syzygy
/'sizijē/. noun. derived from greek 'suzugos' meaning 'yoked' or 'paired'.
def: (astronomy) the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system, such as the sun, moon, and earth during an eclipse.
def: (general) a set of connected or corresponding things.
The end of the twenty-fourth Hunger Games was unprecedented.
Never before had such a concrete act of dissention taken place on a country-wide stage, let alone under the sanction of one of Panem's most trusted officials. Though both Valentin Verduin and Maryse Delacroix perished as a result of their unsanctimonious scheming, the ripples of unrest brought forth by their mutiny reverberated throughout Panem on a scale hitherto undreamt of. Rioting in the streets, frequent conflicts between peacekeepers and the civilian populace, demonstrations of protest formed in the underground and taken to the steps of the Districts' justice buildings… vandalism, conspiracy, widespread assaults and messages of slander… for the first few months after the Games' end, it was as if Panem had returned to the state it was in during the First Uprising. And, as such, rumors began to spread that the country was on the heels of a second.
But, naturally, such rumors were falsehoods. Lies spread by the disfavored and disloyal, meant to curry favor for rebel fringe movements. Or, at least, that was what the Capitol claimed - and they had proof enough to back their statements, as far as the majority of the populace was concerned. After all, Valentin Verduin was a rebel. It was a rebel's hand that had denied the Districts a victor. It was the work of rebels that had left Ten a cesspool of criminal activity, plagued by political assassinations and unsolved disappearances for years on end. It was a rebel's outspokenness that left Seven's streets overrun by propaganda and underground paramilitary groups, far more willing to fight than make conversation.
(It was rebellion itself that bred the tradition of tributes. Lest anyone forget what forces were truly responsible for the Dark Days, and all that came after.)
The situation required a remedy; a balm that would ease the venom and anger stirred by Verduin's death Games. And so, ten months after the conclusion of the twenty-fourth, Coriolanus Snow appeared before the country, armed with nothing more than his charisma, martyrdom… and an embossed envelope.
Perhaps the peace had been disrupted by Verduin's rebellion. But peace could be restored, so long as adequate measures were taken.
(The finalists of the twenty-fourth died at the hands of a rebel, but two of them had been rebels themselves. The third was a different case, but even she had not escaped the social scrutiny that had also afflicted her fellow tributes, each of them marked as undesirable, undeserving, unwanted by their own people. Isabelle Harmony, Merrick Aldaine, and Sephtis Adeyemi were not meant to win the Hunger Games, and were not meant to return home, where their survival would not cause a stir so much as it would widespread misery and upheaval.)
(Panem was better for their deaths. The people might not realize it… might not understand the truth inherent in those words… but nonetheless the statement is one of complete fact. Whether they knew it or not, Districts Two, Six and Ten had narrowly escaped three rather unfortunate futures… futures that would have upended their already precarious stability.)
third body
isabelle harmony: the sun.
When the dust cleared and the rain began to pick up speed until it was hammering the earth beyond the clinic door, Isabelle Harmony opened her eyes to the sight of two mangled corpses.
She could put a name to both of them: Cecilia Perdanez, her fellow Career, and Padma Youssef, the Capitol's favorite, and Isabelle's own greatest threat. Both of them were predicted to make it far, to ascend through the ranks of the dead and dying and claim their spots in the endgame for the Twenty-Fourth, just as Isabelle was herself. And yet here they are; hollowed-out husks splayed across wooden floorboards, undeniably dead. One with a split in the flesh of her sternum, the other missing a head.
Isabelle wonders if it's wrong that she does not mourn their losses, wonders if it's bad that she's not perturbed by the sight of their bodies, or the feeling of a bloody knife clasped within her own hand. Here she stands, a murderer without question, and yet she cannot bring herself to regret the actions she has perpetrated - killing Cecilia, or allowing the boy from Six to cleave Padma's skull from her neck in an act of vengeance so similar to her own.
She's in the final four now; almost a Victor, almost a survivor. She will undoubtedly need to kill again in order to cement herself as one.
Which is why she regrets nothing when she picks up Cel's spear and buries it in Six's chest, impaling his beating heart with the bloodied polearm, not withdrawing her weapon until the shaft itself is halfway through his body. His cannon fires almost the second the tip pulls out from the gaping hole in his flesh, bits of gore and viscera clinging to the golden head as it glints beneath the clinic lights. Isabelle considers it for a moment - the weapon in her hand, the violence it's now wrought, the two other bodies it must leave behind - and something begins to sting at her sore eyes, crystalline droplets sliding down her cheeks as she looks at Six… looks at Ten.
"It was me or him," she says, as if she's trying to convince herself just as much as her audience. "And… and it's me or you."
The spearhead enters Ten's back. Isabelle tastes salt on her lips, and pain in her throat, her tears drying to her blood-covered face.
The Blood Queen epithet given to her in Two was always meant as an insult, a name made to shame and slander the unfortunate girl known as Isabelle Harmony.
But even before she runs through the storm in pursuit of her prey, even before she catches Sevilin Verrillo in those tunnels and bashes his head into a rock, Isabelle knows what her victory will mean - not reverence and not respect, not the redemption of the Harmony clan for which she'd long hoped. Her return to Two will be one marred with vitriol and spite, borne from the bitter taste of hatred that lingers in her mouth every time she thinks of home.
When the Capitol announces her as the Victor of the Twenty-Fourth Hunger Games, she does not lose herself to excitement, does not feel awed or proud or filled with contentment at her comeuppance over the other tributes. She thinks of Maxim, lost amidst the watery grave that is the arena, even though she'd watched as his body was lifted into the sky and carried away never to be seen again. She thinks of the Fours, whose callousness toward death had led Isabelle down a path of destruction she'd never anticipated, whose very existence on that last day had filled her with an inexplicable rage and urge for violence, their volatility only serving to feed her own in the aftermath of losing her friend.
