CH 21: Catching Fire
Gabriel Dean stood and paced agitatedly around the main control room. Over the course of the Games the number of monitors required to broadcast the different areas of the arena had slowly blackened as tributes died and the coverage area shrank. Now, there was only the main screen operating as all cameras focused only on two.
He ran a hand through his stringy and oily hair and pondered the last words he and President Hoyt had exchanged, right after Jane and Maura had reunited with Haymitch. Rumblings of discontent had been simmering throughout the Capitol and no doubt the districts as well. Hoyt had his Jabberjays nested throughout Panem: citizens that looked like regular Capitol folk, Peacekeepers and administrators out in the districts. Their reports had grown alarming. The bulls had been lanced and barbed but instead of crying for the kill, murmurs of mercy had been building.
Everyone likes an underdog, Dean offered.
Hoyt's face hadn't budged from its frozen look of vile disdain. I don't. Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it's contained.
So…
So, contain it! Hoyt snarled.
He had not contained it. He had given them an underdog story fit to immortalize in song and story. The spark had grown, taken to the arena like a half-starved ember bathed with fuel and oxygen. It was a conflagration now.
Dean watched as Maura plunged the dagger into Casey's neck and pulled it free. Watched as she held the red-coated steel blade in her hands and unknowingly spread her first kill's blood across her face. He brought his hand to his mouth and shook his head as Jane carried her to the lake, washed her clean and held her as she cried.
"Sir," one of his assistants looked at him with terrified confusion plastered across his face. "You have to see this."
One by one the blank monitors were switched on. The assistant's hands flashed across his controls and each screen tapped into a camera around the Capitol. Dean watched as the broadcasts displayed the same phenomenon. If it weren't for the different buildings and varied landmarks one could think it was the same picture over and over on the dozen or so monitors. But, it wasn't. On each screen there was only a massive throng of humanity: the Capitol's citizens having spilled into the streets. His eyes flashed to the main monitor and listened as Jane and Maura each took a dagger in their hand and settled to the ground.
With the flip of a switch the assistant activated the sound from the cameras. The chants drowned out the almost hushed whispers of the last two tributes on the main feed. Let them live! Let them live! Let them live!
One of the cameras zoomed in on the District 8 balcony and Dean watched as Korsak, Cinna, Portia, and Effie came into focus. Korsak brought three fingers to his lips and then held them out above the crowd that had gathered and was looking up at him.
Dean's eyes widened as the giant screen in the City Center broadcast the image to the entire capitol. Slowly, across every screen in his control room the Capitol's citizens brought three fingers to their lips and held them up in reply.
"My God," Dean muttered, "We'll make them martyrs."
Korsak stood on the balcony and watched the ocean of bodies swell beneath him. They rolled and undulated as their numbers grew. The colors of their vibrant Capitol attire mixed and swirled as they packed closer together. He was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that they weren't just congregating in the streets, his face was being televised on the gargantuan screen in the City Center and they were all looking at him. On smaller screens around the circle the scene from the arena continued to play out.
"They wouldn't…" Cinna whispered as Jane lowered Maura to the ground.
Korsak pursed his lips as tears began to stain his face and drip to his shirt until it looked as if rain had fallen on his breast. "They would."
He brought three fingers to his lips and raised his hand over the crowd. Cinna followed suit, and after him Portia and Effie as well. The din of the crowd quieted until an eerie hush fell across the city. One by one at first and then in massive waves, the citizens brought their fingers to their lips and mimicked the sign of respect that Haymitch had introduced them to in the arena. Not a single hand lowered as their eyes all turned to the arena broadcast, the stark silence filled by Jane's strangled count: "One…two…thr…"
The two women had long since grown weary of crying. The time had come and gone when tears just seemed futile. Sobbing had been followed by anger and then more tears and then anger again and now only a deep and empty sadness. They took comfort in each other's arms, holding one another, limbs tangled and cheeks pressed closely together as they watched.
Constance Isles wrapped her hand in the tail end of Angela's hair and closed her eyes as Jane and Maura each took a dagger in their hand. "Maura…" she whispered, "Darling…I love you."
