LI: The Capitol - Rose Point Estate.

Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17

The logical thing to do when it's more than slightly after midnight is sleep.

So that's exactly what she does.

And it works, too, for roughly six or so hours. Considering she slept most of the previous day away it's not all that surprising. It is nice, for a while, to just lay there while trying to forget everything's that going to happen even sooner than she thought.

There's one thing that gets her out of bed, admittedly, and it's Tarquin.

Once he left the library last night, or this morning, she didn't see him again. Presumably he found Dr. Arranmore and collected whatever was brought for him - she really ought to do that herself, but her wrist isn't causing her too much pain. She'll do it eventually if it begins troubling her.

Half of her expected to wake up and find Tarquin in the corner of the room again, silent and hunched over like a weird little gargoyle. She had left her door unlocked after a few minutes of internal debate. If she locked the door and he tried to come in, it might chase him away and force him to go to sleep. In the end she had decided it was too cruel; if he came looking it was only because he was desperate, and that didn't deserve chasing away.

She found him half out of a window, for crying out-loud. Chasing him away would be like asking for it.

Something in her almost dreads heading to his room because of that. It can't be any worse than last time, can it? She'd like to think that way. She's not sure it's smart, but there's not much of that going around these days anyway. If she was smart she probably wouldn't get herself involved in anybody else's drama like the good old days, where she hardly talked to anyone unless they spoke to her first. It was weird to be so disconnected from such things, but good at the same time. Nothing could hurt her then.

She's already hurting, though. Everyone is.

All she can do is try to make it better.

She knocks on his door a few times but doesn't get a response, holding her breath the entire time. Maybe he's still sleeping. She did wait several hours after she woke up to head this way, but there's still a chance of that, sleep-deprived as he was.

Ria allows herself to crack the door open an entire two inches and gets an eyeful of absolutely nothing except the empty room. The bed looks as if it was slept in, but who knows if that's really the truth. The bathroom door is almost entirely closed, open about as much as this door is that she's holding onto, but it's the light that's coming from inside that gives her a little bit of hope. There's a bit of shuffling, too. Enough for there to be life.

That's... good.

"Tarquin?" she calls. There's a swear and the immediate sound of something bouncing to the floor. The door cracks open a few more inches as he bumps into it, his shadow spilling out into the bedroom. He eventually retrieves whatever hit the floor and then pokes his head out to look at her. It takes her a long few seconds to process what it is she's seeing; there's a towel draped over his shoulders and half of his hair is slicked to his head. There are little smears of black at the very tops of his ears and across his forehead but she chooses not to mention it.

"What are you doing?" she asks. It seems pretty obvious.

"Dyeing my hair?" he says. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

"I," she starts, but he ducks back into the bathroom before she can get anything else out. She knew that, of course. It just wasn't what she was expecting.

She edges into the bathroom after him, careful not to startle him again. There's another dot of black on the floor where he must have dropped the bottle and she scrubs her sock over it until it's gone once again.

"Why?" she asks, sitting down on the edge of the tub. There's stuff absolutely everywhere, strewn over the counter and into the sink. There's an extra pair of gloves resting on the back of the toilet.

He shrugs. "I mentioned it to Tycho a few days ago. I do it at least once a month, you know? Like every color of the rainbow. It feels like forever since I've done it. I mentioned it, didn't tell him to or anything, but he made me breakfast this morning and just gave me a bag full of the stuff. All brand new, different colors."

"And you picked black," she says flatly. "Is that black?"

"Yeah," he answers. "I don't know, it just seemed sort of fitting. Is that weird?"

It does seem that way, at least until she really thinks about it, and then she finds herself cracking a smile. It almost gets hard not to laugh. It really is fitting, and she gets it. Tarquin's a theater kid through and through, constantly changing to better fit the part of the month. Now there's nothing to play at except how he feels on the inside, and well...

Black is probably fairly accurate. His hair was already growing in close to that color, if not exact, anyway.

Tarquin smiles too. "See? Makes total sense."

She nods. He doesn't look terrible, this time. She loathed to admit but he did a few days ago, when she would look at him and wonder when he was going to finally collapse. Don't get her wrong, he still looks tired, but not so much.

And he's focusing enough to do something. He ate breakfast this morning. Interacted with a human being that isn't one of them.

