Chapter 25: I Want the Good Times Back
I want the good times back!
I want those grand ol' days!
I want the twisted nights
The sick delights
The wild soireés!
-The Little Mermaid
The house seemed quiet as the Peacekeepers ushered us into the main reception room, explaining that all personal possessions from the Presidential Mansion had been packed up and moved here. There were boxes upon boxes; clothing racks of gowns I couldn't even remember anyone wearing.
And I felt no warmth. Not like it had been when I first moved in, not when I just wanted to be with my family across the Circle. When would it be home? When we made love in the bed where we once slept silently? When we cleared out the living room of this mausoleum?
That's what it was. Nothing felt personal, nothing at all. Rows and rows upon dresses that would never have a reason to be worn again. Even if we pulled out the old plate settings, gathered everyone left from the old parties, would it ever been as sinfully delicious?
Darren was already shifting through one section of the boxes, the ones labeled with his parent's names. The new regime must have sold off that house to the highest bidder. This was all we had left. A new house with cold memories, and boxes of things that felt like artifacts from an old time.
"December! Come look at this!" He pulled a small frame from one of his mother's crates, and was smiling. It was an old picture, we were each six, I remembered. It was the first time our parents made us perform together, not long after I started music lessons. It had been a family night, for Mrs. Broderson's birthday, and May and I had begged Mama to let us re-wear our very first party dresses from only a few weeks before. The soft pink, the white lash and the dark green sash. It was just Darren and I, in the middle of the performance and we both looked happy, color in our cheeks. And his jacket matched my sash.
A smile to match his warmed onto my lips. "It made me so mad when you showed up in green like that."
"You wanted to pick the song but I wouldn't let you because it was my mother's birthday."
"The one time I let you get your way."
"I think there have been a few others." He tugged me suddenly and I collapsed into his lap. Kisses attacked my neck and I couldn't help but laugh. "Can we do it? Can we be happy here?" Between the kisses, somehow the boxes began to look happy. We had our memories, didn't we? The happy ones too, they couldn't take those away. Just like Papa had said that last day in the Rose Garden. Remember when everything was good, the simple moments, like when we all laughed at the breakfast table, when we were simple and at peace. Without those moments, the pain you feel wouldn't exist.
And Thresh. Be happy with him. He'll give you what I can't now.
"We decided in 12 that we were going to be happy. Being here, in this house. I don't see why in the end it can't make it easier." Darren just smiled, starting going through the boxes again. He found another frame, and I saw mama on her wedding day, Mrs. Broderson standing beside her and smiling. The official diamonds were around her throat, the first day she was ever allowed to wear them. The day she became the President's wife.
Those diamonds. Papa, and mama. And Cory… Cory should have grown up long enough to hang them on his wife's neck. I sprung to my feet, rushing to one of the boxes labeled as Maribelle Snow's jewelry. I had to touch them; I had to feel the power of generations that shared an office.
"They aren't here. Damn it! The diamonds aren't here!" I slammed the box lid shut. I didn't need to dig through the others to know. Mother's jewelry box was like our own to May and I. We spent years watching her select pieces from it and I knew exactly where the diamonds belonged.
"You left them here? Those diamonds are generations of Presidents and their wives…if it necklace is lost…" He came up to me, wrapping arms around my waist from the back but I shoved him away.
"They are lost Broderson! Get everything else upstairs and start putting it away. I can't stand that it isn't. I'll take care of this." Darren started talking fast but I didn't distinguish a single word as I rushed from the main reception room and back into the foyer.
"Take me to Plutarch Havensbee. Right now." The Peacekeepers had fallen slack in the new regime, their uniforms not perfectly pressed as they scrambled up from the stair's bottom step. Sitting on guard duty, pathetic.
"I don't believe Mr. Havensbee…"
"I will see him now!" I was seething, everything focused on getting out of that house, and I didn't see the tallest one lunge at me before he caught my hair. It only took a moment for a second one pinned my arms.
"Let her go boys, she's just a little girl." Their grasp dropped immediately and I looked around to see their Captain had come back into the foyer from his scan of the house. "Put a call into Havensbee. I bet he would find her spoiled rotten wails amusing this time around. Outside, now." They disappeared in a moment and Darren enveloped me in his arms the moment they were gone. "Peacekeepers, what a name for this force. There is nothing the same here anymore, December Snow, and you have better start learning how to play with the new rules. These are brute lads desperate to cause a bit of trouble, liking the power of wearing a uniform after living in the Districts or the slums of the Outskirts. They won't care about your pretty face."
I recognized him from a memory I constantly tried to block. "You were the one who carried me, weren't you? To my parents after the bombs went off. You saved me that day, I wouldn't have moved from that spot if not for you."
"You were my watch back then, and you are once again. Just for different reasons." There was nothing in his voice, nothing at all. Maybe he wished he had left me to the shattered glass. The watch he wore was different from the ones before, it was like the ones that the rebel guards had used to communicate. He looked down at it briefly as it beeped. "Come on, let's get you to Havensbee. He has accepted your presence."
