Unconditional Surrender (or, District 7)
x
i'm telling you.
if i gave them everything they've asked
for, i would already be dead.
'Crisis Actor', Maggie Woodward
x
Alder Seracot, District 7
"So, uh," I say, leaning forward to rest my elbows on the registrar's desk. "How does the amnesty work?"
The woman behind the desk is probably somewhere in her fifties, with dark eyes, wrinkled at the edges from smiling. The rest of her skin is clear and brown, until the line of her jaw is interrupted by a neatly knotted hijab in a floral print. She could be anyone's doting grandmother. Kind of the platonic ideal of one, like any second she might whip out a plate of cookies, or, like, whatever it is that a grandmother would do outside of a Capitol television program.
Not like I'd know.
I hold my breath as she rifles through the papers on her desk.
"I'm sorry, dear," she says. "I've been slow to catch onto the digital… movement, this may take a second. I suppose you want the full text?"
"Yeah," I say, moving my hands back out of view so that I can clench and unclench my fists without attracting her attention.
After a second, she produces a document printed on slightly heavier paper, pulling it out of the stack with a flourish. The President's seal is evident at the top of the document, foiled and shiny under the fluorescent lights of her office.
"Here we are," she announces, tilting the paper so I can get a look at it as she reads aloud. "A full legal pardon will be extended to any permanent resident of District Seven upon selection as volunteer for the 90th Hunger Games for any past violations of Panem's law, contingent on the completion of all necessary documentation and Capitol recognition of the legitimacy of the applicant. Ah! Quite a mouthful."
"So can I do it?" I cut in immediately, the words having been bubbling in my chest since long before I approached the Justice Building this evening.
"I've got all the paperwork you'll need," the registrar tells me. "Mr…?"
"Seracot," I say. "Alder Seracot."
A flash of recognition crosses her face, making my stomach turn just slightly before her expression lapses into pity. Much, much worse. District 7, in theory, has a lot going for it. A lot of us, especially public officials, like to believe that to the point where they practically go blind the second something doesn't fit with what they want to think about themselves and the place that they live.
What's fucked up here has got to be an aberration, has to be removed, pushed out of view, ignored until it can be politely laughed about.
That's part of why I think I'll make such a stellar volunteer.
"This specific provision, you understand, doesn't grant any sort of pardon to… family members."
No, District 7 isn't where anyone would choose to be the son of a well-known whore, if that was something you could choose.
"Yeah," I reply sharply, well and truly casting aside any illusions I had about this lady having any reason to give a shit about me, whether she looks like the kind of person who'd have secret family recipes and smell like baking bread all the time or not. "You just read it aloud. I was listening."
She makes a face, half patronizing concern, half rising annoyance.
This is typically the point where things fall apart. I can hold up a polite mask for a while. For a long while, if no one actively tries to push it off my face. The balance, though, is always delicate, and even from this… random lady, someone I've never met before it my life and will hopefully never encounter again, a fairly minor presumption is enough to do it.
Bad timing.
I'm trying to negotiate my way into a volunteer position, not a jail cell.
So I grit my teeth, sink my nails even deeper into my palms, and summon up a thin smile that, from her reaction, must be quite unsettling, confirm some shitty thing she believes about me already. Fucking good!
"All of that sounds great," I say. "I'm sold."
Keeping it short, sweet, not coursing with hot anger or cold need to do something… she's not a big woman, delicate under her brightly-colored clothing, and at her age… a letter opener on her desk… would that exclude me from volunteering?
"So, if you're committed, then, we've got a packet that'll give you an idea of what to expect if you're selected," she begins.
"If?" I interrupt.
I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't that. Maybe shouldn't be surprising, with the level of hero-worship of Saxaul and, lately, Manari that we have going on in this ridiculous district, the extent to which the utter fucking sheep around my age have let their presence within our borders convince them that volunteering is some kind of honorable thing, that it'll lead to doing anything fundamentally good beyond, sure, putting your neck on the line for the end of the Games, fine.
Probably should have seen that coming. The self-righteous piece of shit quotient in my age group is so high these fucking days.
"You didn't think you were the only young man to express interest in volunteering, did you? Why, with the applications we've been handing out, I think we're singlehandedly keeping the paper mills in business. All this… digital… well, you know. Not everyone brings them back, and you're not obligated to yourself, of course! But know you're not the only one, and the strength of your application will matter."
"Who's gonna read this?" I ask, pointedly ignoring her tone, which is just the wrong side of condescending, flipping through the several pages, pinned together with a twist of metal.
"We have a panel, including myself, Mayor Jibreel, Saxaul, and a Capitol representative, though I'm not yet certain who that will be," she says patiently.
My frown deepens.
"And do you know, like, what they're… what you're looking for?"
"I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly hope to send someone who will win," she says, smiling slightly. "Any other questions?"
Yeah, I want to say, a whole goddamned list of them, because that's the most unhelpful advice I've ever heard, nice.
And also, unfortunately, verification of the fact that if I did something stupid, here and now, that wouldn't help my odds of getting picked. Would definitely hurt them. Like I mentioned, not putting my name in the running for a jail cell, here, if I can avoid it. The opposite of that. Amnesty.
"No," I say stiffly, and if she sees the muscles tightened in my jaw and neck, my nails dug deep enough to draw blood from the palms of my hands, knotted into tight fists, she wisely doesn't mention it.
Just nods, smiles, stands with some effort, and ushers me out.
