Rye kissed Barrow goodbye, hugged all of the kids in turn, even if they tried to wriggle away, and tolerated a hug from her sister. "Cheer up!" she said. "You look like I'm heading off to war." Delilah just rolled her eyes, pretending she wasn't anxious.
"Will you bring us presents when you get home?" Flora asked.
"Of course."
It was a short trip from her town to the District capital, where she went to change trains. At the platform, Rakesh was already there - he had gone ahead a few days early to look at some materials. Rye approached him, dragging her suitcase behind her. It was eighty percent presents.
"Ah, Rye!" Rakesh said cheerfully. "Early as always."
There was already a small cluster of people gathered around him, attorneys and clerks and the like. They had been expressly forbidden from bringing spouses due to lack of space, a limitation Gina Feng, a fifty-year-old big-city prosecutor, got around by finally giving up on the pretense and marrying her secretary. The Goldfields, Anna and Husk, had had it easier, as they had been married for forty years now. Rye had been shit out of luck. Barrow was needed back home, to play devil's advocate. They hadn't ever been apart since their marriage, which worried Rye.
"Who else are we waiting for?" Rye asked, taking off her backpack and sitting down on the edge of the bench next to a woman of around thirty who was sitting in a small motorized wheelchair and looking at something on her smartphone. Anita Carver, a small-town lawyer.
Rakesh took out a piece of paper from his pocket. For some reason, Rye was suddenly reminded of how, as a teen, she had queued for the bus that had taken her and her classmates to the Reaping field. "Half still aren't here," Rakesh said, and the vision vanished. "Carver, is your orderly planning on showing up?"
Carver nodded. "Right over there," she said, pointing to the person next to her, a woman in her mid-twenties. Carver's arms and wrists appeared to be locked into an odd angle, but her fingers worked fine. "Two for the price of one - a secretary and a live-in aide simultaneously."
"She better be paid double," someone quipped.
"Oh, she is - and I pay half, since secretarial work isn't a medical necessity."
Rye smiled at the banter. It was always nice when a collective gelled so fast. They chatted about insignificant things as the others trickled in. "I thought prosecuting the deputy Head was the limit," Tina Hudson said, shaking her head. She was a few years older than Rye, an expert in corporate law from Centre - most of the late deputy Head Peacekeeper's activities had been related to corruption. "And now this!"
"Yeah," Daniel Torres said. "Never thought I'd see the day." The associate prosecutor was the youngest on the entire staff, only twenty-seven years old, and being a metre fifty-five tall didn't improve the situation.
Husk Goldfield laughed. "You? I've been waiting for this day several times longer than you've been alive!"
The young man looked around and took out a book from a bag. Rye caught a glimpse of the title - it was something having to do with the laws of war. All of them had gotten a crash course in that. "I can't believe we're going to stand in a courtroom and prosecute those people," he sighed.
"Or sit," Carver quipped.
"Or sit," the young man agreed. It was doubtful he'd get to do so - the associates would focus on writing briefs and the like. Besides Rakesh and Rye, only Anna Goldfield and Carver would do the courtroom presentations, Goldfield formally being Rakesh's deputy.
In the distance came the faint sound of the train arriving, and then the train itself appeared. Once, Rye had needed to apply for special permission to go to another town. Now, she could hop onto the inter-District train and go to the Capitol. Strange, how things had changed so quickly. It was as if a sharp push had been all that was needed to bring the entire system crashing down.
The train stopped, and the team from Nine queued up to get on. "Wait a second," Carver said. "Does nobody see the problem here?"
"Fuck," Rakesh hissed. "Where's the conductor? They've got to have ramps."
Fortunately, a conductor soon appeared. With difficulty, she lifted a section of the floor and shoved it out the door, making the ramp fall over the stairs with a loud clang. Carver easily used the joystick controller to wheel herself up, and Rye also appreciated how much easier it was to get a wheeled suitcase up on it.
