The grand tour of whatever facilities they're willing to let Lyme see before she proves herself ends at the requisition room. "You'll get a communicator cuff," says the sour-faced aide who apparently ranks low enough to rate 'show the traitor Twos around' duty. "You'll have access to broadcast communications, and be able to signal the president to contact you with anything important. Misuse of the communicator will result in official sanction and your cuff revoked."

That, at least, makes sense, since anyone in charge of an operation this size can't be running around answering every last trivial question when there's a war being planned. If it weren't a traitor's nest, Brutus would probably appreciate the efficiency. In a world where he isn't dead, anyway. Lyme shakes off the thought and nods in response before the silence stretches out long enough to be suspicious. Keeping focus is a little harder these days, especially now that the last of her stim pills have finally left her system.

"To clarify, you'll get one, but not him," says the aide, jabbing her finger at Lyme before waving a dismissive thumb in Claudius' direction. "You brought him, so you're responsible for him. Everything he does comes back on you."

"That's fine," Lyme says, even as she forces her shoulders down from the automatic bristling hunch.

"Don't worry about me," Claudius adds, and he keeps his tone artificially light and even manages a smile, but the breeziness of it fails to reach his eyes. "I'm housebroken and everything."

The woman slits her eyes at him. Apparently humour is not one of District 13's secret exports. "D," Lyme says, chiding, and Claudius makes a show of widening his eyes and holding up his hands in surrender. The aide watches, then gives a small, satisfied nod. It hits Lyme that Claudius very likely did that on purpose, giving her a reason to call him to heel so that the soldiers see she can be trusted to keep her kid in line. Maybe he'll fit in better than she thought.

"One other thing," says the woman, and she rolls up the sleeve of her uniform to reveal a line of numbers and letters — words? — inked in purple on her right forearm. "This is your schedule. Everyone is required to keep to it, it's how we make sure everything runs smoothly down here. There's a machine in the hallway, I'll show you how to use it, but the schedule goes on the right arm. Anything on the skin will interfere with the transfer process."

Lyme frowns. "All right," she says, waiting for the other side of it. Anyone who's spent as much time in the sponsor ring as she has knows how to recognize a 'but' incoming.

Funny enough, again Claudius gets there first. "No," he bursts out, and Lyme turns to stare at him but he doesn't break eye contact with the thin-lipped aide. "No way. We earned these, we're not taking them off just because you need to stamp 7:00 - Breakfast on our arms at just the right spot."

It might have taken Lyme a second but she's with it now, and she inhales with a sharp hiss. Her hand comes up to cover the tattoo encircling her right wrist without even thinking, and Lyme spent the first year of her recovery trying to burn or slice or abrade it off, but Claudius is right. The tattoo is part of her — and the only piece of her home district she has left.

"And how exactly did you earn them?" the woman snaps. "By murdering children, like the other savages in your district? I've seen your Games, you know, the one with all the twelve-year-olds. You really think that's something to be proud of?"

Claudius lifts his arm so his wrist sits at eye level, and he turns it to show off the circles of colour that represent the kill beads from his training bracelet years and years ago. "Technically these were all adults," he says, and before he'd mouthed off for show but this is real, all steel and poison in a death-eyed smile. "The kids I murdered for free."

The woman rears back, nostrils flaring, and Lyme steps in and lays a hand on Claudius' shoulder. "Claudius," she says, more alarmed now than chiding, because they did not come all this way and betray their district and their friends just to get shot in the head in the bowels of District 13 by a trigger-happy rebel.

Claudius actually shakes her hand off with a sharp jerk of his arm. He plants his feet and balls his fists and glares at the aide, who's now giving him an unimpressed blank stare. Plus there's a soldier guarding the door with one hand on his weapon, and the gun might be holstered but Lyme bets they'll take any excuse they can get to toss Claudius in lockup to take the Career down a peg.

"Claudius," Lyme says again, and she doesn't touch him but she puts every bit of authority into her voice. She can't pin him against the wall with one arm over his throat — not in front of other people and definitely not here, that's for them and not an audience and especially not one that wouldn't even begin to understand — and her heart hammers. Claudius might be a good kid and the easier of Lyme's Victors, but he's a killer and a fighter. The Program didn't train him to lie down and let someone step on his face. If District 13 is trying to push him into snapping, they might get exactly what they're aiming for.

Claudius exhales hard through his nose, but finally he takes a step back. "I'm not getting rid of my tattoo," he says, flat and uncompromising. "I'll put the schedule on my other arm and do whatever it tells me to do, but I keep what's mine."

Lyme looks down at her own arm, the swirls of black and the dots of red, orange, silver and gold that represent eleven years of learning how to kill and survive and all the years that came after.