It's a misty, overcast day, as most days are in District 7. I'm fresh out of a shift at the papermill this morning - which is why I'm somewhat divided on whether it's a good thing that the Office of the Registrar is keeping the place in business or whether the whole fucking place could burn down and it'd be a relief.
How come Saxaul's gotta be on the selection committee, when we know by now that he's not even going to be our mentor? A few months from now, there's an announcement set to be made, some kind of lottery, but it'd be stupid for me to wait that long, knowing the kind of overachieving motherfuckers we have in District 7, how the second they heard he'd be reading applications half of them probably signed up just to include love notes in their personal statements.
I sigh, leafing through the application on the steps as I wait for the trolley that I took here in the first place to loop back around, which will bring me to the mill, within walking distance of home.
Yeah, a personal statement first, itemized lists of physical skills and references to support whatever claims the applicant decides to make. The thought of including references, for fuck's sake - what, my boss, to verify that I can work a stockroom and lift thirty pounds? - makes me frown even more deeply.
I guess I should spout off about wanting to be part of the end of the Games, like everyone else will, knowing our only victor's predilections in that area. That's not totally not true. I mean, nothing wrong with having my name lauded in the history books for the next few generations.
They've never been something I've been especially afraid of, though. Same shit, different place. Worst that can really happen is a few days of getting fattened up in the Capitol, and then… whatever you can make of it. And that's kind of how it's always been, or how it's seemed, for me if for no one else in this district. My walk home from the Justice Building is a long one, would be hours if there wasn't a trolley to catch for the first leg. For a long time, I've lived far enough from Seven's city center to be more or less untouched by the kind of brilliant improvements that people are always going on about.
Paper mills, like the one where I've been picking up part-time work for the last few years, still leach chemicals into the water, though the thought is that it's 'less' these days. As long as there's a demand in the Capitol for perfectly-bleached white cardstock, there'll be toxic shit to dispose of in the aftermath of making it, and there's only so much that the mayor can do about that, when the district doesn't technically own the mill.
No one starves with the soup kitchens, obviously, but there's no pride in depending on soup kitchens, either, and my mom is - was? - a proud woman, in her way, which is a bizarre and convoluted way, but a way nonetheless. And she managed to land herself in prison often enough to leave me on my own well before I had the sense to figure out the trolleys and get myself fed once the cupboards were bare.
There's nothing anyone can do, not the Mayor, not a victor with a guilt complex, not the stupid registrar, none of them can do a fucking thing about a shitty parent.
In that way, I'm better than all of them.
Because I handle my shit - handled it, really.
There are things worth escaping, even before you get to considerations of amnesty, which are… recent.
Obviously, I've thought about what I could make of it. No rules, just… real choices, uninfluenced by anyone with more power than you, except for, like, trainees. And even a trainee can die, and statistically, most of them do. Who hasn't thought about it? It's an even more serious consideration for me than it is for the the idiots with a raging hard-on for justice or whatever.
I don't mind the idea at all.
And anyone really can win, when you look at the track record. If he hadn't pulled things off the way he did, it'd be easy to mistake Saxaul for any skinny high-schooler on the factory line. And then there's people like Corsage, who show you, well… anyone can win, and anything can be forgiven, or at least forgotten about, given enough time.
The application feels oddly light in my hand.
How do I express any of this stuff in writing?
"Hey, Seracot!" someone calls from the steps of a dilapidated government-construction house.
Instinctively, I avert my eyes, look down, a habit leftover from walking these same streets when I was younger. I can deal with just about anything any asshole thinks to throw my way, these days, but it doesn't change the reality that, upon entering this part of town, for most of my life, I had to be ready to run.
Especially from the kind of person who knew my name, because that meant the kind of person who knew my mother.
"Yo!" the person calls again, and I look up, any attempt to ignore them forgotten. "Where you headed, huh?"
"Just on my way to your mom's place, y'know," I snap, knowing full well what the retort will be.
"Yours ain't good enough for you?
"Yours is cheaper."
It's not just one guy - shit. There's a whole crew on the steps, a few I recognize, a few I don't. Mostly recent dropouts, same as me. The sort of people who, if this application doesn't work, I'm gonna have to spend the rest of my life stewing around with.
Idiots, every single one.
"Fuck off - hey, Alder, Alder, don't fucking walk away from me -"
Oh, delightful, and now he's following me. I turn on my heel, hoping to move fast and get an idea of who's struck out with the guy, but I'm a little too late, and his fist closes on the application I've got rolled in my hand.
Jonathan isn't anything special as far as residents of the neighborhood go, pale-skinned with watery blue eyes under a thatch of curly blonde hair. He's tall, but not taller than me, and he's flanked by a guy I don't recognize and a skinny girl I know he's fucking around with, Sitka or Syca or something common.
"Hey," he says, tightening his grip on the paper. "You broke Sitka's brother's arm."
"I've broken lots of people's arms," I say, keeping my tone as level as I can. "He was probably getting into some shit he shouldn't have."
"Nah, that's you. What the fuck is this? You still in school? Got you fucking homework- shit, what kind of paper is this?"
He must recognize the high quality of the document. Unfortunately, it's something we all know plenty about, in just a few years at the mill. He makes a very real effort to rip it out of my hands, and I sigh, realizing this is a fight I'm actually going to have to have.
