With thanks to deathless . smile, Technicolour Raincoat and and MidnightRaven323 for your reviews of the last chapter.

Y184-09-07 T 22:45:00

DISTRICT 9

Silently, as the sun set across the golden fields of District 9, Robyn Blackthorn crept out of bed.

The darkness wasn't quite absolute yet, and it was with the last slivers of daylight that she found her riding clothes, slipping them on in darkness. Last, rustling mutinously as she put it on, was her most prized possession beside Cinder; her jacket. It had been an adult men's jacket, and slid halfway over her hands and shoulders as if to illustrate just how un-adult and un-male her figure was; but when belted tightly and worn with pride, she looked every part the rebellious, leather-jacketed, older rider she wished to appear to be. She pulled her long russet hair from where it was caught underneath it, hastily plaiting it into a half-decent braid before tying it together with a scrap of string. On went her boots, and her messenger bag over her shoulder, and she was ready. Slowly, quietly, she slid out of her room, desperately minimizing the clack of her boots against the bare wooden flooring.

Her parents couldn't know they were doing this, meeting him; they thought what he stood for could ruin the business and home they'd worked their life to get.

Robyn didn't refute that, but she was merely disinterested in those consequences.

Her brother was outside, already making his way to the stables. She closed the door carefully then rushed across the farm to meet him, her long auburn braid catching the last of the light in the sky. It was a moonless night, and the stars glittered above them, a soft glow in the sky. As ever, Robyn looked up habitually until she saw a great red glow, the flickering light of a strange star she had never been taught about. She had often asked what it was, but not even her teachers had known.

She had always wondered if the Capitol knew what the red star in the sky was, flickering as it did like her hair in the last embers of sunlight.

"You were careful, right?" Her brother whispered. His eyes glinted in the light, an odd golden brown that caught the light like her hair.

"Of course I was," Robyn replied. "Dan, how stupid do you think I am?"

"Oh, only as stupid as usual, Robby Robyn," he said fondly. Despite the height difference, Robyn could still scuffle with him a little until his advantage of height, age and strength overpowered hers. She stifled her giggles of amusement to keep the quiet.

Dan pushed open the door to the stables; the familiar and comforting smell of horse and sawdust washed around them. Robyn instinctively made her way to the partition she knew best; a dark form whinnied softly and nuzzled at her hand as she offered it to its velvet lips. A dapple gray coat, silver and fine with dark spots rippling the surface, breaking over the crest of its mane, which was pure obsidian. The Andalusian mare raised her head, whickered, and regarded Robyn with her intelligent brown eyes. She smiled, rubbed its neck, swung over the fence into its partition, then began to buckle on the saddle.

Dan looked over as he led his own stallion, large and jet-black, their classic Blackthorn-bred plough horse, through the stable. "There's not time for that," he said urgently. "Just take her out and let's go!"

"Alright, alright, hold yer horses," she quipped, ignoring the groan her brother responded with. She led Cinder gently with a hand on her neck, opening the gate and leading her behind Dan and his stallion. The stable door opened; the stable door closed. They mounted their horses, Robyn unused to doing so without a foot on a stirrup but managing nevertheless, and then ushering their horses into a canter, away from the farm.

Dan's horse was a member of the Blackthorn breed; a plough horse, tall and strong, sold for considerable prices. District 9's fields were always in need of plough horses, and while District 10 bred them they were rarely bred well; they simply didn't know what was needed in a good plough horse. The Blackthorn family had filled that gap, and in doing so had made a lot of money.

Robyn's horse, however, was decidedly not a plough horse. The Andalusian, king of horses, the horse of kings, was a war horse, fast and intelligent and responsive to their rider. The breed was a rarity in Panem, and the Blackthorn family had purchased a single mare as a foal when a District 10 herd became available for sale. While the family used it mostly as a horse for training others, and as the single horse besides the breeding pair that they did not sell, it was generally regarded as Robyn's horse; she had named her, ridden her since she was able to be ridden. Cinder was her horse, and could gallop like a silver wind. As they left the farm, she urged it into doing so, leaving Dan in her dust as they rode through District 9.

