Interlude: The Ruler and The Insurgent.
Head Gamemaker Elkavich. Gamemakers' Headquarters.
Her headquarters are in a frenzy, and that is the last place she wishes to be.
(It is unsightly. All of it is unsightly: she can barely dare to look at the madness that makes the stage before her. A hundred head-throbbing cries; the freakish shoves of bodies; the pitter-patter of mad feet like there was a terrorist desecrated here.)
Even that would not truly be a lie.
Control. Breathe. Control. It is a mantra she repeats to herself, yet it is not useful. For no matter how much she tries to restrain herself, to moderate herself, to be temperate…
… that does not change the reality that she beholds.
The reality is not a reality that can be. She cannot have wanton earthquakes in her Arena. She cannot have obstreperous signals interfering with her Games. Hell, she cannot have this - this mad gallimaufry that is her headquarters now.
(And Snow's breath glides across, already so cold on her skin, a hint of a smile meandering upon his lips. "Elkavich," he would purr, the creep of his saline breath pressing against her neck, "what have I told you?")
Elkavich can be penitent, she can be impuissant, she can be circumlocutory till he believes her to be the salt of the earth itself: but what does not change is that there is rebellion. In itself an executable offence.
She cannot bestride him.
Not in a world so razed by rebellion.
(Why did she choose to rise now, at this time? Of course, Snow enticed her with all she could have: all that she can wrangle into her hands: glorious and gluttonous wealth, the cheers and cries of the Capitol. Of course, she was entranced, but not for his reasons: she could make something of herself, she could drag herself from the bitter dredges of dirt and rise above like Gaia, the mother of the world. Elkavich could cock her head at the empire that she created, and she would be recognised, she would be seen, not slandered. She would watch the world itself beg her at its knees.)
… none of that now.
(No. What she is is this: a little girl, trying to play at Gamemaker, dissatisfied with the title of escort and who wanted bigger, wanted better. What she is, is this: a scapegoat. Two months, you'll succeed, they said, and that filled her with so much confidence, oh, she would. Of course she couldn't: who in the world had heard of a Games created so quickly, grown from the ashes of little girls lining up to off themselves?)
(They'll bring her in. Elkavich stands on the glass cliffs that Guthrie had made of her; Elkavich stands on the ruins that Snow had thrown her to remake. Elkavich stands, and her legs shake, and they pay her no heed: no, their eyes are turned below, to the shrieks of ravenous vultures she can't control, to the shadows of her tombstone.)
They'll blame her. Oh, Elkavich, and Snow's smirk would be cloaked by disapproval in his face, I had hoped that you would conjure an Arena of your desires. But it is so clear that you would prefer to… reuse. A shame, really: was the last Games not a symbol of rebellion? Was it truly creative to reforge the prior Games? Rebellion festers in that heartland. Did you think that you could redeem Guthrie's Games? I thought that you would make something yours, for once.
Yours. The word is viscid tar in her mouth.
(Nothing can be yours. Did you expect anything to be yours? The Capitol's tasselled you up with their gems and you made her their escort. They've made you reel kids in for their voyeuristic slaughter, and you are but a sidepiece of jewellery for their voracious eyes. Oh, you could claim that you're here of your own strength, of your own prowess, but admit it, Elkavich: you wouldn't be here if not for Snow. You would not be here had you not been one of Guthrie's loyal escorts. You would not be here if not for Guthrie's dualistic Arena. You would not be anywhere.)
Elkavich doesn't realise she's clenching her fists till she feels the consistency of blood amid her palms. Her razor-tipped fingernails slice a ruby tear in her skin.
"This is my Games," she exhales, closes her eyes, say it again, sayitsayit I dare you, make it sound like it's true, make it sound like it means something, sayitsayitsayit—
"Do you understand?" She opens her eyes and the words ricochet across the headquarters. And she finds her team's eyes on her, finds their stares and their silence, as they watch her upon her elevated balcony. No more is chaos; no more is their frenzy.
It is just her left.
And her words are stoic, cool-stoic-cool, and that is what she sees reflected in the rest of the team's eyes: their fear, their awe, their obedience.