Since it would be fourteen hours to the Capitol and it was already evening, they had gotten tickets for sleeping compartments. Rye ended up with three other women - Carver, Carver's orderly Lope, and Feng, who was annoyed at being separated from her wife. The Goldfields were also in separate compartments - hopefully, Rakesh hadn't had a sudden fit of prudishness.
"I don't see why you need so much stuff," Carver said, watching Feng fight with her suitcase. Carver had with her only a duffel bag and a suit on a hanger wrapped in paper; the suit had been hung up on a hook. Rye's suit was inside her suitcase, which she managed to place on the rack without too much issue.
"Not all of us can get by on one pair of shoes," Feng pointed out, hissing madly and stretching out on tiptoe as much as she could. "And you're going to be stealing my ironing board in any case." The two had worked together in some sort of IDC matters, so they knew each other well. Feng finally succeeded in shoving her suitcase onto the rack.
"I have two pairs of shoes," Carver protested. "You think I'm going to appear in court in running shoes?" She pointed to her feet. "And I can't use an ironing board in any case."
Feng snorted and tossed her backpack onto her bunk. "With you, we can expect anything. Does anyone want to play something? I've got some board games, as well as two packs of cards."
"See?" Carver asked Lope, who was watching the two with an amused smile. "Why do I need to bring anything when she's got the entire contents of her house stashed away in there? Ironing board, indeed!"
They had been told to expect to stay in the Capitol until the summer. Knowing how non-political trials worked, Rye had mentally added on a few months. It was already April, and they were just starting to make their way to the Capitol. Granted, they were the very last delegation, and all of their documents, witnesses, and other materials had already arrived. Unlike with usual trials, it was all hands on deck and full priority given, which saved a surprising amount of time. Rye had never seen such haste without an accompanying disregard for the rule of law.
"Do you have any food in there?" Rye asked, nodding at the suitcases.
"Of course!" Feng exclaimed. "But we've got a dinner and breakfast included with our tickets, so let's not waste it. It's non-perishables in any case." She checked her watch. "Dinner's in an hour. What do you say to some poker? I have cards and a box of chips in my bag."
Carver sighed in mock despair as Feng got the cards and chips and sat down opposite her. Rye sat down next to Feng. There was a little table in the middle of the compartment, and there was just enough room for Carver to maneuver.
"So," Rye said to Feng, "I see that if I ever need anything, I should ask you."
"What do you even have in there?" Feng asked, eyeing Carver's bag.
Carver shrugged and nodded at Lope, who put a chip into the centre of the table. Rye's hand was awful. "Enough clothes for a week and meds, as well as some little things. Lope's got the spare parts and tools for the wheelchair, but that's it. We're being paid, after all."
"You're going to wear the same seven pairs of socks over and over?" Feng asked. "They'll wear out."
"I don't even walk, how will they wear out in a few months?"
By the time dinner was finally brought in, everyone's luggage had been thoroughly analyzed and the four of them had turned out to all be atrocious poker players.
"Finally!" Feng said as someone knocked on the door. "I'm so hungry." She got up and came back holding a tray with four bowls of some sort of mush and four circles of bread on a plate.
Carver sighed. "All this humanitarian aid from abroad, and this is what we second-class passengers are stuck with." Lope held up a spoonful, which Carver ate. "This is terrible."
Rye tried her own stew and had to agree. "What even is this?" she asked.
Feng made a face at her bowl. "Some sort of vegetable-and-bean stew. Hold on." She climbed up and got something from her backpack. A small glass bottle. "Now this will make it better."
"I already knew you were insane," Carver said, "but not to this extent."
Feng shook out some of the sauce onto her stew and mixed it. "Now this is better," she said, and passed the bottle around. When it was Rye's turn, she put some sauce on her spoon first and tasted it to check the level of spice. It was in fact very spicy, so she was careful to not put in too much. "Does anyone want tea?"
"What? How?" Rye asked. "You know we won't get reimbursed for tea of all things."