She couldn't stand to look at it early in her recovery, after she'd clawed her way out of the Arena with the sick knowledge that winning was nothing like she'd built it up to be. No glory, no honour, nothing but kids choking to death on their own blood or blowing up into wet chunks of meat from stepping on a landmine or burning to death with a thick, sour stench that haunted her for months.

She'd seen the faces of the teenagers she killed every time she looked at her wrist, and the tattoo — meant to remind her of her belonging in the Village and mark her as family to the others who lived there — only served to remind her of exactly what she'd done to get there. Lyme covered it with long sleeves or custom-made leather cuffs most of the time at home, but had to bare her wrist whenever she went out in public as a show of strength and solidarity with her district.

The district she'd just turned her back on. Lyme could pretend it was Brutus' death that did it but that would be a lie. She's thought about it since the first time she or one of her friends lost a tribute, and every time afterward when a bright, fierce, determined kid came back home in a plain pine box. She thought about it whenever she turned on the news late at night and watched footage of riots or public floggings or heard rumours of food shortages and ever-increasing production quotas in the districts.

There's no way to know for sure, since nobody ever talked about it out loud, but while the others in the Village might be angry or disappointed by her defection, Lyme would bet her stipend that absolutely none of them are surprised. Her turning traitor was never really a question of if or even when, but rather how.

Here, though, the inevitability of Lyme's about-face is less clear-cut. Lyme never received a white card from Victor Affairs telling her who would be bringing her home tonight and what they expected to do to her while there. She never returned home to find her house burned to the ground with her loved ones inside in a tragic 'accident'. Lyme's treasonous leanings might have been obvious in amongst the loyalest of the loyal in District 2, but here in Thirteen they're all wondering why she bothered. Two Victors of her own, with sexual autonomy, personal freedom and anything she's ever wanted — all the privileges Lyme used as excuses to ignore the nation's suffering until she lost her closest friend.

A personal vendetta, President Coin said at their first meeting. Nothing grand or noble here, just a dog who finally turned on her master. It's not unreasonable for them to ask for a sign as a show of faith.

Lyme's tattoo marks her as a hero to her district and a killer both, and both are true and intertwined. She's failed three times as many kids as she's managed to save, and she holds the District 2 record for most kills in the Arena — but what does that even mean? So much blood, so much death, and the people at home love her and revere her but for what? She'd had a hard enough time remembering what it all meant back in Two; in here, anything Lyme built for herself she just ripped to pieces and set on fire.

"Claudius keeps his tattoo," Lyme says. Claudius raises his chin in defiance and the aide gives her an exasperated stare. "But you can take mine."

Claudius bursts out, "Boss!" at the same time that the aide starts to protest for the opposite reason, and Lyme holds up a hand to silence both of them. "This is not a negotiation," she says, raising her voice to counter any further arguments. "His stays, mine goes. That's the way it's going to be."

Turns out medical supplies are currently at a premium in District 13 given the state of the war and the number of operatives coming back from combat missions in need of attention, so they don't give Lyme any painkillers or local anaesthetic while removing the tattoo. Really, though, that's fine; the laser they use to burn away the ink hurts a little more than getting the tattoo in the first place, but it's nowhere near the most pain Lyme has felt in her life.

More importantly, every flash of pain reminds Lyme exactly why she's here and what she's doing, just like the tattoo artist's needle had done for her twenty years ago. She doesn't watch them at work, instead staring out at the far wall and gritting her teeth. Her breath comes short in her chest, and she lets them think it's from the pain and not because it feels like they've dug a hook under her skin and are ripping out everything that makes her who she is.

They do give Lyme a bandage when they're done, at least, and a small vial of ointment for the first few days. "You might experience a reaction with the ink from the schedule tattoo since your skin will be sensitive for a few days," the man warns her. "Nothing to be done about it, just don't panic when it happens."

Lyme nods and smooths the edges of the fresh white bandage, wishing she could cover it with long sleeves and trying her best to ignore the jiggle of her memory that gives her a rush of deja vu. With the removal complete, Lyme reports back to requisitions and receives her communicator cuff, which sits heavy around her left wrist and keeps drawing her gaze whenever she moves her arm.

She doesn't look at Claudius when she comes back to their shared room, and if he has something to say about it he decides to take the hint and keep quiet. The black ink of his own tattoo stands out sharp against the curve of his wrist, in contrast to the pale purple ink that marks the schedule along his other arm.

They'd given him a cloth armband to cover his tattoo but he's pointedly ignored it, leaving it on the small desk in the corner of the room. Instead, in a nod to District 13's utilitarian fashion sense and as a minor compromise, Claudius found someone with a pair of scissors and had them chop off his hair. It's not a military-buzz but it's shorter than he's ever worn it since his Centre photos, and whenever Lyme catches him out of the corner of her eye it makes her jump.

