Bari stands by the tree with Odair, sword in hand, as the lightning builds up overhead. They're speaking too low for the microphones to pick up any words, but her body language is tense but not murderous, not yet. She's waiting, which is rare for Bari and might mean an interesting development except that Katniss Fucking Everdeen has her bow pointed right at her head and Nero can't do anything. Can't fly through the screen and kill Twelve himself, can't call down a rain of fire like the Gamemakers, can't even break into the Games Command compound to bully one of them into doing it for him.
All he can do is sit here and watch his girl die once Twelve lets the arrow loose. Then it'll be just like Nero's life does four years out of five, except this isn't a tribute he's kept a bit of distance from until she wins. This isn't an eighteen-year-old who's only just now realizing that the Centre lied to her, this is his Bari. She's his girl and he loves her, and he knows everything about her, things the cameras have never seen and the Capitol toadies who fawn over her will never know. Things like the smoothies he makes her so she doesn't slice her tongue on those Games-damned teeth, or the hardwood flooring in her house because she once tore up the carpet with her bare hands until her nails peeled back because she just had to destroy something.
His girl is down there about to be murdered - by the girl on fucking fire, no less - and Nero is supposed to sit back and watch.
Something's going down on Brutus' screen because there's Lyme, rocking back and forth with her eyes fixed on the image in front of her, but Nero pushes it back until later. She's his girl too and Nero would normally comfort her but not now, not today, not until it's over. Odin is down in the sponsor ring and Ronan in yet another meeting with Snow, both of them killing themselves to save one of their people, and so here they are, Nero and Lyme and Lyme's girl, waiting to watch good people die.
The minutes tick on - Nero can't move, tear his eyes away from the screen - can't do a Games-damned thing, but at last Everdeen moves. Except it's not to shoot Bari, or Odair; she turns around and aims at the forcefield behind her, and Nero has no fucking clue what's happening anymore.
The arrow flies. The lightning strikes. The screens go dead.
Nero leaps up from his chair, whirls on the terrified techs who are now being cornered by the handful of able-bodied mentors still in the room. Nero makes a quick headcount of those remaining, and that's when it hits him. Haymitch Abernathy isn't here and Nero didn't notice him leave. Abernathy might not be the world's best mentor by a long shot but even he wouldn't leave to get a drink when both his kids are still in there.
Normally Nero wouldn't give a shit about why Abernathy jumped ship, but that's too many weird things going on at once.
Nero pushes past a babbling technician. He's not the only one, the other mentors rallying behind him, and they shove through the guards at the doors to the main command room. "What is going on?" Nero demands, and the voices around him rise in agreement. The mentors have been a silent bunch these few days as their friends and colleagues kill each other off - as the Arena does half the dirty work - but now they're united, every bit a front as the victor-tributes the night they held hands on stage.
Except this time, there's no tomorrow to turn them against each other and ruin the pretty image. Tonight there's just answers, answers they will have or the wall of killers on either side of Nero will taste blood for the first time in years.
"I don't know," says one of the Gamemakers in a calming voice, holding out a hand. "There's a problem with the Arena, our communications are down and we can't get through. We're sure everyone's tributes are fine, but we need you to be calm so we can figure it out."
"Calm," snarls Dexter, and his boy took an arrow to the temple yesterday afternoon but he's still here because leaving means admitting that it's over. "You want me to be calm. You want him -" he lashes out an arm at Nero - "to be calm, when nobody knows where his tribute is or if she's dead or anything else, and you're all just sitting here with your thumbs up your asses?"
"I'm going to ask you to step back before we have to call security," the Gamemaker says, and it's the voice he uses that pushes Nero over the edge. The calm, arrogant voice of someone who has authority because it's been handed to him, not because he earned it. This uppity little shit has never spilled blood himself, only pushed a button and let the creations of others do it for him. He and those in this room sit behind their desks and play at the Arena like it's a chess game, and Nero can't take it anymore.
He rushes them - the Victors around him a growling mass of fury - but then he flies back, they all fly back, because the Gamemakers aren't stupid and someone activated a security field.
Nero collapses, stunned but not hurt, and the Gamemaker sighs in disappointment. "If you'll all return to Mentor Central and wait for instruction, I won't tell the president what happened here. Please. This situation bad enough without having to arrest all of you, too."
Nero wants to rip the forcefield apart with his hands and tear the man's head from his body - his blood is up, now, the fight in him demanding he finish it - but he's been a mentor for thirty years and knows when a fight is lost. "If we don't get word within the hour," he says, and it feels like punching himself in the face until his skull caves in but he grits the words out, "I'm going to the president."
"That sounds like a reasonable course of action," the Gamemaker says in a conciliatory tone.
Nero turns on his heels and storms out before he gives in to the urge to batter himself against the forcefield like a bird trapped on the wrong side of a window.
It's not until he returns to Mentor Central and they all collapse into their chairs, slumped in various attitudes of defeat or restrained fury. Nero turns to Lyme, see how she's doing since Brutus is still down there, but she's not beside him anymore.
Lyme isn't here at all, and just like with Abernathy, Nero doesn't remember seeing her slip out.
He has just enough time to start panicking before guards burst in and grab a screaming Annie Cresta. Within moments the room is filled with guards and bristling with weapons - Nero does a visual sweep and counts two guns for every Victor present - while still more pour in. The extras move in two at a time and remove the mentors, dragging them out of the room. Most don't bother protesting, too shocked - or jaded, grim-jawed and silent - to fight back.
The Fours get hauled away as well, leaving only Ones and Twos alone in the room. The privilege of loyalty, for what it's worth; unlike the Fours, who half the time have more in common with the outliers than with their fellow Careers, the Ones and Twos have never pulled at their collars. Nero would be glad for the privilege if all of them were here, safe and with him.
But Bari is still lost in the Arena, and the odds of Lyme having decided to run to the bathroom are about as high as Nero growing wings tonight. The longer time ticks down, the more the dread in Nero's stomach grows.
It's Nero, Artemisia, and the Ones in a silent standoff with the remaining guards, until finally Ronan and Odin appear in the doorway. Both of them take the situation in with a few quick glances, but while Ronan's hand tightens on his cane and Odin's massive square jaw clenches, they both keep their professionalism to the core.
"Is there a problem?" Ronan asks, keeping his voice casual.
The squad leader flips up her helmet's visor. "There's been a bit of an uproar, and we're taking all Victors with suspicion of treasonous connections into custody. Given your exemplary service record, the Victors from Districts One and Two have been given dispensation to return home. We'd ask that you catch the next train possible back to your districts."
"Of course," Ronan says smoothly. "We understand, and we thank the president for his faith in us."
Odin glances at Nero. The two of them have worked together for decades, and it takes Odin approximately two seconds before his eyes widen and he flicks his fingers in a signal, thumb and forefinger extended perpendicular to each other. Lyme?