With the force he's exerting trying to pull the thing out of my grip, it's pretty easy to turn his momentum around on him and knock him off balance with an elbow to the jaw and a sharp shove with my shoulder. He doesn't quite fall like a sack of rocks, but he does stumble back, giving me enough time to pull a knife on him.
"I'll do more than break your guy's fucking arm if you don't get him out of my fucking face," I tell Sitka, zeroing in on her as the weak point in the trio.
Two birds, one stone. She grabs Jonathan by the elbow and hisses something to him. I shift to threatening the third guy, but he's already taken a few paces back, wisely putting space between us.
"Go ahead. Call the Peacekeepers if you want," I say. "Hope you can hold out fifteen minutes, 'cause the nearest one's probably busy fucking my mom. That's enough time to bury a fucking body."
It's an empty threat. It takes hours to dig a decent grave, and coincidentally, my mom's not going to be fucking anyone for a good long while. None of them know that.
No one else bothers me on my way home, though I do flip up the collar of my work shirt to hide my face, just a bit. I try to walk softly, since fucking around in this part of the district, where everyone's equally messed up and cast aside, pretty much, isn't a good bet, but as evidenced by whatever dumb fight I got myself into that drew heat from Jonathan and his boys, I'm not always good about that.
Home is a three-room house, another government constructed model, actively falling apart. The overgrown vegetable garden in the back is the only part of the property with any sign of having been recently touched, and with a few more afternoon thunderstorms, that'll be invisible.
The humidity is relentless, though. I stop to pick at the bandages on my cheek and chin, which I've been trying to ignore. Inside, the house still smells like bleach, but not so much like blood and alcohol as it did a few nights past.
My mom is nowhere anyone is likely to find her if anyone, Peacekeepers or otherwise, comes calling. They have, already. I can only send them away so many times before a client gets suspicious - that's the only way this is going to fuck me over, but there's… well, there's a chance of it. I smooth out the papers on the rickety kitchen table.
It's been a week since my mom finally got drunk enough to really try to kill me, and a week since she realized just how not-kindly I take to a fucking knife in the face, family or not.
How's that for a personal statement? I look back at the application.
Bad idea, probably. Shouldn't be too explicit. I really just want to get this done and head to bed, but when I sit down to hammer something out, I find that the blood is still risen from the confrontation in the street, my face still hot.
My pen digs into the paper almost thick enough to rip, if it wasn't such high quality cardstock. I grimace down at my own work. The question is worded almost flippantly for something that'll determine so completely where or how I live or die, maybe.
"Why you?"
I've done bad things. If I stay here, I'm going to do more of them. It won't be my mom next time. It'll be someone you actually give a shit about. You can stop me permanently by sending me to the Games.
That shouldn't be enough to get me thrown in prison if I'm not selected. No one at the Mayor's level gives enough of a shit to really investigate a whore's disappearance, even with a lead. She won't be the first of her kind to drop off the map in the line of duty. Talked about that often enough, like I should be grateful for the risk she was taking, somehow.
Knowing what I'm capable of, who the fuck would turn me down?
District 7's done a great job of making it clear that I'm not good enough for this district, fucked from association by birth.
Time to see if I'm bad enough for the powers that be.
x
Janina Tamalak, District 7
What's a door, really? Just one door. Worn wood, glass clouded with age and the temperature difference between the air conditioned gymnasium and the already swelteringly hot morning. It's like standing outside in a thick fog, basically, for all I'm sweating and for all the air is drenched in moisture.
Just one stupid door.
I take a breath. Last night, I fell asleep practicing what I would do if someone stopped me. I'd be honest, right away, because that's how you keep on the right side of things. Nothing you learn faster in a house jam-packed with siblings than the fact that… well, everything's easier if you tell the truth the first time, don't cloud the glass any further with falsehoods. Who can keep track of a lie when you can barely keep track of your shoes among sisters and brothers?
I've already lied enough to get to this point, and that burden is heavy on my shoulders as it is.
Someone will stop me, grip me by the arm, tell me that I don't belong here, send me home, someone who knows my parents, someone who will tell my parents that one of their daughters, on a Friday morning, no less, a holy day, was sneaking around somewhere she had no place. Here at a gym, where I categorically don't belong, public building or not.
All the evils of the world are locked in a room, and lying is the key. The imam of our mosque is way too fond of repeating that admonition for me to just forget it, especially now, my heart racing, hand on the slightly worn brass handle.
It's not locked. I can feel that it isn't locked. When I tug, just a little, a rush of cool air parts the gap between the double-doors, blowing strands of hair away from my face, where the beads of sweat on my brow had been sticking them. It would be so much nicer inside. Just have to get it together enough to…
Do it.
And then, there I am.
I push my way through into the lobby of the public gymnasium. Fluorescent lights hanging overhead, dull and buzzing but illuminating the space, since the sun hasn't yet risen enough to really pass through the massive, somewhat clouded windows. Tree cover, yes, but also the earliness of the hour.
At least I thought I would be alone.
That's kind of an unfamiliar thing for me. I'm the twelfth out of seventeen children, mostly twins, though I was just a single child myself. My parents are pretty serious about the 'having lots of kids' thing, and they aren't bad people, aren't like, neglectful, or anything, but at the same time… they have seventeen kids, and in our house it's easy to blend into a swirl of complete chaos. The gym is the quietest place I've been in a long time, since even the woods, a more typical refuge, tends to be noisy with birds and animals and rustling leaves and other sounds of life.
