With thanks to jollyroger, Glassgift, Katrace and abbycoraby123 for your reviews of the last chapter.
Y 184-09-02 T 02:00:00
Day 3
The room he lay in was silent and clinical, but there was an element of beauty to it- an aesthetic design that went beyond the practical. The design was quite unlike the garish feel of most of the Capitol- it copied Lexus Valerian's style, or perhaps was his style. The colours were muted and pastel, soft greens and blues. There were no sharp edges; from the oddly shaped ergonomic bed he lay on to the machines he was hooked up to to even the curving floor-to-ceiling tinted windows, everything was curved, modern and painstakingly designed for an aesthetic state of calm.
It was oddly beautiful.
It was terrifyingly clinical.
Rufus hated it.
His wrist was braced in what he would describe as a lattice of plastic and carbon fibre, that criss-crossed to perfectly encase and set his broken bones. His wounds were sutured and applied with a strange substance that seemed to heal them more quickly than his body could naturally do so- the Capitolians that had tended to him had been nothing but professional.
Rufus hated it.
He had been manipulated into creating a non-rebellious reason as to why his tribute had jumped onto a landmine. He had been tortured, broken, over and over, and yet he hadn't broken, not until Snow had threatened Holly.
Rufus Warnke did not fear death. He was seventy-nine; in District Nine, he was an abnormality to lifespan and only alive by virtue of his Victor status and subsequent life of luxury. He did not fear the ending of a life prolonged and marked by suffering.
But Holly was his daughter, and she was still only fourty- perhaps he and her didn't speak anymore, and hadn't since his wife died, but for his daughter he would move heaven and earth, even if she didn't want him to. He would lie to keep his daughter alive- he would do anything to keep his daughter alive.
Still, matters were moving out of his control; his tribute, a girl he should have saved, had jumped onto a landmine, because he had said in a drunken bitter haze that she wouldn't last the week. She had asked him what to do- he had told her, and shouldn't have, to make her death count for something. If you can't control your survival, he had said, then you should own your own death.
She had taken his advice and then some. Without trying to, he had incited the girl to make her death into a rebellion in its own right.
Rufus hated it.
Desperate to escape his thoughts, he scrolled his thumb across a chromed and bevelled remote; programs flickered to life on a large screen ahead of his hospital bed. He was going to just skip past the Games- he had had enough of the Games the day he was Reaped, so many years ago.
But the flames that leapt on the screen stayed his hand.
Seven tributes, none of them his. Muted by the Gamemakers but clearly yelling to each other of escape from the arena. Seven tributes, of rebel creed and Career training, of crime and of poverty, working together to save tributes that were not their own.
Rufus blinked.
This was not like any Games he had seen before. This was not insidious, this was not subtle- this was open and aggressive rebellion, and it manifested in the symbol of Panem's power set alight.
And for the first time in decades, for the first time since the Capitolian had read his name, for the first time since President Sanchez had placed a crown of thorns on his head, Rufus Warnke found purpose.
The escorts and victors watched in dumb shock as Elizabeth tied Quint to her back, grabbed the paracord rope, swung herself out and-
The image crackled, flickered and died. The image was dark for a few long seconds, and then switched to a zoomed-out graphic of the arena.
"And now," a harried-sounding Caesar Flickerman said, "Let's see what Ronan's up to! The fearless final member of the Career pack's been busy tracking down our brother-and-sister duo from District Five..."
"What?" District Eight's escort gasped. "They can't leave it there!"
Sisyphia took a moment to regain her voice. "I think the camera died." She said, her voice's emotion numbed by fear. "I think the heat may have destroyed it."
"Oh, god," a soft voice whispered. Sisyphia glanced over- she vaguely recognised the green-haired appearance of Demeter Hansen, the stylist for District Eight. "What's happening to them?"
The camera had already flipped to footage of Ronan Horne and the young siblings he was hunting. Nothing more had been said by Caesar about the fire- every camera they switched to on Ronan was pointedly angled away from the inferno burning in the Inner City.
It was as if they were trying to ignore the seven tributes at the mansion altogether.
Finnick Odair had been standing at the back of the room, but now he was crowded amongst the others, eyes wide and face slack. "That was rebellion," he said, and the murmurs of the group went silent.
"Kid," Haymitch Abernathy intoned, "Don't say things you can't defend."
Finnick's normally smiling, handsome face was taut with a strange kind of emotion Sisyphia couldn't place. He watched Haymitch, then the group, and then clearly backed down, folding into himself just slightly.
Sisyphia found she didn't want him to back down.
"Why not say what it was, Abernathy?" She said with forced lightness to her tone. "You saw that. Elizabeth and Theon set the Presidential Mansion alight. Quint and Glace and the others are trying to escape the arena. That's rebellion."