Nero looks away, staring at the wall, but twitches his hand in response. I don't know.
Another sign, thumb and forefinger in a curve. Claudius?
Another twitch. I don't know.
Odin lets out a long, slow breath. "We'll leave immediately," he says, his voice booming and authoritarian, and the guards relax a fraction at not having to fight the strongest, most physically intimidating of the Victors. Odin has a knack for making his obedience seem like magnanimity. "Everyone, let's get out of the way and let these people do their jobs."
Nobody in that room needs to be told twice. The mentors pack up their gear and grab their things with quick, silent efficiency, and split off according to their districts. Odin steps in close to Nero as Artemisia takes Ronan's arm. "When?" he asks in a low voice.
"After the broadcast cut off," Nero replies at the same volume. "Claudius wasn't here, he left around eleven but I had other things to focus on. Maybe they're back at the rooms."
"Check," Odin says, flicking his gaze to the side. "I'll hold the train. If not, come back as soon as you can. We can't linger."
Nero's hands shake, and he balls them into fists. "I know."
He darts up the stairs to the Two's resident quarters and into Claudius' room. The bed is messy, the blankets skewed and rumpled, but all his belongings, including his satchel, are missing. Suspicion crawls up Nero's spine but he drags himself over to Lyme's room anyway, closing his eyes when the door hisses out of the way because he doesn't want to see what he knows is there. Nero takes three long breaths, opens his eyes just long enough to confirm that Lyme's things have been taken before he turns and stumbles back out. He detours to pick up the others' bags and sling them over his shoulders before heading back downstairs as fast as he can without causing suspicion.
Lyme is gone and there's no point lying to himself about why, not when was only a matter of time before Lyme finally snapped. Nero saw it on her face the day they fixed Claudius' Reaping, and with every year gone by and every loss she suffered, it only got stronger no matter how much she tried to hide it. He's not surprised it happened now; it's a miracle she didn't turn the day Cato died.
He only thought she would've told him first.
No time for that, not now. Nero walks briskly to the train platform without stopping until he meets the station guards, giving them a wave. "Hell of a night," he says affably.
"Tell me about it," says the first guard, waving Nero through without bothering to scan his ID. "Your train is on the Platform Three. Don't suppose you saw anything suspicious on your way over? Anything at all would help, you know."
Lyme turned traitor and took her boy with her. It's Nero's Capitol-bound duty to report her, but she's his girl and that means it's his job to give her as much of a head start as he can, even if she's going straight to hell. Any mentor worth the title would do the same.
"Nope," Nero says with a pleasant smile. "I hope you guys get paid overtime. Looks like you'll be working late tonight."
"If only," the man says with an eye-roll Nero can't see behind the visor but hears in his voice, and then Nero is past them and boarding the train.
"Anything?" Ronan demands as soon as the carriage door slides shut. There are cameras all over the train and no way to disable them, and so Nero just shakes his head and tosses their packs onto the closest berth. He forces himself to sit in a chair in a reasonable fashion instead of screaming and smashing everything in arm's reach, and Odin gives him a grim, thin-lipped look of sympathy. Nero does not need that right now, not when Odin's tribute volunteered so Nero wouldn't have to, and he looks away.
The train hums and and pulls out of the station, and Nero watches the tunnels flash past the windows. Across the car Artemisia has curled into a ball, her legs pulled up to her chest and forehead resting on her knees, too glum even to pull out her needlework. She's Lyme's girl — Lyme's miracle, pulled on her first year of trying — and her mentor left without saying goodbye. Nero should go to her but he can't move, and so he just sits and watches her, knowing exactly what's going through her head and helpless to give her any comfort.
It's easier to think about Lyme going off and doing something stupid than it is to wonder whether Bari is bleeding out in the jungle somewhere. Nero tells himself the Capitol hates loose ends, and as soon as they have it under control they'll call him. He gave his Bari to the wolves again after promising never to let her go; it shouldn't kill the Gamemakers to let him know one way or the other if she's still alive. Odds are they'll pull her out, Brutus too, and it'll be fine. Everything will be fine.
Country before self, duty before life, and the Capitol rewards that which is given. Nero has never bought into that shit before but today he will be as loyalist as he needs to be if it will bring Bari back to him.
The train whirrs down the track away from the Capitol, the buildings a glittering pile of jewels in the distance, and Nero's phone stays silent in his pocket. Ronan turns on the carriage television, but the only thing on every channel is static. As the train disappears into the mountain and the lights wink out behind them, Ronan suddenly turns and heaves up his dinner into an empty soup tureen. The sound and rising stench breaks Artemisia out of her stupor, and she pours a glass of water from the side table and kneels down next to Ronan as he waves her away.
"Poisoned cookies?" Nero asks dully. Ronan never admits it, but they all know that the president's offers of baked goods leave their patriarch sick whenever Two needs a reminder to be careful.
"Biscuits," Ronan croaks out, and if there's ever a time to dispense with bullshit about a little stomach trouble, it's now. Artemisia dutifully ignores his stoic attempts to brush her off and rubs his back. At last Ronan finishes, and with a rueful grimace he lets Artemisia help him back to his seat as the train staff rushes forward to clean up the mess. Ronan leans back against the cushioned headrest and closes his eyes, face ashen. Artemisia hands the tureen to the aide, who disappears, the door hissing behind her; Nero cracks a window in an attempt to clear the car of the sour, acrid stink.
"I suppose now is as good a time as any," Ronan says without looking up, and Nero freezes, one hand still on the latch. Time inches past like the obnoxious slow-motion footage of blood spatter as tributes fall to the sword; it takes him half a lifetime to turn his head toward Ronan. Of course Ronan would know about the Arena; he was with the president when it all went down. Of course he has insider information, especially since he paid for it with toxic baked goods.
Not Bari. Please, please not Bari, not after all this. Nero didn't take her hunting and scrub the blood of squirrels and chipmunks off her hands afterward, didn't accumulate a shoulder full of teethmarks because she liked to chew on him both for comfort and when he annoyed her, didn't wrap her up in sweaters and blankets and cuddle her on the couch when she complained, just to hear about her death from Ronan now. Please.
Please.
"Odin," Ronan rasps out. (Nero hates himself for the relief except he doesn't, he regrets nothing if she's alive.) "Odin, I'm so sorry. Brutus is dead."
Odin should have volunteered. He should have known Brutus would step up; he should have stopped this. Odin's Victor should never have gone into the Arena to die, not when he had a mentor who could protect him.
So the children had voted to keep Odin and the others of his era out of the Reaping; that agreement did not forbade any of them from volunteering. Odin could have stepped in. The moment the Reaping ball called Nero, the instant that Enobaria's mentor was called to stand with her, Odin should have taken his place regardless of any agreement. Sixty-two years was a long life, and Odin still had his health and an impressive physique; he might not have won, but he would have made a strong showing and ensured that Two received at least a Victor, if not him.