That's really good. She used to say that about herself.

"Did you sleep?" she asks. He doesn't break from the mirror, full concentration mode on and everything, but he doesn't go all twitchy on her.

"I did, yeah," he says, as if he's still surprised by it himself. "It wasn't super long, or anything, but I fell asleep really easily. Whatever he picked up for me to take must've worked. I think it did."

There's something brighter about him, more energetic. It's weird considering how he's going darker but he doesn't seem so dead on his feet anymore. A little sleep is better than none, but this is all the mental game. If he's convinced it's helping, if he thinks things are getting better and easier, than they will. That's just how things like that work.

"That's really good," she murmurs, and he nods, swiping away an accidentally placed black streak against the side of his neck.

Finally someone else is making progress. That's better than good.

Ria is definitely hungry enough to head downstairs for some food, but she feels compelled to stay. Someone has to supervise and make sure that he doesn't completely trash the bathroom. He looks a tad on the manic side, moving too fast for the eye to properly track, but that may just be the excitement that comes with familiarity. This is something he's used to.

"Do you have any more boxes of that?" she asks, letting nearly ten minutes of silence pass between them before she pipes up. Tarquin turns to her with a raised eyebrow, abandoning the bottle of dye at the sink's edge.

"Just wondering," she continues.

His smile is so bright it could probably blind someone. "Really? Would you seriously let me?"

"It was a thought," she says slowly, but he's already rooting through the bag with both black-stained, gloved hands. Half of them end up on the floor in his quest to find the right one but he finally comes free with a box identical to the one already on the counter, waving it about triumphantly. He slams it down right next to her as if proving a point.

"I don't know, the blue hair seems very you," he points out.

"Because it is. It's only been natural or blue. Nothing else."

It's been blue for three years, now. Her mother wasn't the biggest fan of it, she knows. She only kept it for as long as she did because it felt right, so undeniably her that changing it would've been akin to blasphemy. Right now, though, she could see it as something else. A change to fit the shift that's occurred in everything else. Tarquin's right - it really is fitting.

He finishes running the dye through the last of his untouched hair, coating it several times over. Eventually he peels the pair of gloves off and tosses them in the trash, picking up the new box. He turns to her, a nervous smile threatening to disappear from his face.

She doesn't feel like she can let that happen.

"One condition," she says. "You don't mess it up."

His face lights up like he's won the lottery. What an improvement that is.

"Deal," he agrees. "I would never."

Anyone else she may not trust just like that, but well, he saved her life. She sort of has to.

Besides, it's not her life. It's just hair.

If he can do that, he better be able to do this.

Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4

Every time he ends up responsible for something Ria seems to be the recipient.

He doesn't care if bits of his skin end up stained for a few days or if his feet hurt from how long he stood in one spot in the bathroom. For her he starts by dragging in a chair from the bedroom for her to sit on - that can end up stained for all he cares, because it's ugly anyway. He digs out a new towel and takes special care to mix everything together.

He probably should have taken more care to notice how long he's got left until he has to wash it out, but he'll figure it out. He's done it a hundred times before and his hair hasn't fallen out. What's one more?

She looks vaguely suspicious as he wiggles the bottle back and forth over top of her head, staring back at him in the mirror. He'd look at himself like that too if he was on the verge of maybe, possibly messing up something very important.

No, he's not going to. He won't.

"I'm going to look like a freak," Ria predicts. "I already look like a ghost - I'm just making it worse."

"You're not going to look like a freak."

"How do you know?"

"Because I know," he insists. "I've seen every color under the sun. You'll be fine."

He's only ever had one truly massive disaster in his hair dyeing escapades. The bright, fire engine red they had chosen for Calix's hair had ended up more orange, almost a muddy brown. It had made him howl so loud with laughter that both his parents had come to check on them in the basement, where they found both of them rolling about on the floor like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

It was a good thing Calix could roll with the punches. He had even left it like that for a month; by the time it was over it had almost looked like his natural hair color.

It hadn't, really, but he had never told him that. That's what best friends were for.

It's odd to think that he doesn't really have one anymore. Calix knows he's alive - all of his friends do. That doesn't matter anymore, though. They're not all that far apart but it feels like a hundred thousand miles in actuality. He has no access to them no matter how much he wishes he did. Maybe they've just moved on. That's probably for the best. Calix, Arden, Velia... they'll be better off for it. They don't need someone like him around.

