almost. He knows the Snows had a superiority complex, he just assumed Coriolanus has grown out of it. He sighs to himself and grounds all three of them, just so he doesn’t escalate the issue with his own temper.

A week of solitary confinement outside of school, and then two weeks of tense peace. That’s all he gets before he walks in on his son pinned to the wall by Coriolanus’ smaller body. He resolves himself to finding a more permanent solution, when he spots their mouths clumsily colliding. He thinks of kisses stolen behind Cosconia’s house. He changes his course to his office instead. It’s unfortunate he doesn’t drink. He drafts up a new engagement agreement and leaves it in his desk for when the time comes.

He can’t help but smirk when Coriolanus’ signature finds its way onto the paper during his own absence from the mansion. The boy’s a minor, it’s not even legally binding.

For her eighteenth birthday, Tigris asks for a flat in her own name. Nothing large, she says, just so she can work on her designs, as if there weren’t numerous empty rooms in the house she could use. He tells her he’ll sign the Corso penthouse over to her, the old Snow domain he had purchased all those years ago for a pittance, then renovated. There’s just a few conditions. She’ll visit at least once a week, he is guaranteed stock in any business she is a founder of, and she tells him what she and his son really think of their engagement. There’s an official annulment, the Snows move out, and Sejanus gets to go on chaperoned dates only with his new fiance, because there may not be a risk of pregnancy, but the chance of catching the engaged parties in a compromising situation has gone from near zero to annoyingly high.

His son forgives him for moving them to the Capitol, and Strabo tells him their family’s story. Sejanus wants to be a doctor and Strabo has known for years, of course he has. He admits this is not what he wanted for Sejanus, that he wished he’s take after him more than his Ma. Then, that it’s alright, because Sejanus brought him a nice young man to take after the business, who will be logical and stubborn and protect his son when it’s necessary not to be soft.

Strabo hates the Hunger Games, because while his family escaped their grasp, everyone else’s didn’t. He doesn’t show it though, not like his wife and Tigris, who quietly weep year after year for the dead, not like Sejanus, who is very vocal and whose opinions carry monetary compensations. He believes that’s why Coriolanus chooses to confide in him with his own ideas about the Games.

“The tributes are dirty District rats,” the boy, almost a man, says. “But we could make them better, like you’re better.”

Strabo’s face falls.

“Sir, I only mean you’ve elevated your family’s status like no other before or since. The tributes dying is a waste, isn’t it? Robs them of the opportunity to prove themselves.”

He is aware his boot is being licked, but what the hell, let’s hear the boy out.

“Change the prize from survival to money, a real amount. Then you can change the loss from death to return home, but the balance of reward remains the same as before. The tributes should still be random, so that everyone is incentivized to develop into something worthy of the Capitol.”

There’s no heart in the ramblings, not like there was when he was begging to be Strabo’s assistant for the summer.

“What do you actually want, Coriolanus?”

A pause. Silence stretches and the boy before him looks around in search for an escape from his gaze, but there is none.

“Sejanus doesn’t like the Games,” a low murmur. “I’d like to make him happy, actually happy.”

“Story of my life, son.”

Chapter Text

They forbade them from moving to the Capitol, even after they had turned traitor on the Districts. Strabo is stressed like never before, trying to find a loophole, but she just pours herself a glass of wine and sits on the porch to watch the sunset. Red light on red rocks, red liquid through red lipstick. Her son will not grow up wearing academy rouge. That was her husband’s dream for him, anyway.

She would have been happy to spend her entire life in 2. Strabo may have been born there as well, but she and the factory are the only things truly keeping him, that and now the law. She can’t blame him for being an orphan, she knew who he was when they married. A man who will never be quite content with what he’s got, afraid of losing it all, like his direct competitor did. She doesn’t mention it was Strabo who contributed to that downfall.

Her family thinks she married down, because she did, back then Strabo was poor but she was the youngest of several siblings who had already established themselves in trade or business. Now her house is the most elaborate in the District, and none of it paid from her bank account. No, her work has only ever been at home, when she knows many women work shift after shift and then come back to raise multiple children on their own. She wishes she could have more children, but Sejanus’ birth had complications. She considered becoming a schoolteacher after Sejanus grew up enough, before the war. Now she has no doubts the parents would not accept a perceived traitor looking after their impressionable offspring. Oh, well.

The Hunger Games are announced and District 2 doesn’t feel like home anymore. Or it does, but the one from Strabo’s memories, when his father got drunk and violent and uncontrollable. Her sister and her brothers put more effort into spending time with her son from then on, Cosconia’s nephews and nieces all grown and safe. She doesn’t know what she’d do if Sejanus was taken from her. Would it be her or the world that breaks?

Strabo comes up with the idea that if they were have more children, losing just one of them would hurt less. She imagines it only increases the odds of her suffering. But the Plinths have a fortune now, fortunes need heirs. Her family want nothing to do with their blood-stained money.