She is taken aboard the hovercraft to be patched up and counselled on what she's meant to do next. Stone's adamant that she uses her time with the Master of Ceremonies to extol the values of Careerdom to the audience, although Isabelle hardly feels inclined to praise a system she's begun to hate. Still, it's easier than discussing Maxim. Easier than discussing Cecilia or Sevilin, or her own emotions over what happened in that hellscape of an arena. So she does what Stone wants - does what Two wants, if only to appease their fragile egos.
She may want the lot of her District to suffer, but she's not foolish enough to say it aloud. She's got enough shit to deal with back home already.
Like her reputation - like her identity.
Isabelle Harmony never intended to become the Blood Queen, but the Games have tarnished her beyond recognition - something made apparent from the moment she sets foot back in Two. As she steps off the train to the judging eyes of a half-silent crowd, she realizes that her volunteering never mattered - winning the Hunger Games has changed nothing. She is still talked about with contempt, still reviled by all who knew her before her victory came to fruition.
And the worst part is she can't blame Two for hating her, not anymore. She won out of spite. She won out of guilt.
(But regardless of her motives, she won. She survived. And now… now, she will live for revenge. She will find satisfaction in the fires she starts and the flames she fans. Maybe it's wrong of her, but Isabelle's been shamed one time too many. She's a victor now. Why should she have to indulge her District in their disdain for her?)
(She is the sun, and any who look on her with scorn in their gaze, any who dare to damage her with their words or abuse her with their hands, will burn.)
…
The first few months after Isabelle Harmony's victory were quiet. Panem's latest starlet was no social butterfly, and had been reticent even before entering the Games. It was no surprise, then, that as a Victor she would be withdrawn; content to keep out of the spotlight and away from her fellows in Two, most of whom she had little desire to engage with regardless. Years of torment and abuse are not easily forgotten, and though Isabelle Harmony's victory had opened a new chapter in her life, her return was not a new beginning - no matter how much she'd once hoped it would be.
When addressing her own District at the denouement of her victory tour, Isabelle was careful with her words, mincing them as best she could while still allowing credence for her own feelings. "Do not mistake my reticence for apathy," she said, to a sea of confused faces with thinly-veiled malcontent hidden in their vacant eyes. "I am grateful for the opportunity afforded to me by my victory, and for those of you who supported my efforts for success, I hold nothing but gratitude in my heart - just as I hold great pain for the costs my success has endured, and great frustration for the judgment that I must still endure upon returning to you. I cannot deny that my upbringing in this District has been instrumental in shaping me - and that my experiences as a Career, and as a citizen of Two, will continue to shape my identity as a Victor. Thank you, my District, for all that you have taught me."
Thank you for reminding me that I am a product of my pain. Thank you for reminding me that I can never escape my past, nor the scrutiny of others, no matter what turns my life takes.
Thank you for reminding me that I will never be accepted, and that you will never grant me the respect I wished for. It makes it far easier for me to follow the path I've chosen, when I'm shown no reason to have remorse.
(Thank you, District Two, for killing me.)
One month after her tour, Isabelle finds herself outside the door of a music shop, her hand clenched tight around a blood-spattered piano key, her shoulders locked in place as she gazes in through the windows to see a familiar girl with red hair, sitting before a familiar counter. If she focuses hard enough, she can see her face, the memory of it etched forever within Isabelle's psyche, along with the once-beloved scent of sandalwood and cord gloss.
She closes her eyes. Breathes in through her nose, then exhales through her mouth. She doesn't want to talk to Rita. She doesn't even want to be here.
But she needs this. She needs…
To say goodbye.
She enters the shop.
"Welcome to Quincy's Instruments! How can I -"
Rita's words die on her lips when she raises her head. Isabelle cocks her head to one side, her lips fixed in a scowl that refuses to leave.
"Yeah," she says bemusedly. "It's me."
Her footsteps are measured as she approaches the counter, raising her hand and slapping it down against the wood, hard enough for the noise of skin-on-surface to break the uncomfortable silence of the store.
"Is that…?" Rita asks, though the surprise on her face betrays her disbelief. She knows exactly what Isabelle's given to her - exactly what Isabelle's here for.
"Thanks for nothing, Rita," Isabelle replies, doing her best to ignore the tears pooling in her eyes, so close to spilling down her cheeks.
She turns to leave, knowing full-well she'll never return.
It's bittersweet, leaving; Isabelle thought it would feel good, once, before she'd won. She imagined storming into the Quincys shop and throwing the piano key on the ground, letting loose her anger and her tumult and her pain, if only because Rita needed to know how much she'd hurt her, needed to understand what she'd done. But the truth of the matter is that no matter what Isabelle says or does, the effort would be futile. Rita never knew her. Rita will never understand her. Maybe there was a chance for true connection before, when Isabelle was still young and naive and jaded only by the experience of her bullying, without bloodshed - maybe the old Isabelle would have expressed herself enough to find closure. But the Isabelle of the present is too broken to find her peace - too dead to concern herself with the lives of those in her orbit, regardless of how they've impacted her own.
She exits the shop to cold wind and desolate silence.
There is nothing for her here. There is nothing for her anywhere.
…
This is how her story ends.
Isabelle Harmony is an outsider. She has always been an outsider. That fact does not change, for it is a constant of her existence, and therefore unavoidable.
What does change, however, is her spirit.
Isabelle Harmony was broken by the Games. Her wrath festered in her wounds and her mind as she fought to return home, taking hold of her heart and twisting it into something dark. Something venomous. And with no love, no respect, and no companionship of which to speak, it became her dearest friend.
Geneva Stone took ill during the year of the twenty-seventh. With the other living Victors of Two hard at work managing the trainees at the Academy, the task of mentoring fell on Isabelle's shoulders.
Her tributes did not want to listen to her. Her tributes watched her with hateful eyes and bitter scowls, and told her with their silence of her unworthiness. She looked at them and she saw hatred. She listened to them and she heard slander.
(Was it real? No. But that didn't matter.)