Angela's hand fell from where it had been desperately clutching Constance's shoulder; she took the woman's hand in a vice-like grip and watched as her daughter centered the dagger in her lover's hand over her heart. Her face stilled and hatred filled her eyes as she watched, "He's taken everything from me."
Maura's father sat with his back to the television. He played through his mind every skinned knee he'd rinsed, every cut he'd bandaged, and every pinched finger he'd kissed when Maura was a child. He wouldn't see her bleed this way. They couldn't make him watch.
Patrick Doyle settled a hand on his shoulder and gave a light squeeze. Everyone knew now, that he was Maura's birth father. Angela Rizzoli, the Isles', as the Games had played on they had welcomed him. He suffered, just as they did. Even the citizens of District 8, that had before always passed him in silent trepidation gave him sympathetic looks and nods on the street. Anonymous women left food on his doorstep. As Jane began to count, his fingers tightened until they balled into fists, "Hoyt," he growled between gritted teeth, "I'll make him pay for this."
"One…two…thr…" Angela and Constance both gasped.
Across Panem the districts came to a halt. No sound emerged from the mines in District 12, no coal smoke puffed out from the mouth of the tunnels. Soot covered men and gaunt women and children stood bleary eyed in their town square and watched the screen the Peacekeepers had erected for the Reaping and left standing for the Games.
Mayor Undersee, the loss of his own daughter, Madge, earlier in the Games still fresh and raw in his chest threaded through the crowd to the front and watched as Haymitch pulled the rope and loosed the Tracker Jackers on himself. Haymitch had never been particularly loved in the district; he was almost a recluse and definitely a drunk. But, he was one of them; he was their victor. Mayor Undersee often wondered what kind of man Haymitch would have matured into if he had not been reaped, won, and lost everyone he had ever loved because of it. As he watched Haymitch's act of selflessness, he thought he saw a glimpse of who that man might have been.
He brought three fingers to his lips and held them aloft as the men and women behind him offered the same final goodbye.
Hundreds of miles away the fields of District 11 were vacant. Late fall crops were unharvested, plows, sickles, and scythes unattended in winter fields that waited to be planted.
Barry Frost's cousin, Rue, wove lithely through the congregated people. She whistled her signature tune and the bodies in front of her parted as she made her way to the stage in front of their Justice Building. She climbed aloft and looked out at her brethren. Over her shoulder she glanced up at the screen as the tributes from District 8 kissed one last time and refused to part. Rue kissed her fingers and held them out; as the gesture was mimicked she began to sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see…"
Throughout the districts, unplanned and uncoordinated the same scene unfolded. In District 3, the people emerged from the electronics factories and held three fingers to the sky, in District 5 the same, in District 6 mechanical operations ceased as the citizens remembered the part Giovanni had played. Districts 7, 9 and 10 were eerily similar, no sounds of felled timber reverberated through 7, the granaries of 9 were abandoned, and in 10 unfed cattle lowed at their troughs.
President Hoyt stood in front of a wall of screens in his own private monitoring room. He clutched a fistful of dried lavender in his hand until powdery specks of purple crumbled through the cracks of his fingers. He had demanded his Head Gamemaker contain the spark. Instead, the dull ember of day one had raged into a sweeping holocaust. Row after row of bodies with three fingers raised towards crystal blue skies, in the Capitol, in the Districts…those fingers were flames. Panem was burning before his eyes.
Guiding Maura to the ground, Jane pushed her to lie down. The ground was hard and uncomfortable, but worst of all, the scent of blood and death hung low and tortured her senses. Maura took a deep breath through her mouth to avoid the smell only to have an acrid taste roll across her tongue. Jane straddled her and Maura's eyes fluttered as the tip of Jane's blade easily pricked through her threadbare clothing to the skin beneath. Maura let her hand with the dagger she tremblingly clutched be maneuvered over Jane's heart.
