Schismatic Movement (or, District 1)

x

It is either the beginning or the end
of the world, and the choice is ourselves
or nothing.

'Ourselves or Nothing', Carolyn Forché

x

Vermeil Caine, District 1

Outside of contractually obligatory sparring and some basic physical maintenance, I haven't done much at the Center, lately. Nothing beyond the commitments of a failed recruit, though 'failure' is a kinda harsh word for it.

It's just a question of whether a person makes the cut or not, and I just didn't. During the 89th Games, though unrelated to the events of them… probably?… my parents' divorce was finalized, and in the aftermath, with all that crazy bullshit with the new victor, then the tour, the hiatus coming out of nowhere, everything was thrown into disarray.

I've never been the guy to come to for a level head in a chaotic situation, or like, in general, really.

So it made sense, it wasn't unfair, or anything. My scores on some exam or screening were too low, or too high, or too indicative of sociopathy. They look for fundamentally stable, reliable types, these days. Or so it seems, anyway, if our standing volunteers for this year… my year… are any indication.

That's not exactly my vibe.

And contracts with the Center don't expire until five years past being cut, so it was probably for the best, anyway, that I ended up on the path out of here so soon. For the last three years - give or take a handful of months - they've called me in when needed. A sparring partner for the recruits in the running. It's pretty much the easiest job on the list, when they basically own my ass, could have me cleaning floors all day if they wanted. And I get swipe access to the gym, though not when they've got a class in session.

Small mercies, since the Center is kind of on the downswing, what with first the hiatus and then the finale being announced two nights ago. It's the talk of District 1, even in school, so I've enjoyed having a close eye on the action periodically.

I haven't been called in today.

The woman who typically makes the decisions, one of our three victors, Sequin Singson, isn't even in the Center. Most of the competitive element grinds to a halt in her absence, and she's been out-of-district frequently for the past year. Not a bad thing. Less distraction from school on my part, frankly. When I walked in this morning, the combat area was fully vacant, the muffled sounds of music and machinery wafting in from the gym. A conditioning class, from the sounds of it. Attendance mandatory, back in the day.

So I'll have the place to myself, then.

I can't really put my finger on why that's appealing enough to counterbalance the obvious risk, just of being in here when I'm not supposed to be. Years of conditioning to fear stepping out of line should be enough. They used to be enough.

I'm not sure what changed. Something did. Recently, too, or I'd have done this ages ago. It can't just have been the announcement, though that can't hurt, either. One last Games, if the Capitol is to be believed.

One last chance to… I don't know.

The rack of weapons has always been tempting. I'm not exactly careful about heading over, looking it up and down in a way I never have, even as a trainee. It was always so supervised, becoming less so as I reached the end of my tenure, only to be cut before the real business of it began.

(Maybe for the best?)

I can't bring myself to stare for too long. There's a handsome balisong in a subsection of various ornate and simple switchblades. After a moment's consideration, I take it, feel the weight of the hefty gold-plated handle, shaped like the head of a coyote. Slip it into my pocket.

Almost immediately, I realize that I've made a larger mistake than I'd expected. It's not like I'm here to steal, though I guess I sort of just did, but it does sort of occur to me that… well. I kind of just stole something, and there's definitely some kind of weight sensor beneath the thin plastic web holding the assortment of blades in place, and it's definitely pulsing gently with white light, and I definitely knew this about the weapons rack, but wasn't…

I've been out of sorts for a few weeks, now, but this is just dumb.

Sighing at myself more than anything, I immediately make things much worse by grabbing three more knives, one of which is another switchblade, one hunting knife that I shove into the waistband of my jeans, and a push dagger that I shuffle into my sneaker.

Someone has definitely been alerted.

I wonder what's going to happen next. My heartbeat is already practically audible. It's not going to be Sequin, since she's off in District 3 or something.

Peacekeepers? Some other instructor?

I climb onto the combat plinth, sit, and wait. Not understanding, really, why this isn't horrifying me. It should horrify me, I know that, but instead, I feel the blade of the hunting knife, sharpened to an impossible finish, digging just slightly into my hip. And I lean into it, not away, into the hot wetness of blood already welling up in the deepening cut.