The escorts and stylists and victors around her were deathly silent now. Haymitch's expression was unreadable. Effie Trinket seemed caught in the crossfire.
"What a shocking thing to say, Sisy, I mean, really!" She seemed panicked, and it took a moment for Sisyphia to put it together, but after a moment it became clear to her. Effie and Haymitch had been the sole prep team for the rebellious volunteer Katniss Everdeen, only two years ago. That girl had died, and by Gamemaker-controlled mutts, no less- Sisyphia still remembered the mockingjays, tearing at Katniss' eyes, ripping her flesh from her body.
Haymitch regarded Effie and then Sisyphia. He regarded his drink, then, and drained the lot.
"I hate this fucking town," he snarled, and walked away and over to the bar.
The Four escort laughed nervously- half his team had left him, and he was left with the last true Career and the Career-turned rebel, both relying on his loyalty. "I think this is all just a bit of a misunderstanding, Sisyphia," he said weakly. "My Emma's from District Four. We train our tributes better there."
"So remind us why Theon Veux just set the President's place on fire?" Johanna Mason drawled. The escort's jaw closed with an audible click, but seemed unwilling to debate with a killer, and with that swept from the room.
The District Seven Victor turned her gaze to the room as a whole.
"Anyone else want to remind us why the trained Career Theon Veux set fire to the Mansion? Or that the trained Career Emma made a rope to help them escape? Or that Quint clearly said it was all in aid of getting out of the arena? Anyone want to hedge their bets on why?"
The group of Capitolians and Victors had dispersed outwards across the District Six apartment now. There was a tense feeling to the air. All the Victors were silent, paralysed by fear from speaking the truth.
Sisyphia had not experienced this fear. She did not know what it was to be afraid of recompense.
"Because they're rebelling," she told her Victor. Johanna looked at her in honest surprise.
"Right," the young woman responded. Even she seemed to be edgy now. "Right," she sighed, looking up to watch the footage that was so carefully avoiding the rebellion they were all now conspiring in admitting to.
On the screen, Ronan Horne ploughed on through the night, his back to the flames- the final Career had abandoned all of himself but his duties and training. He was almost sad for Sisyphia to watch- it was as if he hadn't realised that all of the Careers were gone, and that all of his training was obsolete to the new world order he stood in.
Sisyphia didn't have the experience to name what she felt, but any Victor in the room could have told her that what she felt was the fear of retribution.
The bar had been bustling and busy only a little while ago- it had been midnight, and for the Capitol midnight was when the party just began. Elysium, with its indigo lights and ever-present feed to the Games, had been buzzing with the energy of two hundred shining people drinking four hundred shining drinks.
Now it was silent but for the voice of Caesar Flickerman and for the breaths of two men sitting on a couch made for twenty. Alec and Ganymede, absently holding each other's hands, had been sitting there, almost in a trance, for hours.
When it had happened, flames had leapt on the screens of the Games and the bar had gone nigh-silent to watch, and when they saw the President's mansion in flames a number of patrons had screamed.
Alec had not done so until he had seen Quint Barkwater within the building's confines.
Alec had never liked the Games. True, he had watched it- he had debated it, he had bet on tributes, as every Capitolian must. But he had never liked it. And now, he had met one of the tributes- he had seen him, seen his grime-streaked face, given him money. He had seen this tribute's face.
Quint Barkwater stood in a mansion on fire and for the first time Alec Taupe could not separate life as he saw it with life on the screen. A child, a child he had met, was stuck in a burning building, and what was Alec doing? Watching shining people drinking to his demise?
He had started shaking. He repeatedly made juddering movements towards the television to switch it off, but kept backing down. Ganymede, with ever-watchful eyes to his boyfriend, had ordered everyone out of the bar without hesitation.
He had sat with Ganymede and watched until the last camera went black in the square.
Silence was in the cold air, hanging between them like a guillotine. Ganymede swallowed and began to speak.
"I know I said I didn't need to know what happened." Ganymede's voice was hollow and dry and little more than a whisper. "And I trusted that whatever had happened, we were going to be fine. But you said what you did is against the law. Every time Quint Barkwater comes on the screen, you can't keep yourself together. What the hell is going on, Alec?"
Alec gripped Ganymede's hand a little tighter. Almost all of their lighting had been switched off and they were left in shadows, and Alec imagined Peacekeepers in every pool of darkness surrounding them.
"I met him," he whispered, voice breaking even at that volume. "I met him at the station, before he was reaped, and- god, Gany, you don't see it so well on the screen, but he was so thin, they're all so thin, I just wanted to help him, I-"
"Oh, god, Alec," Ganymede breathed. "Did you give him something?"
