LII: The Capitol - En Route to Panem Central Courthouse.
Emmi Langlois, 17
Applicant #13
"Alright, everyone, in the car," Pandora urges.
If Emmi could have one superpower it would be the kind that enabled her to die on the spot and then pop back up somewhere six thousand miles away. That would be the more pleasing option than getting in the car and willingly traveling to the courthouse.
Everyone else is already piling in, though, so she'd look pretty stupid if she did that.
She climbs into the backseat with a sigh, jabbing Tarquin in the leg until he shuffles over all the way. He looks weird. She's not sure if it's the whole hair deal or if he's just like that. Probably both. Besides it's not bad weird, really, just nervous and jittery in a way that no one else is just yet. They've still got a drive to the courthouse - not a very long one, but it's not dooms day time for at least a few more minutes.
They don't have a solution, though. They haven't figured out who it is. Apparently they've got Kestrel of all people staying behind to keep at the list even though she was their main suspect yesterday. Emmi's just doing what she's been trying to this whole time, and that's trust Pandora.
A squad car showed up at the Estate just before they were scheduled to leave. Someone was out there waiting before they had even stepped foot outside, fancy outfits and all. It's that same squad car that pulls out behind them as they turn out into the road. To keep them from running, or to make sure they get there in one piece. There are still people with cameras lurking outside the gates, after all.
In fact, there are cameras, at least one, virtually the entire way there. One on the first street corner. The shutter goes off. A whole gaggle of them just down the street from the courthouse as if they got the wrong address. The flock of them lingering on the front steps is stupidly overwhelming. Her second superpower would be to vaporize whoever she wanted with just a single glance.
Evander is out there waiting for them, but it's just him.
For some reason she finds herself glancing around just before she steps out of the car, but there's not a familiar face in the crowd. She isn't sure why she expected there to be.
Her feet touch the ground. The mob descends. As the first one out of the car Evander swoops in and grabs her arm, wheeling her up the first few steps and towards the doors. The camera's, almost all of them at least, go back to the car. There's more going on there.
A few go off right in her face, though, and she shoves through the last few of them half-blind from the shutters.
They were given a few instructions, all of them boiling down to do as your told. Someone pulls open the door to the courthouse - she doesn't see who, but she steps inside, and then stays put. That was the first thing she was told.
It's mostly just a game of listening to Crynn, who's graduated from law school but never actually represented anyone until this day.
God, they're fucked. It's not his fault, they just are.
She got it easy being the first one out - it takes several long minutes to collect everyone else just inside the doors and each one of them comes inside so fast they nearly knock her over. The building itself just feels... cold. It feels wrong.a
And she just has to listen, too. It's the worst. There aren't very many people lingering about in the hall but every single one of them stares owlishly as they're lead past, herded down the hall and into the courtroom.
It's surprisingly empty inside. There weren't cameras allowed inside, that she knew, but it's still bare. There's a clerk standing at the front of the room and two other people sitting in the very front row on the left side.
"Aren't those the fuckers from the hospital?" she wonders.
"The nosy ones asking questions?" Icarus asks. "Sure is."
Of course the President sent prosecutors from the beginning, how did she not know? It's a good thing she spent most of her time avoiding them, at least when she could. She can't even remember their names. Just their intrusive, pushy little faces every time they so much as got near her and anyone else they saw fit to bug.
"Eriska told them to leave me alone," Ria says quietly. Yeah, for good fucking reason, apparently.
There are a few people on what has to be their side though too, and Eriska is one of them. She's spent enough time looking at the others over the past few days as well - that's Jordan from Ten and Waylon from Three. Wendell from Eleven is sitting in the row behind them. There's a woman sitting next to him - she's almost positive that's one of them too, perhaps the Six, but she can't remember her name. It's been a long few days.
The Eight's not here, though. Emmi's seen her a few times around the District, enough to recognize her, but she's nowhere in the room.
No one else is.
"If your mother comes in here, please hide me," Soran mutters. Evander looks around the room, but Emmi's already convinced she's nowhere close. She's not about to make an appearance here, no matter where she stands with the government and what she does for them.