This is all just a little bit new. Like, I've never… I mean, sort of, I guess, it's familiar, the sheer desire of it all, wanting so badly to… but I don't actually do it. It's never been such a profound need to get the best of someone, to flout the rules or whatever, that I can't bite it back, nod away the twinge of an unpleasant urge to… escalate, when my mother raises her voice, or an opportunity presents itself, an unguarded balisong on a silver fucking platter, I know not to...

In some ways, I think I know exactly what I want.

And then I hear someone enter the high-ceilinged central chamber, and I have yet another great idea about how I'm going to get it.

"Sticky fingers," our youngest victor, Corsage Perrier, says warningly, striding towards the plinth with the air of someone interrupted from, perhaps, a pleasant nap. He's not especially tall or imposing, blond and classically handsome, not too much older than I am, really. "Couldn't wait, huh? Intensive Care is on, I'm missing my favorite part. Who even are you?"

While he's not too extensively involved in training, always keeping a wary distance from Sequin, he shows up for sparring matches reliably. I know him from the crowd, watching eagerly as others spill blood in a way he can't.

Often my blood.

"You… might not know who I am, but I know who you are," I say, trying not to sound like I came up with the sentence thirty seconds prior and have been practicing it in my head ever since, mostly ignoring what he actually said.

"No fucking shit, everyone knows who I am," he sighs. "Come on, down you go."

"I want to talk to you."

"About the thievery or the breaking and entering?"

"I'm… Vermeil?" I say, wincing as my name comes out more like a question. "I… I'm still contracted here."

"That doesn't complicate the whole 'theft' deal as much as you might think it does."

"I want to volunteer," I blurt, poorly-timed, I guess, since it seems to catch him off balance, and wait for him to scoff or tell me that I can't, wondering what will happen after that.

I'm already on the combat plinth, after all. The thought makes my pulse quicken. Someone will have to come and get me off of this thing. Something will happen. Oh, yes. I definitely want something to happen.

Instead of going in any of the directions I'd have expected, though, he frowns, just a little.

"Now, why would you want to do something like that?"

The past few days seem to bubble to the surface, unbidden.

"I just had this moment, it was like… a completely stupid thing, like, totally mundane, but I had this realization that -"

"Oh my god, please, spare me the details, fuck."

He sighs dramatically, vaulting over the boundary of the combat plinth with the grace of a gymnast. Corsage has always been disorienting like that, even as a senior student, I remember, before he volunteered. He's not the biggest or the most assuming person ever to have been churned out by the Center, but he's one of those obnoxious types who's always had a knack for it.

"Did you make it to your kill test, at least?" he asks, rounding on me and crossing his arms. "Before you got axed, I mean."

I didn't. That starts at fifteen, yes, but I was cut at fifteen, probably a few weeks short of it.

"No," I say, aware of, and not exactly thrilled by, the consequences of lying to a mentor.

Not the exciting type of consequences. Mundane and unpleasant ones, like being demoted out of combat and into janitorial work.

My contract calls for two more years, here, that he's in a very good position to make miserable. Surprisingly, though, at my response, he makes yet another almost cartoonishly disappointed noise, breaching the distance between us, alarmingly close to me, now, his blue eyes leveled with mine.

"Well christ, then, how the fuck do you know you want to kill people? It's different shit than stealing a few knives, you know."

I blink.

How do I know?

I didn't exactly think I'd get this far. Definitely not with Sequin, who would have probably kicked me out of her office for wasting her time, hell, ended my contract and had me carted off by Peacekeepers if she was annoyed enough. Stolen-knife or not. That was, I think, what I expected. Though I'm not, like, sure anymore. What I expect. From myself any more than anyone.

Still making eye contact, squinting slightly like he's waiting to see how my pupils dilate or some shit in response to the question, Corsage edges even closer.

I can practically hear his heart beating, see it in the artery in the side of his neck, buried under tissue, but we're taught exactly where it is.

For a second longer, I hesitate.

Then I reach out and dig my nails into his neck, at the pulse point.

It's not exactly fair, since he can't do much to stop me. Everyone knows Corsage has a chip in the base of his skull, after he won, what with… well, the way he won. No matter what the fuck is wrong with me, I know he is, or, was? Well, is, I guess, pretty clearly, a special kind of fucked up.

But he can't hurt people. That's the deal with the chip. The whispers about it died down, more or less, a few months after his triumphant return, as more interesting news came and went, but no one's totally forgotten, and occasionally he and Sequin will have the sort of high-volume argument that ends with her backhanding him across the room. Never the other way around.