Isabelle ignored their questions. She gave them faulty information about the workings of the Games, and harmful advice on how to deal with them once they were inside. She cut off their sponsorship, and lent her aid to District One instead. When both of her tributes were killed in the bloodbath, she did not grieve or despair. Their deaths were her design - just as Maxim's, Sevilin's and Cecilia's.
Stone returned to mentoring for the twenty-eighth, and the twenty-ninth. Cancer took her the year of the thirtieth.
Isabelle returned to the train, the Capitol and the tribute center. She mourned. She drank. She wrote letters in her journal to Maxim. And when the gong sounded for the beginning of the Games, she once more abandoned her tributes. She made a deal with Nereus and Circe from Four, gave Two's sponsor money to their tributes instead, and asked them to condemn her tributes.
Two more deaths in the Bloodbath.
Two more deaths for District Two.
(They couldn't prove it was her.)
After six years of early deaths, volunteers began to dwindle. Isabelle's fellow Victors disavowed her, and Aristaeus petitioned to ban her from mentoring for good. But she had plans enough to account for interference; her thirst for vengeance could not be contained. It was the only thing of substance she had in her life - a burning wrath that filled the emptiness in her soul. She wanted Two to crumble. She wanted their people destroyed.
And so as Aristaeus rode away on the train, Isabelle stole away to the Academy, with all her hopes hidden in a can of gasoline.
The inferno was beautiful.
She rose from the ashes, rubble and corpses with a smile splitting her face, her arms raised toward the sky, tears streaming down her soot-smeared cheeks.
Change is upon you, District Two! Embrace your new status as the Careers, fallen from grace!
Your legacy is fire.
Your inheritance is the dirt.
(This is what I call justice.)
(This is revenge.)
second body
merrick aldaine: the moon.
As the girl from Two bursts through the door, her screams loud enough to drown out all other sound, Merrick does not stay to watch her enter, nor does he stick close to Sephtis' side when the floodwater begins to spill over into the lighttower. Before a word can be said or an insult can be thrown, Merrick turns to the stairs and he ascends. He stumbles up over step after step, the stone slick and unyielding beneath his tired feet. His body pitches left and right and he moves - sluggishly, so sluggishly, and fuck me, I won't make it, there's not a chance in hell, shoulda just run myself through back in that shithole clinic, made it easier on myself - up one, two, three, four… ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen…
The hatch to the upper levels is latched shut, and when Merrick grabs for it, his hands are too sweaty, too bloody and aching and damaged to maintain a steady grip. It takes more than a matter of seconds for him to pull on the dangling chain and wench the door open, more than a matter of minutes to pull himself through, into a dark room with no windows, only another set of stairs laid into an adjacent wall, right beside a waterlogged cot and a broken desk.
There are footsteps behind him - one set, two sets, Merrick doesn't know and he doesn't care. He won't stand a chance in a fight. If he's caught by Two, by Ten? Instant death, without question. And he didn't make it all the way into this godforsaken tower of doom just to watch his chance of victory crash and burn.
(Fuck knows he doesn't really want to go home, doesn't exactly rejoice at the thought of returning to Six and his shit grades and shit family and Mommy dearest getting blasted out of her mind on morph, but he's already gotten this far. Why should he be the one to lie down and let Career bitch and circus boy run him over?)
Something sharp catches him in the leg, and he trips, tumbling down across the width of four steps as a shadow encroaches on his position. The girl from Two is standing there when he turns around, spear raised and poised to run through his chest. Merrick's lips quirk into a half-smirk, sardonic to the nth as he taunts her with his expression, waiting for her to draw closer, waiting for her to -
"You betrayed me," she hisses. "What happened to revenge? You said you'd kill him, why the fuck didn't you kill him -"
Merrick doesn't listen. As soon as Two's close enough for his leg to reach, he lashes out, drawing his shin up and extending his foot right into her knee, the joint popping as she tumbles backwards onto the landing, arms flailing as she tries to stop her descent. Her head cracks against the rigid stone, and even though it's not enough to kill her, Merrick doesn't bother finishing her off.
(Sephtis can do that far more easily.)
The cannon fires when he reaches the top of the tower, his wrists sore and his fingertips stinging something awful as he shoves his way out onto the overlook. Sephtis is right on his heels, of course, Merrick has no doubt about that. Maybe if he's lucky, the asshole's still guilt-ridden enough to lay down his arms before he reaches the top. Doubtful though. When are things ever that easy?
He's leaning against the railing when Sephtis barrels through the trapdoor, spear tucked under one arm. Merrick doesn't move until he's gotten himself out of the hole leading to the keep below, doesn't even react until Sephtis spots him and exhales, sharply, clutching at his side where a deep wound seems to be leaking blood enough to leave him winded.
"Can't keep running around," Sephtis says. "Gotta end it."
Merrick crosses his arms. So it is a fight, then - him against the wannabe torturer, the victim against the sidekick. Funny how it cycled back to this in the end. Shoulda killed him when I had the advantage.
Sephtis raises his spear and starts to charge. Merrick ducks, diving to the side behind a stack of barrels to try and give himself momentary cover. It doesn't work, of course - no, Sephtis just smashes through them like the freak of nature he is, slams his spear downward just inches from Merrick's body. Too close to a hit. Not close enough.
Merrick tackles him.
The momentum carries them off balance. Sephtis crashes into the railing and Merrick goes for the spear. He yanks, hard as he possibly can, but not hard enough to loosen it. Sephtis drives a palm into his chest and he tips sideways, back into the broken barrels and a twisted metal pillar holding up the light beacon, dead and cold above their heads. Sephtis charges forward again and this time Merrick goes for the legs - gets his arms around them and tugs him to the side, and there's something like a crack, then a split, and then there's Sephtis, falling just like Two did before.
His chest hits the railing and his arms brace themselves against the metal hold as he tries to turn. But Merrick won't let him. He clambers to his feet, looks at Sephtis - his hunched shoulders, his exposed back, his spear discarded on the ground.
He won't take any satisfaction in killing him. But he's ready to end this.