Strabo kisses her goodbye and drives to the local orphanage for children of deceased Peacekeepers. She brought one child into their world, he brings them two. An eleven years old girl and her eight years old cousin, because they did not wish to be separated. They do not look like the majority of 2 does, like Strabo and Sejanus and she do, but it’s not that extraordinary. Peacekeepers especially are often shuffled from place to place.

Hello, dears. I’m Cosconia, but you can call me Ma. That’s what my son Janey calls me.

They introduce themselves as Coriolanus and Tigris Snow and she directs them to the dining room before having a very stern talk with her husband. But what can she do? She won’t order them returned, exchanged for ones she finds more fit.

They each get their own bedroom, but almost every evening she hears footsteps in the hall after she’s put them to bed. First it’s just one set, either going left to Tiggy’s or right to Coryo’s, sometimes accompanied by muffled sobs. Then, it’s two steps, often one of which is the one she’s grown infinitely familiar with over eight years. All three now share the same surname, because being recognized as Capitol nobility might lead to fates worse than social ostracization in school, fates unsolvable by checks.

Thankfully, her siblings see the children for what they are, innocent, when she brings them over for visits. Tiggy especially loves her only aunt, who introduced her to embroidery. Coryo is most interested in his cousin Scipio’s work, an officer and decorated shooter, at least when he’s not trying to spy on Strabo. Sejanus, with his big kind heart, doesn’t once feel like he’s being replaced. No, he joins his new siblings and teaches them games from Cosconia’s own childhood.

Three growing bodies eat a lot, but she refuses to hire a cook. It gives her something to do as her dears grow more independent, leaving the house individually or in groups for long hours. As long as their grades don’t suffer, she has no problem with it, even uses the time freed up to go to the market, or walk around in nature. The trio grows apart a little when Tigris goes to higher school, the boys left behind. Her daughter makes girl friends and is interested in fashion, which twelve year boys unsurprisingly scoff at. There’s still respect and love between them, but there’s more of a gap, like there is one between Cosconia and her quite a bit older siblings.

Soon enough, her sunset watching includes waiting for Tiggy to get dressed and go to parties as well as waiting for the boys to come back home from a day out. Sometimes mentally tired from summer apprenticeships, sometimes physically tired, hair wet and bodies shivering from swimming in the river. Either way, there’s hot tea and pastries for them, just like there’s a water glass and a sandwich for when Tigris returns in the night.

More often than not, Coryo sleeps over in Janey’s bed and vice versa. Her adopted son finally calls her Ma and means it, when Tigris’ tone gained sincerity years before.

Strabo no longer has to pay for three people’s reaping safety. Tigris accompanies him to Capitol on business sometimes now that she’s finished with schooling, to exhibit her needlework. Sejanus, never one to be particularly sneaky, signs up for Biology and Medicine Intro classes instead of Business that Coriolanus chooses. Strabo only has one discussion with him about it, he’s got an heir and a spare after all, just not in the order he thought he did. Coriolanus Plinth has two fathers worth of shoes to fill.

Coryo and Janey grow closer than she had ever been to any of her siblings. More often than not, in the corner of her eye she sees them sharing secretive laughs and meaningful glances, and smiles at their affections. When her husband is around, they act much more proper, but they do both refuse to watch the Hunger Games. It’s a relief none of her children enjoy seeing blood of their peers being spilled. Sejanus may feel guilty about being safe from the chance while others are not, but Tigris and Coriolanus have no qualms about it.

Still, she doesn’t like being reminded of the theoretical danger her boys still are in. Usually, for the Games’ duration, she stays home and distracts herself from worrying by working in the kitchen. This year, the penultimate year, she decides visit a trail she hadn’t been to since before the war. It was one she used to walk with Strabo during their courting days, and she craves the comfort. Nobody cares what the parents do on Reaping days, anyway, so she only tells her household she’ll be out for the day.

The path has grown wilder over the years, but it’s still recognizable. She had planned to stay for sunset, but then a thought of returning home late only to find one of her sons taken to Capitol after all has her hurrying back. She throws open the front door only to find a trail of the clothes they had put on in the morning, a sigh of relief escapes her. She goes upstairs to scold them for leaving a mess, even if it’s been a stressful day for everyone. She hears laughter and movement from Janey’s room but the planned words die in her throat at the sight.

Their activity halts almost immediately, at least. Sejanus grabs Coriolanus and pulls him down beside himself to cover them with the bed sheets strewn around them. Does she scream? Separate them? Throw one of them out? Is it her fault? Strabo’s? Is her daughter involved in this, too? She backs away from the door frame and slides to the floor. Her heart is threatening to escape her body. Something weird happens to the concept of time and existence, before her son, the one she gave birth to, is calming her down. He’s put on trousers, but that doesn’t erase the marks on his chest, some fresh, some days-old. She lets him escort her downstairs, to the sofa. She demands a glass of wine, then a bottle. She has to deal with this before her husband comes home, but how can she deal with one of her children fucking another? Her son, the one she’s only been raising for the past nine years, hasn’t shown his face again yet.

Sejanus sits by her side, lips still kissed red. His eyes are getting red too, from all the crying. She learns it started three years prior, after a day spent at the river. Things escalated with time.