His haircut now matches Lyme's almost exactly, or at least the scissors-by-hand version done in a fashion-ambivalent military compound instead of by Capitol stylists right before the biggest Hunger Games in over two decades. Lyme doesn't ask him if he did that on purpose or if it's just a coincidence, and Claudius doesn't bring it up.


Selene will never admit it to any of her squadmates, but she's relieved when the only thing they're tasked with doing at first is trying to get intel on the location of the Victors. It's not like Selene regrets what they've done — not exactly. There's no point to it, they're here and they made their choice and there's no going back, and Selene has always been raised to look forward. She's always been good at it, ever since Petra won the right to volunteer for their Games and Selene suddenly had a whole new life ahead of her. No point in wondering what might have been if she'd managed to edge Petra out for the top spot. Selene had joined the Peacekeeping Academy and never looked back.

Of course, Petra's horrific Games-ending injury and the way she limped across the stage after her victory helped Selene move past that one, but she can do this too. She doesn't know what she would have done if their new friends asked them to infiltrate Snow's mansion and kill the president, of course, but Selene refuses to lose sleep about it. This is all confusing enough without driving herself to distraction imagining hypotheticals.

The mission isn't difficult, though — or, well. The objective itself is ridiculously tough; wherever the Victors are, the Capitol has their location on lockdown, and now that Selene and her squad are fugitives and presumed dead it's not like Rigel can get access the system and try to find intel. They have to do things the old-fashioned way, which means skulking around the Capitol and intercepting whatever information they can get without tipping anyone off. It also means no run-ins with Peacekeepers, no conflict with anyone Selene might have worked with or trained with at the Academy or the Centre, and that suits Selene fine.

She knows, logically, that they'll run up against each other someday. But not yet, and so Selene shoves those thoughts away for when she has time to deal with them.

Rigel and Marius are good at their jobs, even if those jobs now involve treason against the government they swore to serve. They gather bits and pieces of information here and there, staying under the radar and sticking to the seedier parts of town rather than the hyper-patrolled urban centre, and generally not attracting attention so they manage to avoid fighting any Peacekeepers.

In fact, they do such a good job of avoiding Peacekeepers that the first time Selene sees combat since joining the rebels is when she and Dash are ambushed by a local gang.

Ironic, really, since Selene cut her teeth on this sort of action back in the day — nobody starts a stint in the Scouts with guarding President Snow, that would be ridiculous — and now she's doing the same mop-up action as when she was a junior Peacekeeper. The gang will have seen the uniforms and assumed exactly that, rookie beat-cops on a foot-wetting mission, and figured they could get their kicks in without risking serious retaliation. Too bad for them, Selene has several combat ops under her belt and a whole lot of confusion that feels pretty good channelled into rage. The punks won't know what hit them.

Or so Selene figures, at least until the first lowlife lobs a homemade grenade at them. It misses but Selene cops the brunt of the concussive blast and gets knocked off her feet, her rifle flying out of her hands. She glances to make sure Dash is okay — he is, looking wide-eyed and shaken but he's got his rifle, so good enough — and then files that part away, concentrates on the fight. Her rifle is too far away to reach and night sticks are not gonna cut it, and so Selene casts about for a replacement.

Of all things, her weapon of choice is a light pole.

That should be completely ridiculous, but Selene is without her gun and the gang might not be trained or heavily armed but they're scrappy and determined and clever enough to rig up homebrew explosives, and the Centre always taught them, you use what you can get. The trainers always drilled it in; you could guide the Gamemakers toward giving you your signature weapon but there's no guarantee that they'll do it. Petra was a perfect example of that, in the end. And so when there's a fucking broken light pole lying there amid the rubble just in reach, Selene thinks, what the hell.

Selene grabs the pole in a double-handed grip and swings it through the air in a beautiful, perfect arc. It's been years since she held a sword or a staff — the Peacekeeping Academy doesn't teach weapons training other than firearms and truncheons, to build as clear a separation for the ex-Centre kids as possible — but it comes back to her like breathing. Selene nearly takes the head off the guy next to her, and as the blood splatters out (perfect for the cameras, they'll love that, nobody can resist an artistic spray of blood against the lens) she whips around for a second swing. It connects solidly with the next guy's shoulder, which gives with a sickening crunch, but Selene doesn't stop. She whirls again and finds another, and another —

It feels good. A little too good. Selene is almost disappointed when there's no one else left to fight — all right, there's no 'almost' about it — and her heart is pounding and she feels a wide grin across her face —

Shit.