"I have a kettle in my luggage, and the water in the bathroom only needs boiling."
"Um, no thanks," Carver said, trying to figure out a way to place the bowl so that she could eat independently. "This is really great." Lope tore up the bread for her, and she nodded in gratitude.
"You're welcome," Feng said cheerfully.
They settled in shortly after that, but the entire night, Rye suffered from nightmares about her children being Reaped. After the third time, she gave up on sleep and sat up, pushing the blanket off himself. Had it been sleeping apart from Barrow, or the train ride? For decades, she had lived with the knowledge that the only way to get to the Capitol was to be picked for death. Nobody in her family had taken her adolescent fears seriously, laughing about how only the poor were ever picked, and Dad's mother had even been a true believer. In her class at middle- and highschool, it had been more of the same - teachers going on about the glory of dying for the District and fellow students convinced it could never happen to them. And it hadn't. Rye had fretted and suffered from nightmares for nothing. People like her mother, who had been able to have a non-working spouse, simply hadn't had their kids selected, the odds had been too good. Even Vadim and Delilah had laughed at her for worrying about her children.
Taking deep breaths, Rye tried to chase away the gloom inside herself. She thought of the government officials and Peacekeepers she had prosecuted. The tables would be turned now. She was not a child meant to die, she was an adult meant to...kill?
But she had fought, and there had been nothing satisfying about that. Only the opposite.
Rye firmly told herself that it did not matter. Building a new country was just as important as the destruction of the old, and transitional justice was a key component of that. She stared out the window. It was still fully dark outside, but as she watched, light began to appear on the horizon. The train, in much better repair than any train Rye had ever rode, bounced over the tracks in an endless rhythm. It felt strange to be in bed without Barrow.
The first to wake up was Feng, who took out her morning medications from a small box and shuffled off to the bathroom. "Oh," she said when she returned. "Good morning. You're already up?"
"Motion woke me up," Rye lied.
Feng nodded sympathetically. "It's only one night, at least. Can't imagine getting there from Eight or Four." She settled down to watch the sun rise. "Strange, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like it was all a nightmare, and I just woke up."
"Yeah." At least someone agreed that it had been a nightmare. Perhaps the contingent of crimes against humanity prosecutors self-selected for spies and unorganized activists and whatever Rye was. Most other people of their status were mourning the end of 'stability'. Admittedly, it was the villages where people had supported the regime the most despite their abject poverty. The illiterate farmers still had no idea what to do with democracy.
Carver and Lope both woke up soon afterward. The four of them barely got a hand of poker in before breakfast was brought in - powdered eggs and rehydrated vegetables, as well as weak tea with no sugar. Feng turned out to have yet another sauce in her backpack, as well as a box of sugar cubes and a bottle of saccharine pills. "My wife is diabetic," she explained.
"Do you have an entire kitchen in there?" Carver asked.
"I have some basic utensils."
"Looks like we'll be set if they make us live in tents," Rye quipped. She was feeling much better now that everyone else was up.
Lope looked at her watch. "We arrive in an hour."
Once they finished eating, Feng took out several thin bags from her backpack and began to put the bedding inside them.
"You really think they won't give us bedsheets?" Rye sighed.
"Given that my wife received five sets from her cousin alone? Yes."
Rye's niece, Vadim's youngest child, had fought in the Capitol, and she had sent her a cutting-edge sewing machine as well as jewelry most of which she had resold, except for a pair of earrings that suited Barrow well, and an expensive leather belt that was currently in her suitcase.
Once the train was in the Capitol and they were all queued in the corridor, it turned out that Feng hadn't been the only one. "This is going to make us look bad," Rakesh sighed. "We are respectable professionals, not marauders."
"They're the ones not issuing us with anything," Anna Goldfield replied.
"What? Who told you that?"
"I called ahead and asked a friend of mine who got there via Thirteen," she said. "Does anyone here have an iron?"
"I do," Feng said. "And an ironing board."
