Author's Note: Back to another career victor, but definitely a more likeable one than Satin. We're going to District Four again and finding out more about the development of Mags' plans now that she has another victor to work with…
….
The Twenty-Eighth Annual Hunger Games: Coral Shimizu, District Four
"Why do you want to win the Hunger Games? Why do you want be a victor?" Mags asked.
"I want in. I know what the three of you are doing. You've likely recruited most of the trainers. But the victors are the key players. You have plans for District Four, that's obvious, but I imagine your ideas stretch beyond here. You're rebels."
Shai spat out the tea he was drinking, and Mags almost fell off her chair. No interview has ever gone like this. They gathered themselves and continued the interview, awkwardly trying to get to the end of their questions.
Once Coral had left for her evaluation with Chloe, Mags and Shai were left staring at each other in shock.
"Are we really being so obvious? How many of the others could know?"
"I never thought we were. There is a chance she is playing us, but a small one. I would say that she knows for certain what our true aims are and has figured how the Centre fits in. I guess now is a good a time as any to review our procedures and information sharing plans," Mags replied.
Shai nodded in agreement, "How do you think she worked it out? She has been spending a lot of time with Chloe."
"No. Chloe is too clever to carelessly give up information, nor would she be manipulated. I trust her with my life. Look at how valuable she has already been."
….
After much deliberation, resulting in Mags taking the biggest gamble on any tribute in her mentoring career to date, Coral Shimizu entered the Twenty-Eighth Hunger Games and was crowned victor. District Four's now established routine for new victors was followed stringently with the three more senior victors spending almost every waking moment with their newest member.
Mags had investigated Coral's past to try to understand the girl who had rattled her. She found that Coral had come from rebel stock, at least on her father's side as the man turned out to be one of Shai's informants, and the girl adored her father. He would be allowed to visit soon, and Mags had already agreed to watch over that meeting. She would also accompany Coral on her Victory Tour and assess how she got on with the other victors. Then they would prepare her for mentoring and the Capitol and after her first Games observing the role, she may be given an official position within the Centre.
Mags was acutely aware that Coral could be dangerous. Nobody in the Centre during her training had leaked any information but she pounced on the small hints the victors did willingly drop to their final potential volunteers and was sociable enough to be speaking with attendees from across their programmes to figure out the Centre's role. Unbeknownst to Chloe, who had quickly become attached to Coral (Mags knew her first girl was in real need of a friend on her level), the two oldest victors secretly set tests for Coral to test her loyalty, dropping snippets of false information to see where the 'news' would end up, and observed who she was in contact with.
But none of their stories ever leaked and Coral was a quick study in the Capitol and impressed with how well she dealt with sponsors. Of course, she never went anywhere unsupervised but never tried either. She related well to the other victors too. After some initial difficulties on her Victory Tour with Orchard and Woof, angered by another volunteer victory, she bridged the gap between their districts, without Mags' interference, with her interest in their homes. The older men found that they genuinely liked the young woman despite their misgivings about volunteer tributes.
….
Upon their return from the Capitol, Mags and Shai set about integrating Coral into their plans and elevating Chloe's role. Shai wished to step down from annual mentoring and eventually the Capitol, intending to only return to the official role for the right volunteer. He would continue to manage the vocational programme at the Centre and step up his management of his correspondence and district informants. Mags would remain Director of the Centre as a whole and would always have a say in volunteer selection but she was being pulled in too many directions. Therefore, Chloe was to take over managing the volunteer programme and Coral would take Chloe's current role as Lead Trainer for the candidates. The two young victors would have ownership of District Four's volunteer programme.
Chloe left Coral with no doubts as to how challenging the role would be over the coming years. Their current older candidates did not look especially promising and after two victors in six years, she feared their luck was running out. There was also the matter of children from known loyalist families enrolling in the Centre. Whilst they had no issue with their involvement in Shai's programmes (they would learn skills for work and the victors had the opportunity to observe loyalist groups through them), they did not want their volunteer programme overran and some of them were sure to pass the tests and make the cut.
Victors in Four had to be loyal to Four above all. Anybody who sincerely proclaimed their first loyalty to the Capitol, or the President was far too risky, and it would be up to Chloe and Coral to make those calls.
….
District Four did indeed suffer from a drought in new victors but that was not the fault of Chloe and Coral's leadership. They had lost tributes who really had a chance but plenty of others who they knew did not. It was painful, selecting those volunteers, but they would rather this than the terrified twelve-year-olds they saw year on year in other districts.
The two victors took their biggest gamble in the year of the Thirty-Third Games, entering two of their candidates from loyalist backgrounds. Chloe, always the more risk averse and softer of the pair did not like the idea. But Coral was more ruthless and willing to take risks. She figured they could handle a difficult victor, there would be four of them versus the lone new victor after all. But ultimately, she doubted either would win and given that their families wanted the glory of giving the Capitol volunteers, why not give them the whole Hunger Games experience? Shai would side with Chloe, but whilst Mags would not be so crass, she showed her more ruthless side and sided with Coral. The loyalist children volunteered.