I don't think anyone's been desperate to test its efficacy, but it's not like anyone's turned up mutilated since he's been back.

And now his blood is running down my hands, hot and wet and immediate in response to the sensation of flesh, stretching, tearing along the crescent-moon lines of my fingernails.

I have to fight back a strangled gasp of… something.

He… oddly… laughs in delight, cracks his knuckles.

"Perfect," he says, then takes me by the upper arm, flips me, and hurls me bodily to the plastic-y white surface of the plinth.

A spray of his blood follows me down, landing with a delicate rhythm around me as I hit the ground with bruising force. But I realize, abruptly, that I can't stop smiling either, even as he takes me by the collar of my shirt and hauls me to my feet, his neck still oozing blood.

I must not have quite dug deep enough to really damage the artery.

He's smiling too, though I imagine I must look far more elated than he does, dangling by my neck, utterly at his mercy.

Corsage has no sense of mercy. Everyone knows that.

My heartrate climbs. I try, to no avail, to ease off on grinning.

"You're a weird motherfucker, aren't you, Vermeil," he says, tightening his grip on my neck. "How'd you get cut, huh?"

"Tested out," I choke. "Onto … other things."

"But you still want to volunteer."

"Y-yes."

"And you want to do something worth watching. Not just this kind of idiot bullshit."

"Yes," I say, with far more certainty, even as his grip grows progressively more restrictive and the supply of blood to my brain is entirely cut off.

It's the best I've felt all week.

The most right, at least. Inches from death.

I want to look him in the eye, before he does it, but I can't stop looking at the blood. All the blood. He's made no effort to stanch the bleeding. It doesn't seem to bother him at all, save for the sort of modified grip he's using to hold me up without engaging his left side, the torn-up one.

"God," he says, at last letting me fall backwards, seeing stars, unable to throw my hand back to catch myself. "Sequin may just fucking kill me."

Then he laughs, far more earnestly than before, kneels beside me and picks my head up, from where I lay, too dizzy and disoriented to react much.

"I need a favor, and you seem to like blood so much," Corsage adds, shifting his still-bleeding neck and watchin my gaze follow the movement with a smirk. "Are you gonna cooperate?"

I nod, some of my motor control rushing back. Prop myself up until I'm sitting, at least sort of, on my own.

"We've got some Capitol woman showing up this afternoon. Based on what I've heard from Sequin, I'm willing to bet that she'll like… well, the idea of you. If I can handle that for you, I'm gonna want something in return."

"Yes."

"Kind of a broken record, huh?"

"...would you prefer 'yes, sir'?" I say sharply, some of my old sense of myself pulsing back into my body as the feeling returns to my appendages.

"Hm."

In the second that he pauses, seemingly to seriously consider the idea, I pull myself to my feet. Take the stolen knife from my pocket, flip open the blade, and swing it, aiming for his heart.

He catches me by the wrist.

"Y'know, I don't think I do. Seems kinda disingenuous with the level of respect going on here."

With a cruel twist, the knife falls out of my hand.

"Drop the other knives," he advises me. "You're not gonna be the motherfucker who kills me, Vermeil, I can tell you that right now."

I nod, taking both of the other blades from where I've concealed them, one biting into the flesh of my waist after being tossed around so badly, letting them clatter to the surface of the combat plinth.

"How did you…" I finally ask, looking down at my throbbing wrist, the contradiction of his easy responses to my attacks post-throat-gouge and the hypothetical behavioral modification chip finally striking me at full force. "How are you doing this?"

"Loophole when my life's in danger. One of a few I've found. You're gonna help me cut the fucking thread, though."

I blink. His smile doesn't waver.

"Come on. Step into my office. We got a lot to talk about, and if we're lucky, we can catch the final sum-up. It's reruns, but it's one of my favorites. Motorcycle crash. Lots of interesting things to learn about skulls. I think we can help each other, Veneer."

"Vermeil."

"Close enough," he says, a little dismissively, gesturing me down from the plinth.

He hasn't checked the rack to see what I actually took. I know that because, as I climb down after him, I nick my heel on the push dagger still concealed in my shoe.

It stabs just slightly into the meat of my foot with every step as I follow him to the offices adjacent to the main chambers, leaving behind a mess of blood and three out of four blades. It all smells so headily of iron. Corsage still hasn't cleaned up the drying mess of red that's beginning to tangle and dry in his hair.