Selene drops the pole and backs away. Her head spins, there are too many things happening and none of it makes sense. Conflicting streams of training churn through her mind. Scrapping with Petra in Residential, clenched jaws and blood on her fists — performing takedown drills on dummies in the Peacekeeping Academy until her muscles screamed, until she could subdue a target without hurting them — learning to kill — learning not to kill — go for the meat, thin the fieldyou are a Capitol Peacekeeper you must be firm but gentle, you are a shield not a weaponyou are a warrior, a tool, bringing pride to your district

Selene the Peacekeeper wars with Selene the tribute trainee and suddenly she's not sure who's wearing her face.

"Selene!" Dash says, from close by. Selene blinks and registers his face as he hovers anxiously. He's pulled off his helmet, and by the whites around his eyes he must have called her name a few times before she finally heard him. "Are you okay? I saw you lose your rifle, I tried to get to you but there were too many —"

"I — no." Selene shakes her head. "I'm quite all right."

Dash's eyes go even wider. Selene replays, and — shit, she said that in a Capitol accent, didn't she, like they trained her in case she ever had to reassure a crowd of citizens here in the city.

"I'm fine," Selene says, forcing herself to Two Standard.

"Sure," Dash says, slowly. He hands Selene her rifle, though she watches his hands hesitate for a second before handing it over like he wasn't sure whether he should. Selene accepts it, lets herself loop the strap over her shoulder and cradle it on autopilot because she has no fucking clue what to do with herself right now.

(Her father's friend showing her how to use a rifle, too big for her eleven-year-old frame but Selene insisted. Dad, flinging up his hands in defeat; Ted, laughing, saying why not, let's show the kiddo how it's done — )

"Let's go," Dash says, still in that careful tone. "I'll take point, okay? We're gonna head back around and rendezvous with Rigel and Marius, and then we're home free."

Rigel and Marius. Right. Selene nods, hopes she doesn't look too spaced out.

Later it'll cross her mind that not only does Dash take point, he leads them in a wide loop through the back streets and away from everyone, keeping them — keeping her — away from any possible combat zones. Selene half appreciates the thought but also kind of wants to shoot something.


"What took you so long?" Rigel demands, yanking off his helmet once they're in the air. Marius says nothing, lets his CO handle it, but his gaze immediately fixes on Selene in the mirror above the cockpit dash. Selene busies herself with stowing her gear so she doesn't meet his eye.

"There was a gang," Dash says, which is not a lie but also not accurate enough for a proper sitrep. He very carefully doesn't look at Selene. "Had to take the long way around."

"Kid, minimizing casualties is a noble goal, but if they attack you —"

Selene doesn't want to do this right now. Funny enough it's the idea of Marius concern that bugs her more than Rigel's frowning, and so she lets Dash handle the debrief. Selene wanders to the back of the hovercraft, leans her forehead against the cool metal bulkhead and tries to gather her thoughts.

It doesn't work very well.

See, Selene is a killer. She's been a killer since she was fourteen, on paper, and technically maybe even earlier, depending on how you define it. When she was nine her father taught her how to shoot his pistol, and once she'd proven her competency at the firing range, they'd take trips out into the mountains. He'd given her candy for every critter she'd taken down, she's pretty sure. At eleven, around when she'd started joining her dad and his buddies on hunting trips, Selene had started getting bored of the approved kills. She'd used her hands or borrowed knives and practiced for her animal kill test alone in the woods, rinsing her hands off in the stream before heading back for dinner.

Her Centre entrance exam had been a breeze. So were all the kill tests. If nothing else, she'd worried herself by not being disturbed enough at having committed murder.

When Selene became a Peacekeeper, they trained that out of her as much as they could, but all their protocol was geared toward undoing Centre programming. The Centre might have honed Selene's killer instincts to a fine point and stoked her rages from flash tantrums into something deeper, darker, but they didn't plant the seed. Fortunately for Selene and her psych eval, she'd always been a good actress and managed to show the proper amount of reform.

Anyway, maybe pretending not to be a killer is ultimately the same thing as not being one for real. Either way nobody dies, right?

But now people have died, will die. People have died because Selene killed them without making the conscious decision to do so (the pole heavy and comforting in her hand, the rush of the fight in her blood) and the scary thing is, for all that Selene is a killer she's never been the berserker kind. Oh she got in trouble for violence — excessive force, Selene, the trainers used to cluck at her — but it was always deliberate. She'd decided to hurt someone and fuck what the trainers said; it had never been a black-out-and-wake-to-blood kind of deal.

(She always got into more trouble than the berserker boys who snapped and smashed other kids' heads in, which Selene always thought was unfair back in the day. Now, of course, she knows why.)

That doesn't happen anymore, though. Selene does know how to follow orders.