He accidentally knocks the tip of the bottle into Ria's ear and she reaches up to swipe away the black before it can stain, wiping her hand across the towel.

"Sorry," he murmurs. She shakes her head, but not enough to dislodge his hands.

"If it helps, I think it'll look cool," he says, trying to distract himself from his own thoughts.

"Cool. Right."

"We have to go to court tomorrow like this."

"Don't remind me."

He doesn't like the reminder either, thank you very much, but at least the image is slightly entertaining. They may not even care, really, but if someone does... the thought is enough to get a smile out of him.

It'll be a nice change from all of this. It's a familiarity thing to him as well, something he did just as easy as sleeping and breathing used to be. Waking up with a bit of sleep under his belt and going on to do this just felt right. For a second he could've been home, up earlier than his parents to practice lines and fix his hair, causing ruckus before they could notice.

It's nice, thinking about it like that. Painful, but nice.

He can't help but wonder how it is for Ria. She's been like this for a while, no doubt. To her this isn't familiar, isn't comforting. It's a great big, weird change in the midst of a bunch of other big, weird things. She just doesn't seem like the type to embrace change all that much, let alone choose it the way she has now. Maybe he wants to forget who he is, forget how easily they picked him out because of his hair, but her...

Why is she doing it? To appease him?

He hopes it's not just that.

"Do you miss the person you used to be?" he asks out of the blue. She looks up from her lap, making a face when she notices the funny, slicked-back state of her hair under his gloved hands. He does. He misses his old self and how it used to be like one would miss a lung, like breathing is hard without it. And it is.

"Not really."

"Why not?"

Ria shrugs. "I don't know. She was weaker, I guess. I was weaker."

"I don't think you were weak."

"Well, you were the only one," she says, managing a half-smile. "Seriously, it's okay. I know what I was."

He doesn't think she was weak, never will, but something is different. She's still quiet most of the time, but she talks to him. She talks to him a lot. She spends time with the others and doesn't completely shy away from it even when things get a little too loud for her liking. He knows that she's trying, that she always is, and that a lot of the time it's working.

Not doing those things before didn't make her weak... she's just growing now, is all.

He wishes he could say the same about himself.

The pills Dr. Arranmore gave him did work, he thinks. He doesn't feel right for needing them, but he slept. Not enough to catch up on everything. Not very deep, either. It was enough that he didn't have any sorts of dreams, good or bad, but when he woke up there was little rest inside him. He had just enough energy to get up and eat, to see this through.

It's sort of fading, now. He doesn't tell her that.

Instead he just finishes up with her hair in otherwise silence. He feels oddly enough like a monkey doing this job, picking through her hair with an intent that he's never felt before, but this is important. If he fucks this up she'll probably kill him in his sleep - and she could, no doubt about it. He'll lose the trust in her speaking so actively to him when it's the one thing that's been keeping him going the most.

"Alright, I think we're all done," he announces.

"Think?"

"Definitely done. And I'm going to wash mine out, so we'll see how this goes."

Ria scoots out of the way, chair and all, to allow him access to the sink. It's hard to see with his head stuffed up underneath the tap but he watches with blurry eyes as inky black water swirls down the drain with every push and pull of his hands. There are little droplets of it splatted all across the counter and sink when he finally pulls his head up, letting the last of the water stream from the ends of his hair. It definitely doesn't look black, but what does he know anymore? He gives a quick few pulls of the towel over his head for good measure before he stands back up. Some stray pieces fall back across his forehead - it's getting longer, too, and they're jet black. His entire head is.

He could look like anyone. How easy it would be to blend into anywhere in the world now and just disappear.

The thought alone is tempting, but impossible.

Ria hums approvingly. "Solid job."

It better be. He looks to her and can catch not a single trace of any blue left on her head already. Hopefully that's a solid job too.

If not, it's probably his life that'll be on the line.

Icarus Devereux, 17
Applicant #10

"Do I have to?" Soran asks.

"No," he answers, at the same time Emmi gets out a yes that's far beyond pushy at this point, descending directly into the territory of a direct order. Evander gives all three of them a particular look that doesn't scream approval, but Icarus is pretty sure they've never gotten one of those.