Odin should have foreseen that Brutus would ignore the vote allowing mentor-Victor partners to enter the Arena together; Brutus would protect his own Victors with his life not wish another mentor to face the same fate. Brutus' honour runs deep (ran deep) like the veins of quartz down the side of a mountain, like trees so rooted it would take heavy equipment to tear them loose and three days to clear them out. He would never have stood there and watched Nero go into the Arena with his girl, of course he wouldn't, and Odin could have stopped it.
And now Brutus is dead, his soul rocked to sleep in a cradle woven from a thousand should haves, and Odin bears the fault of it as though he'd struck the fatal blow himself.
Odin has crammed himself into the ever-too-narrow berth at the back of the train, staring out the window over the side of the mountain. The lights of the pit mines glow orange against the blackness below. Brutus' family hailed from one of those little towns, small settlements ringing the granite and limestone mines, eking out a meagre existence until they carved the last workable stone from the earth. Brutus had aspired to better things, to serve a greater purpose, and Odin had been there to watch him rise. To watch him die.
Brutus is dead, his body growing cold in a hovercraft somewhere, and later it will lie still and silent in the Capitol morgue until the dust settles and someone remembers that people exist who love him, who will want him back. Odin suffers no illusion that the return of the tributes' bodies will be a high priority in a year when the Arena was breached and half the mentors hauled away for treason, and he cannot risk asking sooner. Yet the morticians might get impatient, even, might toss Brutus' remains in the crematorium to empty out the space, and Odin might never -
No. No, he cannot think that, will not think that. Brutus will come home and Odin will bury him in good, solid Two earth the way it should be, head pointed toward the mountains so his soul may find its rest among the forests and the high, jagged peaks that stretch up to the sky. He will be honoured, he will, and one day a hawk will open its eyes and soar through the air over the granite cliffs, a warrior's heart beating beneath its feathered breast.
But thoughts of the proper last rites are no comfort, not today when the wound is still so fresh it has not yet begun to fester, let alone heal.
Twenty-six years ago Brutus took this trip home in a medicated half-daze, sweating and fevered and shaking, but refusing to take the extra pills to pull him into sleep. "I want to see it," he'd said, blue eyes cutting straight through all of Odin's mentorly protests. "I want to be awake when we hit home."
How could anyone say no to that? And so Odin had sat beside him, one hand resting on his Victor's neck as the only comfort (though to comfort whom, as Odin's chest thrilled with every beat of Brutus' living heart that drove the blood through his veins and pulsed against Odin's palm), and Brutus pressed his forehead to the window and sucked in ragged breaths. When the train rounded a curve of mountain and the carpet of pines gave way to long stretches of open dirt and the pitted surfaces of the mines, Brutus let out a soft cry and splayed his fingers against the glass. Odin turned away to afford him privacy, but even then Brutus only gave himself until the train passed through the first mountain tunnel before reining himself in.
"I feel it," Brutus said then, turning to Odin with eyes blazing bright. Every last cultured, even syllable of the District Standard accent trained into him since age thirteen fell away to reveal thick quarry brogue, brought on by intense emotion. "I feel Two. I feel home."
Now, the train passes over a sprinkling of lights that marks yet another quarry town, the stars reflected in the shining black surface of a pit mine lake for a brief moment before it's gone, and an insane thought crosses Odin's mind: should he contact Brutus' parents? Families in Two lose the rights to claim Victors as their own long before the Arena, but a sacrifice is different. While parents of Victors will never see them save on the television or at public appearances, parents of fallen tributes are always invited to meet the body at the station and accompany it to the field of sacrifice for the interment. Few do - last year Clove's father made the journey, though her mother and both of Cato's parents did not.
As Brutus won his Games, Odin has never met the couple who raised their boy with values the Program could neither completely instil nor take away. He wrote them a letter of thanks and dismissal and that was that; Brutus only mentioned them in slurred half-sentences when the medication wrested words from him unbidden. Even so, his memories were conflicted but - as far as Odin could make out - cautiously good.
Many years have passed since the last time Odin met with haggard but proud-eyed parents, but time has not erased the speeches of consolation from his mind. And yet while memory remains, the words have soured, faded in their brilliance. When Odin imagines looking at the faces of the people who watched their son climb those stairs not once but twice, imagines giving them the usual fare of honour and glory and duty well done, something inside him shrivels. He failed - in so many ways, he failed - and he could not bear it now. He cannot take his pain and heap it onto those whose age-old wound will have opened anew. He cannot feed pablum to the people who gave him the greatest gift he ever had the honour to receive - and the absolute shame to lose.
He could not face them without a body to return, at any rate, and Odin grasps at his excuse and clings to it two-handed. There's no point in thinking about contacting relatives when it's not real yet - no cannon, no coffin, no footage, nothing to take the horrible news Ronan handed him and turn it into something he can comprehend.
Against his will, the movement of the train and three days of running on stimulants and adrenaline pull Odin into an uneasy sleep. He doesn't dream, that's a mercy, and wakes when the train pulls into the central station at Two. Odin pushes himself to his feet and rubs a hand over his bleary eyes, his swollen, itchy lids protesting the contact, and he heads for the door. The others are there, hollow-eyed and exhausted and silent, and Odin is just about to search for a cab rather than take the hike through the city and up to the Victors' Mountain when he spots Devon waiting for them.
Devon, Brutus' middle Victor and only boy, leaning against his car with his face pinched and brows furrowed over wide, hopeful eyes. Odin sucks in a hard breath.
"I called him," Artemisia says in a low voice, not exactly apologizing. "We needed a ride and I knew he'd be awake."
"Did you tell him?" Odin's voice makes it out under protest, strained and gravelly. He's spent the past few days with the sponsors non-stop, and without his tonic to ease the wear on his vocal cords, Odin's throat has finally begun to show the strain.
Artemisia shakes her head. "Not over the phone."
It's cowardice wrapped in kindness, a way of avoiding the inevitable, but one that makes sense. Odin would have done the same - had done the same, by spending the train ride alone and grieving instead of contacting Brutus' Victors to ease their suspense as soon as possible. "I will tell him," Odin says. Artemisia lets out a puff of air between her lips and nods.
(He catches her out the corner of his eye as she moves to the side, holds out one hand for the mentor who no longer stands beside her. He pretends not to see the guilty start and the flush of colour that flames across her cheeks.)
Odin steps close to Devon and closes a hand over the boy's shoulder. "Not here," he says simply, and starts to move past, but Devon reaches up and grips Odin's wrist with a strength that belies his smaller frame.
"Yes or no," Devon says, jaw tight, his skin washed pale and orange in the streetlight. Behind them the train hisses off into the distance.
Odin stands for an eternity with the heavy summer heat pressing against his skin and the incongruous chirping of crickets in the ditch below the tracks before he shakes his head.