This episode, whatever it was, scares Selene more than she wants to admit, maybe especially because she can't even explain what's wrong. It's not her first combat mission, not even her first mission working for the rebels, and she's trained for this. Not the treason, obviously, but the fighting, the snap decisions; she's practiced learning to reprogram her reflexes so she doesn't go for blood in those moments before her brain kicks in. The Peacekeeping Academy trained her as a soldier as well as a guard, she's got this, honestly.

Then again, she hasn't actually done this a lot. It's an open secret among the corps that the Scouts division are the Capitol's secret police, but most of what they do is routine patrol or uneventful guard duty. President Snow doesn't actually need to send the Scouts through the Capitol to break down walls that often, and when he does, Captain Emin always picks a senior team. Selene hasn't done a lot of infiltration.

It's hard, because Selene was raised to be a tribute, and when she didn't get to do that, they took her apart at the Academy. They filed the edges off and put her back together as a Peacekeeper, and she'd adjusted to that fine — but now she's not that, either.

What if she, if not a Peacekeeper? Rebel, traitor —

No.

Selene presses the palm of her hand against her eyes. Breathe. Focus. They're doing good work here, with the rebellion. Better, maybe, than Selene had been doing before. They're going to save lives. It's better this way. She's doing the right thing. It's okay.

"All right there, Selene?" Marius' deep voice cuts through her thoughts.

Selene straightens, startled. Ah, shit. Marius must have finished piloting the course in for Eight and come back to see her still standing there, half blanked out. "Uh, some guy had a homemade bomb. Threw me around a bit." A split-second later Selene really hopes that Dash didn't try leaving that out on her behalf, or they'll know for sure that he's been covering for her. The scorch marks on her breastplate, at least, mean they'd figure it out eventually. "It's no big deal."

Marius raises his eyebrows, and yeah, he's always been remarkably resistant to Selene's bullshit but she also doesn't need this right now. He crosses his arms and leans against the opposite bulkhead. "Sure. That's why you're pale and standing here in your armour, even though we're halfway back."

"I hit my head. It'll pass."

A long pause, during which Marius studies her closely. Selene attempts to project an aura of not-crazy-just-mildly-concussed. Although it doesn't escape her that if pretending to have a concussion is the safer option than admitting what happened, maybe she's got issues.

Selene's head hurts, and not just from the blast.

"Actually," she says suddenly. Rigel and Dash have gone to sit in the cockpit, speaking in low, easy tones. It's just her and Marius here now. "There is one thing. Tell me why we're here. You said you'd explain more, later — and, well, it's later. So explain."

Marius raises one eyebrow again and regards her steadily for a long moment.

Right. Okay. Selene takes a deep breath and tries again. "I just mean — look, we agreed to join the rebellion. I agreed. That's fine. I'm still with it." And wow, look at both of Marius' eyebrows shooting up at that. Her hands clench into fists; she isn't explaining this very well at all, and if she's not careful Marius will pull her from active duty and then she really will lose it from cabin fever. "Look," she says again, modulating her voice to calmness. "It's not that I don't trust you, okay, it's just. I need to know why. For me. You and Rigel were pretty quick to throw in with them. What do you know that I don't?"

"Yes," Marius says, and his voice has gone surprisingly gentle. "You're right — I said I'd explain, and I haven't. How can I put this… Remember the pair of brothers we caught last year, out of One?"

Selene nods. "Our first field op." She and Dash had been starry-eyed recruits back then, dazzled by the glitter of the Capitol and doing their best not to show it. THey'd still been giddy and enthusiastic when they got their first rotation — and the first mission had been to gun down two fifteen-year-olds for the crime of running away from the District 1 Career Academy. The shine wore off pretty quickly after that.

Marius nods too, grimly. "We had orders to kill them. They were lucky; we don't always, and that's always worse, for them. Those end up as Avoxes if they're lucky, or Gamemaker experiments if they're not. Or worse. And for what?" Marius looks off into the distance, his large frame incongruous with his quiet manner. "The Capitol is built on corpses, Selene. And we — the Peacekeepers, protectors of the people — put them there."

Selene twitches at the sudden note of self-loathing in his voice. Marius has always been the level-headed one, the calm to Rigel's fire, but now there's an undercurrent of darkness. For an ex-Career, that's as good as a full-body shudder.

Marius immediately shoots her a pained half-smile, likely guessing her thoughts. "To be honest, I'm not sure why more Scouts don't turn," he says, quietly. "We see more — do more — than any other division. Snow uses us to do the Capitol's dirty work. It's because Two is loyal already, and the best and the brightest of Two's Careers go into the Scouts. we get the worst of the worst because if anyone can be trusted, it's us."