Soran looks downright confused as to who he should be listening to. Icarus will let him go, if he must. Emmi will probably hit him if he tries.

"Look, I'm not saying any of you have to have a full-blown conversation with the woman, alright?" Evander says. "I just think everyone should meet her. And whether you end up talking to her or not at a later date is frankly none of my business."

Evander's right - it's really not. If he sometimes can't handle what they say candidly Icarus can't imagine he'd like what they'd say to a therapist in secret. Though that's probably the point; he doubts Evander wants to hear it at all.

He doesn't know if he'll ever talk to her, personally. He dealt with a therapist a handful of times after Estella, her sister's recommendation before she up and left One with her parents in tow. The guy was nice, don't get him wrong, he's just not sure it really helped. He isn't sure how this woman is supposed to help either. They've been left alone a lot to process things, to try and work through them. Any fixing needed to be done a long time ago.

She might be too late already.

"If we have to meet her, where are tweedledee and tweedledum?" Emmi asks. "Why is it just us three?"

"I'll go make them do it later."

"He won't," Soran mutters. That's what he figured. The three of them are more pig-headed, more likely to ignore instructions unless forced into it. Ria and Tarquin will eventually feel bad enough about ignoring Evander that they'll just go and do it anyway. It's touching, but it's kind of annoying. Why can't he be lumped in with them instead?

Scratch that. He knows why.

Evander stops just outside the archway to the next room over and turns on them all. "Behave."

"You haven't met her either," Soran points out. "What if she sucks?"

"She doesn't. Pandora's met her. And she has all the right credentials."

That doesn't necessarily mean she's any good, but he keeps his mouth shut. He'll try to behave for as long as he can, for Evander's sake and for whoever this poor therapist is. She's gonna have a lot to deal with if she decides to stick around. He should probably give credit where credit is due - even stepping foot into this building is ballsy for someone with no prior experience in dealing with... whatever this has been.

It's either that, or this woman is very, very dumb.

Evander heads in. Emmi gives them both a very drawn out, exaggerated look and follows. Now that they've both gone he begins to wonder if the two of them could take off and not look back.

The thing is, he feels like Soran should talk to her. They probably all should, but Soran is closer to a definitely after what happened the past few days. It's not his call to make, though. He won't risk setting him off now after he's slept, finally, and progressed into something that isn't a complete and total mess. You couldn't pay him to do something like that. Talking to someone, if he wants to, should be his decision. That's what he's beginning to learn. He can't force any of this.

"Kill me," Soran says, and then tugs away from him after Emmi. Like he said: choices.

He for one lets himself lurk at the back of the room for a minute, trying to assess what's going on. Even from a distance he can tell she's younger than he would have expected, much younger than the man he talked to months ago now. Maybe younger is better? It's easier to relate, that's for sure. She looks nice enough. Non-offensive. At least willing to give it her best shot, which is more than he can say for most people.

What's funny about this, though, is that Evander's staring at her like he just woke up first on Christmas morning. Like it's the best day ever.

Okay, maybe younger isn't better.

Soran turns around and catches his eye. Why, he mouths, and Icarus swallows a laugh. Alright, she's attractive, he'll give Evander that, but yeah. Why. He didn't think experiencing love at first sight with their therapist was on anyone's list of tasks to complete today.

She smiles at him from across the room, so he finds it fit to close the last of the distance and at least shake her hand. She never stops smiling.

It's almost sort of eerie, but apparently Evander doesn't think so.

"Shoah Jensen," she tells him. "It's nice to meet you."

"You too." It takes everything in him not to phrase it as question.

He doesn't think she's Capitol-born, but it's hard to tell. She holds herself with the confidence of one but it's hard to tell what else is there, just that it may not be something he's familiar with. Otherwise she really doesn't seem like something to be nervous of. He could come down here and talk to her. It's not like she's going to bite him.

He'll see.

Soran leans in over his shoulder. "If he starts hitting on her I'm leaving."

Emmi snorts so loud that any subtlety they have flees the room and pitches itself out the window. Evander looks like he wants to kill at least one of them, but possible all three. That's hard to tell as well.