"Some credit coins," Alec whispered. "I didn't- it wasn't a lot-"
"Oh, god, Alec." Ganymede's eyes, usually a soft caramel, were wide and dark and fearful in the night. "You know that's counted as smuggling. You know he's going to be scrutinised if he's a tribute- what the hell were you thinking?"
"He needed the money," Alec whispered, and now all his fears were bubbling from his mouth in feverish desperation to explain himself. "He needed it, because we're not giving him enough. If we're supposed to be the administrative centre of Panem, what administration doesn't give enough food for children to eat?"
Ganymede shook his head furiously. "Alec, it doesn't matter about morals, it matters about law. You know that Panem operates on a system of-"
The words Ganymede was about to say were ones Alec had heard repeated to him enough at school, in public information broadcasts, and he could not stomach them.
"-On a system of delicate supply and demand that cannot be tampered with, I know, I know, but god, it's not working if the supply isn't enough."
Ganymede brushed his teeth delicately over his lips and considered this. He opened his mouth to speak.
It was then that the bar exploded with light.
The two men jumped up to their feet as roaming lights shone through every window, temporarily blinding them as with a juddering crack of splintered wood the locked door to the bar broke open. There was an almighty roar of engines and Alec could hear Ganymede yelling in his ear but could not discern the words.
A clatter of boots against marble flooring, and dark-dressed Peacekeepers flooded into the bar, from the back door, from the front. Ganymede started to pull at Alec, to try to get him to run. Alec did not move. For once, he was not clouded with panic. The adrenaline had cleared his mind of all else but the logical options.
Alec knew he could not escape. And so, his only priority was keeping Ganymede safe. Ganymede could not be seen to be his ally in this, or else he was in as much danger as he was.
As the Peacekeepers raised guns and shouted demands, Alec turned to Ganymede, his partner, his love.
As the lights blinded him and the clamour of guns and boots and engines came closer, Alec grabbed Ganymede by the shoulders and shoved him violently away from him. Ganymede crashed back into a row of bottles, eyes filled with fear and betrayal and the light of damning Peacekeeper torches.
Alec tensed as the Peacekeepers approsched, and offered up his wrists to what he assumed would be handcuffs.
Instead, he felt a sharp kick from behind, and gasped as the momentum brought him to the ground and the air was knocked from his chest. He could hear Ganymede screaming- or was that him screaming? He could not tell. His hands were forced behind his back, handcuffed now- he felt a strip of tape cover his mouth and silence him. He gave way to his basest instincts and lashed out in all directions, but it was too little and too late.
The last thing Alec knew was a rough black bag covering his eyes, his nose, his mouth. An impact to the back of his head and the world went silent.
Plutarch Heavensbee sat in the dim light of the medical evacuation craft. His nose, the medics had said, was broken, and asked how he did it- Plutarch had smiled and said it was nothing, really, just his lack of coordination and an uncooperative wall. If the medics suspected his untruths, they did not press him, and had left him alone in the back of the craft.
Plutarch disliked lying for the man that had punched him, but he did not wish to be seen involved in Seneca Crane's burgeoning downfall. If he could not be seen pinned to it, he would not be suspected.
Strategy, after all, took precedence over all else.
Plutarch stood and began to slowly inspect the craft, trying to distract himself from the throbbing pain in his nose and the still-bleeding cuts on the inside of his cheek. He had not wished to be so forward with his intent towards Crane- a clever man, a more political man, might have suspected why Plutarch wished for rebellion.
No matter, Plutarch mused. If all goes to plan, Crane will be dead soon enough.
Caesar Flickerman, Master of Ceremonies, the Voice of Panem. That was his title; that was what everyone introduced him with. It was a powerful thing to represent the voice of the people- it was a powerful thing to declare the Games to the world.
But to Caesar, it had never felt like enough.
He rose from his recording booth as they switched to a full-day recap. Ronan Horne had killed the District Five duo- the final Career was well on his way to tracking the allied District 10 girl and District 3 boy. Predictions set them to be dead by morning.
And then all that would be left would be Ronan and the revos, and then Caesar would be stuck.
He was the Voice of Panem. He was not a miracle worker. Snow had entrusted him to soothe the people, but how could he do his job when Lexus Valerian and Seneca Crane couldn't kill just seven rebellious tributes? How could he survive if the others were not cooperating in helping him?
Caesar left the booth and nodded to Dalton Roche, his usual replacement, who took the booth with fear in his eyes and panic lodged in his throat. He did not bother giving Roche meaningless platitudes of assurance that they would be okay- he could not speak a lie.
Well, not unless I am decreed to do so.
Caesar was not a stupid man. He had not risen from the unknown to become Snow's voice without being clever.