Selene stays quiet and doesn't comment on the irony, but then Marius lets out a soft, humourless laugh. "Then again, maybe mass Scout defection not such a far off possibility after all. There's an entire division dedicated to monitoring the Peacekeepers, and a big chunk of that is monitoring us."

"How did you stand it for so long?" Selene asks softly. She knows how she does it — she's been compartmentalizing since she was a girl, and it's always been easier for Selene to square away what should be done with what must be done. But Marius, for all his staid professionalism, has always had more heart.

Marius shrugs, a gesture of helplessness rather than dismissal. "At first — it seems like they deserve it. They break the rules, we're just the weapon used to enforce them. But after a while, you start to think, what if the rules are wrong?"

Like giving up their heroes. Like letting Brutus die. Like shooting down two boys who only wanted to cross the district line for a chance at a new life.

Selene nods. "And so here you are."

Marius touches his chest in a wry salute. "Here I am."


Marius watches Selene disembark, a worried frown on his face.

Something's wrong. While, yes, he had promised to explain, he hadn't missed the part where she'd deflected his questions by neatly turning the conversation on its head and grilling him instead.

Dash comes up behind him. The kid is biting his lip, which means he's got something to say that he doesn't want to but thinks he should anyway. He's an open book, really, especially compared with Selene. Marius has never quite figured out if it's a matter of personality or a holdover from District 4 culture.

"What really happened out there?" Marius asks, rather than waiting for Dash to sidle into it.

"I'm not sure," Dash says. "We got jumped by a bunch of gang members with a shockwave grenade, knocked both of us off our feet, and by the time I got to her she'd killed three people with a broken light pole."

Marius gives him a long, incredulous look. "A light pole?"

Dash throws up his hands. "I guess it was the first weapon she could get her hands on. Her rifle got knocked away in the blast."

"What happened after that?"

"I gave her rifle back and led her back to the LZ. Um." Dash hesitates. "She didn't seem to quite have it together. When we left. I think she – went away somewhere, I don't know."

Went away somewhere. Shit. Combat regression is rare, but not unheard of – it's why the Peacekeeping Academy only teaches batons and guns, both weapons not used in the Centre, and forces the kids back through dummy drills for months before they're allowed to practice on each other.

"Marius?" Dash says. "She seemed better once we got back, but I don't know…"

"You did well," Rigel says, rescuing him as he strides over from the hovercraft. "Go get cleaned up, get some food. See if you can get Selene to eat something, too."

Dash nods, looking relieved, and departs.

"Will she be okay?" Rigel asks Marius in an undertone.

Marius rubs his forehead. A lot of Centre Seniors don't have a very strong sense of self; a lot of it is wrapped up in the Games, and when they don't go in they have to build their identity up from the ground up again. In a way, being a Peacekeeper is one of the worse paths for them to take; the Peacekeeping Academy is almost as bad as the Centre in how it moulds its recruits. To go from the Centre to the Academy to the middle of a damned war — well.

It's not altogether surprising. Selene's still very young, but before this she'd shown no sign of any psychological complications. Seemed to be adjusting just fine to the new way of life.

Until now.

"I'll keep an eye on her," Marius tells Rigel, and leaves it at that. Which isn't an answer, but it's the only answer he can give.


Rigel shows up at Brutus' room with a tray of food and a buddy alongside. This guy is Two as well, also probably around Devon's age but twice his size and with a bright red beard that adds a few years to his appearance. "This is Marius," Rigel says. "He's my XO."

Marius nods at Brutus, amiable and professional all in one, and Brutus' memory niggles a bit. He might have seen the kid around at galas in Two, though he can't come up with anything solid. This is where Devon's magic memory would come in handy; he would have some charming anecdote about the time they chummed around or he caught one of them with spinach in their teeth, and everyone would laugh. But Devon isn't here, he's in Two mourning for his mentor, and Brutus bites down too hard on his spoon and the metal makes his teeth ache.

"We think you should come out with us," Rigel says after a few minutes of eating in silence. "See a few things. There's been — stuff that's happened, and I think the best way is to show you."

"You cleared for that with the boys upstairs?" Brutus asks. Just this morning one of the doctors caught him doing sit-ups over the edge of the bed and he thought they were gonna lecture him back to death.

Rigel and Marius exchange glances, and this time Marius speaks. "It's our hovercraft," he says. "Or, well, we brought it in when we defected and it's keyed to our biometrics through Capitol security. Nobody's keeping us here."

"Tell me something," Brutus says. Marius has the look of someone who likes to think long before he speaks, and Brutus appreciates that in a comrade. "Your CO here told me you turned because of me. That true?"