Her resolve began to wane; she felt her grip on the dagger's handle loosen, but Jane leaned forward, the pressure of her chest against the steel tip forcing Maura to steady herself. "I love you. Forever," Jane whispered, her lips closing over Maura's one last time.
The kiss was a comfort Maura didn't know possible given the circumstances. It gave her back her resolve. She knew she couldn't open her eyes the next day and the next and the next for however many years she would live knowing that she wouldn't be waking up next to Jane, that her lips would never feel that warmth or taste that subtle sweetness again.
"Forever," Maura whispered back, her fingers closing even tighter around the blade as she eased it forward.
Gabriel Dean could feel the panic taking over as he watched. His heart beat uncontrollably and he'd dispensed with even attempting to wipe the profuse sweat that pooled and dripped from his brow. Disaster. This is a disaster. The seconds ticked by, each one he was sure would end what he hoped was a farce, a ploy. They wouldn't…would they? But, as he considered in that flash of seconds the entirety of the Games he had witnessed, he knew it was no trick, they would kill themselves. There was no salvation. End Game. He had lost.
The rest of the Gamemakers had filled the room and his assistants were now all staring at him, red-faced, sweating, and distressed. "Sir…" One of them croaked. "Sir!" He turned to regard the young woman, Alyth, he thought her name was; it was her second Games in the control room. "Sir!" She said again, "There…there will be no victor."
No victor. It couldn't be. His eyes roamed the screens before him, the carefully kept order of the Capitol on the verge of collapse as the numbers of the crowd grew, all of them with three fingers raised.
"On the count of three, as hard as you can, ok?" Jane asked, moisture welled up in her eyes but she clenched her jaw and pressed the tip of her blade more forcefully into Maura's skin. "One…two…thr…"
"STOP!" Dean yelled into a broadcast microphone as he slammed his hand to a button on the main console and ignited the remaining mines behind Jane and Maura.
The shockwave tore them apart flinging Jane several feet away and slamming her hard to the ground. Her hand trembled as it closed around the dagger embedded an inch in her chest. Her grip on the handle loosened and fell away as she struggled to sit up but the proximity of the blast had left her disoriented with her ears ringing and nearly deaf.
Dean panted, his ragged breaths, the only sound in the stunned silence of the control room. There was no other way. Hoyt had been right: a spark is fine as long as it is contained. He could let them be martyrs or make them heroes. As he watched the screen he straightened up and squared his shoulders. Heroes could be dealt with, martyrs, he realized, would more than likely burn Panem to the ground. "Let them live," he said as he turned without a look towards anyone in the room and left.
A force seemed to wrap around her body and weightlessness overcame her. Jane could see the ground, her head lolled back and the shimmering silver underbelly of a hovercraft filled her view. The last thing she saw was Maura floating upwards towards the craft with her as Claudius Templesmith's confused voice crackled across the arena, "Ladies…and…and gentlemen. Your…victors in the 75th Hunger Games. Jane Rizzoli…and…Maura Isles. District 8."
"Maura…" Jane mumbled as she blacked out.
A wave of shock and awe ripped through the stunned silence of the crowd. Their hands began to fall from the air back to their sides and confused chatter swept through them, hushed whispers at first but growing until Claudius Templesmith's announcement elicited a ground-shaking cheer that trumpeted through the Capitol.
Korsak stood on the balcony, mouth agape at the scene unfolding on the screen and the raucous uproar from the ground below. He couldn't believe it, but the announcement had to be true. Victors. Plural. Both of them.
"I don't…it can't be! This has never happened before! It's patently against the rules!" Effie wrapped her hands around the upper rail of the balcony and looked out at the sea of people. "Is it true!? Is it really true!?" She covered her mouth and began to laugh, soon recovering her composure she clasped her hands together and smiled. "Two victors! It's wonderful!"
Cinna and Portia stood dumbfounded. "Vince," Cinna said softly placing his hand on the overwhelmed mentor's shoulder, "How is it possible? Hoyt? Would he allow them both to be victors?"