When I peek through into the main chamber, even though it's five in the morning, I'm somehow not the only person who's decided to come here this morning.
Someone's definitely working out.
Before I can figure out anything else about the situation, I flinch back, out of sight, but also out of range to figure out the situation. I made it this far, right? That's not nothing. No, that's not nothing at all. Maybe I can come back tomorrow. Maybe I can make myself wake up even earlier and make the hour long walk, get here exactly when it opens.
Or is the person I saw the person who opens the gym?
Will they just be here whenever I show up?
My cheeks burn, and I feel stupid, ashamed, knowing I should have realized this would never work. What was I thinking, spending three hours after school this Wednesday getting the paperwork from the Justice Building, lying to my parents and Jaaram, who's the oldest brother still in the house and the only one who actually thought to ask about where I'd been, why my part of the chores wasn't done and Kamilah and Naba had to handle the setup for supper that night themselves, and I'm just… it's pointless.
It's stupid.
I'm being stupid.
And I thought this was a good idea, to get away for a little, to have something just for me, for once, even something terrible, but there's no place in the world that's just for me, no thing that I can just have, no place that I can just be alone.
"Is someone there?" a voice calls, echoing in the cavernous gymnasium, and I choke on my own throat and freeze.
What was I thinking? I can't even run away properly.
There's a sound that I don't recognize, sort of like a zipper being drawn closed or the chain of a bicycle whirring at high speed, and I only have time to force myself to take a few shaky steps back before…
Oh, I've really messed up.
The man who emerges from the gym is seated, which is odd for a second, though it quickly prompts my sense of recognition. Not just the operator of the gym. Damn my luck. Utterly damn it.
Manari Issa, the runner-up and only known survivor of the 89th Hunger Games, scowls at me as though I've personally offended him by cowering in the shadow of the second set of double-doors, propped open, leading into the gym.
I suppose I probably have.
At least he doesn't know my parents, thank God.
"Sorry," I say hastily, taking several more steps back, nearly tripping on my long skirt.
"I don't suppose you have a reason for lurking in the lobby of the gymnasium?" he says scathingly. "You're not exactly dressed for it."
I blink.
"Ah, I was just leaving."
"Fascinating," he says, and begins to wheel himself back into the gym.
This is the closest I've ever been to someone this famous. I find myself following him without really meaning to, and his chair makes the noise I heard before, the sort of mechanical fast-paced clicking as he maneuvers expertly across the mats.
He pauses after a second, turns on one wheel, shockingly fast.
"I thought you were leaving."
"I… I was," I say.
"Do you need me to whip out a dictionary and explain what the word means?"
"...do you need a dictionary to know the definition of 'leaving'?" I say back, quickly, aware that this is the sort of thing that any of my older siblings would quickly dismiss as backtalk and a symptom of my having too much time on my hands, needing to spend more of it sweeping or scrubbing countertops, probably.
So this would be my cue to cower and apologize some more.
Instead of, I don't know, snapping at me or something, though, he snorts, like he finds my not-quite-a-coherent-retort funny rather than annoying.
"Apparently you do. You missed the exit back there."
Without another look, he turns back, wheels himself to a set of bars, and resumes what looks like set of pull-ups, which I guess is what I interrupted.
I stand in place, feeling as though my feet are glued to the mat, just watching.
"As a dear friend once put it," he says, a touch of dark humor in his tone, lowering himself back to his chair after a shocking number, turning to find me still standing, open mouthed, where he left me, "take a picture, it will last longer."
"Sorry," I say. "I…"
"Clearly you're not here for no reason. If you don't want to share that reason, you probably ought to head home and think on it," he adds. "Rather than waste any more of my time."
"What are you doing here?" I ask, after a second, which isn't a reply, but is pretty much the only thing on my mind.
"Pull-ups."
"...but…"
"I'm still in the district because I've been working out of Seven, lately. And I'm here because that's no excuse to vegetate. It's a dangerous world. Poorly dressed little girls lurking around every corner."
"I'm not poorly dressed," I say abruptly. "Or little, actually."
Why not keep digging, at this point?
"Why are you here?"
He crosses his arms, which are corded with muscle beneath his dark skin. For the first time, I really look at him, almost in the eyes, trying to actually think, process, why am I here?
"I'm going to volunteer," I say. "If they let me. I think they might."
With a long sigh, he turns back to the bar, reaches up, and begins another set of pull-ups.
"So you're stupid, then," he says, voice alarmingly even as he works.
"I'm not stupid."
"You're volunteering."
"You volunteered."
"Yes, and it was the stupidest thing I've ever done. I acknowledge that, as most victors do, with the fringe benefit of not having myself been a victor. Are you suicidal? Is that the issue?"
My cheeks are flushing, against all of my efforts to make myself look tall and sure of myself and confident in my choices.
"I'm not suicidal."
"Good to hear. Then you've got no business volunteering."
"...I already did," I say. "Can't un-ring a bell."
At this, he pauses again, takes a second to re-seat himself, and turns to face me.
"So you are stupid, is what you're saying."
"Guess so," I concede, not willing to go into all of the reasons, since they feel so trivial when I really dwell on them, and I don't want to hear him say that, which would make it all almost too real to fathom.
How do you explain to someone for whom preparing for this was their whole life, who's apparently suffered from the Games enough to just… forgo all of that, scrap his allegiance to his district of birth… that volunteering is just… well, it's an opportunity, and it's kind of the only one I've ever had to be anything but the twelfth Tamalak the civics teacher has ever taught?