"Same," Reaper Smith, another associate, said.
Rakesh rubbed at his temples as if he had a headache.
"Does anyone have extra razor blades?" someone asked. "I'm out."
"Yeah," Feng said. Noticing their confused looks she explained, "I lived with my brother for the longest time, and he always lost his."
"The Capitol should tremble and fear at your approach," Carver said in a deadpan voice. "And lock up the silverware. If there's any left after our brave soldiers went through, that is."
When the team of prosecutors from Nine piled out of the train, they did not give off the professional air Rakesh had wanted. Instead, they looked like a horde of itinerants, complete with the bedding that was discreetly removed while the conductors were looking the other way. They got off the platform and handed in their declaration forms. Outside, a man was holding up a sign with the number '9' written on it in front of three vans.
"Hello," Rakesh said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Irons' secretary. Joseph Murza at your service. You must be Rakesh Kantaria?" Murza was a very attractive young man - no wonder the Chief of Counsel had nabbed him.
Rakesh nodded. "And the team."
Murza took a piece of paper from his pocket. "Smart of you, to take the blankets. The billets have an issue with that."
"I told you so," Feng said triumphantly.
"Now, let's split up, five to a van," Murza said. "And hope your luggage fits."
The back of the van appeared roomy at first sight, but it was soon hopelessly full. Rakesh and Murza squeezed into the front next to the driver. Rye, Feng, and Feng's wife/secretary Kate, a grey-haired woman in her fifties, managed to get seats among all the luggage everyone had hauled in. The driver, a young woman whose face was covered in acne, was horrified. "What do you need all that stuff for?" she asked.
"Life," Feng said succinctly. The van sped off over unevenly paved roads. They passed piles of rubble and untouched buildings, and the open window let in a chemical stench of disinfectant. Some parts of Rye's hometown also looked like that, though they had always been shabbier.
She wasn't sure what she had expected from the Capitol, but it wasn't this. People milled around, cleaning up the streets and looking away whenever a uniformed soldier passed. It looked nothing like what she had grown up seeing on television, and she felt almost disappointed.
After a long drive over terrible roads, they eventually pulled up to a cluster of small and mostly intact houses that looked like something a well-connected lawyer could have lived in back home. "Here you are," the driver said, braking abruptly.
They climbed out of the van and got their luggage. A few people leaned out of windows and waved. "Where are we staying?" Rakesh asked.
"Prosecutors - that house for the men, and that one - for the women," Murza replied.
"What about me?" one of the paralegals asked.
"Right over there." Rye was a little bit jealous they'd get to live with people from all over Panem.
"What about us?" the Goldfields demanded.
"Figure it out yourselves." Husk Goldfield took out a coin and flipped it.
"Is there enough room?" Rakesh asked.
"So far, everyone's fitting properly, but if things get tough, we might have to get fold-out cots."
"Spare me," Rye muttered. Her pride wasn't letting her complain about the lodgings, but she had always thought that being a prosecutor implied a certain level of treatment, not fold-out cots.
"Secretaries have their own lodgings," Murza continued.
"Uh-" Feng began.
"Figure that one out on your own. Alright, prosecutors - go get unpacked, the rest stay with me."
The five women, Husk Goldfield, and Lope were led by Goldfield into the house as the handful of clerks and secretaries began to follow Murza further down the street. Anna Goldfield knocked on the door, which was quickly opened by a middle-aged woman in a bathrobe and dark glasses who was holding a sausage in one hand and a folder in another. "Nine?" she asked. Goldfield nodded.
"Nice to meet you. We're Two."
As a child, Rye had disliked Two, until she had realized that they were just as trapped as her, if in a different way. "Nice to meet you, too," Goldfield said, offering her hand to shake. The woman ignored it. "Could we see our rooms first, please?" she asked awkwardly.