She sits down at the very end of the first bench when the entire group merges. Jordan reaches out to hug Pandora. There's a name off the list, she's convinced. All of them are probably worth taking off.
Tarquin squeezes in next to her and sits down. He had been looking around as actively as she had been but is now studying the ground between his shoes with a fierce intensity, scuffing one back and forth over the tile. Not a good thing when he's borrowing very nice shoes.
"What's up?" she asks.
He shrugs, gnawing at his lip. "Nothing."
She continues to stare at him, gathering patience to either wait him out on what he's thinking, or to burn a hole in the side of his head. Whatever happens first. He glances up at her a few times, each one quicker than the last. When he finally takes a deep breath he's staring at the ground again but she can practically see the gears turning in his brain, queuing up what to say.
"I was just hoping someone would be here," he says. "One of my friends, or something. I don't know."
She hums. "I don't think they just let anyone in here, you know. They probably couldn't, if they tried."
"Oh."
To be honest, she's not sure that's how it works at all. He just looks so sad, is the thing. It can't just be about this, but she's not sure she has it in her to unpack whatever the fuck else is going on inside his brain right now. They clearly don't have the time, either. Crynn files the rest of them in onto the bench the second the clerk moves away from the front podium. There's only a few more people that have trickled in after them, but no one she recognizes, and clearly Tarquin doesn't find a single familiar face either.
"All rise. The Honorable Judge Escher Sykora presiding in the matter of the State vs. the five surviving applicants of the New Haven Program."
What a boring ass way to refer to them, she thinks, and Soran makes a face too. Good to know she's not the only one thinking that.
The guy that walks in isn't totally evil looking right off the bat, which is good. He's just old, and there's nothing offensive about that. Perhaps his hairline could use some help, but Emmi is going to be good and stay silent unless she's spoken too.
They're told to sit, so she does. The clerk retreats, but not very far.
"Mr. Vukovic, Miss Terigan," the Judge starts. "You're aware of and are confident in the charges you've presented to the state?"
"We are, Your Honor."
"Mr. Sylvaine. Your clients are aware of the numerous charges being presented against them?"
The only other person at the front of the room has to be the translator, and she looks downright bewildered as to how any of this is happening. Emmi feels the same way if she's being honest.
"They are," she says. She really needs to get on the whole sign language train herself, so she can know what's going on.
"And from what I understand there's been an agreement to forego a trial due to the plea. Is that correct?"
"It is."
He looks directly at her. She's blaming the hair. Curse Tarquin and Ria for blending in now like normal, sensible human beings. She really ought to get one of them to do hers too. It's probably because she's sitting at the end of the aisle and has the easiest access out, but whatever. His eyes are very beady, and she doesn't like it one bit. Why couldn't he start with someone else?
"Miss Langlois, if you would please stand."
She does. Crynn sort of looks like he wants to hug her. That, or apologize.
"Miss Langlois, how do you plead?"
She swallows down the full cup of bitter in her throat. "Guilty, Your Honor." Guilty for something she didn't even fucking start. It's bullshit, all of it.
"And do you know that by pleading guilty you waive your rights to a jury trial of any kind? You willingly give up that right."
She shouldn't. "Yes, Your Honor."
"Did anyone force you into accepting this outcome?"
"No."
"And are you pleading guilty because the multiple charges laid out against you are in fact true?"
"Yes." Unfortunately for her.
He looks... well, not exactly satisfied, so that's good. "You may be seated, Miss Langlois."
Some of the tension leaks away from her shoulders when she does, but it moves onto everyone else. She leans back in the bench and allows them all out, one by one over several minutes, as the exact same questions are asked to them and the same answers are repeated back. Icarus looks about as happy about it as she does, and Soran spends the whole time looking like he wants to either take a nap or kill half the people in the room. Tarquin looks like someone just stuck him with a pin and deflated him before the party even began.
Ria, for once, doesn't shy away. Her voice will never be a loud, confident thing but her back and shoulders are straight the whole time. Emmi would get up and clap for her if she could.
And just like that, five guilty pleas and no one even had to do anything.