That my mom usually doesn't get my name right, even with so many of my sisters married out of the house by now, and if this doesn't make her, make my father, make anyone see me, nothing ever will?
And I'll die honorably, as myself, as Janina, someone worth remembering and writing about and thanking, part of something bigger, not a number in a birth order or a reasonably-well-behaved student with no identifying characteristics beyond slightly-above-average grades, which might as well not matter, since most of Seven's industry doesn't hire based on academics, anyway. Who'll do nothing more remarkable than get married someday, work as a schoolteacher or a secretary, bear a few children and die?
He sighs.
"What about your family?"
"I… they're going to have to deal with it," I say, feeling my face flush anew, reaching up nervously to tuck my hair behind my ear. "But I figure they'll find plenty of comfort in their sixteen other children."
This actually seems to give him a moment of pause, and he's back to looking at me appraisingly.
"Someone's going to lose a child," I add. "Someone with a daughter. Might as well be someone… no one will really miss. Who they've already half forgotten."
"Oh," he says, looking very uncomfortable. "Please don't cry."
"I'm not crying!" I insist, my eyes hot and wet.
Surprisingly, something about my insistence makes him laugh. He reaches over his shoulder to take a neatly rolled white hand towel from a basket affixed to the back of his chair, then takes a second one and lobs it to me, underhand.
I catch it, frowning at him as I dab at my eyes.
"I wasn't."
"Of course you weren't," he says.
"Look, I know I've messed up," I tell him. The towel smells like bleach and nice cotton. My family isn't the worst off at all, but our towels are all thin and greyed out with age, not crisp and white like this. "This, being here, you know… I just… don't… know. And I feel like such a hypocrite now."
"Well, go on."
"I figured the best thing I could do for myself, once I did it, put in the paperwork or whatever, was to try to face it. Even though that kind of undermines it, right? The idea from the start, that I'd just go in and be seen and… any idea of martyrdom or whatever."
"What," he laughs. "So you're not planning on killing a quarter of the arena? And yet, you're in a gym? The hypocrisy. How devastatingly shameful."
My cheeks must be vividly red.
"You can't do much dressed like that. Do you have pants? The next time you come to the gym, wear something fitted that allows you full range of motion. Is the lawfulness a concern?"
"Huh?"
"So you won't catch the hem of your dress in a machine and end up dropping forty pounds on your hand trying to get it out. Unless it's a sympathy ploy for sponsors with an idiot fetish."
"I… oh, I have pants, yeah," I say, looking down at my loose-fitting sweater and long skirt, which, in hindsight, are probably the best evidence that I didn't really think my plans for this morning through.
"Bring water or a vessel to hold it," he adds, then begins to wheel himself to a rack of weights, easily lifting one about the size of my head.
I'm back to sort of drifting after him, hand towel scrunched in my grip, wondering if this is some kind of weird dream.
"Can I… what are you doing with that?" I ask, as he holds the weight close to his chest, lifts it slowly and deliberately above his head, and brings it back down to elbow-level.
"Start at that end of the rack," he says, pointing at a ten-pound weight.
Without questioning, I comply. Used to this kind of thing, growing up knowing implicitly than anyone older than me could tell me what to do basically whenever and I'd just have to take it. Even though the weight is disappointingly small, less than a fraction of what he's lifting, I realize as I hoist it up and try to emulate his movements that it's hard.
"You're going to need practice with weapons," he tells me, a minute later, when my forehead is positively beaded with sweat, and he irritatingly isn't perspiring at all. "It's not hypocrisy to defend yourself. You're not a prophet, you're a child who's made a choice, and not an ignoble one. That's my condition for any of… this. You're not just going in there to be slaughtered like a kid at Eid, you understand?"
"I don't know if they'll accept me at all," I pant. "Just in the spirit of honesty, like, it's kind of early to decide to help me."
A little hopeful, there. I'm not a bad writer. My teachers have always said so, though couched in comparisons to my oldest sister Zainab, who writes speeches for Mayor Jibreel now, or any of my other siblings. My application was strong.
I'll allow myself that pride.
When it comes down to it, I can really do good academic work. I'm… good at a lot of things, if people would just pay attention. Pride is toxic, I know, I can see where it's gotten me so far, it's… but it's true.
"The worst that can happen is that you'll have tried to improve yourself for nothing," he says flatly.
I think worse could probably happen, whether or not I get chosen. The second my family finds out, actually, worse could happen. This isn't the kind of thing good daughters do behind their parents' backs.
"Thanks," I say. "I don't know what I did to deserve this -"
"Allah provides for whom he wills," he says brusquely. "You needed help. Here I am. Frankly, this is more convenient than figuring out how to get you home would have been. And imagine the hassle of mopping up the consequences of your failing to use the equipment without proper instruction."
"Oh."
For a second, as he returns the weight to the rack and takes two smaller ones, I watch him, trying to reconcile the reality of a person with having watched his Games, years ago, yes, but since they were the last ones before the hiatus, it's impossible not to recall them with clarity.
District 7 has never been the most involved with the Games, though after Saxaul's victory, some measure of interest was reignited. If his public appearances are to be believed, he utterly hates that, but people like to think… well, that we have a chance, in the scheme of things, that Seven can stand on its own two feet in competition, even someone normal, like him, just a person.