Their obedience.
She levels her gaze at them all. No, this team is hers. They obey her; they revere her; they watch her. No, this headquarters is hers. She's earned it through her verve and her strength and her largesse. No: this Arena is hers. She's taken what Guthrie's made, and she improved upon it; she made it her contrivance, her chef-d'oeuvre, her creation.
And send sieges of rebellion against her stature and send parades of dead children on the streets and hell, and send Snow in to slice her neck, but nothing will change the fact: the Games are hers.
Elkavich is not yet moribund.
Not to the mistakes of others.
Not for a Games that was not good enough.
She turns to her controls. There's barely a dozen: simplistic, her Games had stayed. But there is one lever that had solely belonged to her. And only to her. Only she, the Head Gamemaker, could choose to release her creations.
(It had taken time, piecing them together. Yet not as much time as they would before: there were no parades of corpses two months ago, no return of bodies to their homes and their morgues two months prior. These mutts were… easy.)
And the red lights that dot her control panel flash green, and a dozen whirrs and creaks give way under her. A dozen flurries of noises-set-free; a dozen screeches; a dozen clatter of hooves. A dozen stream out of cracks that the earthquakes had created; a dozen more break free from earth and rise above dirt.
Something lets up the corner of her lips.
That is why she barely hears the steps approach; that is why she barely hears the clatter of heels. That is why she does not look when she hears somebody speak.
"M-miss Elkavich," a Gamemaker says, and the stutter betrays just who it is. "Snow s-seeks you."
Her scoff belies her fears. She does not turn to look at Kathvarine.
"Tell him he can have ten minutes. His duties I can care less for. I have my Games to attend to."
Jordyn Moriau. ?
There's something unreal, perhaps, about being on a hovercraft.
Not just because of the fact: Jordyn Moriau has never been on a hovercraft, and the only hovercraft she'd expected to be upon was the one carrying her corpse back home, to be buried under a name that wasn't hers.
Yet she is here.
No just that. What is unreal is the fact that she is here, and alive, and breathing, and with District Thirteen. What is unreal is the radio signals jettisoned across stations, unknown to the Capitol and to Peacekeepers. What is unreal is the fact that they have organised rebellion at their behest, that they have people on the streets stirring justice, stirring revenge, that they have devices and bombs and siren-calls and technology and weaponry.
"We're on course to the Arena. Are we ready for extraction?"
Her eyes jerk up at the voice through her comms. Anxiety bubbles underneath her skin. Listening to their reports, now, still, is uncomfortable. Jordyn isn't sure if there's a day she'll ever be comfortable: the rebellion is like the hovercraft she stands upon. Unsteady… uncertain… so prone to falling, if one strike gets, snug enough to dismantle their craft itself…
Another voice fizzes through.
"Yes. The Technologists have confirmed their location. The Mole has her finger on the trigger. We are prepared for entrance."
Jordyn lets out a quiet, not-quite, breath. The Technologists, she thinks, rueful. What a way to name the Threes. And her mind drifts once, and away: The Mole. How… nice, to have someone high up in your ranks… working for your cause.
(She knows that there is history. This is not the first time that District Thirteen had attempted to interfere. That was something that Cynane had mentioned, upon their debriefing, after Jordyn arrived. Their first attempt to disrupt the Games, the 53rd, had foiled; but that is no matter. They have connections, now, they have people, they have operations set across all of the Districts.)
Their rebellion is warranted. Their rebellion is important. Their rebellion is necessary: as necessary as air is necessary, and there, that is why she is here.
… but anxiety still gnaws at her skin, and it doesn't really make her feel any better.
What is also unreal is the way her face makes the screens. She is now the poster child of rebellion. And it's uncomfortable, if she's being honest because the Jordyn Moriau holstered to the world is not quite herself. That is a figurehead; that is a caricature; that is an act. And sure, she had excelled in all sixteen years of acting. But that makes her only more uneasy upon the screens.