Devon sucks in a breath, then another, then another, and he drops his hand and digs his fingers into the tattoo encircling his wrist. For a moment Odin fears he will have to turn away and give the boy his privacy, but Devon is a Victor and he is Two and the mountains endure. "Get in, I'll drive," Devon says in a measured tone, and slides into the front seat.
Odin gives Ronan the front passenger seat in deference to his position, and for once Ronan doesn't argue or threaten to rap Odin across the shoulders with his cane for treating him like an invalid. The rest of them cram into the back of Devon's car, Artemisia in the middle and Odin and Nero on either side, pressed against the doors in an attempt not to crush her, and it strikes Odin that Devon came alone. Artemisia must have told him only four of them returned or he would have brought someone else along in another vehicle.
The Village would have heard something, surely, if Lyme and Claudius set the presidential mansion on fire. Hovercrafts would have descended within an hour; Odin would see the flames from the burning Village from here. In their absence a cold uneasiness settles in Odin's gut; he never got on with Lyme much really, very little for them to connect with other than a mutual fondness for Brutus that she constantly and to the belief of no one disavowed, but he knows enough. If Lyme found something more satisfying than a bloody end following quick revenge, then Snow help them all; they might taste firebombs yet.
But not tonight. Tonight the Capitol will leave its loyal servants alone while it deals with more pressing matters, and perhaps tomorrow Lyme and Claudius will return, having assuaged their anger and the twisting snakes of treason by knifing a few bystanders in a back alley. Once can only hope.
The Village is awake when they return, watchful and silent. No one waits at the gate, but light streams from the windows of a handful of houses; likely they've clustered together to wait, mentors and Victors together in groups. Brutus has two more Victors, and his youngest barely three years out; Petra is carved from the mountains like the rest of them, but Brutus was softer with his youngest girl than any of the others. She may be strong but she's still young, so young.
And Odin has to tell her.
"I'll call a meeting for those who want to attend," Ronan says as they exit the car, turning away as Devon drives around to the lot behind the gate. "No reason for the story to get repeated over and over, especially when it might change tomorrow. The rest of you, go home, try to rest."
Artemisia lets out a noise somewhere between a screech and a sob and presses a hand to her face before turning away. Nero lays a hand on her shoulder but she shrugs him off in a jerky motion, stalking a few paces up the path before stopping, digging her shoes into the ground and kicking up a clod of dirt. Odin takes half a step to her before falling back. He and Artemisia have never understood each other, Odin the steadfast and Artemisia the Village's wild child; he never sneaked out at night to start brawls in dive bars and press pretty girls up against the walls in dark alleys. For her part, Artemisia never found the same comfort in honour and knowing one's place. Odin would be a poor substitute for her mentor now.
Nero heads up the path toward his house, giant fists clenched at his sides and pain leaking off him like steam from a mess of organs freshly spilled onto clean white snow. His mentor will wrangle him, thirty years out of no; for now the focus must be on those without that privilege.
"Artemisia," Odin says, and the girl pushes her hands into her hair, fisting them in the brown strands and pulling hard, but she meets his eye. "Go see Callista."
Callista is not in Artemisia's branch of the mentor family tree, but their most ruthless and sexually rapacious Victor captured young miss Misha's attention from an early age. She's not the best at comfort, but if nothing else, Odin has found it difficult to maintain total despair when surrounded by her ten shabby former alley cats dressed in immaculate hand-sewn jackets.
Artemisia drops one hand, fingers twitching as she fights not to draw a knife from her sleeve. "Yeah," she says finally, and heads off down the path.
Devon comes up beside Odin's elbow. "I'll go see her soon," he says, his voice a careful, manufactured neutral, and Odin nods. "We're all still up, me and Emory and Petra. After the feeds died we just - well. The girls are at Petra's."
Petra's house sits near the back of the Village; far to walk for a girl with a reconstructed pelvis and a cane, but the house sits close to her mentor's and lies protected on all sides. Devon falls into step beside Odin, hands shoved into his pockets. "What happened?" he asks finally.
Odin lets out a breath. "I don't know."
"Odin -"
"I don't," Odin repeats, and Devon shuts his mouth. "Ronan told me he's dead. That's all I know."
"Enobaria?"
"Still alive when we lost contact, no word since."
Devon swallows and nods, eyes flickering. He survived his Games by dissociating, separating himself into Devon the person (warm, caring, affectionate) and Devon the tribute (ruthless, cunning, the type who smiled and kissed his victims as he drew the knife), and Brutus was the one who helped him knit himself back together. Now he's slipping, struggling to push back the emotions and keep himself calm, and Odin cannot help him.
The porch light shines a circle of orange light onto the lawn and the front stoop of Petra's home; Petra sits on the bottom step, stretching out her leg,. The daylilies growing in front of the house have all been stripped of their flowers in a radius as long as Petra's reach, a scattering of torn orange-red petals lying on the stair or clinging to her jeans. Emory sits a step above her, a basket of scraps and a half-finished rag doll in her lap, a dozen completed dolls beside her, ready to send out to orphanages throughout the district.
Emory drops the doll and the needle at their approach, and Petra startles midway through pulling loose an extra blossom, her hand skidding up the stalk and tearing loose all the leaves on the way. Odin swallows hard, tasting ash and dust and bile, and forces himself not to turn away from the desperate hope that burns in both girls' eyes. The words crowd his throat and refuse to move, and no matter how many phrases Odin tries in his mind (I'm sorry, I couldn't save him, I've failed) nothing seems worthy of the blow he has to deliver.
The silence stretches on as it did with Devon, and Odin owes them - what, comfort, truth, brutal honesty? - but the world has stopped. Even the frogs ceased their singing when Odin passed by the stream that runs near this clump of houses. At last Petra draws her hands into her lap, curling her fingers into fists. "Did he die well?" she asks, blue eyes wide and shining in the lamplight. Her voice trembles for a moment but she catches herself, digs her nails into her palms and squares her shoulders.
Odin hesitates for a hair's breadth, but no, if he cannot deliver good news, he can at least give them this. No Victor deserves the sickening churn of uncertainty. "He did," he says, and may the mountains forgive his assumption. Whatever happened in those moments before the cannon, Odin knows as surely as he recognizes the insistent trill of red-winged blackbirds in the sunrise hours that any Two would have fallen while bringing integrity to his district. "We will know more once the communications blackout has been lifted, but Brutus fought with honour to the end."
Petra's face pales except two spots of red on her cheeks; Emory sways while seated, reaching over to steady herself against the post. "Was it Twelve?" Petra asks finally, a dark, ugly rasp beneath her voice.
"I doubt it," Odin says. Katniss Everdeen could have shot Brutus from a distance, theoretically, but the boy would have to dig a ten-foot pit and slowly fill it in again before he managed to take out someone of Brutus' size and skill. "The Capitol will release details to us as they come. I'm sorry I can't tell you more."