Sephtis turns around just as Merrick's hands slam into his head and upper body, pushing him over the railing and off of the overlook. He's silent as he falls, save for a strangled yelp that stops abruptly when his body meets with the black cliffs below, dead on impact. Merrick doesn't bother watching as he goes, doesn't bother looking over the edge to see if he's actually dead. He drops to his knees, then falls to his side. A curtain covers his vision, blocking out all light, muting all sound.
When he wakes, he's in a hospital bed. And he's alone.
(It's not a surprise. Merrick's always known that nobody cared whether he lived or died in the arena, not his mentor, not his District, maybe not even his mother. And why should they? Merrick's never been anything more than a waste of space, firing off insults at the people around him and ruining everything he dared to touch. Nobody wanted him to win. Nobody wants him to be here, especially not over Two girl, or over Padma, or over Hana (and she deserved better, she should be here, she should be alive, rather than him, he knows that, oh, how he knows.))
(He's as cold and as distant as the moon… some odd mesh of desolation, mystery and misery trapped inside a deadened husk.)
(The world is better off without him. So why is he still here?)
…
Merrick Aldaine returns to District Six in a state somewhere between melancholy and disillusionment.
He sits through the Games recap. Sits through his crowning. Sits through the long ride back on the train, the victory tour, the pompous ceremonies held by the Capitol, all without complaint or anger. Merrick thinks perhaps he should be angry, since the festivities that are prepared for him seem more like a slap in the face rather than a form of celebration, but the truth of the matter is that he just doesn't have any room left for anger. He's empty - full of pain and confusion and nihilism that his body can't seem to purge itself of. Perhaps it would be different if he still had his tongue, his voice or his face, perhaps if he were whole, he'd still have enough fight left in him to feel, but it's impossible to say for sure, and Merrick doesn't see any point in wondering at futures that do not exist. His reality is emptiness - emptiness of feeling, of energy and livelihood, of values, goals, morals and dreams. Panem didn't want him to win, and Merrick isn't exactly enthusiastic about his victory either.
His only regret is that being an Avox means being unable to drink. Imbibing alcohol to fill a trauma-void isn't the worst coping mechanism, really. He'd rather live intoxicated than sober. Sobriety is… messy. Too messy for him to deal with.
His mentor seems to realize that, too. Maybe it's because of how Merrick watches her move about the train with a frown as they travel between Districts, not even bothering to reach out and cultivate the connection his mentor's been trying to offer. No matter how much she tries to speak to him or break through his facade of apathy, Merrick remains beyond her reach, a captive of his own self-imposed isolation. He doesn't respond, doesn't even bother to acknowledge the lifeline she's throwing to him, and why should he, really? Alvina, of all people, should realize that victory isn't even half of what it's cracked up to be.
Whatever, he tells himself, as he follows Alvina down the empty road to the Victor's Village, where a dying tree stands tall amidst a bed of wilted flowers. The white-grey houses which line Glory Lane look about as inviting as headstones in a cemetery. If she wants to pretend my survival is a good thing, let her. Isn't gonna kill me to play along with her delusions.
He keeps distance between them as they walk down the street, and doesn't bother to linger when she presses a set of keys into his hand, curling his fingers around them.
Come find me if you need anything, she says, and Merrick waits until her back is turned before he scoffs, jamming his keys into the deadbolt and heading into his new house without so much as a wave goodbye.
He doesn't bother leaving the next day. Or the next, or the next. He sits in his sparsely furnished house with the lights off and the curtains drawn, a prisoner of his misery. And he tells himself that he's fine. He's always when he's not.
His family comes. And they go. Eventually, they come again, and Merrick ushers them out before they can even set foot inside the door. It's easier that way - avoiding his siblings even when he so desperately wants to keep them close, avoiding his mother and everything she represents, even when he craves the thought of reconnecting with her, of letting her in.
But it's safer to cut her out. It's safer to cut them all out. Merrick's too damaged to love anyone - especially his own kin.
(It only takes a couple months before they quit visiting altogether. It only takes a couple months for his victory to become old news, and for Panem to forget that Merrick Aldaine ever survived in the first place. One of the nice things about seclusion, he supposes; it kills even those who are still alive. Oh, sure, he leaves his house from time to time, but there's never any fanfare surrounding it. People treat him like a ghost when they see him in the marketplace, not bothering with greetings or small talk when they know he can't respond. Sometimes he'll see a friendly face, but those are simple enough to ignore, and they're even simpler to forget.)
He gets used to living in a phantom state. The longer he spends in solitude, the easier it becomes to forget what he's missing. The world passes by around him, and Merrick fades away into obscurity, just as he was always meant to. For the next year, he keeps to himself and allows Six to forget his disfigured face, his voice and his name, just as he forgets himself.
(And, naturally, his ever-growing stash of morphling powder and butterfly needles does wonders in speeding that process along.)
…
This is how his story ends.
Merrick Aldaine is an addict. Not too much of a surprise, given he's had morphling in his veins since birth, a legacy bestowed on him by an insecure mother and a deadbeat father, who never wanted him to begin with. He wouldn't call himself a product of his upbringing, but there's no question that Merrick's life has been defined by his broken family just as much as his delinquency.
(What is his victory defined by? Misanthropy? Possibly. There's plenty of people in Six who'd say he's got a chip on his shoulder, and more still who'd say that winning only made it worse.
For his part, Merrick's not going to try and argue with that. He doesn't see any point. It doesn't take a genius to see that he's a miserable bastard, or that the Hunger Games brought out the worst in him. Torture, abuse, addiction, murder… it's all a part of him now, etched into his skin just as much as his mind. He can't escape the Games. He can't escape himself, the disgusting, despicable monster whose appearance finally matches his personality. His scars are a testament to his flaws, proof of the fact that the only thing he's good for is fucking up and running himself into disrepair.)