"There has been no settlement reached in regards to the matter of the defendants. We will adjourn for an hour to allow Mr. Sylvaine, Miss Terigan and Mr. Vukovic to discuss possible settlements. If no agreement is made in that hour we'll discuss sentencing at a later date."
So, that's it? It's over? They're done for?
Crynn could get them out of this, maybe. Or he could buy them a few more days in order to figure something out, to find who really did this. Maybe Kestrel already has and is just waiting for them to get back.
Either way she has to believe that this doesn't end in the worst possible way, even if it is.
She just has to think that way, because it can't be over.
She won't let it be.
Soran Faerber, 19
Applicant #8
"Do you think they'll let us be next door neighbors in jail?" Icarus asks.
He can't help it - he snorts. "Probably fucking not. They're gonna send me and Emmi to proper adult prison while you three are sent to baby jail."
"Emmi's still got like, a week left."
"And I'm pretty sure a week won't matter when it's adult prison versus baby prison. And you've still got a few months."
Icarus is sulking like that's a bad thing, when in reality any sort of juvenile detention center that they could get sent to wouldn't be nearly as bad as outright prison. Icarus, for one, will probably die in prison.
He hadn't even realized Emmi's birthday was a thing, either, or that it was steadily coming up to the end of July. It feels like it's been years, or maybe the brief stint with death maybe just shaved some of his time off. Metaphorically speaking, of course. He's just really bad at keeping track of things now, way worse than he was before.
His brain is still rattled to a point. He knew Icarus was right about not feeling fine but he hadn't wanted to confront it then. It's a little worse here than it has been, but he's not surprised.
Besides, he's working on it. That's all he can really do.
Emmi appears and sits down on the bench next to Icarus, shoving the both of them down until she has enough room. Icarus wraps an arm around his side before he can tip off the bench and onto the floor. He has no idea how long it's been, but it has to have been nearly an hour by now. He doesn't think anything's getting resolved today, which means they may just have some more time to figure something out.
"Think they're getting anywhere?" he asks.
Icarus shrugs. Emmi sighs, lengthy and more annoyed than anything he's heard today, and that's a pretty high benchmark to pass.
So no. Okay then.
He has no idea where Pandora and Evander went. He's pretty sure the Mervaine's showed up at some point. The fact that they're being left unsupervised now of all times is pretty impressive. Maybe someone finally trusts them enough to leave them alone. It's that or they're just spread too thin. Besides, there are cameras everywhere, an entire colony of people outside. Where would they even go?
Ria walks by them twice and then finally stops on the third time, lingering just in front of the bench. She won't stop fiddling with her hands, still looking this way and that even though she's stopped traversing about.
"How's the wrist?" he asks. She looks down at it, like she's unsure.
"Fine, I guess. It doesn't hurt as much."
He's surprised it doesn't hurt more, what with the size of the guy and how small she is in comparison. He could have broken her arm clean off right from the shoulder if he really wanted to. If only he had been slightly more lucid in that moment. He could've done something.
Emmi seems to be taking a nap. Icarus is humming something under his breath and doing a bang-up job of ignoring everything else going on around them. She, however, keeps fidgeting, the anxious look in her eyes growing by the second.
He nudges her with his shoe. "What's up?"
"You haven't seen Tarquin, have you?"
"No? I thought he was with you?"
"He was, but he went to the bathroom," she says, nodding to the door at the end of the hall. "I haven't seen him come out... maybe I missed him, but I don't know. I have a bad feeling."
Well now he has a bad feeling too, thanks to her saying that. He's seen a few people come and go from the bathroom in the past hour, but not Tarquin. He's pretty sure he saw him go in, now that Ria says it, but where did he go after that? If he did come out, why did he split from the rest of him? It's Tarquin - he can't see him going off to just sit by himself somewhere until the hour's up when the rest of them are right here.
He gets up and makes a beeline for the bathroom with Ria skittering after him. There's only one person in there when he opens the door, an older man washing his hands at the sink. He gives Soran one wide-eyed, slightly terrified look and edges around him and out of the bathroom before he can so much as blink.
Okay then.