They probably can leave. This is all Evander wanted, right? It would be best for the three of them to flee the premises before things get any more awkward. Emmi must be thinking along the same lines, too. She nudges him as if to turn back towards the door, doing so herself. Someone has to take the lead to get them the hell out of here

"What the fuck have you two done?" Emmi asks, foot half-raised as if to begin leaving. Icarus turns to the doorway as well. There are two smaller figures lurking there, near silent as always, staring back at them. It feels like they've been there longer than they have any right to.

Tarquin, completely black-haired, raises his eyebrows. "Nothing?"

By his side Ria looks exactly the same, hair black nearly down to her shoulders, still slightly damp in places.

Yeah, right. Nothing.

Soran nudges him. "You're next."

"Absolutely not."

Emmi, out of nowhere, starts laughing. Nothing too loud, just a sort of ridiculous little chuckle that she muffles into both hands as she presses them over her face. Evander and Shoah have both stopped staring at each other, finally, to observe whatever the hell's going on between the five of them. Even Icarus isn't sure what to call it, or if it could have a name. It probably doesn't.

It's just weird. Weird, and ridiculous, and entirely them.

It feels as if in this moment it looks like they need therapy now more than ever, but it was already pretty close to that benchmark.

A confirmation of all things is better than nothing.

Kestrel Rhodelle, 25
Member of the New Haven Federation

She's only been up to Rose Point a handful of times.

If she's being honest, she's not sure how to label Pandora and herself when lumped together. She thinks they're friends. They feel like friends? Not friends in the way that she's friends with Waylon and Jordan, but that's different. It's just easier to be friends with people who have been in the same situation as you, District kids who lived in fear of getting reaped every year and who snuck by through the skin of their teeth, spared for some odd reason.

Forming relationships with people from the Capitol is just that. Different. Every day, every month she spends her she spends it trying to adapt.

It's probably the worst hand of all, being a Twelve who spends half the year in the city. She grew up in a two bedroom shack with seven other people living in it, her parents and her grandmother, Khia and Aunt Ruthy, her two younger cousins after her Uncle died in the mines.

She bought an apartment here once she had the money. She almost never spends any time in it.

Jordan and Waylon at least have each other, consistently and constantly. She never has that.

One of the ever-present security guards at this place leads her through the main building and out into the back. She's never been this far. She knows Pandora and Crynn live back here, but she's only ever been with them in other places. It feels too intrusive to be standing just under the hanging light over their front door alone once the guard leaves.

But she's here now, so she knocks.

Crynn opens the door with a little smile, beckoning her inside. She hovers uneasily just inside the door while he closes it behind her. It doesn't feel like she belongs in here. It's too personal.

"Hey," Pandora says, an easiness to her step as she emerges from the kitchen something Kestrel envies great. "Nice to see you."

"You too," she answers. "How has everything been?"

Pandora hums. "Difficult," she settles on.

"But no one else is dead yet, so you're doing something right."

"Apparently," she agrees. "Here, sit down. There's something I want to talk to you about."

Crynn hasn't moved from the door. He's no former trainee from Two or anything like that, but he's big enough to fill the doorway and block it. He eases up a little when she looks back at him but seems to settle more firmly into place. There's a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, a sense that something's not right. There's nowhere to go except a window. She's not sure there's a back-door.

Why is running an option she's considering? How bad could this be, really?

Pandora sits down across from her, leaving the coffee table between them. Distance could be a good thing.

"You told me about your sister, once," she starts. "I know it was a while ago, and I'm not the type to pry."

"You're right. You're not."

She isn't, so why does it sound like she's about to? Even thinking about her sister gets a lump stuck in her throat, one that doesn't go away for hours.

"Hear me out," she pleads. "I know you said you looked into it, but you really never found anything? Nothing at all?"

"No. Why are you asking?"

"No one ever figured anything out? Not your parents, or your Aunt—"

"My parents won't even say her name," she says. "And I know why. It's easier that way. It was like she got reaped. She left one day and then just never came back. She was just... gone."

"You really don't know," Pandora says quietly, something that should be phrased like a question but isn't.

"Know what?"

Pandora is looking more troubled by the second. She gets up, abruptly, and sits down with a thud on the table right in front of Kestrel's spot. The whole thing wobbles precariously and creaks under her weight. She gives it a second, but nothing gives away. When she looks around Crynn is gone, too, and she sees the edge of his shadow disappear down the hall before nothing's left of him at all.