They took off their shoes in the corridor, which was completely bare aside from some articles of clothing belonging to the prosecutors from Two. The kitchen turned out to be completely bare. "We just got here yesterday," the prosecutor in a bathrobe complained, "and we have no idea where to get things. I've been here for weeks stuck in one house with thirty others and they took all the good things." She took off her glasses and Rye nearly leapt into the air when she saw they were closed, with only a little bit of white peeking out between the eyelids. No wonder she had ignored Goldfield's hand - she was blind! "I'm Isabella Jinwe, by the way."
"This woman has an entire kitchen in her luggage," Carver said, pointing to Feng. "Er, on my left."
The prosecutor from Two turned her head in that direction with sudden interest. "Do share."
"We need to unpack first," Goldfield said.
They were led upstairs, where there were four rooms. Nine had been given an accessible house with a lift for Carver, so Feng didn't have to hoist her luggage up the stairs. The house had two floors, a huge basement, and a small attic, as well as a large kitchen and five bathrooms in total. "Four rooms for six people - Carver, do you want your orderly in your room with you?"
"Yes," Carver said. "The less people are subjected to living with a roommate, the better. At least Lope is used to my snoring." Lope chuckled.
"Alright, so how about you unpack your things and get settled in?"
That left three rooms for five people - Rye, the Goldfields, Feng, and Hudson. The Goldfields and Feng got their own rooms for obvious reasons (Kate was dropping off a few things at her official lodgings), so Rye would be rooming with Hudson. The two of them carried their bags into the sparsely equipped room. One of the beds was a simple futon, the other was a bare mattress on a sturdy metal frame. There was a single small low table, eliminating the need for chairs, and an empty set of drawers. There was also an empty closet with three hangers, and Rye felt grateful she at least brought a hanger for her suit.
"It's clean, at least," Rye sighed. "I'll take the futon - that's what I sleep on at home."
Hudson opened up his suitcase and began to move clothing to the drawers. Rye followed suit. "I guess it'll do," Hudson said. "The country has more important priorities than us." She made her bed using the stolen blanket, sheets, and pillow from the train. Rye had only been able to grab the blanket, but that would do. She rolled up blanket and futon and put them against the wall.
The two hung up their suits, Hudson using the extra hook for her jacket. Rye hung hers by the hood from a drawer handle. Besides the clothing, Rye didn't have much. Toothbrush, toothpaste, comb, pads, deodorant, and two towels - a small one and a big one. In the bathroom, she was met with an unpleasant surprise. There were three towels and a single bar of soap.
"Good thing I brought my sewing kit," Hudson said, rubbing at her chin. "We'll have to label our towels, and all of our laundry."
Feng walked in, carrying two large bottles of different shampoos, hair cream she most definitely did not need with that short straight hair of hers, and a bunch of other supplies. "I had to share with the others," she said. "Can someone help me carry the other stuff down?"
In just a few minutes, the kitchen looked much cheerier. "I don't understand you," Feng said to Carver as they watched the kettle boil. "How did you fit so much stuff in that tiny bag?"
Carver shrugged. "I left out all the unnecessary stuff."
"But I didn't bring anything unnecessary!" Feng said as she stocked the cupboards with the food and condiments she had brought. "If not for me, you wouldn't have had a blanket. And I'm sure someone will appreciate the futons."
Jinwe walked into the kitchen, now dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. She walked slowly, hands reaching out to check if there was anything in her way. "I need to talk to Kantaria," she said.
Goldfield looked away from the kettle. "Do you have his number?" she asked, taking out her phone.
"Yes, but I'd rather do it in person."
The kettle finally boiled. Feng poured everyone tea, sighing about the lack of a proper teapot. Rye dumped in a sugar cube. It tasted good.
There was something oddly appealing about such an improvised lifestyle. It made her feel a little bit like a student again. Rye sipped her tea as Jinwe discussed how things were going with Goldfield, due to the absence of Rakesh.