So obviously everyone was watching when Fidan made it to the final seven, and everyone was… well, after she died, having been allied with him, a lot of people redirected the intensity of their support for her to him. We watched together, for the finale, several of my older siblings even bringing along their children, coming back to the family home for it.
Jaaram has a poster with Manari's face on it in his room.
Oh, he's going to be so jealous.
My stomach flips as I think about it. How this isn't just a chance meeting that I can brag about. He was right, really, it was just stupid of me, volunteering, even if the tree is already half-felled, teetering before it hits the ground. Even if there's a chance I won't be chosen. I still lied, snuck around...
This is going to hurt things with my family.
"Are you alright?" he asks, just a touch of concern in his expression. "I mean, clearly not. Switch to three pounds, you'll hurt yourself with the ten if you try to follow me in these next sets."
"Just, uh, my… you know. Family and stuff."
"Right, you mentioned that. Are things alright at home?"
He says it casually, continues to move normally, but I realize from the way he watches for my answer that he hasn't missed a thing I've said or a motion I've made, that he's taken in how twitchy and evasive I've been this whole time. And he's worried about me, someone he doesn't even know.
The knot of muscle in my stomach seems to migrate from my stomach to my throat, and I wonder if I'm going to cry again.
"Really, they are," I say, with a strength of tone that I can already tell is convincing no one.
Things are great, if I don't step out of line or make trouble or make a mistake.
But sometimes I do, and when I do, it's like I might as well be dead to my parents until I earn my way back into their recognition, and I… I never talk about this, no one does, but there's nothing lonelier than having no one to talk to in a household of ten people.
And here I am, messing up with what I'm doing this very second. Lying, I lied to them...
"That's good to hear," he says evenly. "How about we plan to meet here a few mornings a week? Just until you hear back from the selection committee. You must have class today -"
That snaps me out of whatever weird fugue state I was in, and I scramble to find a clock on the wall. Not late, but near enough to being late to break out in a cold sweat that has nothing to do with exertion.
"Oh, yes," I say quickly. "I'll be back… mornings, I'll come back."
The slight furrow in his brow suggests that he doesn't completely believe me.
"I hope you do," he says, which is actually a huge relief, since I kind of still keep expecting someone to jump out from behind a workout bike and tell me I'm in the wrong place, doing something wrong, should be… well, anywhere else.
It's nice that someone wants me somewhere for something other than my value as a dishwasher, I guess. He studies my face again, and I try not to visibly squirm with discomfort.
"The later you tell your family, the worse it will be. I know it's difficult. Do it anyway."
I swallow around the lump still lodged in my neck.
Is it worse if they're angry with me, if they treat me like some kind of misbehaving dog, or is it worse if they don't care?
"Until next time," he says pointedly, nodding towards the door.
"Thank you," I say. "I really, uh…"
"Don't be so quick to thank me. Frankly, don't mention it. Ah. I'm… did I ask your name?"
He didn't.
"Janina," I say.
"Well, Janina, get to class, and try not to get yourself into any other death cults on the way."
I nod, push my hair back behind my ears, set down the weights, and nearly trip over my skirt running for the door. Somewhere behind me, he's laughing again.
Emerging from the gym and into the streets is utterly bizarre. It's every bit as hot and damp and muggy as it was when I spent fifteen minutes idling outside the door in the first place, but indescribably different. Less terrifying, or more? It's a little like waking up from an impromptu afternoon nap, realizing the light has changed and you can't remember what you were supposed to be doing, where you should be. But with none of the fear, I decide, after thinking it over for a second.
That, at least, is good.
The paralyzing part of the terror has bled out.
A gaggle of girls from my year pass on the sidewalk without particularly noticing me. Familiar faces, a few even in my class. On their way to school, which is still a real place I need to get.
"Hey, Karira!" I call. "Resa! Wait up!"
I'm back to sprinting, hindered badly by my skirt, in an effort to join them, as Karira turns and literally makes eye contact and waves, but doesn't slow down. For once, though, it doesn't sting so badly when I find myself walking in the back of a crowd of people I sort of think of as my friends.
Maybe that's a bad takeaway, but whatever I was trying to do by volunteering…
I think it might work.
x
Herodotus Snow, The Capitol
The worst thing about Marina was the fact that she was maddenly, infuriatingly, near-ubiquitously right about everything.
It was difficult to reconcile that with how much he relied on her, not just materially, as she was generous with the inheritance that his great uncle had denied the rest of the family, but in the sense that he wondered very much if he would ever socialize outside of work without her relentless efforts to involve him in her bizarre social machinations, with the victors, as always, at the center of the whole mess.
He couldn't say that he completely hated it. Introverted or not, he was hardly antisocial, and the weekly dinners kept him from retreating into a near-impenetrable shell built meticulously over the course of a lonely childhood.
But did she have to go and shatter it all by making him a cornerstone of this plan to end-the-Games-with-more-Games? Not as though he wasn't well-accustomed to playing straight man to her comic in their familial double-act.
The projected selections for District 7's tributes were accounted for in a packet on the coffee table, he sighed and rubbed at his eyes, which was terrible - it caused wrinkles, he knew that - but the whole affair was so damned exhausting, and had somehow managed to wreck just about every part of his life that he sincerely enjoyed.
It was all fairly typical.
The good Marina giveth, and the good Marina, she taketh away.
Unfortunately, she had seemed to be wrong, thus far, at least, about Saxaul reaching out and ending the frigid silence to which they'd all been more or less subjected to since he'd returned to the Capitol and moved in with Cora the week before.