Hoyt. "Never," Korsak shook his head. "Only the Head Gamemaker would be able to intervene like that…" Only the Head Gamemaker…which means…Hoyt… "I have to go!"
A new terror beset Korsak as he streaked for the suite elevator. President Charles Hoyt didn't tolerate defiance. Jane and Maura's actions had given Gabriel Dean virtually no other choice. The vengeance Hoyt would seek to perpetrate on all would likely be severe. He had brutalized Jane once; Korsak wouldn't allow it to happen again. And Maura, after everything they had been through, Hoyt was more likely to go after her in order to torture Jane. Horrifying thoughts swept through his head as he pounded on the buttons of the elevator.
The hovercraft would bring them to the medical wing of the Training Center; he would be there this time. Korsak flexed his fingers and stared at his palms, "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch. I swear to God, if you touch them. I'll kill you."
Constance and Angela closed their eyes but the unexpected explosion shook them both. They gasped. Angela covered her mouth to stifle the cry and stood as the dust on the screen settled. The camera panned from Maura, curled into a ball with her hands pressed tightly over her ears as she shook, to Jane, several feet away, writhing in pain as she pulled the dagger from the shallow wound in her chest.
"Janie!" Angela shrieked, falling to her knees in front of the television, her fingers raking through the thin layer of dust on the glass. "What's happening!?"
Constance, her eyes focused on the tv, clawed the air with one hand until her husband rushed into her arms, her legs nearly giving out as she sank into his embrace. "They're alive. They're both alive," she whispered in shock. "Look!"
The screen only showed the hovercraft removing them for a second before the camera switched to an aerial of the ground growing distant. Claudius Templesmith's shaky voice made the announcement.
They all turned to look at Head Peacekeeper Patrick Doyle, who stood with the same shocked look on his face as he stared at the now blank screen.
"It's true, right?" Constance asked, her voice quivering as she walked towards him. "He couldn't say it if it weren't true."
"No," Doyle nodded. "No, he couldn't say it if it weren't true. The repercussions could be too great…riots, unrest…" Suddenly, at the mention of unrest, Doyle remembered he didn't have the luxury of being a spectator. He was the Head Peacekeeper for District 8. With Angela and the Isles' on his heels he bolted for the Justice Building.
Those who had stayed inside to watch spilled out as they passed. When they arrived at the central viewing location outside the Justice Building the crowd of District 8 was silent until they glimpsed Angela and Constance and began to cheer.
The lower Peacekeepers perked up at the sight of Doyle, converging on him with a slew of questions. Was it true? How was it possible? Should they disperse the crowd? "Let them be," Doyle ordered.
Friends and acquaintances surrounded Angela and Constance. All the fear and sadness from Constance's face had disappeared, she smiled and accepted the hugs and outstretched hands with gratitude. Her daughter was alive. Angela, however, knew that there was a price to victory. She pushed away from the encroaching masses until she found her way to the steps of the Justice building and climbed until she could rest her hands against the giant entrance door.
"Angela!"
She turned when she heard the familiar voice and saw Carla Tallucci dragging an almost bewildered Patrick Doyle by the arm. "Angela." Carla grabbed her friend by the forearm and pulled her close, her face stern and serious. "You have to tell him. You have to tell him what happened before. What could happen again. He's the only one of us that could possibly do anything."
"Tell me what?" Doyle's brow furrowed and his lips became a thin and concerned line. "Angela…"
"Hoyt…" Angela choked out on a whisper. "He…he doesn't just let them win. He hurts them afterwards. He hurt Jane before." She closed her eyes as the tears streaked down her face. Jane had never even told her what happened. When the brooding, the anxiety, and the nightmares that woke her daughter screaming in the night became too much to bear she had gone to Korsak and demanded to know whatever it was that was being withheld from her. He had told her why Jane had the scars on her palms, what he had seen in that hospital room, and what Hoyt did to him and the other victors. "He violated her after the Games." Constance had joined them now and her smile had withered as she listened to Angela. "He'll do it again…and to Maura too."