Again their eyes meet, and Brutus has never been a Peacekeeper, never worked that close in tandem with someone else, not when a mentor's job meant pitting friends and bond-family against each other for the sake of their tributes, but he sees it with the two of them. Not just command but respect and trust, soldiers on the field who've fought and saved each other's lives and know exactly who to count on.

Rigel nods at Marius, eyes closing for a fraction longer than a normal heartbeat, and Marius turns back to Brutus, apparently satisfied. "No," he says, the word heavy and final. "No, I think that started years ago. You gave us the push to do something about it."

It's funny, and probably stupid and selfish and half a dozen other things, but it soothes Brutus a little to know that two upstanding officers of the law didn't up and turn their backs on everything they'd sworn to protect just to save his life. "All right then," he says. "What did you want to show me?"


They fly him over the remains of District 12. It's still smoking, the coal mine belching up thick, black smoke and tongues of flame, but now and then the breeze pushes it all aside and gives a stark, shocking view of the piles burnt corpses and bleached skulls. Marius has the conn, and he steers the hovercraft in low, swooping arcs in an ever-widening circle from the main square. Once he drops to avoid a wind shear and the jets from the repulsors kick up clouds of ash, shoving aside the layers of grime and debris to reveal the smallest skeleton Brutus has ever seen, nestled in the protective curve of a larger one.

Brutus swallows acid, but he fights the urge to look away. This is death, this is sacrifice (this is — wrong), and his own discomfort is no excuse. Years of watching children die in the Hunger Games and never blinking have trained him for this, what a funny thought, and so Brutus presses his forehead to the plexiglass window and takes it all in.

Whatever Rigel had to show him, Brutus would never have guessed this. Never would have thought the Capitol capable of doing it.

"I had to see it," Rigel says. "I saw the footage, Thirteen shot a propo, but it's not the same. We left the kids back at the base and we came out here and —" He waves a hand. Brutus glances at him, and Rigel's face is pinched tight, his eyes hollow. "The rebels here have been pretty good about the whole thing so far, us being from Two and all, but you know what the worst part is?"

It looks to Brutus like a whole damn lot of worst parts, all rolled up together into one stinking shit-heap, but he waits to hear what Rigel singles out as the cherry on a mass-murder sundae. Rigel swallows, and he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flat silver disc, engraved with the Capitol eagle on one side and the district logo on the other. It's a Peacekeeper's token, given out halfway through the first twenty to commemorate ten years of loyal service; Brutus recognizes it because he's handed them to proud soldiers before, when it was his turn to take part in the ceremony.

"We did this," Rigel says finally. "The Capitol gave the orders, but Two flew the hovercrafts. We dropped the bombs. I could tell myself it was only Capitol-born Peacekeepers who did it but they're too soft, they don't have the training or the stomach for it. You don't send people pressed into the service over gambling debts to strafe an entire district. You send people who made their first kill at fourteen and never stopped." Rigel grips the ceremonial coin tight, knuckles whitening, and exhales hard through his nose. "We did this, and it's not the only unforgivable thing we've done."

Brutus says nothing. Ain't nothing to say, and he's not one to fill an awkward silence because he fears the sound of it. Marius concentrates on his piloting, taking them up and out of Twelve at last, clearing the line of pine trees oddly unfelled by the fires and flying out across the open wilderness. Rigel turns the disc over and over in his hands, and when he looks up his eyes have the same empty exhaustion that Brutus saw in the mirror every time he lost a tribute.

Marius flies them back to Eight, but he doesn't head straight for the base. Instead, secure in their hovercraft's stealth capabilities, he takes them on a tour of the main production cities. There Brutus gets the second part of the tour, letting him take a good, long look at the devastation. Factories, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals — there are no military targets in District 8, no barracks or fuel deposits or anything else of strategic interest, yet there's hardly an urban centre without at least one pile of smouldering rubble and scorch-marked streets. The whole time Brutus never spies a single civilian, only the occasional lines of white uniforms patrolling the ruins.

"Peacekeepers keep the peace," Rigel says, quiet and tired. He's not looking out the window but Brutus gets the feeling it's because he doesn't have to. "I've captured runaways trying to cross the district boundaries and brought them in to be turned into Avoxes, and I've shot the ones who refused to comply. I've stood guard over interrogation sessions where it was clear they didn't know anything, but the inquisitor was bored that day. I've even run a few myself — though they took me off that assignment pretty quick because I didn't have the knack for it. The prisoners can sense it when their torturer's heart isn't in it, you see."

Still Brutus says nothing, but he can't help frowning. He's not a Peacekeeper but he is a Victor, and since he could walk he knew that the people of Two obeyed the Capitol and in return for their loyalty the Capitol granted them safety and prosperity. As a Victor he would never blame the sword for slicing through the belly of an unsuspecting tribute, not when it couldn't choose the arm who wielded it. Just the same, a quarrier, a Victor, a Peacekeeper, all of them had their roles to play, and no one was more important or blameworthy than any other.