Somehow, everything is falling into place.

x

Neroli Qayyum, District 1

"Square your hips, feet parallel, and thrust! Twelve thrusts… eleven…"

"Neroli," Cabernet whispers from the pad beside me, the loaded barbell resting on his hips rising and falling in unison with mine, and with the rest of this particular jam-packed chamber of the gym. "Hey. Neroli. This doing anything for you?"

He nods at his excessively rolling hip thrusts, grinning back at me when I roll my eyes.

"I'll kick your ass, Cab," I complain, huffing out a breath to keep my hair from clinging to the sheen of sweat on my face. "I just went up a plate. Don't distract me."

Fittingly, Linda, the conditioning instructor who's been deputized for Sequin's absence this particular week, sees him being excessively wiggly and strides over to chew him out with threats of a dislocated hip, a broken bone, a torn ligament, disqualification from volunteering in the grand finale. By the time we collectively finish the set, she's taken two plates from his barbell as a sort of punishment, her impressive biceps rippling as she easily hefts a forty-five pound plate in each hand and continues to call out our count.

As serious as she her threats sound, it's pretty obvious how much everyone believes that this year will actually be the end of the Games, which is to say, not at all. While it may be a special moment, like a quell, a place in some history book regardless of the outcome, it's not as though Cab would be forfeiting some particularly high honor if he did tear a muscle or something. It's not going to be the last one.

Everyone's pretty much on the same page about that. Recruitment hasn't slowed down even slightly. About a quarter of the other trainees in the massive chamber are still giggly little kids, playing at how quickly they can jerk their hips into the air since they're too small for weights.

Linda announces a water break, and I roll over, hefting the padded barbell from my hips, grabbing my bottle, and facing Cabernet. He's looking sulky, his typically lively green eyes clouded with something inscrutable.

"You got anything else you want to say?" I needle him.

"I think I made my point," he says, mustering up a grin.

Cab's always taken criticism to heart. Sequin knows to be gentle with him, by now, that for all his antics, he really isn't trying to get himself cut, knows to shape up quickly with only a subtle correction. And he really is capable of doing things right - that's a whole thing with him. Linda apparently missed the memo.

"Aw, I'm a little impressed," I say. "Hey, you managed to attract Linda from all the way across the room. Hypnotic power, great responsibility, you know the drill."

"Lay off," he says, his smile taking on a far more familiar shape.

No one's saying it out loud just yet, but like, after about a decade in the Center, there are some things you can know. Like how you can always tell if Sequin's going to be amenable to joking or not based on whether Corsage is within earshot. The same way we knew it was going to be Manari and Jewel long before it was actually confirmed, well over three years ago, now, in advance of the last Games.

It's going to be me and Cab, and we're going to have to get used to that.

Sequin's alluded to as much, and since then, I've actually been making an effort to get to know him, to take him seriously, since clearly there's something about him worth taking at more than face value if Sequin thinks for even a second that he could make it as a volunteer. He doesn't really run in my circles, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but has required some getting used to.

"What are you getting up to tonight?" he asks, taking a long drink from his water bottle.

"Schoolwork," I say, very honestly, and he sighs as though he's disappointed in me. "Family dinner."

"Ew." He wrinkles his nose at the thought. "Sounds horrible. Come on, Friday night and you're staying in?"

"My sister's coming over," I complain. "That's not horrible."

"Isn't it, though? You're so boring. I can't believe Sequin's literally going to send me into the Games with you to make you look less boring."

"I'm not…"

"Party tonight, Pixane's parents' hotel, there's supposed to be a bunch of Capitol tourists there and we've got a bet going about who can get the most free drinks off them," he suggests. "I'm about to kill it, you could be my sober witness!"

"Just be careful, Cab," I sigh.

"The carefulest."

The thing is, despite his front, he actually will be. As I've gotten to know him, I've learned that he thinks things over far more deeply than he'd like people to believe. Lives in his head just as much if not more than I do. He's a good guy, if a little caught up in the more superficial parts of the culture surrounding training in One.

I've been grateful to have stayed out of that stuff. I'm no smooth operator. Half the cuts to the lineup this late in the game, just a year left to go, have something to do with some social mishap that snowballs into missed days, poor performance, cracks in the veneer that we really have to keep up, to prove to Sequin more than anyone else that we can.