Petra's breaths come ragged in her chest, and with each inhale she gulps in air and swallows it down faster until she nearly chokes. "I'm fine," she snaps at Emory without turning, and Emory drops her hand before it reaches Petra's back. "I'm fine," Petra says again, a small keening sound escaping with the next breath. She fists her hands and presses them hard against her eye sockets. "He'd want me to be fine, I shouldn't - it's an honour to fight and an honour to die and -"
"And no dishonour in mourning," Odin tells her, cutting off the torrent before she can lose control, as for Petra that would be spitting on Brutus' memory. "You are allowed to grieve. If we did not then his sacrifice would have no meaning."
Petra sucks in another lungful of air, but this time it's steady, and when she releases it the tremors fade. "Okay," she says, raising her chin.
Emory sits without speaking, and Odin would embrace her except that she, too, would brush him away. Brutus raised his girls to be proud, stubborn Victors who have grown up beautiful and perfect and utterly incapable of accepting sympathy. Instead Odin exhales and sits down in between them. "Stay with me tonight?" he asks, and it does not take much for him to push the grief into his voice; less exaggeration than it is allowing himself to show more than he should. "I'd rather not be alone."
Emory nods, reaching over to take one of his hands; Petra leans against his side, and the lines of comforter and comforted blur between them. At last the girls fall asleep, ragged breathing slowly evening out, and Odin wraps his arms around their shoulders and holds them steady until dawn strikes the mountains.
It's the first day in a world without his Victor, and Odin closes his eyes against the rising sun.
No one in the Village locks their doors. The ones who respect each other's privacy, like Brutus and Emory and their branch of the mentor tree, they'd be offended at the lack of trust and the implication that anyone thought such measures were necessary. The ones who didn't, like Enobaria or Artemisia in her youth, would only be amused and encouraged by the minor challenge.
Entering a trained killer's house without permission is a bad idea even for another trained killer anyway, and so really, the unspoken tradition mostly takes care of itself. The Village is a self-regulating machine, bound by mutual bonds of functional insanity and adherence to tradition. You don't have to be one of Odin's perfect little Victors to understand — at least after a while — that creating a safe system for Panem's most hated people is worth putting up with a few customs.
Victors tend to go in and out of their mentors' houses all the time regardless, special rules and all, but it still takes Artemisia almost two days to push open the door to Lyme's.
The air inside the entrance tickles her nose with the smell of dust and abandonment after a month away. The mentors disappear for half the summer, and they can't leave the windows open unless they want the summer thunderstorms to send rain lashing in to soak everything in reach. Artemisia's house had the same mustiness when she finally left Callista's that first day back and headed home.
In a normal year, the day after returning from the Capitol marks the official airing-out of all the mentor houses; open the doors and windows, let the breeze flow through and chase away both the stale air and the tenseness of the past month. It's a way to mark the end of Games-season and the start of a new year, by Two reckoning; what does January matter when in August there's either a new resident of the Village or two more corpses in the field of sacrifice? The mentors sweep away the memories of blood and screams and long nights hunched over desks and swilling coffee, and invite the promise of a fresh start.
Fresh start or two new dead kids walking, depending on how you felt like phrasing it. Well, it's the thought that counts.
Lyme kept her workspaces clean out of necessity, since they all have mountains of polling data and sponsor information that they can't exactly have go missing. When she lost a tribute she'd clean her house from top to bottom, down to taking the door off the refrigerator and peeling off the rubber lining around the seals to scrub every last inch of space. Despite that Lyme was never an obsessively tidy person in the day to day; she'd made washing dishes into a bonding activity with her Victors or otherwise she'd leave them in the sink until morning, and the collection of shoes near the door always managed to creep from a neat, orderly line into a haphazard pile.
It's there when Artemisia toes off her shoes, the mess of hiking boots and running shoes; court shoes for when she plays one-on-one against Brutus and filled half the Village with swearing, plain black shoes she wears for official business and to exasperate her stylist. Artemisia lines up her own sandals next to Lyme's jogging sneakers, and a small laugh bubbles up in her chest when the toe of her own pair barely hits the two-third length mark of Lyme's.
She should straighten them, put them back into place, but even as Artemisia bends down to organize the pile she freezes. Normally she'd come back in three days and find chaos anew, but now it will just be the same neat row forever. It's stupid but she can't deal with that, not right now, and Artemisia moves past the mat into the kitchen before her brain catches up and calls her an idiot.
Lyme learned to cook after Artemisia won so that her girl could have whatever she wanted, and she'd kept that up over the years and done the same thing for Claudius. Lyme was never the most chipper of Victors and her house leans more toward the relaxed-but-tasteful style of decorating, but after Artemisia's win she'd repainted her kitchen a bright, cheerful blue. The kitchen is where they spend most of their time, lounging on the stools along the counter or sitting at the main table, and it's by far the happiest room in the house.
Before leaving for the Capitol last month, Artemisia cleaned her fridge out of anything that would go off in the next few weeks; she hadn't been in the mood for the semi-traditional leftovers and clear-out party, so she'd let Devon have his pick of her vegetables and gotten rid of the rest. Lyme will have done the same, but there will still be things like eggs — Artemisia's comfort food as a young Victor, and Lyme always kept at least a full dozen as a backup as well as whatever she was currently using — that should get taken out before they rot.
Artemisia tugs open the door, the seal resisting for half a second after a month of disuse —
It's empty.
No forgotten onions in the crisper; no jars of sauce along the door that should probably get tossed except for the hassle of rinsing them out and dealing with the smell of expired tomato. No containers of leftovers shoved haphazardly against the back wall and forgotten for months until they provide the subject for a fun round of 'guess what this used to be'. The shelves stand bare and blank, every surface scrubbed down as though the appliance had just been delivered this morning. Even the stubborn stain in the back corner that resisted efforts to remove it so long that Artemisia had joked about giving it a name has been scoured away.
The fridge even smells of lemon and vinegar, clean and sharp like a slap to the face. Lyme must have been up all night before the Reaping, wiping the insides and pitching all the contents into the dumpster out back behind the Village.
Artemisia's chest burns, the only clue she'd been holding her breath until finally her lungs protested. She lets it out in a rush, grips the door until her fingers spasm. She doesn't bother to check the freezer to see if somehow the bags of chopped frozen vegetables for Lyme's morning omelette managed to escape the purge; there's no point. It's all gone, everything, and Artemisia stares until the light at the back burns a purple afterimage into her vision when she blinks.
Artemisia slams the fridge door shut and staggers back, pressing both hands over her eyes and sliding them up until her fingers fist in her hair. Artemisia has been in the Village eighteen years, and she's never seen Lyme clear out her fridge like that, not once. Maybe there's a explanation — maybe the power somehow died and everything spoiled overnight and Lyme threw it all away at three in the morning before everything magically reconnected — and maybe Artemisia hasn't lost five kids out of five in the last fifteen years, either. Maybe none of this is real and they're all really sea turtles having the most ridiculously complicated shared dream.
