.

◈
לבטל
le⬩va⬩tel
to nullify
◈

If she thought too much about it, President Cerise Emerald could still feel the phantom pain in her chest.

It had been a month now since that fateful day: since the death of her mother, Ruby Emerald, since the death of her brother, Garnet Emerald, since a part of Cerise died too. Cerise was still struggling to process what exactly had happened in her mother's office. When she opened the door to her mother's office, Peacekeepers close behind, she had a feeling she'd find her mother's body as she did, slumped over her desk, bleeding out from who knew where. But she was not expecting to see her brother sprawled out on the floor, a gunshot wound in his stomach, and Alexios lying next to him, a smoking gun on the floor between them.

And the worst part was that this was all her fault. Even though Alexios had promised her that he wouldn't kill Ruby, she knew when he handed him that gun that she was likely signing her mother's death warrant. She knew and she chose to do it anyway. But there was no way for her to know beforehand that, instead of staying with the briefing team for just long enough, Garnet would go rogue, running to their mother's office and to his death. Sure, she was trying to act in Panem's best interest, but at what cost? The blood of her brother and mother would be on Cerise's hands for the rest of her life.

"Cerise?"

Cerise turned to see her sister-in-law, Elizah Kleppeer Emerald, waiting in the doorway. She could feel a tear sliding down her cheek as her emerald-green eyes met Elizah's brown ones. "Hi."

"How are you feeling?" she asked, coming up to him and delicately putting a hand on Cerise's shoulder.

"It's hard. I miss them."

"I do too."

"Is it time?"

"It is time. Are you ready?"

"As ready as I can be."

Cerise took one last look at herself in the mirror. She looked a lot like her mother – the two women were of similar body types, had the same red hair, and had the same trademark emerald-green eyes. Cerise had always thought that Garnet looked more like their mother than she did, but there was no mistaking Cerise for the daughter of anyone other than Ruby Emerald.

Her appearance was a little piece of her mother that Cerise knew would always be with her as she strove to carry on Ruby's legacy – or, more accurately, to shape Panem into the country that she wanted it to be.

Taking a deep breath, Cerise followed Elizah through the halls of the President's Mansion. It was still strange to her that this was a place she could now call home. Ruby had chosen not to, preferring to distance herself from anything that tied her too closely to her grandfather, Coriolanus Snow; she instead chose to use the mansion as an event space of sorts. But Cerise didn't know if she could bear to work in the same office in the Games Center in which her mother and brother were murdered, or to live just a few floors away from Ruby's old apartment, as most of the Emeralds had their apartments in the same building. It would be much easier to grieve and move on if she could get some distance - and yet something about the grandeur of the mansion was so intimidating, so overwhelming, that it felt wrong to disturb it, as if Cerise didn't deserve to be there.

Because she didn't deserve to be there.

When they were finally able to move Ruby's body, they'd discovered signed Transfer of Power paperwork under her body, the once-white paper stained blood red. Had she not signed that document, the presidency would have automatically passed to Cerise at her death; instead, Ruby made the active choice to name Garnet her successor, as the person to carry on her legacy and shape Panem the way that she wanted. But with both Garnet and Ruby dead, the presidency automatically passed to Cerise. And yes, that was exactly what she wanted; the goal was to convince Ruby not to sign that paperwork so that Cerise could take power on behalf of the Alexios group. But now that she was actually president, devoid of any support system, she really wasn't sure if she was ready to do this.

But it wasn't like she had another choice.

As she reached the door to the balcony, Cerise was greeted by her cousin, Violet Emerald, the first time she'd seen her since Cerise's official inauguration that morning. The two shared a warm, sad embrace, neither really knowing what to say. Since they were children, the two had always been each other's best friend and closest confidant, and while they'd grown apart over the past few years, loss had a way of bringing people back together.

"Are you sure about this?" Violet asked.

"I have no choice. I have to avenge my mother and brother." And this was the plan from the beginning.