Being out after curfew was an offence that was always punished by execution. Since the riots of the past few days, the unrest following the 76th Hunger Games, the Peacekeepers had cracked down on anyone out after nine, and the patrol teams had increased in size. Still, Robyn wasn't worried; she knew every inch of her agricultural District, and rode faster than any other in it. The two cut into a wheat field and crossed it at speed, Cinder's hooves finding the ground with a surety that training couldn't create. The night had closed in now, but Robyn's eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she led the way.

The huge barn that housed crops for the District Reserve was, for now, empty; in the coming weeks, it would be filled to its twenty-metre ceilings.

Tonight, it housed two hundred people with ease.

Dan rode up behind her as she dismounted Cinder; she waited for him as he too dismounted and walked up beside her.

"You know the knock?" She whispered.

"Course, they told me," Dan responded. He gently rapped his knuckles against the wooden door in a rhythm. A rattle of something being scraped away from the door, and it opened; the two walked into the gloom of the barn, leading their horses in with them.

Sonorous tones were already speaking as they walked in.

"-Is why we have to stop acting is individuals and band together as a coherent group," Rufus Warnke said, sitting on a platform of pallets. Two hundred people had been what Dan had guessed would be the attendance, but he had been wrong; somehow, three hundred others had found their way to the barn. Rufus' eyes glanced up as Cinder whinnied, and they met Robyn's. Robyn stood still, green eyes caught in the searchlight beam of Rufus' alert gaze.

"Welcome," he said with interest. "It's good to see young blood for the cause. What's your name?"

"Robyn Blackthorn."

"Oh-h," he said with clear interest as the five hundred turned to see the Blackthorns that had turned up to a revo meeting. "No wonder you rode here. How old are you two?"

"Eighteen."

"Fourteen."

"Fourteen," Rufus repeated, his eyes not leaving Robyn's. Robyn, unused to the attention of so many and defensive of how she seemed to be the youngest here, spoke up.

"I have an Andalusian," she said sharply. "She's really fast, and so am I. I'll do anything needed to further the cause."

Rufus' lips quirked in a slight smile. "I'm sure you will, and I'm sure your speed can be put to great use," he said. "Can you evade patrols, are you that fast?"

"Easily." If there was one thing Robyn was proud about, it was her prowess at riding. Rufus nodded contently.

"If your brother will permit it, you would be a great help to the cause. Our allies in neighbouring Districts need to take us messages every so often, and we to them; electronics are out of the question, as right now they can be so easily tapped. Until we fix that issue, we need someone to take us messages from the District borders; are you willing to do so?"

"More than willing." Robyn puffed up a little with pride, her smile increasing in size. Dan looked worried as he glanced between Rufus and Robyn, but said nothing.

"Then it's settled. Now, about the matter of Peacekeeper brutality..."

The crowd dispersed slowly; Rufus had never anticipated how much everyone wanted to meet him, talk to him, understand why now he had put out feelers with the District's most prominent revo groups and rioters. They all wanted to talk, they all wanted to shake his hand; they all wanted to let him know they were willing to do anything he asked of them. It scared and excited him that he had brought in such a response- he hadn't realised just how much District 9 would bring in unrest, and especially with the guiding hand of an elder Victor of the Hunger Games.

Still, he mused, watching as the Blackthorns mounted their horses and rode away, Robyn with her new instructions for her courier assignment: there might just be hope yet for a few ancient traditions like the Games.

There might just be hope yet for a lot of things.

I'm on holiday and it feels fantastic. I'm completing chapters, I'm going outside, I'm watching films in real cinemas, and it's only been the weekend! Also, I've been binge-watching The West Wing. When it ends, because I almost have finished watching it, you'll know by the pained screams.

In any case, thank you to JadeRavenstone for Robyn Blackthorn! In case y'all couldn't tell, all the horse stuff came from their submission form; I've never even come close to a horse, let alone know how to handle them. I've tried my best but I don't know one end of a horse from the other.

As ever, thank you for reading this far.