She could spend all day coming up with reasonable alternatives but in the end of the day, bullshit is bullshit is bullshit. "You knew," Artemisia says out loud, finally. "You knew."
The words act like the first death in the Games that galvanizes the frozen tributes too scared to run. Artemisia whirls around, yanks the nearest cupboard open so hard that the door bounces back and slams against her wrist, but who cares. She grabs a plate and smashes it against the kitchen floor, and it shatters against the tile but it's not enough. Neither is the next one, or the next one, or the ones after them, not until every single one lies in pieces on the floor.
"You left me!" Artemisia shouts to the empty kitchen. "You left me! You promised!"
There's blood on the floor, too, spattered against the broken shards, but Artemisia barely feels the sting on the bottoms of her feet. She wrenches open the next cupboard to start on the glasses, except the first one she pulls out is a tall drinking glass with a sloppy smiley-faced sunflower painted on it. She'd given that to Lyme years ago during the winter of 58, when she'd been bored and antsy during a snowstorm and Lyme suggested crafts as a way to keep her hands and brains busy. It was a silly, kiddy sort of activity but Artemisia had fun with it, and she'd decorated half a dozen glasses with terrible art, mostly as a challenge to see whether Lyme would keep anything so tacky.
She had, for almost twenty years. Artemisia stares at the glass in her hand, then slides down until she's crouched on the floor amid the shards of the plates with her head between her knees.
None of the Victors have ticking clocks in their houses because it reminds them too much of the countdown, but the sun has moved from the wall to the floor when the front door opens. Artemisia doesn't bother calling out, but the slow, even tread means either Brutus or Emory, and guess what.
"Heard the noise," Emory says from the doorway, calm as always. "Thought I'd check up."
"She cleared out her fridge," Artemisia says, face mashed against her legs, and it sounds stupid out loud but Emory lets out a long breath so maybe not. "She knew something was coming and she didn't tell me."
Emory's shoes crunch over broken ceramic, then she clears aside a space and sits down next to Artemisia. "Seems to me, someone who empties out their refrigerator and doesn't tell her Victor anything was hiding from herself, too. Probably she didn't want to admit anything until it was too late."
Artemisia snorts. "You always think the best of everybody."
"I really don't," Emory says, and mercy of mercies her pants don't actually burst into flames. "But I've known Lyme since she was a bitter little thing a few years after me. I saw her look at you like someone pulled the moon out of the sky and put it in a basket just for her. She wouldn't leave you for no reason."
Artemisia is thirty-five years old and over halfway to losing one tribute for each kid she killed in the Arena. She does not burst into tears, nothing that dramatic, but her eyes itch and the pressure builds in her head until she almost wishes she had.
"Ohh," Emory soothes, reaching over to put an arm around Artemisia's shoulders. "You know she loves you."
"I know." Artemisia lets Emory tug her over, just a little, to lean against her side. "But she hates the Capitol more."
It's funny but for all Artemisia despised rules, she'd never been that great a traitor. There are rules you break and rules you don't, authorities to mock and ones to follow, and the Capitol had always fallen solidly in the second set. Besides, while Artemisia hates losing tributes each year, it isn't the Capitol who killed them, it's the other tributes, and no point getting mad about that when she'd murdered nine of her own to be here. Especially when each loss would be worth it when she finally pulled a Victor of her own.
The other districts hate the Capitol, that's been clear from the broadcasts and the threateningly polite propos since the 74th no matter how much everyone upstairs want that kept quiet, but the other districts aren't Artemisia's problem. If she worried about every starving kid out in Eleven or wherever she'd never sleep at night, and Artemisia is a master at compartmentalizing. She has enough to worry about without twisting herself up in knots over people she'll never meet.
It burned Lyme up though, watching kids die every year, hearing rumours about tariffs and quotas and everything else that left the districts scrambling to feed themselves. Artemisia didn't care, but Lyme had never been good at remembering what was or wasn't her problem. Artemisia had known about her mentor's private opinions but ignored them the way they all did, politely turning away from Lyme's dark expressions and clenched fists the way they don't stare at Petra's injured leg.
Claudius, though. Despite the Centre and the Capitol taking him out of his shitty home life and off the streets and giving him a mentor and a family and everything he ever wanted, he'd come home from his Games already twisting around to bite the hand that fed him. Again, not Artemisia's business what her little brother thinks in private, and he knew enough to keep it to himself other than a few snarky remarks during mandatory broadcasts, but he and Lyme must have talked in secret.
Just like Artemisia and Lyme had an unspoken agreement not to mention the resentment bubbling up inside Lyme every summer, Lyme and Claudius must have made one of their own.
"It's my fault," Artemisia says in a low voice. "He'd follow her into the sun if she asked him to and I always fought her on everything. Of course she wouldn't trust me."
"It's not a bad thing, not being trusted with treason," Emory says, matter of fact, and Artemisia winces. Saying it in her head is one thing; hearing it out loud is like stepping on nettles. "But I don't think she had to ask that boy much. His loyalty was to her and no one else and we all knew it. Doesn't make him special, just not as smart as you."
"Or something," Artemisia says dully. "The stupid thing is, if she'd asked me to come with her I don't even know what I'd say."
Except she does. No amount of Quarter Quells would make running away worth it, joining up with rebels from the outer districts who would surely want any Career dead before they'd let one join. There's a good chance anyone Lyme runs into will shoot her before taking her, and no guarantee that any amount of resistance would change a thing. Better to stay here, take their hits and weather the storm while the rest of the districts burn. It worked once; it would work again.
Brutus died to save Two, to prove their loyalty while the rest of the country cheerfully weaves the ropes for their own hanging. Don't screw that up by throwing it all away.
Brutus —
Artemisia grimaces, and she pulls away from Emory's comforting arm. "Fuck, I'm sorry," she says. "You lost — and I'm just —"
Emory shakes her head, and for the first time Artemisia notices the shadows under her eyes and feels like shit. "Can't change that," she says, pressing her lips thin and exhaling through her nose. "Better to help where I can, long as I can, before it hits for real."
Years ago Artemisia crushed so hard on Emory that she's surprised the other woman didn't run away screaming, but now more than ever she's grateful that Emory stayed. She'd stuck with Artemisia through the terrible innuendo and incessant flirting to forget a comfortable, if sometimes exasperated, friendship, and now she's here when both their mentors are gone.
Artemisia would rather Lyme be a traitor than dead. Emory, she knows, will be just as relieved about Brutus in reverse. It doesn't make her feel better, not really, but it's better than nothing.
She wipes her eyes, dry despite the stinging. "I'm gonna clean up," Artemisia says. "Don't tell anyone I had a temper tantrum."