(There is something else, that she would not touch, not yet: for she needs to suppress a wince when they call her name, needs to stuff down a chaotic medley of feelings unease unease wrong wrong so putrid in her mouth wrong so wrong whenever they speak. But that is something she would not touch: not yet.)
Her comms fizz; the noises rebound, across and over the small hovercraft. Every little more sound spikes her nerves. Yet it is better, to focus her mind on, better, to focus on how it is all too unreal.
What would be the most unreal would probably be the girl sitting next to her. Who she thought was dead. Who she thought she would see again. Who would've ever thought that she'd be seeing M—
"... Jordyn."
She jumps. Her eyes dart up to Cynane's, from across the hovercraft, standing at the commands. Discomfort sinks into her skin, but that moment does not last for long. Cynane would see how she feels, and she can't be caught up in her feelings. There are more important things to attend to.
"Is there anything I can do?" she says, despite herself. She straightens her back: she tries to seem more presentable, less tired than she already is.
She had made a broadcast… just yesterday. It was for the Sixes. For Herman and Fascia… the fallen.
"Stand strong. We'll avenge the deaths of your children. Their sacrifices are not made in vain."
… she had not even known that they were part of the rebellion until their faces had marred the dusk-dark skies of the Games, and Cynane had sighed, let out a scoff from her lips, another two of our operatives down.
Cynane stares at her. She swallows and meets Cynane's gaze.
"What is it? Do we have more operatives," and the word itself is uncomfortable on her lips, too clunky, too cold, too clinical, "... down?"
Something pulls by the side of Cynane's lips. It would have been a smile if it was not so… raptorial. But it is only for a moment: and then it is gone again.
"No, not yet. What I want you to do is to tell the world," Cynane says, and the thin smile that meets her lips is almost eerie. "The rebellion is underway."
"How?" she says, and the words are nearly breathless from her lips.
Cynane only cocks her head.
"That's easy. It's extraction time. Are you ready?"
Extraction.
"Where is that?"
Something presses by Cynane's lips. "You'll know the destination." And Cynane turns her head back towards the front of the hovercraft. And if she looks, she can make out the shimmer of the Arena, that shimmer she'd taken down. Again-once-again.
Cynane does not even flinch when she says the next words.
"Her grave."
Gamemaker Kathvarine Guthrie. Gamemakers' Headquarters.
She watches Elkavich leave, and there is something pretty that quirks her lips as she goes.
It is so easy that she ascends up the platform which Elkavich had sat upon. The Head Gamemaker, who needed somewhere special to keep her screens, her systems, her controls: wasn't she just so much better than them all?
(That place her father sat upon. That place that was supposed to be Guthrie's, till he was seized away by Snow, till he was executed in some red room else place. And seeing Elkavich in where her father was supposed to be churns her gut with… something.)
(Not that she loved her father. But… still.)
They've been at their technological siege. The rebels from Thirteen were; those from within the Games were. The force-field hadn't been altered, much, but Kathvarine knows that there had been more changes, more precautions and measures to ensure its security.
Kathvarine knows where the extraction point is. She knows the control of the earthquakes; there is a circle, a safe place, where the quakes dare not disrupt. She knows the rebellion; she knows the hovercraft that whirrs in wait; she knows that change hinges on her.
And all she needs to do now is to demolish the force-field.
There is no easy way she can do that. But with the help from the Threes, and then the rebellion themselves…
It is so easy.
(It is so easy the force-field shudders upon the screens. It is so easy that it shutters, that it suspends, that it stops. And then there are shakes, and then there are explosions, and amid all of the chaos that erupts through the earth is a calamity above the world.)
Kathvarine watches the entrance of the hovercraft into the Games with an unbidden smile.
The rebellion has begun.
A/N. Subplot shenanigans! We are blazing. Any new thoughts? About Elkavich? About Cynane and the rebellion? About Kathvarine?
As always, if anyone has any concerns or thoughts, feel free to message me! I'm always here on to talk, or on Discord (Dawn#9708). Thank you so much for reading, and as always, huge thank yous to Linds, Joseph, Haiden, Slytherin, Bradi, and the rest of the gang for following along. Yall are awesome!