There was going to be a big meeting of the chief prosecutors today, in honour of everyone actually arriving. They'd go over the final draft of the indictment and hopefully not realize that they needed to make substantive changes. Rye had done some work on the indictment - what seemed like every single atrocity that had taken place in Nine during the time Lux had been Commander-in-Chief had needed to be written down, documents proving it found and sent to the Capitol.
Rye had seen the sections pertaining to Nine in general and to Count Five, aggressive war, which Nine was going to be focusing on. She wasn't sure she liked that count - it was a bit too Thirteen-centric for her tastes. The Districts had been occupied, but Thirteen had been de facto independent. The count was mostly targeted at the firebombing of Twelve, but in Rye's opinion, there were better ways to handle that.
"What a lovely day it is," Janie said earnestly as she and Tav strolled down the street. It was early in the morning, so there weren't that many people downtown. The place was completely wrecked, of course, but it was rebuilding fast.
"Yeah," Tav said, squeezing her hand. Now that his depressive episode was over, he was as cheery as before. "Perfect day for a day off." Tav was still working at getting his munitions factory rebuilt. Today, both of them had their day off.
They walked past a stall selling candy by the piece. "You want some?" Janie asked.
"Sure."
Janie approached the stall. No prices were given for anything, which made sense, given how fast the prices changed. The sum of money Janie had sent her parents that had bought an apartment not too long ago now would have bought a chair. Soon it'd be enough for a matchbox. Chocolate and gum, at least, stayed themselves. "Two of those," she said in a careful tone, pointing to two large lollipops. Slightly arrogant, but not so relaxed it looked like she didn't care about the price. She did care about the price very much, and wasn't going to let some fleecer walk over her. Some people did show off how rich they were by making a point of not haggling, but unlike them, Janie sold autographed photos, uniforms, and food, not heroin, mephedrone, and whatever else some chemistry student had cooked up in their bathtub yesterday.
Fortunately, the seller knew who was in charge here and named a low price Janie still managed to haggle down. Janie took the lollipops and handed one to Tav.
"What's that?" Tav nodded at a person selling their belongings as he unwrapped the wax-paper.
"What's what?" Janie licked her own candy. It tasted great. Her family had never been able to afford anything like this before.
"That thing."
He was pointing to a mortar and pestle. "It's a mortar for grinding things," Janie said, remembering how she, being the eldest, had been the one to help the grown-ups grind tesserae grain. "We have one at home, but it's bigger."
"Bigger than that?" Tav licked at his candy. He looked extremely sexy doing it. "That thing's already massive."
Janie imagined that one time Grandma and Grandpa had made that massive wedding cake for one of her cousins, but with that little mortar being the only way to grind the wheat. She shuddered. "The one we used is this tall," she said, holding up a hand to her waist. "We used a pestle the height of an adult to grind it."
"I thought you live in an apartment!"
"It was outside, by the building. Most times we cooked grains instead of grinding it for bread."
Tav shook his head, eyes wide. "I can't believe that flour of all things was too expensive."
Rumour had it that someone had found some document proving that the lack of access to stuff like already ground flour and already made clothing had all been part of a massive conspiracy to make everyone too busy baking bread and knitting socks for rebellion. If that was really true, whoever had come up with the idea was an idiot. Communal mortars had been the number-one let's-complain-about-the-government place.
"Everything was too expensive in our town," Janie said, licking her lollipop. It was massive, a flat disk about the size of her palm without fingers on a wooden stick. The candy was mostly blue, with lines of yellow and orange and red woven through it. It tasted like sugar. "Like, you had to be rich to buy stuff like this." She paused. "Well, not rich, the accountants bought their kids candy every week, but I never had pre-made candy before getting here. My grandparents can make all sorts of things out of melted sugar."
"Aren't they mechanics?"
"No, my other grandparents." Now that would have been a catastrophe. Grandma and Grandpa Guerra could build a car out of scraps, but they could only be allowed into the kitchen to sweep the floor. Grandma and Grandpa Ferguson could cook a feast out of cheap grain, but they didn't know what to do when the breakers flew out. Division of labour at its finest.