She was wrong - he hadn't called within the week.
Disappointingly, she always seemed to be right about the awful things. Though Saxaul must have been involved in the near-immediate selection process that had gone on in District 7, practically as soon as the last of the volunteers had submitted their applications, it had been nothing but radio silence apart from a few messages Marina had relayed from Cora.
He was 'doing well', or 'tired', or 'thought the new season of A Capitol Experience was garbage'.
It was oddly patronizing, hearing about how someone so important to him was holding up in what must be an apocalyptically terrible time via what was essentially an elaborate game of telephone. And it was agony, not really knowing what Saxaul thought of… well, selfishly, what he thought of Hero's part in things.
To an extent, he just wanted him to shout him down, call him worse than complicit in the murders that were about to be on his hands, and just get over it. The anticipation was, in a way, worse than anything he could actually say. Probably.
He just wanted to know, god damn it.
In a huff, more annoyed with himself, he picked up the files and a pen to annotate them, as he had with all of the past volunteers they'd received. He was militant about hard copies of everything for security and privacy reasons as much as for the pleasant sense of moral superiority that a good pen and paper seemed to afford him at a time when something to the effect of thirty percent of Capitol students graduated without the ability to write by hand.
Those numbers were lower than they'd been in the past, under his great uncle's government, in which writing by hand was treated in equal parts as a privileged skill and the kind of low, debasing act that should only be expected of residents of the districts.
District 7 was interesting, as usual. A girl who fancied herself some sort of martyr and a noted delinquent with a record that took several pages to flip through. He found himself wondering as he read through their responses and the selection committee's analysis exactly what role Saxaul had taken on in the process. Which was idiotic, like a bleeding wound from a bitten lip that would heal if he would just stop worrying at it with his tongue.
His apartment, meticulously neat, last straightened in a fit of nervous energy a few hours earlier upon receiving the profiles from Seven in the first place, was growing darker as the sun set and the floor-to-ceiling windows no longer served as a light source. He frowned as the document became progressively more difficult to read, waving to activate the lights in his living room, but only succeeding in reaching a few lamps.
It would have been cozy, sitting on the couch with a glass of wine in the warm golden light, the skyline still glowing purple and pink in the aftermath of the sunset, but the task was downright depressing, and he found his face contorting in displeasure as he listed relevancies in backstory to leverage, areas in which he'd want to cross-reference psychological profiles with those of other volunteers.
A knock at his door nearly gave him a heart attack, his pen slipping unbecomingly halfway through recommending that Alder's inclinations for violence be weighed against those recorded for the Five girl, Styx. A smudge emerged on the paper, and he frowned at that, his pen, and the door for good measure.
"You know it's legal, these days, to call ahead," he began, as he stretched and rose from his place on the couch, figuring that only Marina would be so goddamned presumptuous, but in equal measure grateful to see her.
Except, as he opened the door, it was very much not Marina.
"Hey, handsome," Saxaul announced. "Long time no see, huh?"
He blinked, then blinked again, no response immediately coming to mind.
"We can talk out here if you want," the younger man suggested, smiling in a way that, if anyone else had done it, would have been entirely innocent.
Hero cleared his throat.
"Please, by all means, come in. I'm afraid I wasn't expecting company, or I would have made something for you to eat."
It was dinner time, wasn't it? Oh good lord. He sounded like an idiot.
"Aren't you just the sweetest?" Saxaul said, ignoring his discomfort with his own idiocy, closing the door behind them.
The lock clicked into place, and he felt his mouth go very dry as he moved to the living room to neaten up the coffee table, and more importantly, to conceal his notes.
"So, whatcha working on, Head Gamemaker Snow?" he interrupted, suggesting that Saxaul knew exactly what he'd been working on, which, frankly, he wouldn't put past him.
"I thought we were on closer terms than that," Hero parried, in a rare moment of 'having a coherent reply', offering Saxaul a place on the couch.
"Hm, I'd have thought you'd be into the title."
"Not especially."
"And yet," Saxaul said, a note of cold steel behind his playful affect. "You did accept it, didn't you."
"I won't insult you by repeating Marina's spiel," he sighed. "She convinced me. There wasn't an alternative. You're familiar with the economic considerations -"
"Fuck the economy," Saxaul sighed, picking up the bottle from the coffee table, surely catching a look at the documents from District 7, and inspecting the label. "That might as well be my campaign slogan. Ooh, new stuff. How's the District Twelve project going?"
The way that it was going, technically, was top secret. A few preliminary investors Marina had roped into experimental vineyards in the wreckage of a smouldering crater. Population something to the effect of two hundred Capitol-born workers shipped in and out at the end of growing season. But of course, Saxaul would know about it.
He had a way of knowing things.
"Not my purview," he admitted. "But well enough to have a product, clearly. Ah, speaking of your campaign-"
"Terribly boring," Saxaul interrupted, uncapping the screwtop bottle and taking a long drink directly from it, pausing with an approving smile. "Do I detect a hint of… grapes?"
Despite himself, he laughed.
Just slightly.
Enough for Saxaul to notice, so... too much.
Fuck.
"Hey, are you seriously lounging around your own house in a three-piece suit?" he laughed, easily channeling the slight shift in energy. "You trying to worry me, or what?"