And I can. Do what's called for. Really well, too, I'm like, good at it.

But there're plenty of things I'm not good at, and what Cabernet is suggesting sounds like a delightful combination of all of them.

Not liking crowds, so long as I can get over my discomfort in the close-confines of group training, like today, is seriously the opposite of a problem in an arena with twenty-four people, particularly when the whole point is basically to reduce that number as much as possible, if you want to get clinical about it.

"Just know you're invited, okay?" he reminds me, shifting back into place and gearing up for the next few sets as Linda reassumes her position at the front of the room and claps twice, calling us to order.

It's nice to be included. That's been a surprising aspect of my mission to become friends-ish with Cab. Sequin has almost certainly put him on the same path, and he's really trying to find common ground. As I continue to tuck and thrust in time with Linda's orders, I wonder, vaguely, about his motives.

Figure I have a year to sort him out before things get stabby.

I can do stabbing. Pretty well, actually. But I don't dance, and he certainly does, probably more than is strictly good for someone who wants to be taken seriously.

Not to be too judgey. It's not like it's a crime. And to his credit, it's not hurting his performance in training at all. From beside me, he follows Linda's instructions perfectly for the rest of the class, still looking a bit glum despite himself.

I wind up frowning, wishing I had the kind of skills it takes to resolve this sort of thing, wishing I knew why the approval-or-lack-thereof of a random instructor, not even a victor, mattered so much to him.

After another forty-five minutes, during which we work every conceivable muscle in our legs and abdomens (and a few I struggle to believe actually exist, but I'll take Linda at her word) we're released from our brightly-colored mats, and I pour what's left of my water bottle down my face, mindful not to get my hair wet when I had it straightened so recently.

"Fuck," Cabernet complains. "She was right, my hips hurt."

"Valuable lesson about showing off?" I suggest with a laugh, though frankly, my own hips hurt enough - I think that might be the point.

"Never!"

He flips his mop of dark brown curls out of his eyes and offers me a brilliant smile.

Okay, maybe I don't have to dig too far to see why Sequin thinks he's a good choice, fine.

"What else are you supposed to get done today?" I ask him, kneeling to meticulously disinfect my mat, my barbell, the rest of my things.

Cabernet shrugs in the process of slapping around a few wetwipes.

"Sequin's kind of on me about improvised weapons since my last bout. Tell me, though, in your professional opinion, be honest… do I look like the kind of person who's going to be picking up a rock and whaling on some guy with it?"

The idea actually makes me snort.

"Yeah, no. I think you spend more time on your hair than I do, and that's actually saying something."

"Don't sell yourself short," he laughs. "Seriously, you want to do improvised weapons with me? I can beg if you want. No one makes blunt objects dangerous like you do, Neroli."

"Aw, I'm blushing," I say flatly, sighing.

He's got a point. My last few sparring bouts have involved a fire extinguisher, a solid marble chess board, and yes, a literal rock. Sequin's worried about what the finale will bring, that much is pretty obvious. Emphasizing flexibility over conventional weaponry, though we all have enough hours logged with a sword or a knife to last a lifetime, frankly, so it seems a good bet, the branching out.

I've always liked the little challenges posed by the unconventional. Cab tends to panic, though he hides it well. Sequin tossed him a baseball for his last bout and I watched every stage of grief, culminating in 'acceptance', flash across his disconcertingly attractive face.

Poor Cab. I don't panic. Spent enough time doing that as a kid, the youngest by several years of four sisters and one older brother in the mix, getting dragged around between training and dance and singing and whatever else they all did. There was never a quiet moment in the house, and I hated it, quieted myself down to try to find some peace, barely ever talked, even, until I started training.

And it clicked.

It works. I'm good at it. My hands do what they're supposed to do. I've made it further than Sweret or Ambrox ever hoped to go. Not in the hypercompetitive way, more in the… well, this is just my thing. The thing that I can apply myself to and see something happen. It works. It makes sense.

Training is basically the least chaotic thing I can imagine. It's got clear rules, clear consequences if you break them.

I live for it, the easy predictability interjected with delightful moments of challenge and adrenaline.

And my parents are so proud.