He starts mentoring the year after the Games. It's a Quarter Quell year - a Hunger Games with a sadistic twist, children being voted in by their own communities, condemned to death for their flaws and their mistakes. If Merrick hadn't already won, hadn't already been eighteen during the twenty-fourth, he's sure Six wouldn't have hesitated to throw his name into the running for tribute. One of the perks of being a pariah.
Alvina does most of the footwork. Merrick sits in his room on the train and in the tribute center, pushing needles between his toes and injecting morph into his veins. He doesn't bother watching the Games, but when Alvina tells him their kids are dead, he locks himself in the bathroom, turns on the shower and lets the cold water soak his body through, clothes and all. He doesn't move until he realizes he can no longer feel his fingers, with how tightly they've been curled into his palms.
More years pass. More tributes die.
It's easy to pretend it doesn't affect him, because really, why should he care? He's not attached to any of the kids that go, doesn't know them, doesn't have any reason to mourn them…
He supposes it's because they remind him, sometimes, of his own siblings. Caustic boys and conscientious girls, kids with dysfunctional families and too many vices to name, just doing their best to get by. He looks at his tributes and he sees Kyan and Sabine - the brother and sister that he abandoned, the family that he couldn't support even if he'd wanted to.
And then one year he looks at the tributes and actually sees his sister looking back.
She's sixteen. Eight years older than she was when Merrick last saw her. Eight years older, eight years wiser.
… he doesn't want her to suffer.
They talk in the Capitol. Well, Sabine talks. Merrick just listens. Sometimes he'll pass her notes, slide them under her doorway before he goes to bed. He finds out that his mother died, two years back during the thirtieth.
(Sabine asks why he didn't come to the funeral. Merrick decides not to tell her that he didn't even know there was a funeral.)
She comes into his room one night while he's high. Merrick's barely lucid, but he's conscious enough to recognize she's there. He fills up another syringe, gives it to her before she can say anything.
(Maybe he shouldn't be surprised that she takes it. She is an Aldaine, after all. Just as damaged. Just as broken.)
He comes to in the morning to find her lying beside him. Her chest isn't moving.
There's repercussions. Accusations, a whipping, a trial, and blowback from the Capitol… amongst other things. Merrick drifts through all of it in a haze, enduring scrutiny and abuse without truly experiencing any of it. This is why you don't get attached, he reminds himself. Everything's so much worse if there are feelings involved.
He goes home once it's all over to lick his wounds. But he can't forget. He can't stop thinking.
So he triple-doses, and then he overdoses.
(It's not suicide. It's escape.)
(The spectre of Six dies alone, forgotten in death as he was ignored in life.)
(They don't find his corpse for three months.)
first body
sephtis adeyemi: the earth.
The arena is quiet.
Sephtis feels his body pitch sideways as a second cannon fires, the cacophonous boom reverberating through the walls of the lighthouse as the sky outside the windows grows dark. Through the crack in the barricaded door, he can see the shape of a faceless shadow collapsed upon the stone steps - a lifeless husk all that remains of the girl from Two.
One threat down, he thinks to himself, as he watches her blood pool along the floor under the stacked-up tables, crimson red tainted with something oddly pink and smelling of sulfur. Sephtis fixes his jaw in place, and turns his head away from the grisly sight, his gaze falling on his own feet - shoes partially corroded, his shin thoroughly destroyed from his fight with the Fours. Strange to think that they were alive just a handful of hours ago. Stranger still to realize that it was just this morning when he'd been sitting inside the clinic across from Padma, arguing about Six and the concept of morality.
She's not dead, really. He saw Six decapitate her, watched as her head was cleaved from her shoulders, stared in disbelief as her bifurcated body collapsed upon a rotten floor, her vacant eyes shining with the same aura of cunning and mystere that Sephtis had grown to find comforting. They were opposites, he and Padma, but opposites drawn together by parallel circumstances and a shared history of trauma. He would not have dared to call her a friend, but he knows with absolute certainty that nobody else in the world was capable of understanding him in the way that she had. They were partners, after all; two performers with a history of sedition, stranded together atop a fraying tightrope, over a sea comprised of hatred and condemnation. He would have fallen victim to greater strife if Padma had not extended her hand to him at the reaping, had not taken him into her fold and treated his wounds and listened to him speak.
He wonders if he should be ashamed for taking pleasure in her company… for indulging her whims without question, for allowing her to drag him into a living grave, with a crown of thorns on his head and a brand of shame around his neck. Padma Youssef had been Sephtis Adeyemi's undoing more than once; she was very nearly his ending, too. And it would have been fitting, he thinks, if she had killed him - it would have been relieving if she had disposed of him, before Six, before the Games, before the death of the Cirque du Noir.
… but there's no point in dwelling on the past. It's time to lay the dead to rest. Padma. Shinigami. Crowley. Blackrose. The boys from Nine and Eleven. The girl from Two.
… him.
Sephtis takes in the face of his companion - his unlikely ally, his veritable hero. He does not understand why Six let him live, even if they had a common enemy. Sephtis did not deserve his mercy; he does not deserve anyone's mercy. Since the day he was born, he has been dismissed as trash, disavowed as freak and aberration and monster. What Six was made to endure at his hands (for it was Sephtis as much as Padma who had tortured him, Sephtis as much as Padma who had broken him) only serves as proof of his wretchedness. He does not deserve to live. He does not deserve…
"Kill me," Sephtis says, as he takes a step forward. The spear that he had been using to prop himself up slips loose of his fingers and clatters onto the stone of the floor, its golden tip still coated red with his own blood. "I… am tired of this. All the fighting… the false confidence and the pain of my memories… please, Six. I'm ready for it to end. Take your revenge."
He falls to his knees, no longer able to remain standing with the hole splitting his knee, all of the ligaments and tendons shredded from the blow of Four's strike. It doesn't hurt, but he can feel the air of the room eating at his flesh, clinging to the hole and chilling his wound from the inside out. He can't imagine it's not infected, after an hour spent wading through murky floodwater, his body kept upright only by Six's hand clutching tightly to his own.