"You sure you didn't see him come out?" he asks. He walks his way down and nudges open all the stall doors, but there's no one else here.
"I really don't think so."
That might not be good enough, because he's definitely not here. Soran pushes a hand against the final door but it doesn't give. There's no feet under the door though, no sign of movement and not a single sound.
There is, however, more light in there than the rest of them.
That's not good.
He drops to the floor and wedges himself underneath the door, reaching up to unlock it without even looking. He doesn't have time to look. The window on the back wall is cracked open a few inches; none of the others were the whole way down here. It would open just wide enough at full capacity to allow someone out of it - if he could fit out, Tarquin definitely could.
"Fuck's sake," he mutters. "Please tell me you didn't."
"Didn't what?" Ria asks, voice getting closer. He props himself up on the bar along the back wall and opens the window again. It swings out without making a single noise.
There's not much out there. A few feet of grass before a row of hedges that stretch all the way down the side of the building. He keeps his head out there for way too long trying to process what it is he's seeing, which is to say nothing. Tarquin's nowhere in sight. The dirt at the window's edge is kicked up and smudged across the lip of the window where his fingers are.
"Oh no," Ria says. She's in the stall behind him now, staring with object horror. If only it was because he was halfway stuck out the window and not because it's looking more and more likely by the second that Tarquin took off on all of them.
He hears Emmi's voice a second before the both of them appear behind Ria, her and Icarus both. She looks annoyed, Icarus even more-so. He steps forward to grab the back of Soran's jacket like he's about to drag him back down but he holds on to the window even tighter. If he wanted to go outside for a few minutes, he would've asked. There's an obvious difference between that and this.
And everyone's realizing it, too. Icarus stops tugging at him. Emmi says something absolutely foul under her breath.
"What are we going to do?" Ria asks.
"What are you doing, exactly?" Ferrox asks from the doorway. Soran tries to slide back in too quickly and sends his head into the window's edge instead, swearing. Icarus' hand tightens to keep him plummeting off his perch on the bar.
There's a very awkward, long moment where all four of them stare at him. He stares back at them, unblinking. He doesn't even really look surprised.
He deserves a lot of credit for that.
"Nothing?" Icarus tries, still holding onto him.
"Can we have your car?" he asks in the same beat. Icarus turns back to give him a positively filthy look.
One of them's already taken off, and it's looking like they're gonna have to go too.
"You better hope they were postponing sentencing," Ferrox says, tossing a pair of keys across the length of the bathroom. Emmi catches them with a startled jerk. "If not, you're gonna be in some deep shit."
Too late. They already are. And Tarquin's probably drowning in it by now.
"It's out the back door, to the left, in Lot C," he tells them. "I'll go tell everyone else. You might want to be gone before I do. I can't stop them from stopping you."
There's no stopping any of them apparently. Tarquin's gone, for crying out-loud. No one stopped him. No one even thought to because this hadn't even been a possibility. He hadn't thought for one second that one of them was going to take off and disappear, let alone Tarquin. That's something that he would pull, or maybe Icarus. What's happening now doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't have to, though. It's happened.
And they really, seriously need to go.
Isperia Martorell, 16
Applicant #17
There's no guidebook for this.
If there was, finding him would be a whole hell of a lot simpler.
Even sneaking out the back is harder than you reckon it would be. All the way out they can hear people but not see them, and it becomes a game of wandering about just to see what car will eventually go off. They do find it eventually, some ten minutes later, but even that feels too long.
She doesn't know how long it took for them to realize. That really depends on how soon he took off after he got in the bathroom - did he do it right away, or did it take him a few minutes to figure it out?
Clearly he knew what he was doing, but no one can be all the way there to take off like that.
And she gave him credit yesterday, too. She had thought he was doing better.
So what was the shift? When did that change?
"Is anyone gonna tell me where to go?" Soran asks, pulling free from the lot and into the road. It's calmer this way, and the window's are so dark that no one on the sidewalk has realized.
"He can't be far," Emmi insists. "Just circle for a few blocks."
"He could've gotten plenty far if that's what he wanted to do," Soran points out. "If he wants to be gone, he'll be gone. He's the one that still lives here, remember?"