He knew that whatever happened, the people would respond negatively.
His only hope was to try and rise above it- to become untouchable. To endear himself to the people as he always had done, but this time demonise those who stood above him. If done subtly, he could raise the Capitol to arms. If done subtly, he could not only survive but thrive.
He had always fancied the title of 'President'.
Caesar walked out from the back door of the City Studios into the night. He could hear the buzz of electric change in the air.
Sisyphia had left the Training Centre again- she could not bear the screens anymore, and could not bear the hostility of those surrounding her.
Children were standing in buildings set aflame and all she could do was stand and watch.
Sisyphia, for once, could not stand the Games.
She was only wearing a bare minimum of makeup, and for once no wig, and usually she would be afraid to walk the streets of the Capitol in such a dishevelled state but tonight she could not care. She turned the corner to the Presidential mansion, half-expecting to see it aflame. The statue of President Snow was not melted and broken. It stood tall and proud and paternal to the statue girl , and to Panem.
Still, Sisyphia could not help but see it all aflame, and for a moment wished to see it like that.
She shook her head and walked on into the night- her ears had picked up a buzz of sound in the air, and without direction she found herself tracking that.
Street after street of silence, but Sisyphia could hear the sound of something. She turned a corner, and then she was in the Games Headquarters Square; and she had found the sound.
A screen was set up in the middle of the square, just next to the City Studios, and people were often crowded there, watching the Games in jovial spirit. Typically, they were gone by midnight at the latest, and did not stay for duller moments of the Games.
And yet here, thousands of people stood in a buzz of rapt attention, watching recaps and waiting, waiting.
It was when the crowd erupted into yells and cheers that Sisyphia realised what they were waiting for, because the recaps began to show Theon and Elizabeth, recieving matches, setting the Presidential mansion alight, finding the two trapped within. As the footage muted, the people began to loudly discuss what had been said by Quint- many were wrong, but in the crowd Sisyphia could hear more than a few of the thousands making the correct guesses as to what Quint had said, as to what the group were about to do.
The people knew.
Sisyphia could not speak for her fear, and could not breathe for her excitement.
The video link was delayed and broken, but it was enough for Coriolanus to see that Josiah was afraid.
"Sir, we're really trying to fix it but you have to give us a little time-"
"-You've had time. You have thousands of cameras and hundreds of workers at your disposal, and you tell me they've disappeared?"
"We'll find them!"
"You keep telling me this, and yet I don't see any such results."
"Please, sir, we just need-"
"-You have until seven in the morning, Lyman. If you haven't found them by then, I'm sending in Anamaria Dimitri and the Peacekeepers to take over duties."
It was clear by Josiah's expression that he knew their intent would not be merely to relieve them of duty.
"Of course, Mr Snow."
Something snapped in Coriolanus' countenance.
"President Snow," he growled, and while Josiah started to stutter and fix his mistake, Coriolanus waved his hand and shut off the communications. He strode from the room furiously, forcing the guards shadowing him to follow hastily behind.
Tonight of all nights, Coriolanus had only one destination.
He opened the doors to the Hall of Antiquities and ordered the guards to stand outside rather than follow. He moved through the dark, shadowed hall, imagining his home aflame, his power slipping through his grasp like ashes.
Coriolanus had always known his presidency was borne from blood and would end in it. He had forcibly taken control from President Sanchez, after all.
But people assumed that was his only intent in taking control. People assumed that power and power alone was Coriolanus' drive.
It was not.
He passed by the ancient map of Panem, rested his fingerprints on the glass for just a moment.
His attention was drawn to the scorched device on its plinth.
He tapped a code into the glass covering the plinth, and it folded open to permit his hand- he carefully pulled the device from its confines.
A small, flat metal rectangle, scorched by flame. The surface was printed with an eagle, but this eagle held not arrows in both talons but arrows in one and an olive branch in another.
Snow was not afraid. But he had seen what this device contained, and he knew as nobody else did of its contents.
He was President for a reason, and that reason was this device. And if he had to start fighting to retain power, to serve this device, then so be it.
He clenched the scorched metal device in his hand.
He knew now that a war was coming.
And now, he was ready to fight it.
Hi, I'm screening, and welcome to Jackass!
I've taken a while to write this, as I haven't really been in a Hunger Games headspace- I've been excitedly awaiting (and then last night watching) Avengers: Age of Ultron. And damn. It was breathless, messy fun; like Joss Whedon tried to make six films in one and when the scripting wasn't going so well just covered the whole thing in hilarity.
But yeah. Not what I'm supposed to be writing about, so I put Jacquerie on the backburner until I felt I could do a good job of it.
Three chapters left until Jacquerie's over. ;) As ever, thank you for reading this far.