That contact… that blissful, reassuring, human contact… oh, it hurt him. Sephtis won't even bother denying it. His being is starved for connection. Padma had denied him the catharsis of her familiarity with her spite and her biting comments, vitriolic and pragmatic even when she passed, but Six had offered him a lifeline willingly, had given him a moment of… peace… in spite of their schadenfreudic dichotomy. Sephtis was - is - grateful for that. He will be grateful when Six kills him, even if his gratitude counts for little.
He raises his head. Six is holding a knife in his hand, the blade turned vertical, its end pointed toward the ground rather than at Sephtis' neck. Sephtis takes a deep breath in, and closes his eyes. Padma's blood still coats his cheeks, dried to his dark skin despite the onslaught of rain and tears that have drenched it. It's a bit funny to think that she will be with him while he dies, despite not being the one to stop his heart. Almost fitting.
But just as before, the blow he expects never comes. He waits… and he waits… and he waits for an eternity, caught only in the sound of gentle rainfall and sloshing water against cool stone.
In the darkness, a cannon fires.
Sephtis does not move. He does not speak. He does not emit so much as a sigh, as a voice begins to speak from the dark skies overhead.
"Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the Victor of the Twenty-Fourth Hunger Games… Sephtis Adeyemi."
(They call him a Victor.)
(So why does it feel like he's lost?)
…
They pull him out of the arena the same way they pull out all the corpses - with a dangling claw latched onto the bottom of a hovercraft.
Typically, the Capitol attendant that strips him of his wetsuit and lays his body flat on a gurney says, they hang a ladder from the hovercraft for the Victors; it's more autonomous, more sensible. But your knee is irreparable, she adds, as if Sephtis himself hadn't already realized that. An injury like that isn't to be taken lightly. You won't be able to walk, you won't be able to climb. You'll have a hard time moving around even if it heals - and, granted, it's a definite if.
I think it's best if we amputate it. We can fit you with a prosthetic. You'll hardly even notice the difference.
Okay, Sephtis says, because it doesn't take a genius to realize that what the attendant expects is acquiescence. He lies back on the gurney and stays still as she injects an anaesthetic into his arm, closes his eyes and plays the role of patient without a hint of complaint. He can't see any point in resisting. Can't see any point in telling her off, telling her no, there's no point, no, it's my leg, my body, let me keep it, because chances are the outcome would still wind up being the same.
Sephtis lets his vision fade from white to bright to blue to dark, allowing the hands of the attendant and the Capitolite surgeon to touch him as they please before he falls unconscious.
He wakes up to see a stump where there used to be a limb. Something about the sight unnerves him, more than it has any right to.
He doesn't keep track of how time passes after the arena. After the hovercraft, they take him back to the Capitol, and Verity stands by him as a set of Avoxes help him into a wheelchair, his body clad in a suit of florid purple velour and abyssal black mesh. She helps him pin the flower to his lapel as Tal Velasquez croons at her over-large audience, cracking jokes from her seat on an otherwise empty stage.
"- but I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I? This is a night for celebration, and no celebration would be complete without a guest of honor. Panem, please join me in welcoming your latest Victor, and sole survivor of the twenty-fourth Hunger Games… Sephtis Adeyemi!"
They're applauding when he emerges from the wings, his own hands left to turn the wheels on either side of his chair, despite his exhaustion that clings to his bones. Tal beams at him, and Sephtis forces himself to smile back, trying to will a sense of humanity back into his person-suit. Never mind what he's actually feeling; he's on camera, about to perform a grand act of dramaturgy before the entirety of the country. He cannot afford to slip up. He cannot afford to seem… troubled, distant or unstable. He has an audience.
He has to act.
"Thank you, Panem," he says as the applause begins to taper off, and he takes his metaphorical bow, "and thank you, Tal, for the warm welcome. I'm grateful to be in such good company."
Sephtis feels a lump building in his throat, and he swallows hard in an attempt to rid himself of it.
"Believe me when I say that it is such an honor to be on your stage once again," he continues, and the words are like acid dripping from his lips, spilling down the back of his throat and eating away at his voice box. "Even if I'm not entirely in one piece. Still, I suppose it's a small price to pay for such a grandiose thing as a victory."
I don't want to be here, he thinks, I don't want to be here, I don't want to be here, I shouldn't be here, I'm not supposed to -
"- and you do have quite a way with words! But I suppose that's the mark of a performer, isn't it? Eloquence above dignity?"
Sephtis' smile is wan. Almost fragile.
"I prefer to exhibit both when I can," he responds, not rising to the bait. "As should any Victor. Now, don't we have a Games to watch?"
…
Sephtis spends three months in the Capitol before he returns to District Ten.
People in the Capitol love him. He has adoring fans, reverential patrons, and an audience that likes to tout his name about with words of praise rather than anger. They let him stay in a suite on Ten's floor in the tribute center, send people up to dote on his in between long sessions of physical therapy and prosthetic training. The stump of his right leg is outfitted with a robotic limb, covered by an expensive layer of synthskin that the doctors matched to his skin tone. They do such a good job that, for the most part, if Sephtis couldn't feel the metal digging into his thigh, he wouldn't be able to tell he was missing a leg at all.
That's not the case for everyone, though - not the case for some of his… clients, who prefer to peel back his skin and look at the steel and wire of his metal limb like it's some sort of fantastical eccentricity designed to please them. Sephtis tries not to mind. The patrons he takes on enjoy broken things, and in a way, he's as broken as they come. Physically, mentally… it's all one in the same anymore.
Ironically, the big selling point for Sephtis among Capitol sponsors and Victor fetishists was the same one that won him Shinigami's attention back in the Cirque - his inability to feel pain. There's a name for his condition, something he hadn't known before, when it was nothing more than a genetic flaw cementing him as a freak.
'Congenital analgesia,' the nurse called it when she took the pins out of his stump, not bothering with an anaesthetic once she realized it wasn't something he necessarily needed. 'It's a rare disorder, but not unheard of. Not as special as you probably thought it was.'