Tarquin knows this place, every nook and cranny, every place able to be hidden in or able to be run through. He knows where to go and he knows himself, too. Any place he might be inclined to go is locked away in his own brain, and they're not privy to it.
The phone in the front console starts buzzing as they turn onto the next road. Ferrox had thrown it at her, too, just before they had stepped inside. All four of them stare at it until Icarus flips it over, the display lighting up with an unknown number.
"That's probably Pandora," Emmi surmises.
No one answers it.
The second it stops the first time though the buzzing picks back up. Emmi reaches forward to snatch up the phone, answering it before someone can tell her not to.
"Hello," she says, voice a firm few notches above artificial cheerfulness. She tugs the phone away from her ear a second later - whatever is coming through the other end of the line is loud, only decibels away from a full-blown shout.
If that is Pandora, she doesn't sound very pleased.
"Yes, I'm aware that we weren't supposed to leave, but—"
She tugs the phone away again and presses the speaker button. The almost-shouting fills the car, making her wince.
"You guys can't just leave," Pandora snaps. "That's not how this works. I don't care if he took off, the solution is not to go after him without telling anyone."
"Technically we did," Soran mutters, although she doesn't hear that bit. Thankfully.
"Please just come back," Pandora begs.
"No," Emmi says flatly. "We need to find him."
"I'm getting in the car right now!" she insists. "But I need to know where you guys are. It's not safe for you out there."
"Then how is it safe for us to leave him?"
"We're not. I just—"
It's too much for Ria to focus on. If Pandora's leaving, that must mean they postponed it. Hopefully no one else beyond that found out about them leaving, then. Even if by some miracle they get Pandora to listen and head the other way they still have no idea how to find him though, and that's what she's stuck on. They could look for hours, for days, and never find him. Not if he doesn't want to be found.
"Just call us every ten minutes if you're that worried!" Soran yells back. "What do you think the phone's for?"
Ria isn't sure Ferrox's phone was intended for that use, but it's looking like it will be.
"Where are you guys, though?"
"Don't tell her," Soran says.
"I can hear you, you know!"
Ria's not one to slip by authority but even she knows telling Pandora will only regress their progress. They'll cover more ground the more cars they have. It's not even an equation. It's just that simple.
The hard part is finding him. And she may not know where he's go, but someone else...
"His friends," she says under her breath, but Emmi hears it and one of her eyebrows cocks up. She nods, as if understanding something that Ria hasn't even begun to process.
"Do you think... do you think you could get a hold of one of his friends?" Emmi asks. "They might know where he'd go."
"Probably?" Pandora guesses. "I'll call you back. Don't do anything stupid."
Someone's sarcasm is beginning to find a new home in her. The quip of do we ever? nearly slips out, but Emmi hangs up the phone before it can.
They're relying on people that even been contacted yet, people they don't even know. And who's to say his friends will even know? He's not the same person; maybe this version of him will go somewhere that no one would expect him to. You couldn't have paid her to believe that he would have spent all that time in the mines, and he did.
All she had to do was realize sooner. He might not have gone, or at least she could have stopped him from getting any further.
He's well and truly gone. They've circled half a dozen times already. He's not here.
Ria never paid attention to the time at the front of the car, the neon numbers fuzzy. There's no track of time, but it feels like too long. In this amount of time he could have run god only knows how far across the city. He could've jumped on a bus, or onto one of the rail lines. People might not recognize him like this; there's no way the photos from this morning have been published already.
A half hour trickles into an hour, and then fifteen minutes past. They've gone halfway across the city and back, down almost every side street with any sort of population at all.
The phone rings. Emmi nearly knocks it to her feet in her haste to answer it.
"Okay, okay, sorry it took me so long," Pandora starts. They're going to stop for gas at this rate. "I talked to one of them, he's at the Resonance Theater downtown—"
"Who? Tarquin?"
"No, his friend. He checked the entire building - Tarquin's not there. That was his first guess. He's going to their school grounds and a nearby cafe to check there, and he sent two of their other friends on the train to the east side. Said there's a restaurant there him and his parents went to a lot. He said Summerview Park too but there's no direct line there."