Red streaks ignited Doyle's skin and crept out from under the white neck of his Peacekeeper's uniform. His jaw clenched so tightly the muscles at the joint trembled as the veins on his face bulged. Joining Angela and Constance's hands he turned silently and began to walk away.
"Patrick?" Constance called after him. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. "Where are you going?"
He smoothed the front of his uniform and squared his shoulders as his hand fell to the weapon on his hip, "The Capitol."
Gabriel Dean locked himself in the bathroom off the main control room. Cold water filled his cupped hands and he splashed the refreshing liquid repeatedly across his face. When he looked into the mirror he almost didn't recognize himself. Hair hung limp and dripping, long, uncut sections stuck to his face as rivulets trickled down his skin and dripped from his jaw. Dark circles he didn't recall having were frighteningly prominent under his eyes. The eyes themselves were dull and lifeless. His palms left sweat stains on the marble counter as he lifted them and stared at his hands. The 75th Games, the arena, he had planned and created it all. The very fingers he wiggled in front of himself had operated the controls, fulfilled destinies, and ensured death. In the end, they had also done what no one would have considered an option: they had stopped the Games and given the people two victors.
A soft knock on the door pulled him from his reflection. "Sir…" the voice sounded uncertain and scared. "Sir…President Hoyt has summoned you to his office."
Dean nodded, slicked back his hair, and adjusted his suit. "Whatever happens," he told himself as he walked to the door, "you gave them a Games that will never be forgotten."
By the time he reached the President's mansion from central command at the Training Center he ascertained the hovercraft should just about be arriving at the medical wing with Jane and Maura. He took one last look skyward in hopes of seeing the glint of the sun off a silver hull but the air space above was still and silent.
Two members of Hoyt's personal guard met him and escorted him through the vast labyrinth of the palatial estate until they came to a halt outside of the familiar double oaken doors that led into the President's main office.
Hoyt was sipping a deep amber brandy when he entered. His eyes glanced towards Dean and then back to his drink. Swirl. Sniff. Sip. "Am I dreaming, Gabriel? Or, did I just see what I think I saw?"
Silence seemed a fit confirmation but Hoyt turned and his glassy eyes burrowed deep into Dean until they forcefully pulled an answer free. "It is as it appeared."
"Did you enjoy the power, Gabriel?"
Dean tried to mask the emotions on his face, but shifted nervously from foot to foot. "I enjoy serving the Capitol."
"Enjoyed," Hoyt corrected. "And tell me, how this exactly, serves me?"
"It serves the Capitol, sir," Dean answered defiantly.
"I AM THE CAPITOL!" Hoyt bellowed, slamming his glass to the corner of the bar, shattering it and squeezing the fractured shards in his palm until blood dripped from his grasp and mingled with the pooling amber liquid on the floor.
"Sometimes things catch fire…and burn," Dean continued. "Sometimes a spark is ignited and it can't be contained. In that moment, you have to realize that the only way to quell the flame is to remove the fuel and let it burn itself out. Martyrdom is fuel. Their deaths would have ensured a firestorm, consumed us all. You saw the screens. Their deaths would have been the oxygen that fanned the flames of rebellion across Panem."
Hoyt poured himself another glass of brandy and filled a second tumbler as well. "And, dear Gabriel, pray tell…what do you think their living will do?"
He handed his Head Gamemaker the poured drink and raised his own and tapped the lips of the glasses together. Dean watched bright red swirls of crimson wind around the glass in Hoyt's hand, linger at the bottom, and then fall to the carpet.
"To what shall we toast?" Hoyt sneered.
"To catching fire…and putting it out," Dean responded as he took a sip. The warm liquid burned with remarkable pain down his throat and settled like a hot coal in his gut. He watched as Hoyt tipped his glass and the liquid fell in a sustained stream until every last drop had splattered to the floor. The glass fell from Dean's hand as a violent spasm wrenched away control of his muscles and sent him crashing to his knees. An excruciating wave of paralysis rolled through his body as Dean's mouth fell open in a futile attempt to breathe.
"To catching fire and putting it out," Hoyt repeated. "Indeed."