Tav met her eyes and licked seductively at his candy. Janie chuckled, trying not to show how much of a turn-on that was. "Um, did you eat this kind of stuff a lot as a kid?" she asked, flustered.
"This kind? No. They bought me the cheap stuff often, but then again, with only one of me around, they could afford to spoil me."
Even when Janie had been the only one, candy had been firmly out of reach. "Huh," she said.
They walked in silence for a little while, arm-in-arm. The area looked nothing like what she had seen on television before. "Did you ever go down here before?" she asked, curious.
Tav laughed out loud. "I wish. No point to it. I know some friends went to Central Mall and whatnot, but walking around downtown dressed like I am was a terrible idea." Central Mall was quite a distance away. It had been converted into emergency housing as everything in the shops had been looted in any case.
"Really? You're dressed nothing like a marginal, even now after the war."
"Would you have gone to shops downtown before?"
"We did, to buy New Year's presents. They didn't like us much, but they knew we had the money. It's not like with the marginals, who probably were there to beg and steal in any case."
"Maybe I could have gone with my parents," Tav conceded. "Just not with friends. They wouldn't have wanted working-class mobs around here."
Then why go in a mob? It was like Tav didn't understand that every social situation had its own rules you had to play by. When you entered an expensive shop, you were quiet, demure, kept your hands to yourself, and made sure you weren't standing too close to merchandise. Sure, middle-class people could get away with being rowdy, and so what? You couldn't, so don't be rowdy.
Janie didn't want to argue. "So I guess this is very different from what you're used to, too."
"Yeah. This is all like a different world. Though not as much as for you."
"My uncle liked to watch television," Janie said. "The movies might as well have been happening in a different world. All these things, like-" She tried to think of something. "Like food processors. Press a button, and it's all mixed. My grandparents would kill for that." Tav smiled. His lips were starting to turn blue from the candy.
"I felt the same when I went to the cinema," Tav said, craning his head to see the tops of buildings. "Movies never had the hero get away because the villain joined a queue for smoked sausage and got stuck there for hours. And the hero never went to a payday-loan place to be able to afford the expensive champagne they sip with the love interest, who doesn't spend half the romantic evening complaining about the neighbours. And nobody ever got their hot water shut off for the entire summer, when it was supposed to be two weeks."
"I don't think anyone would have watched that. It's all about the good life."
Tav shrugged. "They should have made movies about people living in shit conditions so that we'd be happier with what we had. That glamour just pissed everyone off after the awe wore off."
"Yeah, but everyone went out of their way to watch movies about rich people. When I was little, there was this one TV show my entire family watched, a soap opera about a single parent and their five kids. Everyone was curious to see how rich people lived."
"I guess." Tav bit off a piece of candy. "My parents liked to read gossip magazines. For the same reason, probably."
"My parents couldn't read. They're learning now, but it's going slow." Janie stepped over a deep pothole in the road.
"And you?"
Janie looked around. The signs written in a normal script made sense to her, but the fancy-cursive ones still made no sense. "I can read newspapers," she said. "I've started reading books, but it takes so long." Sometimes, she looked at text, and for a second, it was all just squiggly lines like before, before suddenly making sense again. "How are your parents doing?" She had last seen them several weeks ago.
"Alright. Work's going well. Electricity's on when it's supposed to be on."
That was the most anyone could ask for.
A/N: This is what I headcanon the Capitol as looking like pre-war (the photo is of Pyongyang): https colon slash slash meduza DOT io /impro/fmTt7X5FxZkIYOSAT7ifrmTme4tHZPuoOaBe-WhgPDE/fill/1335/0/ce/1/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWR1/emEuaW8vaW1hZ2Uv/YXR0YWNobWVudHMv/aW1hZ2VzLzAwNy8x/ODkvNzQ1L29yaWdp/bmFsL2JCMHBCYnE4/RTJEbTNUMk1YbDF3/VkEuanBn DOT webp
(tell me if the link doesn't work)