"Okay, we'll go there. Anything else?"
"His house isn't far from Summerview, it's right near the lake. It's probably still blocked off by police but you might wanna go by anyway."
"Got it. Address?"
"Sending it right now."
Okay, they can do this. Ria feels better now. At least they won't just be driving in circles now hoping to stumble across him in the crowds of people. Things here have tamed down in the past nine years; he could blend in now better than any of them would like.
"Okay, there you go," Pandora says. The phone pings right on cue. "Just please, for me, if you see him and you're in a very public area, stay in the car. He can probably blend on his own but all five of you won't stand a chance. Call me, and I'll come."
She would listen, normally. Ria always does. She behaves and listens because that's just how she was taught to do things, quiet and unassuming. Less attention that way.
If she sees him, she's not staying in the car.
In her time here she doesn't think she ever visited Summerview Park. She lived on the other side of the city in one of those fancy, high-rise apartments. Up there it was like the ground didn't even exist, let alone a park. The people below looked like ants and everything else had felt even smaller. When you always felt as small as she did it wasn't a bad feeling to have.
It's a warm day. The sun is out in full blast, only a faint wisp of cloud here and there to obscure it. There are people out in droves even before they hit the park itself, teeming over the sidewalk and walking out to cross the road without a care in the world.
She gets the feeling that Soran would be viciously honking by now if he didn't want to draw attention to himself.
Ria presses her face to the glass at the first sign of the park, of rolling green grass and the glimmering surface of the lake at the far edge. The people here are thicker than she thought possible - kids running around and screaming as they chase each other, adults lounging about on blankets and basking in the sun, young couples off picnicking. It's not peaceful in the sense that she knows it to be, but something about it is. They're here for a reason.
And somehow, even though she doesn't say it, she knows he's not there.
There's no standout, no single person wandering alone. Even if there was she doesn't think it would be him.
She has to take what she knows about him at face value. He wanted everything before. He loved everything. As many people as he could get and as much conversation as it took to make him happy. He wanted it all.
He's not like that anymore.
"Just go to his house," she insists. Someone ought to argue, but no one does.
Before people didn't listen to her, either. Things have changed.
The house is easier to find even than she expected. The street name is unfamiliar but all they have do to is head a little ways down the lake's edge to find it, tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac. It's still encircled by garishly yellow caution tape, although some of it has started to peel away and flutter free, clinging on with only one end.
And she's not staying in the car.
Besides, the circle is quiet. After what happened here not long ago his neighbors are probably holed up; she can't imagine they chance looking out the window very often now, if they still live here at all. The one at the corner has a bright red 'for sale' sign tapped into the front lawn.
It's a nice house. Not too big. She can see slivers of the lake in the gaps between each property, the sun reflecting off it.
Now this is peaceful, if she doesn't think about what happened.
The front steps look well-trodden but she still picks her way up them with careful precision. There's no one around, but she still feels like she can't make much noise. Beside her Icarus peers into the window to the left of the door, but clearly discovers nothing.
The door gives way under her hand when she pushes at the handle. Is that good?
"Do they not lock down crime scenes in this century?" Icarus asks.
"Unless he's here."
Emmi nudges at one of the ceramic pots on the porch, filled with dried and dead flowers. It looks moved, slightly, the cement underneath it brighter than the rest of the weather-worn stuff around them.
You couldn't do it in Three, leave a key outside just in case. But here you could. Here it was supposed to be safe.
She steps inside.
Now Ria feels like the intruder. She kicks up some dust when she scuffles inside, dislodging the mat just inside the door. There's no sign of anything going on. It almost feels like a brand new house - it would, if not for the personal touches. A family photo there, a still-indented spot in the couch's left cushion. There's an unwashed mug in the sink and one shattered on the floor next to the fridge. She almost kicks it away before she thinks better of it.
"For the love of God, no one touch anything," Emmi insists. She already touched the door, though. Then again, by the looks of it Tarquin did too. He got here first.
