Interlude.

"Our tributes are ready." Elkavich states. "They should be on their way to the Capitol now."

"Is that so?"

"Yes."

Snow tilts his head at her. He's near the entrance of the Gamemaker room, which would lead out to the hallways, so often bustling in the chatter of politicians and Capitolites alike, in rushing assistants and entitled little children, in the silence of traitors.

But those brink-quartz doors are shut, and it's stone-cold that she's solitary in, now.

Snow's presence is… particularly pronounced in the pristine-white Gamemaker room. An asylum, it reminds her of, or of Peacekeeper uniforms—so medical that Elkavich would rather be at a mausoleum than anyplace here.

Where were the better operative headquarters? This was… utilitarian. Spartan. Boring. In all her years as an escort, she'd supervised over a few Games herself— and they were lavish in their sparks of gold and silver gleams, flowing with luscious fruits that were fit for the gods, overspilling in their red and purple wine that would make better gluttons of men than men could make of themselves. The Gamemakers' Headquarters were one of her favourite places to visit; such a reprieve from the smogs of Eight, or the grubbiness of Three, and the monotone of Four.

(Guthrie had a nice place. Six years running the Games, he had the best headquarters of them all. Streams of crimson down the pale walls, shuffled into streamers that he'd use to taste wines, wrung from the excess of Avoxes they had no more use for. He'd always invite Elkavich to his celebratory feasts: grand and gory and glorious they were. She'd enjoyed every single one, despite the nepotism that was so present: Guthrie's daughter, Kathvarine, and so many of his family members...)

(Until, of course. Snow had let Elkavich feast her eyes upon what could be her own.)

Elkavich levels her eyes upon Snow, who stays beside the corner of the door, considering her still. She clears her throat. "What are you here for, President Snow?"

(It's far more imperative, far more—almost—defiant than she intends.)

Snow's eyes do not betray any feeling, but there's a ripple that succeeds through his cold irises. As smooth as the craven ice, he strolls towards her, his steps soundless, as if he were a ghost himself.

"Have you watched the Reapings yet, Head Gamemaker Elkavich?"

(His lips drag upon her name, like a cigar, and his breath's like stabs of ice against her cheek, and the putrid scent of roses sinks into her flesh.)

The Reapings. What did he want her to remember about the Reapings? She couldn't remember much of it herself. There was tribute after tribute, like year after year, and there were the Careers, year after year. She'd turned off remembering their names after her first year as an escort, and she'd stopped bothering entirely after she was elevated into a Capitol Escort. There were better things to deal with, after all, and counting the dead was a job for the insane.

But Snow looks at her, still, a type of amusement twitching his lips, and Elkavich's mouth turns dry at any careless remark that'll leave her lips.

"I'd seen the Eight Girl," is what Elkavich finally says, because Snow is expecting a response, and District Eight is the only one she can remember that's anything special.

(She'd gone up the podium, a scoff curling her lips, and that was typical of older, careless, disobedient tributes—those that thought they might as well forget about the world now that they were as good as dead. Elkavich had enjoyed watching their faces transform, after they'd scorned the Capitol all the while when they were told that their families had been executed as a price for their defiance.)

(Guthrie didn't defy. His tributes were the problem. But he died still because of them.)

Her stomach clenches, now, at the thought of Eight Girl. Elkavich's jaw tightens. "She's…"

"Feisty?" Snow suggests. "Rebellious?"

Those words knot down her stomach in stones. Feisty, and then she remembers the District 2 Career of the 55th Games, Maeve was her name, and she remembers Madison, the District 1 Career, careless, and then she remembers Scott, the boy from District 5, rebellious.

(Suddenly, killing her tributes become… much less an entertaining prospect.)

And when Elkavich's quiet, Snow lets a smile protrude through his lips. "We wouldn't want that now, hmm?"

(It's so much like bits of bone, his grin.)

She's quiet, and she stays in the quiet, for a moment, before she looks up to Snow. She meets his gaze; she matches his smile.

(She tries.)

"No," she says, smoothly. "We do not."

Elkavich tilts her head up. "She'll die, anyway," she says, "Soon. In the Games. But for now, she'll be entertaining. Until we remind them all—who has the authority here."

Snow considers this with a tilt of his head. "And you'll ensure it," and there's a coldness that runs down Elkavich's spine, at his words, "how?"

"Through my Arena," Elkavich says. "They'll understand the price it takes to rebel."