Ultimately, Beetee Latier won the Thirty-Third Games and the bewildered fifteen-year-old found himself with an unexpected new best friend in Coral, who on his arrival in Four during his Victory Tour, pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, kissed him on the cheek and started what would be an enduring friendship. Three's second victor was just one of Coral's many friends among the victors. She was more comfortable than Chloe with her status as a victor who actively chose to take part in the Games and got on better with the victors from One and Two than Chloe did, although much of that could be ascribed to the victors that Chloe won in between. The older victor instead maintained incredibly close friendships with Liev and Seeder, choosing to stay on the edge of the volunteer group.
….
Back in District Four, Mags was happy with the state of their Centre. Their longstanding instructors were still actively involved and maintaining connections. Candidates who were not Chloe and Coral's chosen volunteers were staying with the programme as trainers and leaders and were proving reliable assets to their wider activities. The two victors were becoming trusted leaders in Four and Mags needed to use them to their advantage.
There was one area where they still lacked contacts. They had a few informants in the lowest ranks of the peacekeepers but nobody at a level to provide them with vital information and law enforcement plans. For too long, they had been caught by surprise in changes in rules and regulations at sea, in terms of punishment or business and taxation. They needed to be able to influence policy and rule changes too. Their people were being taken advantage of.
Prior to President Ravinstill becoming increasingly paranoid and susceptible to the influence of some overly powerful advisers, a rather sensible programme involving people from different communities across the districts in the peacekeeping force had been trialled, although it did not last long. Four was heavily targeted, and Coral's community especially so. Mags knew they had a way in through those that had stayed with the programme and had jobs. Not all of them were posted in Four, but they would visit on their annual holiday and there was enough of them at home that they should have taken advantage of this earlier.
Coral and Chloe were to integrate themselves into their social lives, build up trust and hopefully be introduced to some higher-ranking colleagues. Coral's father would help with assuring the loyalties of those who shared his and Coral's heritage, for many of the harsher rules and penalties disproportionately affected them. Whilst Chloe lacked an immediate connection with many of the force in Four, she knew how to present herself and had never built up any bad blood with law enforcement, in fact, they respected her leadership at the Centre. It would be slow progress, but the victors would be patient enough to wait.
….
At every opportunity, Mags would assign Chloe and Coral tasks together. She knew their friendship had deepened quickly and that there was an implicit trust and understanding between the two. They were very different but complemented each other well. They thrived at the Centre and enjoyed being trusted with new responsibilities. They had opened up a new set of unwitting informants in the Capitol too, having integrated themselves into groups of socialites with far too much time and money and a penchant for cocktail parties. Mags could speak to such groups, but the age gap between them was widening and she could never get them to talk in the way her girls did. She watched them go about various parties during the Games and waited until they returned with highly amusing stories full of useful information. Chloe and Coral never failed to impress her, and she was so proud of the way her victors had developed.
They had never explicitly told her about the real nature of their relationship, but Mags was nothing if not wise. The same could not be said for Shai who sent Mags into fits of laughter when he told her that he thought the Capitol newspapers and television studios must be correct in their assertions that Chloe and Liev were secretly a couple. Mags knew that if anyone knew the true depths of Chloe and Coral's relationship, it was Liev and he was providing cover for the pair for the Capitol. If Mags was correct in her assumptions, his rumoured relationship with Chloe was also providing a front for him too.
She hoped the pair were not deliberately hiding their relationship from her and Shai for fear of judgement, they would not find that in the village. Perhaps in some circles in the district she could understand secrecy and it would not do to create gossip in the Centre, but in the village Chloe and Coral would be free to live their lives with acceptance and in peace.
Gradually Mags realised that they were not hiding their relationship, they just were not shouting about it. When she collected her children from Chloe's or when they met at Coral's to discuss their volunteer programme, Mags realised that both houses were their homes. Neither would appear to leave for the night when they had finished their meetings and their belongings seemed to be split equally across both homes. Her children would sometimes stay the night at Chloe's as would Shai's and it was only their children using her spare rooms. Coral's extra space was taken up with their office for managing the Centre and a library which they created together over many years. In the Capitol house that Mags and Shai brought, using a contact as a front, Mags realised that Coral had never put any of her belongings in her room and had likely never slept in there either.
They only formally acknowledged their relationship after the Seventy-Fourth Games. They knew things were changing, and in Four, when the spark ignited, change would come quickly. For the many years after Coral's victory (Mags later realised that the two had been together since Coral returned from her Victory Tour), they simply existed together. Where one went, the other would follow and a few closely guarded them, whenever they needed secrecy.
But after Twelve's double victory, they asked District Four's officiant (a long-time informant of Coral's) to come to Victor's Village and whilst the Capitol imposed laws meant that nothing could be put on the official register, they were married in their district's tradition. The only attendees were their fellow victors, Mags' and Shai's families and Song's sister but that was all they needed. They had a party in the evening and sent messages to Liev and Beetee to tell them to have a drink on them.
When the Quell was announced, they knew they had made the right decision. On reaping day, when peacekeepers tried to break them apart before they walked onto the stage they met were met by Rowan, Noah and Shai and they could not get past. Chloe and Coral stood on the stage, facing their people, proudly holding hands. They were returning to the Capitol on what may turn out to be a suicide mission, they had nothing left to lose.