Coryo isn’t really a Plinth, it’s not that bad, Sejanus says.

I though he was, I think he is. Isn’t Tigris?

Tigris, yes, always. Coriolanus, he was my brother, and then he was more.

Speak of the devil. Coriolanus comes downstairs, fully dressed, blanket in hand that he drapes over Sejanus’ shoulders. He grabs Sejanus’ hand. Was it her mistake not to turn away Strabo when he brought them over that first time, or did it happen later? Tigris isn’t a mistake. She can’t quite think of Coriolanus as one either, no matter how hard she tries. Sejanus certainly isn’t, and she always tries to treat them equally.

The next few days she spends avoiding Strabo, but she can’t do that forever. There’s shouting, a hand raised and forced to lower slowly. Tigris says she didn’t know and Cosconia believes her for her sanity’s sake.

A very tense year goes by, at least one of her boys supervised at all times. At the 10th Reaping held in District 2, the boys’ side draws Coriolanus Snow. She knew Strabo could be ruthless, she knew he saw it as the deepest of betrayals, Crassus Snow returned from the grave to ruin him like Strabo ruined the Snows. She doesn’t care, she wants her boy to come home. Her, Tiggy and Janey are glued to the screen through all the interviews, reports, broadcasts.

Coriolanus charms the Capitol as one of theirs. Return of a lost son, he claims with a wide smile. There to take what’s rightfully his.

He wins, drenched in blood. He comes back to District 2, to their house. Just for long enough to kiss her and Tigris goodbye and go to enrol in officer training. Sejanus follows him, goes for the medic track, and soon enough they’re off to the other side of the country in 12. Five years until she sees them in person again. Strabo has made Tigris his successor despite her lack of interest.

Tigris Plinth gives a managerial position to the cousin who was her brother who was her cousin. Cosconia attends her sons’ small wedding, Strabo nowhere to be seen. Sejanus becomes Dr Snow.

She survived giving birth. She survived war. She survived a disastrous family. She’ll survive whatever comes next. She watches the sunset.

Chapter Text

“Hey, Coriolanus!” ugh. Festus Creed sits down next to him with a lunch tray. One would think after they’ve graduated from not only the Academy, but now also the University, They wouldn’t constantly be around each other. Alas, they both currently work in the Ministry of Economy.

Sure, Festus is one of his least annoying ex-classmates, but still. He has work to do. Festus, oblivious to his inner monologue, grabs one of the papers he’s already filled out and turns it around to read the contents. Confidentiality who?

“You’re adopting?! That’s amazing! You and Plinth are going pretty fast, huh?” Plinth-Snow, Coriolanus wants to correct but holds his tongue.

“Yes. Thank you. I’ll consider making you the godfather if you let me do this and sit quietly,” he doesn’t need to spare a glance at the other man to know his eyes are probably sparkling. Ever since Festus’ own child was born, he’s been obsessed with childcare and anything related to it.

Festus shuts up and grabs one of the other papers to examine it. He could technically make Festus the godfather. There, he’s considered it.

He’s finished with another application, and Festus takes it from him before the ink has dried. If it smudges, he’ll have to redo it. Another blank form joins the pile.

Festus finally lets go of Coriolanus’ paperwork and inhales his lunch. Disgusting. Now without a distraction, but trying to honour the promise of quiet, he’s practically vibrating in his seat. The motion causes the whole table to shake, which is even worse than chatter would be. Coriolanus closes his fountain pen and looks up at his colleague.

“Alright, Festus, speak.”

“There’s so many applications! Is this just prep work? Do you expect to be rejected for the majority?”

“You know I’m not having biological children,” for which he receives an eye roll. Seemingly obvious, as if it was out of possibility to have a surrogate. It’s not out of some husbandly loyalty to Sejanus he refused the option, it’s the idea of putting someone through the dangers of labour. The war is fifteen years behind him, he knows it’s paranoia. And yet.

“It’s just me and Tigris left of the Snows. I don’t want to make her feel obligated to continue the bloodline because of my proclivities. So, I’m making possible heirs.”

“An heir and a spare?” Festus, silly Festus, never looking at the big picture. Never truly ambitious.

“Nothing so common. I have both the Snow and the Plinth fortunes. I’m adopting one of the District 2 children’s homes, for Sejanus’ sake.”

“You can’t take care of so many children on your own!”

“It’s only twenty nine in total. Thirteen boys, sixteen girls. They’re all between five and ten, that’s self-reliant enough,” he and Tigris were five and eight, he doesn’t mention.

Festus barks out a too-loud laugh.

“That’s insane. You’ll have so much infighting over who inherits!”

“Sejanus is an only child and yet he and Strabo had plenty of fights over inheritance. I’m fixing that issue, and besides, the Snow legacy almost went extinct once. We need to diversify into more ways of influence.”

“If even half of them follow the legacy of what you’re doing right now, in no time all of Capitol will be filled with no one but Snows!”

Coriolanus smiles. Ah, now that would be a utopia.