Not as special as Shinigami said it was.
But it has its perks, regardless. Sephtis realized that the first time he got whored out, and the bastard thought it would be fun to gouge long cuts into his shoulders before whipping him bloody. He didn't feel anything, not even when he blacked out, and not after, when he found himself awake and lying in bed with bandages wrapped tight around the entirety of his torso, nearly all of them soaked through with blood. He didn't feel it when, just a week later, another client came and left bite marks up and down his body, and burned the skin on the bottom of his feet, taking delight in the fact that he never begged or cried or tried to make her stop. He didn't even feel it when he got choked until his mind went blank, and someone pulled his hair enough to yank a few strands loose, then shoved their hand in his mouth until he started gagging.
He didn't feel any of it. Any of the pain, the abuse, the brutal torture or horrific fucking that his body was made to endure time and time again, for weeks.
He didn't feel any pain from what the Capitol put him through. The only pain in Sephtis' life came from the Districts, from the citizens of Ten, with their jeering words and hurtful jibes, name-calling, blasphemy and ridicule that haunted him long after Verity took his hand and helped him back to the Victor's Village, far away from the square.
Murderer!
Torturer!
Monster!
Freak!
(Sycophant!)
(Capitol dog!)
(Bootlicker!)
(Sell-out!)
They like to throw things at his house. Vibrantly colored fruits that splatter across the white stone and stain it in a way that can't be repaired, red paint, leftover blood from the butcheries, sticks and stones heavy enough to break the windows. Sephtis does his best to ignore it; he's good at pretending not to care what people think of him. After all, he's been putting up fronts for his whole life. Still, he can't deny that the vitriol wears on him - makes him hate himself, not just for what he's done, but for what he's become.
Victor, monster, sell-out, whore. What's the difference anyhow?
The Underground finds him - he doesn't know how, doesn't bother trying to guess. They staple messages to his door and paint eyes on the steps leading up to it, saying with symbols as much as words we're watching you. Eventually, he catches one of them in the back garden, stringing a dead pig up on his tree, and when he turns around, Sephtis' heart leaps into his throat and gets stuck there because he's seen that face before, knows exactly who his visitor is.
You're supposed to be dead, he tells Crowley, and the ringmaster smirks at him, cocks his head, and says simply, "So are you."
Sephtis isn't sure why those are the words to make him snap.
He grabs a shovel from beside the deck, walks over to Crowley and bashes his head in. When it's all done and his body is covered in blood, he reached up, unstrings the pig, cuts it open, and shoves Ringmaster Renwick's face into its guts.
(He always thought Crowley was pigheaded. The new look suits his old employer rather well.)
He dumps the body in the square. The Underground goes into an uproar. Sephtis finds death threats stuck under his rug, pinned to his gate, fluttering down the streets of the Victor's Village like leaves in the wind.
Another six months pass. He goes back to the Capitol, this time as a mentor. The tributes like him. They listen to him. They appreciate his advice.
And they both die. Just like every other year.
Sephtis stays in the District Ten suite and talks to Verity over a cup of coffee.
It's better for them, really, she tells him. Dying.
Sephtis shrugs. Matter of perspective. It's always subjective.
They did it to me, too, she keeps going, even though he doesn't want her to. Prostituted me. But it was just the once. Nothing like -
I don't want to talk about it, Sephtis snaps at her, like a dog with its foot in a trap.
He has seven more clients during the twenty-fifth. Nine during the twenty-sixth. The scars on his body double, then triple. Sephtis gets another prosthetic after the Treasury Minister breaks his arm in six different places. Unlike the leg, that one almost hurts. He cries when the surgeon cuts it off.
On the bright side, Circe from Four comments one day, while they and the others are sitting around in the viewing room and drinking, at least synthflesh doesn't scar.
…
Sephtis brings home a Victor the year of the thirty-first.
The kid's name is Hezekiah - but he always insists on being called Haze. He's a skinny guy from Ten's Northern corridor, the son of a couple of gravekeepers, born and raised to take on the family business. He's zany, quirky, oddly soft with a great sense of humor.
It wouldn't be unfair to say that Sephtis has taken a shine to him. He takes a shine to most of his tributes, of course - something Verity likes to say is a bad habit - but Haze is different. Haze survived.
I brought him home, he thinks to himself as he unfastens his prosthetic leg from the skin-stump and props it up against the nightstand beside his bed. I brought him home. He won. He's alive.
Sephtis should have known his fortune was too good to last.
They shoot him on his way back to the Victor's Village one night. Sephtis wakes up to find his body still cooling in the streets, red blood around his head like a mocking halo. The Underground's mark is carved into a nearby tree, along with the name of the founding members of Cirque du Noir, and an insulting epithet reading in memoriam.
Sephtis rages. He cries. He screams. He throws things. He trashes his house. He starts pacing the streets at night, enraptured in grief. Sometimes he comes home soaked in blood. Sometimes he doesn't come home at all.
Verity takes over mentoring the next year. While she's gone, Sephtis storms the base of the newly-assembled rebel cell, the Crimson Lotus, and cuts off the leader's head. He pikes it in the town square, and returns home to drown his sorrows in a bottle of liquor.
When the thirty-third Games roll around, he goes back to the Capitol. He endures the demanding hands of his buyers, lets them mark him up and fondle his prosthetics and carve words into his flesh and brand and burn the heavily scarred skin that's under his clothes. He lets them fuck him, degrade him and call him painslut, call him pincushion, call him their voodoo doll like it's some sort of title he ought to take pride in. So many of them feel like Shinigami, using him for his body and making a display of his freakishness. Their hands cling to his skin for months after they're done, and the sensation of them is enough to make him puke.
He goes home again and lets Ten berate him. A Peacekeeper approaches him asking about the Lotus, and Sephtis kills him too. He just wants to be left alone. He just wants to be free.
He and Verity bring back another Victor during the thirty-fourth. She's skinnier than Haze, scrappier than Haze, a girl from the city center with a massive chip on her shoulder. Abrasive, gritty, tough. Goes by Florizel, but it's not her real name, just a name that she liked, and wound up choosing for herself.