Someone goes tromping down the hall. Another pair of footsteps disappear up the stairs. She continues navigating her way through the kitchen and then past the dining room, into the sitting area at the back of the house. It's warm from the sun, all the curtains pushed back to the very edge.
And there's a silhouette too, standing at the very edge of the deck outside, dark and sort of hunched over. Not moving.
Bingo.
Instead of raising the alarm she slides open the back door. He hears her - she sees something in him give a little flinch at the sudden noise, but he doesn't move otherwise. He doesn't even turn around to look at her.
She feels sick, but there's a wave of relief that goes crashing over her too. It feels like she expected to find him dead.
Did she?
"Hey," she says, swallowing. She takes a few steps out onto the deck but can't bring it in her to go right to his side. It doesn't feel right to.
She can see the cogs turning in his brain. Wondering how they got here, wondering what he's supposed to do. "Hey," he says back, voice slightly strained.
Someone needs to tell her what to do. She doesn't know.
"What happened?" she asks finally, unable to settle on anything else.
"I don't know," he answers. "That's the thing, I don't... I don't know. I didn't want to be there anymore, and I told myself I could leave and then I just... did."
"But you knew we couldn't."
"Yeah," he says, and then makes a noise that almost sounds like a laugh. It would be, somewhere else. "Yeah, I knew."
"So why did you?"
"It's too much," he answers. "All of it, it's just too much. And you're all handling it but I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do, most days, and I thought it was going to get better but I didn't sleep again last night. I tried, and I just kept having these fucking nightmares and they wouldn't stop so I gave up. And nobody else is, and that's great and all but it makes everything worse. I can't figure it out like you guys can."
"I don't think we have it all figured out."
He whirls on her. He looks like he's about to cry, and if he cries than she's probably going to cry too. It always happens. "You do. You may not see that but I see it, okay? You're figuring it out and I'm not."
"That's because everyone does things in different ways," she tells him. "Just because one of us might—"
"It's not a might, you have. You're there and I'm here, and I just don't want to fucking feel anything anymore, or at least be awake to feel any of it, which is probably a good thing because based on today they're probably just going to fucking kill us anyway."
"Please don't say that."
"It's true. I don't. I don't want to feel anything. I don't even know if I want to—"
"What?"
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter."
"It does matter. Tell me."
She can see the little tremble, the telltale sign that someone's about to lose it. She's not sure if she's ever even seen it before, but it just makes sense.
"I'm so fucking scared," he whispers, at long last.
"Of what?"
"That if I let myself feel something other than this that it's going to hurt too bad. I'm afraid that if I let even one emotion out that I'm done for. I'll collapse. And I don't know if I can get back up after that."
She waits. His knees don't give out. He doesn't sink to the floor. She does think he's started crying, finally, but he's looking away from her again. The look on his face might break her heart - she's not sure if that's something she wants to allow herself to feel.
"You're allowed to collapse, you know that?" she asks him. "I'm here, we're all here. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you need help getting back up then I'll still be here. You'll get back up, I know you will."
He shakes his head. It's not defiance or refusal. It looks more like doubt, like he doesn't think he has the strength. There's only one person here that went down into the mines and came back out alive, and it's him. Reminding him of that would hurt, but it's also a testament. He didn't fall for good then, and he won't now.
She knows it, even if he doesn't. She can know it for the both of them.
"Hey," she says again, softer. He turns, arms wrapped around himself. There are the tears she was expecting, streaming unbroken down his face. She feels like a completely different person when she opens up her arms to him - it's not her, has never been her.
Maybe it will be. She's working on it.
He doesn't quite collapse into them but it feels close, like if she was any weaker she'd drop him. He buries his face in her shoulder, sobbing, shaking like his seams are finally tearing open and everything is coming out.
She doesn't let go because she was never weak, because that's what Tarquin said.
It seems more believable now.
She can feel the eyes on them from the door but doesn't let go. She tightens her arms around him and he does the same. They're going to be here for a while, she knows.
But it's okay, because they're alive and they're rebuilding and maybe they're finally starting to listen to each other.
If nothing else comes out of this, they have that.
Tycho Alinari, 37
Head Chef - Rose Point Estate
"They coming back soon?" he asks.