So it's… well, it all works out. It all will work out. I'm actually really excited to see Sweret tonight. She's been part of the initiative to exchange workers with District 3, has been living over there since they got the program started like three years ago. Has a husband, now, a baby boy named Adamas who I've never met. Barely six months old, finally big enough to travel.

I'm an aunt!

Mentally, I'm filing through evening plans, imagining the baby that I've seen in so many (so many) photos sent over from Three, wondering how Resani, the brother-in-law-I-haven't-met-yet is going to handle the intensity of a Qayyum family dinner, when Cabernet interrupts again.

"So is that a 'no' on improvised weapons?" he asks patiently, shuffling a hand through his curls again and picking up his water bottle.

"Sorry, probably," I say. "I'm just gonna go bother Linda for a bit."

It's uncomfortable, the way the rest of the trainees, hundreds of them, continue to mill about. Cab and I have the best seats in the house for conditioning, since we're presumably next up, only a few remaining in our age group who haven't been shuffled out to other positions until they wear out their contracts. Most of them will probably stick around in this particular facility all day - other instructors, small group leaders, have started to filter through into the mayhem, drawing classes off in one direction or another.

Linda is still at the front of the room, checking something on her holo-tablet. Up close, it's easier to tell that she's pushing fifty - you could never tell from a distance. I cough to announce my arrival, and she looks up, nodding and smiling slightly.

"Can I help you, dear?" she says.

"I hope so," I tell her brightly. "My sister's in town, and, well, this is a little embarrassing, but I was hoping to brag about my numbers. Is there any way you could let me know how my ranking is doing?"

She laughs, setting her tablet down.

"This isn't the other Qayyum we had a few years ago, would it have been… her name escapes me, but she was bright…"

"Sweret," I offer.

"Yes, that would be the one."

Linda picks up the tablet, giving me an indulgent look.

"I'll have to make the call on Sequin's behalf, but I don't see the harm in tipping the hand, here. Give Sweret my best, and let her know that you're very solidly in first rank. You and Mr. Young of the undulus hips," she added, with a bit of a frown.

"Thanks," I say sincerely, feeling a rush of relief.

It's like, I know, but it helps to be reminded sometimes. I just like to… I mean… yeah, it's stupid, but it matters, to be able to put a number to it, to have the certainty.

"You need to focus more on your lower legs," she calls after me as I half-bow and begin to make my escape. "Over-reliance on your core will have you plateauing soon enough."

"Yes, Linda!" I reply, already navigating around the small crowds of younger children, pausing to say hello to a few even as the words catch in my throat with discomfort at the proximity of so many bodies.

Even though I'm probably not supposed to - should stay in the gym unless I have specific instructions from Sequin to work on improvised weaponry, like Cab, or if I were going to help him out, I guess - I slip out of the conditioning room and into the main chamber of the massive Center, where the combat plinth and the weaponry racks are sandwiched between archery and knife ranges and larger spear-throwing fields.

I expect to just find Cab, practicing with some ridiculous pile of weapon-adjacent things - firewood, plastic dolls, a blow torch, a crystal orb - but he's not on the combat plinth.

Just frowning at it.

"What's wrong?" I call, approaching, confused. "Need a boost to get up there?"

"It's covered in blood," he says, shrugging exaggeratedly.

"Oh. That's new."

"Yeah. Who are we supposed to talk to about that?"

Now it's my turn to shrug, already making a beeline for Sequin's office. He's right, the typically white plastic surface of the plinth is veritably smeared with blood, at least two sets of footprints in it.

Cabernet catches up with me quickly.

"She's not in," he argues.

"We just need someone to call in the facilities staff, Corsage can do that," I say, though I can't help but wrinkle my nose at the thought of talking to him.

He gives me the creeps. Sequin doesn't seem to have any interest in training me out of that impulse, so I think it can be relied upon. I mean, everybody saw his Games. Everybody knows what the deal is, there. I'm glad to have Cabernet walking beside me as we step into the hall of mostly-empty offices.

When Sequin is out of town, most things just stop happening. There are only a few voices mingling from Corsage's office at the end of the hall, as far as possible from Sequin's locked door, which is situated to our right when we first make our way in.

Cab and I exchange looks, approaching the half-open door. An unfamiliar female voice occasionally interrupts Corsage's all-too-familiar drawl. This shouldn't be so agonizing, but there's not much to do about it, really.

Not everything about life at the Center can be pleasant, after all.