Emory stands up and pulls the broom from its spot behind the fridge. "Wouldn't dream of it," she says, and hands Artemisia the dustpan.
Petra flicks through every channel, but each one is the same: white screen, the Capitol seal spinning in the centre, and underneath the words CITIZENS OF PANEM, STAND BY FOR FURTHER DECLARATIONS.
It's been like this since the Arena exploded, for everyone's protection. The Capitol can't have the talk show hosts and reporters and Games pundits speculating on what might be happening, not when misinformation is killer during a crisis. In uncertain times like this, with traitors around every corner, the president needs to control the information that the people see so they don't get confused, or someone reveal a secret too soon. Reporters only interested in their next scoop could reveal the location of Katniss Everdeen before the Peacekeepers can find her; the rebels, meanwhile, would love to poison the people with their lies.
If there's nothing but mandatory broadcasts, that means the citizens can trust what they're hearing. If the Capitol is waiting before making one, that means they're gathering the correct information to make the most accurate statement. Petra takes comfort in the fact that her government cares even in the wake of the greatest terrorist act Panem has known in decades.
The mandatory broadcasts will turn on regardless of whether she's watching, but Petra can't help but check on her own anyway. Not that she doesn't trust the president to alert the nation when it's time, but what if something happens to the automatic signal and her television doesn't get activated when the others do? What if there's a special broadcast sent out to Two first before all the others, for being loyal when the others faltered?
Two is loyal and loyalty is rewarded; it's the bedrock their district is built on. Brutus used to tell her that when Petra raged against the pain in her hip and the medication that turned her brain to slurry and the impassible ten feet from her bed to her bathroom, when she asked why she'd bothered with ten years of training and two weeks of hell just so she could never walk again. Have faith, he'd told her, holding her face in his hands and pressing their foreheads together. Have faith and all will come in time.
Brutus had more faith in the Capitol than anyone, more loyalty than the entire Village put together, even as the others teased him for it. He'd given everything he had, and now —
Petra slams the power button with her thumb and throws the remote across the room, then holds her fingers to her eyelids until pain arcs through her temples and her vision sparks with geometric patterns against the blackness.
Her legs twitch and she grabs her cane, leveraging herself to her feet. The injury is three years old but it still aches when Petra takes a step; there's a thunderstorm brewing past the mountains, and the change in pressure always sends pain shooting down her leg. Brutus' shoulder does the same, wrenched twenty-five years ago in a training accident.
Did. Did the same. The thought hits her hard but Petra keeps on, not bothering with her shoes as the drive to get out, get away, pushes her out the door and down the path. Grass tickles her soles, broken bits of pine cones and fragments of bark sticking her, but Petra only relishes the connection to the earth, solid and real. The world may be falling apart but this is still here, mountains and earth. Two is still strong, and so must she.
Petra catches herself taking the path to Brutus' house halfway down, and she bites her lip hard enough to sting and turns off the lane toward Devon's instead. Maybe Devon will let her have a go at his mural wall, a long stretch of white that he paints as he pleases and often lets the others help. Painting isn't Petra's talent and never will be, but sometimes slapping colour against a blank surface and smearing it around helps settle the jangling inside her.
Devon doesn't answer when she knocks, but he never cares if anyone comes in anyhow. He's friends with Enobaria (was friends?) and she would come in to rifle through his refrigerator for snacks and steal the softest shirts from his closet if she had the fancy. Petra won't be any trouble, and she'll likely be gone by the time he gets back.
Except Devon isn't gone; he's in the main room, staring at the mural wall with a blank stare. "Hey," Petra calls out, cautiously. Devon is their most easygoing Victor, rarely seen without a smile, but now he doesn't even turn to acknowledge her. "I just thought I'd come say hi."
Devon's posture flickers just a little, his hands curling at his sides before dropping back down. There's stubble all along his chin, tear-swollen eyes bruised so dark at the sockets that someone may as well have punched him twice. Despite the mid-July heat he's wearing a sweater with sleeves that droop down past the ends of his fingers unless he jams them up to the elbows.
Brutus' sweater. Petra has one of his t-shirts that she uses as a nightgown.
Petra could hit herself with her own cane. For the last two nights Petra has been going through every upper-body routine on the bar jammed in her doorway until her arms gave out and her muscles screamed, just so she could fall asleep without crying. She lost her mentor, the more important person in the entire universe, and she's only known him three years.
For Devon it was fifteen, nearly as long as he'd been alive before they met. Of course he wouldn't be a comfort, not today.
It's too late to leave now, and so Petra makes her way over to the sofa and lowers herself down, wincing and arranging her legs beside her. "Devon," she says again, softer. "Do you need anything?"
Devon waves a hand at the wall. "I was going to paint something new, but —"
Petra frowns, actually looking at the art for once. Brutus only ever paints (painted) to humour Devon, and he almost always made the same scene of blocky purple mountains and spiky black trees overlooking a turquoise lake. There's none of that here; instead there's red, lots of red, and Devon never uses that colour because he doesn't like blood anymore.
Only one person does, and Petra follows the line of red to where it pools near a roaring orange-yellow campfire and the crudely-drawn figures around it: one woman with a sword, and a dead girl with a long brown braid. Oh.
"Enobaria," Petra says, wincing.
She and Petra had never been friends, but for reasons no one understood Enobaria and Devon got along fine. Devon runs a hand through his hair and crosses the room to sit next to Petra, dropping his hands between his knees. "Yeah," he says, subdued. "She knew it would be her, going in, and she was so pissed about it. She said if she was going to go into the Arena again, she didn't want to share the spotlight with the lovebirds from Twelve and their stupid missed wedding. So she drew what she was going to do when she got there."
Roast Katniss Everdeen over a spit, apparently; Petra's mind does not leap easily to bad puns, and it takes her a minute to find the obvious 'girl on fire' parallel. Enobaria's penchant for torture is just one of many reasons why Petra never tried seeking her out; all of Petra's kills were fast and brutal, no messing around. The trainers at the Centre had toyed with giving her that sort of image, but as Petra filled out and turned out to be short and stocky instead of waif-like they went for wicked efficiency instead.
"They don't know where she is," Devon says. He leans back against the couch cushions, tipping his head up to stare at the ceiling. "Why won't they tell us where she is? What are they doing to her?"
Petra sits up straight. "You think the rebels got her? Do you really think they'll hurt her?"
Devon gives her a sidelong glance through half-slitted eyes. "Yeah, the rebels," he says in an odd voice, then smacks a hand across his face and hisses.
"They probably don't have her," Petra says, reaching over to lay a reassuring hand on his arm. "They obviously blew up the Arena to get their precious little Mockingjay out. They wouldn't waste time trying to capture any of the others, not when Enobaria had a sword. Probably the Capitol picked her up on the way out and they're just waiting until things die down before sending her home."