I chose my name too, Sephtis tells her, and she laughs.
Couldn't have chosen better? It's one sound off from sepsis.
It was either that or freak, he admits, and Florizel just shakes her head and takes another swig from her whiskey bottle.
Shoulda gone with Freak. Sounds way more intimidating.
(The underground comes for her, too, but Florizel's stronger than they expect. She can take care of herself.)
(Sephtis teaches her how to dismember a body, how to get rid of the evidence and scatter the pieces. Florizel's a quick learner, even though she doesn't much like the idea of killing rebels.)
(They're the good guys! She says. Why fight them instead of the Capitol?)
(Because they're both fucked, Sephtis tells her. They're all fucked.)
(Admittedly, he's pretty fucked too.)
…
This is how his story ends.
Sephtis Adeyemi is a threat. The Underground knows it. The Capitol knows it. It's why they both tried to keep him on a chain - why they both tried to break his spirit, and meld him into being their puppet. Assassin, whore, it doesn't make any difference in the end. He has never known a life where he wasn't partially owned. And, naturally, he accepts that he never will.
That doesn't keep him from fighting.
He starts to bite his handlers, and his clients. Starts to take them apart the same way they like to do to him, breaking bones, carving flesh and drawing blood. He headhunts the underground, forces them to keep on their toes and out of his sights, makes them retreat into the sewers for fear of his bloodlust. He takes up arms against the Capitol when he comes out with the truth of what they did to him, and takes up arms against the rebels when he talks about the Cirque - about Shinigami, and Crowley, and Garrington, and Padma.
He makes enemies with his words.
He makes enemies with his blades.
And he dies at their hands, after seventeen years of suffering.
He knows the girl that does him in: June Marelli, the youngest of the disassembled Cirque, and the only one beyond himself to survive Ten's rampant jailings and extermination. She catches him in an alley and puts a knife between his shoulder-blades. He bleeds out on the steps of the justice building, defenseless and alone.
Florizel and Verity go to his funeral. They burn his corpse instead of burying it, and they scatter his ashes in the wind.
Ten does not bother to mourn him.
Some people call him a Capitol lackey. Some people call him a rebel. Most people just call him vicious, Ten's beastly and untamable Victor, who bent the heel to so many different people that in truth he never bent it to anyone.
They don't miss him. To miss him, they would have had to know him, and the fact of the matter is that nobody ever knew Sephtis Adeyemi. He was a man of many faces, a man of many talents and tricks and aspirations and emotions, none of which he ever really allowed those around him to see.
(Sephtis Adeyemi is the earth. He changes, he erodes, he washes away and blooms anew from pain and loss. In life he struggled with the threat of death, and in death he despairs the loss of his life. But he does not weep or grieve for what he has left behind. He simply goes, quietly, to the next destination, surprisingly glad for whatever forces guided June Marelli's hand. He grew tired of living long before he passed.)
In death, Sephtis Adeyemi is abandoned by the world.
In death, he is finally free.
"Panem," the Vice President says, stalk-still behind the shield of a stone podium, his arms held at his sides, microphone so close to his face that the audience could almost hear his labored breathing. "I speak to you in a time of mourning. Ten months ago, you suffered a grievous loss - not only the loss of your tributes, beloved friends and family members - but a loss of faith. When Valentin Verduin killed your finalists, the Games became a madness without reason or rationality. For twenty-four years, you were promised mercy within the consequence of punishment; for twenty-four years, you paid tribute to the Capitol for the ills of your predecessors, with the understanding that one of your children would be returned to you in a font of wealth and celebrity. It was decreed that this wealth and celebrity would benefit not just the individual but the community - as a display of the Capitol's favor for their loyalty and their cooperation. And for twenty-three years, this tradition has been carried forth, with the principle of good will upheld…"
Snow's gaze falls, briefly, to the letter sitting before him on the podium. His eyelids flutter as he seems to skim over the contents, then once more raises his head to resume his address.
"This past year was... different. We stand today amidst a nation divided by grief. The trust that was cultivated after the First Uprising has been broken, and the peace of the country disrupted. Many of us find ourselves the victim of doubts, confusion and uncertainty… wondering at the state of our nation, and what reparations shall be made for the lives lost to one man's inimical dissent. The deaths of Isabelle Harmony, Merrick Aldaine and Sephtis Adeyemi were unfortunate - and to some of you, tragic beyond measure, I am certain. However…
"... let us not forget the lives they led - lives marked by controversy, by distaste, and by provocation. Let us not forget the violence that Isabelle Harmony displayed in the arena, and the blood that was said to have stained her hands in Two. Let us not forget Merrick Aldaine's tendency to act on impulse, nor his years of delinquency and the harm they caused to Six's youth. Let us not forget Sephtis Adeyemi's upbringing as a member of a rebel fringe movement in Ten, where he conducted assassinations and carried out torture not unlike what he did to Mister Aldaine. Let us not forget that while we can grieve these young people - and should grieve these young people - each of them remains more beloved in death than they were in life, when they were marked as outsiders and troublemakers by their own communities."
Snow lifts his hand to take hold of the letter, holding the slim card up above the podium so the Capitol's seal can be clearly seen on the front of it.
"In light of this information, and in light of all recent events, the Capitol has elected to announce a unique twist for this year's Hunger Games - a Quarter Quell, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the uprising's end, and to honor the will of the people during this trying time.
"On this the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Games' genesis, as a reminder to all that many deaths both past and present were the result of a rebel's choice to initiate violence, each district will be made to hold an election one week before the reaping. During this time, the people shall vote in one reaping age male and female of their choosing - both of whom will be elected to serve as tribute based on popular majority. On behalf of the Capitol, I wish you all a retributive - and just - Hunger Games."
A/N: And thus begins the end… worldbuilding info to drop on my profile tomorrow! Subs for Floccinaucinihilipilification will open officially on May 1st.