"I'm going to ask you something," Pandora says. "And you will have every right in the world to hate me, but I need to know."

"Know what?" she repeats. Crynn comes back. That was fast. He hands Pandora something, a folded sheet of paper. Kestrel can't make out what's on the other side.

"Did you have anything to do with this?" Pandora asks.

"With what?" she questions. "This? Do you mean like..."

Pandora swallows. Crynn is back to looking like half a bodyguard except now he's nervous. He would never flee, not with Pandora sitting here, but it looks like he wants to. It's the same feeling she felt when she walked in here magnified and put directly onto someone else's face.

"Everyone who died," she says. "You think— you think I had something to do with that? Why do you think that?"

"I'm not sure I do, anymore."

"But the idea came from somewhere, if it was random you'd have every person under the sun here right now asking them the same question. But it's just me. You thought it was me."

"I'm sorry."

"Why did you think that?"

"I know what happened to your sister," Pandora interrupts. "I know."

"What do you know?"

"Someone took her from Twelve. At least one person. And they took her to Two. I don't know why it was her, I don't know why it wasn't you."

Something terrible tears open that bad feeling in the pit of her stomach and allows all of the contents to spill out. Her stomach feels like it fills with a thousand bad things all at once until there's no room left inside her. Every part is just overwhelmed with that sick feeling, and suddenly she can feel nothing else. She knows, but she'll hardly allow herself to think it. She won't because it can't be true.

"She survived the bombings after the 160th," Pandora continues. "She got out, I guess. I don't know what happened to her after that. All I know is that she came back this year. She was one of the ten Sentinels that caused all of this in the first place."

"That's not possible."

"It is."

"It's not," she says, convinced. "That's not possible because, because I would know. If she survived she would have come back to Twelve."

"But she didn't."

"Because you're wrong," she insists. "You have no fucking proof of that, you don't—"

Pandora doesn't silence her tirade but when the paper is unfolded and presented to her she finds herself falling silent anyway. It's creased in the middle on every side, right through the grainy picture dead in the center. It's different, a little bit. She stares for longer than she should have to before it sinks in. That's her sister. A haggard, thinner version of her sister, an ugly bruise spread across one cheek. To the right of the photo is a list of basic information - name, birth-date, place of origin, followed by a few numbers and words that don't mean anything to her.

But that's her sister.

"She was one of them," Pandora says. "And she's—"

"She's dead," Kestrel whispers.

"I'm sorry."

She shakes her head. She's not sure what it's supposed to be directed at; perhaps the realization that all of this is true is finally hitting her. It's cementing piece by piece. Not only is her sister dead but she did all of this, participated in it. She was alive all this time and never came back home. Home was replaced by Carnelia Trevall and a rabid gang of murderers who all died targeting kids they never should have touched in the first place.

She misses something Pandora says, something about last names and connections.

She's crying before she knows it.

"I'm sorry," Kestrel says. "I'm sorry, I didn't know, I didn't do this—"

"I know," Pandora says. "I know, I'm sorry too. Don't apologize. You haven't done anything wrong."

Maybe she has, though. Maybe this is still all her fault. If she was better Khia may have come home, or if she had walked home with her from school that day instead of gallivanting off with her friends maybe they wouldn't have taken her. The last thing she had with her was the blood just outside of Twelve's fence, hers or maybe it never was, and that was gone long ago.

And now she's gone for real.

She tries to tell herself to stop crying, but it's long past that. In seconds she goes from quiet, horrified tears to outright sobbing. Pandora leans in to hug her, arms tight, a hand rubbing soothingly over her back. None of it helps.

"I'm so sorry," Pandora says. So is she, really, but none of it matters. "Someone did this. Someone got nineteen kids killed. Regardless of the role your sister played she died for it, too. Someone did this to all of them."

She nods into Pandora's shoulder, though she can't see. There's someone out there, someone that's not her, and they did this.

All of this because of one person, at the end of the day.

And if she ever finds out who it was, who it is...

There's going to be hell to pay.

We're in the single digits now, and for some (probably good) reason that seems like a lot more chapters than it actually is. The end is nigh.

Until next time.