Devon gives Petra a small, thin smile. "You're right, peanut," he says, and Petra scowls at the nickname. Only Brutus is allowed to call her that, and even he can't get away with it without her glaring. "I'm just worrying. Everything's gone wrong, and nobody knows what's going on, and the only thing we do know —"
He stops, choking off the words, and Petra looks away. Her own feelings make her feel as though she swallowed ants; being in the same room with someone else's is not something she wants to make a habit of.
"Brutus died well," Petra reminds him. "Odin said so."
This time Devon's smile softens, and Petra bares her teeth. His expression reminds her of the way people in the Capitol used to look at her when she entered a room with her cane and a limp, all kindness and barely-repressed pity. "What!" Petra snaps.
Devon shakes his head. "Nothing, pint-size, it's me. I know he died exactly like a Two should die, I just … it doesn't make me feel better. I'd rather have him here."
"Well, so would I!" Petra says, a flush burning in her cheeks. "You think I'm — you think I want — I don't! I want him here, too! But I don't want to be sad about it, I want to do something!"
"Like what?"
"Like hunt down the traitors and slit their stupid traitor throats," Petra snarls. "This is all their fault! President Snow loves us, he wouldn't want to send all his Victors back into the Arena. If the districts weren't rebelling, he might have changed the rules, made a different Quell, but they challenged him and he can't give in to terrorists. Brutus is dead —" her voice cracks but she pushes through it — "because of Katniss Everdeen."
"Oh, Petra," Devon says in an indulgent tone that makes Petra reach for the knife stashed up her sleeve. "No, hey, don't look at me like that, I only meant I wish I could get angry like you. I'd love to be angry. Right now I'm just —" He lifts his hands and drops them back into his lap. "Nothing. It's probably good I don't want to paint over E's mural, otherwise it would just be a lot of grey."
Everyone is allowed to recover in their own way, Brutus told her once, when Petra asked how long it took the others to get past their Arenas, but now Petra's anger curls in, drives deep into her gut. It's as though she sat on a nest of red ants; she lurches to her feet, reaching for her cane to hold herself steady before she topples and ruins her exit.
"You can stay here being sad and grey and nothing, then," Petra says. Brutus used to call her his little firecracker, grinning and cuffing her lightly when her temper made her lash out and say something unbecoming of a Victor. "I'm going to do something."
This time Devon actually laughs, bitter in a way she's never heard from him. "You do that," he says. "When you bring Brutus back, let me know."
Petra flings one last glare his way before striding out, ignoring the twinge of pain at the too-fast steps because she can't stay here anymore. She takes her time down the front steps — she's not going to let a temper tantrum topple her head over heels and require Devon's help, no thank you — but then picks up the pace again until she makes it to Ronan's.
Their first Victor answers the door much faster than Devon, and he raises an eyebrow at the sight of her. Petra can only imagine what she looks like, flushed and furious and spoiling for blood. "Petra," he says. "What can I do for you?"
Petra falters for a second — what can he do indeed, what can anyone do — but then she straightens. "You're friends with President Snow," she says. They meet up to play checkers every six weeks or so; sometimes Ronan brings her, and the president always remembers to put out Petra's favourite kind of cookies even though she doesn't ever remember telling him. "Can you call him?"
Ronan blinks at her. "What would you like me to tell him, my dear?"
Petra raises her chin. "The districts need to remember that not all their Victors are traitors," she says. "They need to be reminded. Tell him I want to help."
Ronan promises to make the call. Two days later a squad of Peacekeepers shows up with a shiny, black car. "We're here to take you to see the president," says the white-uniformed man who greets Petra at her door. "He was very touched by your request and has extended an invitation for you to stay at the mansion with him."
Petra nearly embarrasses herself permanently by swooning. "Really?"
"Really." This is a diplomatic visit, not a policing one, and the Peacekeeper has forgone his helmet. He's young and handsome and gives Petra a warm, if still professional, smile. "Ronan will be coming along, since he's the most seasoned, and I've been asked if you would choose someone to accompany you. Normally your mentor, but." He touches his fist to his chest, and Petra matches the gesture of respect and condolence. "President Snow asked me to give you this."
He hands her a card, printed on thick stock and embossed with the presidential seal. Petra slides her finger under the flap and opens it, then gasps at the firm, beautiful handwriting in peacock-blue ink. It's real — she can see where the nib from the pen dented the page, this is not printed or stamped but hand written by President Snow himself — and Petra soaks it in before she can focus on the words.
Dear Miss Petra,
Please accept my most profound sympathy at the loss of your mentor, Brutus, who fell in service to his country on Day 3 of the 75 th Hunger Games at 11:58pm.
Brutus' death is a blow not just to his district but to the entire nation. He was a good Victor, an excellent mentor, and a loyal patriot, well-respected by his peers and colleagues. I myself will very much miss his opinions on the best craft beer. His presence will be missed in the Capitol for years to come.
I sincerely hope that you will be comforted in your sorrow by our shared faith in the glorious nation of Panem, whom Brutus served unflinchingly to the very end.
Yours today, tomorrow, and forever,
Coriolanus Snow.
Almost a week since Odin returned with the news and Petra has stayed strong, but as she traces the letters with her fingertips and imagines the president himself mourning Brutus, the dam inside her collapses. The sobs burst out of her until her chest aches, and she nearly loses her balance, leaning against the door frame.
"I'm sorry —" Petra manages finally. "I just —"
"It's all right," the man says. "I can come back after I see Ronan. Do you know who else you want with you?"
"Odin," Petra says immediately. Brutus' mentor will be just as touched as she is, and he's been heavy with sorrow after losing his only Victor but this will make it better. They'll be doing good, serving the president and their country, and what could honour Brutus' memory more than that?
"I'll be back," the Peacekeeper says, not unkindly. "You don't need to pack anything. Everything will be provided for you."
Petra uses the time to cry herself out, then splashes her face with ice-cold water until she gasps and the puffiness dies down. The Centre taught her to cry prettily but she never really caught the knack, and in the past few years she's lost it entirely. But she is Two and a Two is strong, and so Petra pulls herself together.
By the time they come for her, Petra has cleaned herself up and calmed herself down. She's packed Brutus' t-shirt and a few other comforts in her bag — slid the letter into her pocket to keep it close — and she joins the others in front of the house.
Odin slips an arm around her shoulders, just for a minute, and bends to kiss her hair. "This will be an adventure," he says, and he's still aged ten years since last June but at least he's smiling now.
There are more Peacekeepers waiting in the car, and the woman in the back seat hands Petra a blue metal tin when she sits down. "Here," she says. "Compliments of the president."
Petra lifts the lid and laughs out loud at the sight of ten chocolate macaroons nestled in a bed of tissue paper. "My favourite," she says, and offers the tin to everyone in the car. The Peacekeepers demur and so does Ronan, but Odin takes one, and Petra pops one into her mouth whole, letting the velvety chocolate melt on her tongue.
Everything is going to be all right.