Evander shrugs. He's perched on the kitchen counter like a very large, odd looking gargoyle, halfway through a bowl of soup. In the middle of July, no less, but it's not Tycho's job to question what he does and does not want to eat at weird times. That's not what he gets paid for.
"That's what they told Pandora a half hour ago," Evander says. "So they should be back any minute."
He thought so. That's why he was sticking to his job, making food and pouring drinks and tucking them away in the fridge for later. It didn't sound good, and that's all he knows.
Like he said, it's not his business unless it's happening in the kitchen. That's what Althea always says, anyway.
He's a little too nosy for this particular job, he thinks. Working a regular old job in the back of some average-rated Capitol restaurant would be better. The pay certainly not, but he's fine with what he's got. There's always so much going on here, so much he wants to poke his nose into.
Here's the thing - Kerensa Quinn actually likes him, thank you very much, and she doesn't like very many people. If he starts poking around she will no longer like him.
He's probably already skating on thin ice with her if she's gotten wind of how he's been treating those kids. She'd sooner dump them all down his garbage disposal.
That would be messy. Althea wouldn't like that one bit. She hates messes.
Evander downs the rest of his soup in one gulp over the edge of the bowl, broth and chicken and vegetables and all. Tycho takes the bowl from him before he can do anything else weird with it.
"I can wash a single bowl, you know."
"I can too," he says. "Go wait for them, or something. Make sure you don't lose one again. If they're hungry send one of them my way - I'll help them bring up some food."
Evander still hasn't left, bless his heart. It looks like he's supervising Tycho washing that one, lonely bowl, but that's not it.
"Thank-you," Evander says.
"For what?"
"For treating them right. You know, like..."
"Like normal human beings?" he finishes. "Because that's what they are?"
"They wouldn't even argue that themselves I don't think," Evander says. "Either way, I appreciate it. And I'm sure they do too, even if they won't say it."
He shrugs. "I'd do the same if put in their position. People can act all high and mighty, but most of them would too. If this country were full of saints and pacifists unwilling to murder we wouldn't have had the Games in the first place."
"You're pretty smart, you know that."
"Seventeen year old you told me that too, and then you nearly got me fired because you made me help you sneak out."
"It was for a good cause."
"You having a top secret rendezvous with a girl was not a good cause, Quinn, and you know it."
It was funny, though, and he'll give him that. It was also the last, and most convenient, happy memory that he knows Evander has of that year. That was a month before the Games, less than two until his father got shot in the head. Even Renatus had found it funny, he suspected, but he was too green in the job to say it aloud, not when Kerensa was looking.
And then he had died, so it hadn't really mattered. Shit tended to go south like that.
Part of him just thinks that kids deserve that, those moments of happiness and freedom when nothing else matters in the world. These five aren't getting that. They've murdered and fought and bled and now they're trapped here, of all places. The last one they'd really choose.
All Tycho can do is make them eat, so he'll keep on doing that. It feels good to at least be doing something.
He doesn't have kids of his own, doesn't know if he ever will, but their parents are gone. Pandora and Evander are more literal older siblings than parents, and God knows Kerensa won't do anything about that. They just need someone to look after them, and he can do it. It's an easy choice if no one else will.
There's a little bit of commotion from the hall. Not enough rabble to befit this place as of late, but judging by what happened he didn't expect there to be.
Things are powering down for the evening. Everything fits that.
"Alright, that's probably them," Evander says, hopping off the counter. "Gotta make sure everything's good. You serious, about the food?"
"Of course. Like I said, just send someone down."
Evander claps a hand on his shoulder before he goes. "You're the best."
"Don't worry, I know," he says after him. Althea's better, no doubt about it. Maybe not in the general warmth and kindness department, but that's why he's here. Everyone does what they can and they do it to the best of their abilities. Everyone has their role.
He knows his.
Like he said - someone has to do it.
I'm not a law student nor will I ever be and made just about all of this up for the pure sake of plot, so like... no need to point out my nonsense or inconsistencies or both.
And yes, happy 300k. Thankfully that's the last time I'll have to say that about any sort of word count.
Until next time.