We enter the room.

x

Marina Trevino, The Capitol

The visit to District 1 hadn't gone precisely according to plan. In fact, it was shaping up to be a kind of strange slow-motion disaster, as Corsage held a pile of bandages over a still-bleeding gash in his throat and attempted to sell her a proposition that she was certain must have some kind of terrible catch.

In the corner of the spacious and surprisingly sparsely-decorated office, the young man at the center of the conversation, a blond seventeen year old named Vermeil Caine, sat at attention, looking, at intervals, tired, wary, and utterly elated. He was also covered in drying blood, though had clearly made an attempt to wipe it off his face with the sleeve of his t-shirt.

Not a very successful attempt, but an attempt was made.

She found herself stifling a sigh.

Sequin's absence had been unexpected - from what little Corsage let on, it seemed she'd booked it out-of-district not long after the announcement regarding mentorship assignments. Back to District 3, ostensibly to check in on some project.

The woman was entitled to run away, of course. She hadn't exactly been dealt an easy hand.

"Here's the thing," Corsage was saying, both feet on his desk, gesticulating languidly with one hand, the other draped back over the head of his chair. "Sequin's not going to give you anyone interesting. Not even Jewel-interesting. She's playing it obnoxiously safe. They're basically choir children. I mean, by District One standards."

"...and what, if I may ask, does that mean?"

Just being in the same room with him for so long was making her skin crawl uncomfortably. Something about the way he situated himself in his rolly office chair reminded her disconcertingly of Saxaul, a comparison that would probably earn her a well-deserved shunning if she ever voiced it aloud. Probably the only thing she could say to sincerely offend him, likening him in any way to the man currently before her.

For the millionth time, she wished that she could talk to him about any of this. Since he had, of course, anticipated how difficult this was going to be. And if negotiating the particulars was agonizing in One, she couldn't imagine how terrible it might be elsewhere.

"Oh, you know," he said vaguely. "What with the… Neroli's probably off comforting a doll-eyed child or saving a kitten from a tree as we speak. Sequin loves her. It's very saccharine, too much proximity will give you diabetes. And don't get me started on Cabernet, he's single-handedly put me off red wine. Fragile, not in a fun way. I'm just proposing we spice it up a bit."

At least he had the good sense not to press too hard, to keep his affect relatively bland, in contrast with the clear evidence of a very recent fight staining his hair and the collar of his shirt. And Vermeil's hands.

"You're trying to sell me this young man, though, unless I've missed something," she said, beyond exhausted by the whole business.

"He'll be a wild card. Interesting to watch."

"I have twenty-three other volunteers, odds are about half of them will be just as unpredictable. What does he do?"

"Other than steal knives and interrupt Intensive Care reruns?" Corsage quipped, clearly more to Vermeil than to her. "No, ignore that."

The door to the office swung open before things could get even less pleasant, for which she was moderately grateful.

A tall, well-muscled young woman with dark hair and dark skin and a sort of childishly lovely face froze where she stood, the door swinging open before her. To her right, a lanky but equally muscular young man with vividly green eyes looked on in confusion.

"You must be Neroli and Cabernet," she said, suppressing the instinct to roll her eyes at the situation.

Of course, she'd already seen their headshots and vital information. Sequin had submitted it weeks before, had been quite clear about what she was offering, strengths and weaknesses carefully catalogued. She had thought, at least, that the early districts were completely set.

Clearly Sequin had thought so too, if she was willing to leave the Center with Corsage anywhere approaching a position of authority in her absence at such a decisive time.

"That'd be us," the young man said.

"Are you okay, Vermeil?" Neroli interrupted, mostly ignoring Marina, shaking her head as though to get past all the shock of all blood on display in the room and move on to what was important. "What happened?"

Awkwardly, Vermeil glanced up at Corsage as though to ask what he was allowed to say.

Corsage smiled inscrutably, offering no help whatsoever.

"There's no reason to be concerned," Marina cut in, sparing the young man the trouble of answering her well-intentioned question. "Is there something the two of you need?"

"Yeah, the combat plinth," Cabernet explained, unruffled. "There's a lot of blood."

"You don't know how to clean up blood?" she asked, surprised.

Even she knew how that was done.

The young man frowned, as though he hadn't quite figured out who she was or what she was doing there, but just might be uncomfortably close to figuring it out.