"What?" Hero asked, fully disarmed by the question. "Why -"
"Cora mentioned that you've been stressed lately. I mean, more than usual, which is already substantially more than a human should reasonably be able to endure. It's why I came over. Marina's worried enough about you to tell Cora about it, and, I mean, Cora will tell anyone anything if they ask nicely enough, so I figured it must be serious."
Several things about that sentence didn't make much sense, but the regrettable truth was, sleeping an average of four hours a night and two glasses of wine in, he wasn't sure if that was a disconnect on Saxaul's end or his own.
"I… can't say I know what you're talking about," he finally answered, stiffly.
Saxaul had the utter nerve to laugh softly in response, pausing to take another long and careless drink from the bottle, leaving his lips red with wine.
That was absolutely not going to help with anything.
"So, with the understanding that I'm quite well," Hero began, holding his own half-full glass of wine to steel himself, "I'll thank you for the visit."
"It's such a shame to drink alone," Saxaul noted, adopting a tone almost mockingly similar to Hero's. "It would hardly be appropriate to - sorry, I don't know how you can talk like that all the time, you sound ridiculous."
"Fascinating."
"Come off it, Hero, you know why I'm here. You're at least as smart as Marina."
"No one is as smart as Marina," he objected, shifting an inch back on the couch as Saxaul leaned an inch forward.
God damn it.
He smelled like sandalwood and wine.
This was not even remotely how Hero had imagined this going - not that he'd imagined it, fuck - but it was also, well, phenomenally difficult to do anything but what he was utterly certain Saxaul expected he would do.
"The loyalty you got going on is impressive," he noted with a grin. "As is a lot of your deal, Hero. You're not in an easy place, are you?"
"You have no fucking idea," Hero replied through gritted teeth.
"I could make some educated guesses," Saxaul offered.
"What do you want?"
"You know what I want." He paused, which dragged out altogether too long, then reached out slowly to take the end of Hero's tie.
This wasn't even remotely fair. The full-windsor of his tie pressed against his throat as Saxaul's grip tightened, and he was struck abruptly with the memory that this man had killed no fewer than four people in his Games. He had watched. He had seen every second of it.
"I would prefer it if you didn't kill me," he protested weakly, though he couldn't really bring himself to raise a hand in his own defense, his heart beating, it felt, in his face.
"Christ, you are the most oblivious motherfucker I've ever met, and I live with Cora," Saxaul sighed. "You sober enough to tell me to stop?"
"Certainly," he said, a little confused, and then abruptly not thinking about confusion or anything else as Saxaul rolled the fabric of his tie around his fist and pulled him into a rough kiss that tasted very much of wine and, fine, okay, he had thought about it, but - "Stop."
To his credit, Saxaul released his grip on his tie immediately and put a solid two feet of space between them unhesitantly.
He groaned, putting his head in his hands, coughing a little as the blood returned to his head. From his vantage point on the couch, he could still see the profiles he'd been poring over earlier, and he couldn't… he just couldn't...
"Fuck me."
"Well, I was getting there," Saxaul said good-naturedly. "And I do take constructive criticism as to how, if that's the issue here."
"No," he sighed, raking a hand through his hair, finding it in complete disarray. "I - Saxaul, I swear on anything, I... really… think highly of you in many regards, and it's my worry that this may take on a transactional… well, a power dynamic that I don't… and you don't deserve that, and I can't… do that to myself, either, and I'm. Ah. I'm very sorry."
"And here I was," Saxaul sighed, "thinking you didn't have a moral backbone."
"I do seem to have acquired one of those at some point."
"Not enough to stop her, though."
"She doesn't need to be stopped. I… I value your perspective, you know. If you want me to take your thoughts into consideration, you truly just need to… talk to me, occasionally. This is wholly unnecessary."
"Gross, feelings," Saxaul complained.
"I'm inclined to agree with you on that one." He hesitated. "Do you have thoughts on the District Seven nominations, then?"
Saxaul shrugged, rolling over, taking the papers, and leafing through them languorously.
"Can't say I do. You're on the money with these two. Janina's no Fidan, but she's a good kid, and good kids… well. Alder's a first-tier bastard, but District Seven had a hand in creating him and they deserve to see what they've done, there, that'll be… interesting. And that's exactly what you want. You've done well. That's what Marina will tell you when she sees your notes."
"District Four, then?"
"What do I know about trainees?"
"You killed one, you live with another, it's difficult to deny your qualifications."
He laughed harshly, setting down the bottle.
"Maybe so. I'll know more once I've met the children you and Marina plan to slaughter to appease the Capitol common-man deity and, one sure as fuck hopes, bring an end to things."
"One does hope," Hero agreed.
"Hope isn't enough. Or I wouldn't be running for fucking Parliament. Or I wouldn't be… here."
In a single gulp, Hero emptied his glass of wine, setting it down on his coffee table with, perhaps, some evidence of frustration.
"I want the same world that you want, Saxaul, and it's the world that Marina wants, as well."
A world where this evening would have gone very differently, for one, though he felt no particular need to voice that around.
"God, you are the most incorruptible piece of shit in all regards but the one that would have actually mattered," Saxaul said grudgingly. "Drink with me, at least?"
"That was the plan."
"You and Marina and - you know what, Manari, too. All of you with your goddamned plans."
"Cheers."
"Cheers," he agreed. "Happy Hunger Games, Head Gamemaker Snow."
x
Fourteen down, ten to go. Luckily, everyone in the Capitol is miserable too.