Maybe sensing Brutus' thoughts — maybe having had them himself, in the past — Rigel glances at him with a small, wry smile. "Don't try to tell me I had no choice. There's always a choice, and all of us make it. You learn to compartmentalize, do the job no matter what it takes because you have orders and without order the country falls to chaos. Or maybe you swallow it up and let it eat you up inside until one day you snap and refuse a command and shoot your CO and end up in front of a firing squad made up of your own men. Or you push it down and you wipe it away and you count each day until your twenty is up and you can go live a quiet life somewhere and never think about it again. Or you embrace it, you believe every word about traitors and the need for order, and when you whip a child in Eleven for stealing an apple because the overseer worked them for ten hours straight without breaks you tell yourself they broke the law. I've seen all of it, worked with all those people."

"Or?" Brutus asks finally, feeling the weight of one last option in the following silence.

Rigel spreads his hands, a gesture of helplessness, or perhaps inevitability. "Or you wait. You do your job, you keep your head down, and you listen for any sign that things might change. Marius and I, we saw our chance and we took it, and that was you. This double-rebellion thing might be a mess, but I'm happy for my chance to fight."

A low headache pounds behind Brutus' eyes, but he can't tear himself away from the devastation until Marius pulls the hovercraft up and the view disappears from Brutus' window. "That's a lot to think about," he says finally. A copout, maybe, but also not a lie.

"I'm sure it is," Rigel says, and not for the first time Brutus appreciates his straightforward honesty. "Look, I don't think anyone is expecting you to strap on a gun and storm the mansion, but you're here, and this is where we are. My team, our mission is to find the Victors held in Capitol custody and get them out, bring them somewhere safe. If you want something to do, we'd be glad to have you along with us."

That alone is treason, of course. Then again, so is believing that anyone in custody is there for anything but their own protection, or that they don't deserve exactly what they're getting. Brutus reaches deep inside himself, digs around for the certainty that has carried him through his life and the deaths of so many children — looks for the well of relief he'd felt waking up and hearing that the Capitol had Enobaria, not the Arena — and comes up with nothing but dust in his fingertips.

He thinks of standing on the train to the Capitol after the Reaping, staring at himself in the mirror and letting all that rage and fear well up and spill over. Thinks of the Capitol — the President — looking at the Victors, the people who gave their lives and more for their people and their country, and deciding that they deserved to die, deserved to have that one sacred promise of safety and rest revoked. Brutus thinks of cracking the mirror with his fists and the blood dribbling over his knuckles and those three words whirling around his mind like pellets in a winter storm, stinging the insides of his mind and turning his thoughts to ice.

This is wrong.

The Victors in Capitol custody are not there for their protection. If Enobaria disappeared after they pulled her from the Arena, it's not because they're trying to keep her safe. It's because — after all those years of playing the game, of learning how to chew with razors in her mouth, after two Arenas and two death sentences and years of trying to shake the madness — Enobaria, like all the others, is no longer someone worth protecting.

For years, every time Brutus found himself slipping, every time he sat by a casket on the train home or stared at a pile of Centre files and found himself wondering which one he'd condemn instead of save, Brutus brought him back to reality with cold, simple logic. If he couldn't ground himself in patriotism and certainty of purpose, on those nights when his youthful fervour felt far away and misty, Brutus reminded himself that he did not make the world, he lived in it. This was reality, and in reality he only ever had one choice: this, or nothing.

Now, for the first time, and for better or worse, that choice had opened up into something greater.

Brutus glances at Rigel, who has turned to look out the window rather than watch Brutus and categorize his micro-expressions, an appreciated courtesy. "All right," Brutus says. "I'll help you get them out."

Rigel nods, military precise, betraying nothing in his expression. If this was a test and he was hoping that his childhood hero didn't yield to temptation or weakness and stayed the course, he doesn't show it. "And if, after that, you've done all you're comfortable with and you don't want any more part of it, that can be it. I'll convince them to let you stay in the safehouse with the others until it's all over."

No part of that sounds appealing, but really, it's not that much different from prowling his hospital room in the rebel base here. "Yeah," Brutus says. "Count me in."


AUTHOR'S NOTE: Comments are amazing, I love all the comments, please keep 'em coming, but please - do not comment to complain about the time between updates. I'm writing this fic and posting it at the same time, and a monthly update schedule allows me to post consistently without worrying about falling behind. Complaining that you have to wait a month is very discouraging and demotivating for me. I appreciate your patience and understanding :)