"This isn't District Two, we don't do that ourselves," he said, and while there was a kind of youthful bravado to the words, an uncertainty had risen in his voice.

"I'm serious, Neroli," Vermeil objected, as the young woman tried to lean in and inspect the bruise blooming across one side of his face and down his arm. "Don't…"

She drew back willingly, putting an arm's length between herself and the blond boy.

"I'm going to call Sequin," she declared, looking cagily between Marina and Corsage and back to Vermeil. "Just because he got cut doesn't mean you can treat him like this. I don't know what's going on, but… Sequin will know. Come on, Cab, Linda can help us -"

"Linda can't help you," Corsage said smoothly, shooting Marina a hint of a smile that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, like a cold breeze had blown past. "Vermeil, if you want this, do it now. If you don't -"

None of them ever learned what Corsage would do if Vermeil didn't. Because immediately, Vermeil did.

Specifically, he drew an oddly-shaped blade from his shoe, one with a handle that seemed to fit in the palm of his hand, crescent-shaped, with a dagger-like silvery appendage protruding forward. He launched himself, in the graceful way that all of these absurdly athletic children had of trying to kill each other, at Cabernet, aiming for the boy's neck.

To his credit, Cabernet reacted just as quickly, drawing back, ducking once he saw the blade. The close quarters of Corsage's office were his undoing, in part, at least.

It didn't kill him. Missed the neck, which was surely Vermeil's goal.

Sliced open his face, though, starting below his chin on one side, extending as the blade sunk dangerously close to his eye on the other side. Even more vividly green, contrasted with the bright red blood spilling into it.

Now, his only reaction was to grip at his face, stumble to his knees, fresh blood pouring out.

Neroli had disarmed Vermeil given half a second more, almost too fast to track. Now she had the dagger - another second later, she'd tossed it to the other side of the room, whirling back to kneel beside Cabernet.

"What the fuck," she demanded, holding her friend's face together with her sleeve, turning dark and saturated with blood. "Vermeil, what the actual fuck is wrong with you!"

Corsage clucked his tongue in sympathy.

"Awfully rude way of putting it. Do you see what I'm going for here, Marina? Don't you think you'd watch this?"

She couldn't exactly not. The floorboards were too slick with blood to easily escape.

"It's just an idea," he added. "But I think it could be fun."

Neroli, from the ground, where Cabernet had mostly collapsed, tore off a strip of her shirt to better stem the flow of blood and stood, ducking in to grab the phone resting on Corsage's desk.

"I'm calling in medics," she said flatly. "Since no one else seems to care if he dies."

"What did I tell you?" Corsage complained. "She's terrible."

Was this all for her benefit? The distress etched in the expression of the young woman was real, sincere, terrible to behold. Drenched afresh in blood, Vermeil looked positively rapturous. And there was Corsage, smiling through it all, as one of his own students bled profusely on the floor.

He hadn't even taken his feet off the desk.

"You make a good point," she said stiffly, as Vermeil took a step towards Cabernet and Neroli rounded on him like she might gut him then and there, with the phone itself, somehow - from the young woman's certainty, Marina didn't doubt that it was possible.

"No one pays attention to me, but I usually do," Corsage said, grinning. "Nice to meet you, Marina."

"Charmed," she said, standing from her seat, avoiding the growing pool of blood on her way out the door. "I'll… consider your suggestions."

There wasn't much of an alternative.

She wondered, on her way to the hovercraft, if such drastic meddling might finally snap Sequin for good. That seemed excessively hopeful, even for her. The return of the Games would embolden people like Corsage, without a doubt. Three years had allowed him the opportunity to evolve into a far more dangerous creature than she remembered, even in the context of his own Games.

It remained to be seen what the year leading up to the finale would do for Vermeil and Neroli.

x

Welcome to introductions! Do I have a plan? No! Do I have all of the tributes? No! Am I going to have a good time regardless? Of course I am, and if you don't think so, you don't know me. Would love a District 2 guy if anyone's sitting on one, particularly if you've only given me one so far. If you're worried about investing a lot of time on the submission form, don't sweat it; I'm seriously just looking for ideas, more or less, and if you have one, it would be my honor to try to bring it to life.

Thanks for Vermeil and Neroli, I look forward to bringing them into the Games! I hope you find them pleasant to read about and are enjoying this so far.