They made Darren stay at the house, and I silently rejoiced. I wanted the boxes dealt with at least a bit. Some dent to make it look a tad better. The walk across the Circle was longer than I remembered, but the stairs up to the Presidential Mansion shorter. They might have led me through the twisting hallways, but I could have navigated myself to Mr. Broderson's office in a moment.
"Well, Snow's little rose has grown up a bit since the Capitol last saw you in person." No, I wouldn't look at the chair he gestured towards. I wouldn't take it. Not like Darren who used to sprawl in it while he talked to his father.
"Losing your family forces that on some of us." I didn't bother to speak warmly, knowing it wouldn't do me any good.
"Yes, of course. Now, I was told your business with me was urgent." Already I had lost his attention to the papers on Mr. Broderson's desk. But he still let me come, he wanted me to grovel.
So, I took the seat. Just the edge, and made sure everything my grandmother taught me wasn't forgotten. She was right, there would be a moment where I had to get my power back. "I was under the impression leaving the Capitol that my wealth inheritance was to be left in tact due to the fact that all money you found in our family vaults did belong to the Snow and Broderson family lines and not the country."
"Of course, and many others families kept their fortunes as well. I have kept by my order that the money needed for the districts comes from Capitol budget. Did you know that your mother's party budget for every six months could feed two Districts for a year?" I hadn't. I still didn't care. My patience was slim, just as papas.
"Where are my mother's diamonds?" My question surprised him momentarily, his eyes darting up from the papers just long enough to give him away.
"I was under the impression that all your family's personal belongings were moved to you and your husband's home."
"Where are the diamonds, Plutarch? I won't play games. I want my mothers diamonds." I couldn't let them know anything about the jewels, anything at all. It was a family secret, the ashes were too valuable. Every President and his wife, since before the Dark Days. Every single one's remains incased in hardened ashes. What was it that everyone had laughed at Effie for years ago? That if you pressed on coal, it turned to diamonds? If only they knew that little secret technology…
"I have no knowledge of the whereabouts of these diamonds that you speak of." Something crawled over his lips, tightness from worry or confusion, I couldn't decipher. Coin…would Rosa have been told as a young girl? I was locked away, and so was papa. She could have taken them and now they were lost. "If that is all you came for, Mrs. Broderson…"
"It's Miss. Snow. I am filing for a divorce." I didn't know why I decided to lie, but it finally made Plutarch met my eyes. If only I had known earlier it was my martial status he found interest in.
"You can try the courts after you leave my office, Mrs. Broderson, but they won't do anything. You see, I haven't decided yet if you are more of a threat married or not." He thought I already tried the courts, that I knew.
"A threat? How in the world am I a threat?" Plutarch waved for one of his attendants to shut the office door and leave the room as he leaned over the desk.
"I don't trust you, I never have. You were a problem as a child, and now you are practically grown and whether or not I wish it was not true, growth comes hand in hand with brains."
"Plutarch, are you truly saying that I am too smart for you?" I couldn't help but laugh, yet he quickly hushed me.
"First, it's Mr. Havensbee and I don't like your knack for forgetting that. Second, I think you like to cause trouble and don't know what is good for your own neck." I pursued my lips; he once would have been fooled by it. He once would have at least acted to fawn over my every word. "I don't care what that blasted Haymitch Abernathy thinks of you, but if it were up to me I would have had you at least locked up with your husband after the war."
"Then, why did you release him?"
"I want him in the arena. You two will be the first rallying points for anyone trying to bring back the old ways and it would be convenient to have you dead." He could have had Darren dead; he could have left him there with no hope. But no, he wanted to kill us on his terms. We didn't even have the right to the most shameful form of death.
"People won't rally around me. Thanks to your exile of me to Twelve, I've been deemed crazy, even tainted."
"The Preservers will contact you eventually. You're still Snow blood." For a second, I thought to tell him. Tell him we were always wrong about my blood, but maybe it was the best thing papa ever gave me. A lie, a lie that still strikes fear into the hearts of the most powerful, no matter how the world had changed.
"If they are such a threat to you, get rid of them. Bomb them, smoke them out, get rid of them. Surely, you have spies enough to know where they hide if you could have them stationed around our house in 12."
"If I kill a group for their beliefs, I'd be no better than your father."
"You already aren't. You are the one still holding the Games. What you promised to end.
"Even when you were laying in the sun with your little District toy, did you ever truly think they could end them? Did you ever truly think they would be in power?"
"Paylor may be President but she doesn't know this city like you and I, does she? Nothing about this city is for District blood."
I knew what he was implying, that he really did call all the shots, I didn't doubt it and I never had. Somehow, the simple proof was enough for me to finally smile. "No, not one bit."
He hit a button, and the guards came back in. "Take her home." Their hands were rough, but I didn't struggle, there was no reason once I heard Plutarch's last comment before the door shut behind me. "Oh, and Mrs. Broderson, the diamonds were found in Alma Coin's belongings upon her death. As a Snow family heirloom, I believe they were collected by your uncle Ansgar."
Somehow, I must have done something right. Maybe, once the slaughter was over, the Hunger Games would end. But, Plutarch was right. The true games of Panem never would.