"Hm," Snow says, and there's a tentative pull of his lips by the corner of his mouth. "I like your sentiment, Elkavich. For your sake… I do hope that you manage to conjure an Arena… just like that one you so desire. Manage to find the time, I mean."

Elkavich feels a stiffness rise up against her throat. It's bile, perhaps, but she pushes it down.

Time.

She barely has enough of it already. And to make another Arena out of what she has is no easy task. Snow knows that. And she lacks options... solutions...

Elkavich schools her expression instead; she tilts her head down in a nod. She will. She must. She'll show them.

(For her life or else.)

After all. It wasn't as if they'd ever retaliate from the grave.

Jordyn.

It is the chaos of the rumble that rushes through her ears in the war room. Steps, coalescing through in clatters; metal knives unto the ground; the bustle of machinery and bombs echo through the chambers.

Jordyn takes in a breath. It's a heavy hustle in from her lips and out again, and she levels her eyes ahead. The Arena shimmers back to her, in all its golden glory: a sphere of yellow, not-so-different from the sun. She's on a podium, a stage, she has her hands, shaking, under the soft Arena's glow, she's staring at the metal of the camera that gleams at her with the wink of an evil, oil-slick eye.

A shoulder shoves into her. Jordyn stumbles forward. She recovers in a moment, and her eyes go towards whoever's knocked her over—but they're gone now, them and their carts jostling over the elevated silver circle she's on and down the steps again.

"Focus," a voice points towards her, sharp, poised like daggers against her skin. It's low, a tightened baritone, the only sound that can pierce through the noise of the room; that can shoot a shiver down her skin. Jordyn's eyes snap back forward—towards the yellow glow that envelops the Arena, to the camera again.

She breathes in; she breathes out. Focus, she tells herself too, she needs to focus. She lets her stomach clench together; she lets steel tighten her back, her limbs, her shaking hands. There's the camera that turns a ripple up her skin, but Jordyn keeps herself together.

Focus. Focus.

It's too cold, the beady eye that trains upon her; it's empty, almost, the glass that glints a half-light upon her; it's too steely, it's too detached. It roils a feeling through her throat, and Jordyn lets her half-swallow dissolve, for a moment.

Focus. Focus.

She tries to remember the script. They've planned it out, in their meeting. She and the others and District 13. It's hard to remember, above the cluster of noises that pervade the room, but there are words that teether at the tip of her tongue, and she just has to say them.

(There is the black gleam of metal that stays upon her, trained, like a gun.)

"I'm not a Victor," she says, finally, half-breathless, and they tumble out of her, instantaneously, like the break of a dam into a flow, that rustles through as loud as the clanks of steps in her ears, as much as the screeches and the jolts and the fumbles, the metal-against-metal that encroaches upon their too-tight, too-confining room.

And it is Cynane's eyes that stay upon her, from the corner of the room. She mingles there, a statue encroached in shadow, and Jordyn twists her eyes back towards the camera.

Focus. Focus.

"I'd like to repeat that again," she says, in an exhale, "The 55th Games has no Victor. That's what I'd like to clarify. I'm alive. But I don't live because I've won. I lived because I got out. I lived because I survived."

(There are Cynane's eyes that still linger upon her; stoic, solemn, curious with a half-lifted smile, waiting.)

"I'm a survivor," Jordyn states, and it comes out with more vigour than she'd thought it would've had; it comes out far quieter. "I've survived the Capitol. The Games. So stand with me. Stand for your people. Your Districts. Stand with the... Vultures."

(That metal piece questions her, with half a tip of a smile, that black metal that rests upon the stands.)

A quietude exudes through the room, once the camera clicks off. There is the bustle that continues, of course; but the figure in the corner considers her, with a taut-lip drawn across her face, with the cock of her head. And Jordyn forces her feelings to quell.

Time drags on. It's tight against her chest, it's suffocating in her throat, it wraps her in so much anxiety and doesn't let her go from its grasp. Cynane stares at her; Jordyn doesn't dare look back.

And finally, finally, until too much time's gone on until Jordyn can barely feel anything but numbness, Cynane tilts her head. Cynane smiles.

There are words that string across her lips, ones that dance in their mysticism; in their mysteriousness; in a cold, hard, twinkle. "Thank you, Jordyn," the President of District 13 says, and—

Jordyn breathes again.

A/N: Hi all! I'm sorry this chapter ended up being released far later than I intended. What did you guys think? Let me know your thoughts about the subplot going on! ;D We'll have train rides next (all done!), and it'll be quick till we get to the Games!

Next Update (But Seriously): 11th July.

Thank you for reading! Drop your thoughts below :D