"But what if there is backlash?"

"If there is backlash, we will handle it. I am the president, and my word is final."

After a few moments of last-minute preparations, two people clothed in black pulled open to the doors to the balcony, and President Cerise Emerald stepped through to address the nation of Panem for the first time.

"Citizens of Panem," she began, quieting the crowd of politely applauding Capitolites as she stepped up to the podium. "It has been a long and difficult month for all of us, beginning with the death of my mother and brother, Garnet and President Ruby Emerald, and extending to the rebel attacks that have terrorized our country. Every person in our great nation, from the soldiers of Thirteen to the factory workers of Three, has felt the ripple effects of the seismic shifts that have been forced upon us. Know that we in the Capitol are working tirelessly with the authorities in all thirteen districts to find those perpetrators who took lives and destroyed property during this month's violence. I extend my deepest condolences to those who have lost friends and loved ones in this attack; I am hurting with you and I am mourning alongside you.

"I want to be very transparent about what we in the Capitol know about the events of the last month. We have counted a minimum of nineteen different rebel incidents in the last month, with at least one sprouting up in every district." The people of Panem didn't need to know that those attacks had been carefully timed; Pacifica Corwin had spent the last month cuing attack after attack, using Alexios's connections to the rebels across the districts. But Cerise had lied to Pacifica, obscuring the fact that those small acts of rebellion would be easy to crush by Panem's specially trained Peacekeepers. The attacks only went on for a month because Cerise had let them go that long. "Our intelligence reports have indicated that the deaths of Garnet and President Emerald were either the catalyst for or an extension of the rebel attacks, as both were assassinated by rebel leader Alexios Nox. Alexios has now been arrested for treason and is in government custody and will be put on trial for treason in the coming weeks. I am confident that he will be brought to justice, not just for his murders but for all of the violence that his murders led to.

"Given the insurgence of rebel attacks across the country, and given that those attacks are connected to the death of the president and her successor, it has become abundantly clear to me that our country is not ready to move past the Hunger Games. As such, I will be declaring an immediate end to the Inter-District, Inter-Disciplinary Events, and reinstating the original eligibility policies for the Hunger Games. However, we will be maintaining a version of the Statute System for the Reapings that will make those on a statute more likely to be Reaped than those not on a statute. More information on this point will be provided for our mentors and mayors in the coming weeks.

"While this may be a sharp turn, I am confident that today's announcement will help bring Panem towards a safe, sustainable future. Panem today, Panem tomorrow, Panem forever."

Hello everyone, and welcome to the first installment of the Blood Diamond Verse! If you're a little confused about what's going on, I'd advise checking out the last chapter of The Second Inter-District, Inter-Disciplinary Events (also known as IDIDE2), as well as the first chapter of Let Him Feel No Pain, the parallel fic to this one. Yes, you read that right, parallel fic – I did, in fact, split up my own canon into two separate universes. With some exceptions that I'll get into when the fic opens, assume that anything that has happened in any of my previous fics (MMAM, IDIDE1, IDIDE2, and the rewrite of OTWT) has happened in this verse as well, and that anything happening in the other verse, the Garnet Verse, could have happened on this side of the verse had things gone differently.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished is going to be an open SYOT that will kick off this side of my verse. I'm not exactly sure when I'll be opening this story for subs; the more I've been working on its subplot, the more I realize that it's becoming both a sequel to IDIDE2 and a sequel to Only Time Will Tell at the same time. My plan is to open subs around when OTWT closes, so if you're interested in submitting, do follow this fic, and I'll release the second prologue when I'm ready to open subs! In the meantime, why not check out Let Him Feel No Pain? I'm very excited for what I have prepared for that fic as well. And while we're waiting, what are your thoughts on Cerise? She's a character that has held a lot of different roles over time in my verse, and the one she's holding here is not the role that I had in mind for her a year ago...

I can't wait for you all to see what I have in store! Catch you back here in… well, in a while!

xoxo, xxxi