(If you have read this far, I hope you're enjoying it! I had an absolutely amazing time writing it. :D Not much longer to go!)
"No," Effie says firmly. She presses a white handkerchief to her brow, dabbing off the beads sweat that have gathered there since she came to stand beneath the awning over the lunch tables. "That's not right at all."
"Can you think of anything better?" asks Quintus.
"No, but certainly we can do better than 'From the Ashes.'"
"I still think we should stay away from fire completely," says Ismene, the lead technician.
"I agree," Effie says. "And I think it might take a full day of brainstorming to find a few good titles to choose from." Sighing, she reaches for the bottle of water in her bag, both purchased a few days ago from a vendor just up the road. It's still morning, but the humidity is high enough that it feels like high noon.
Even the builders are slower, the usual rhythm to their work weighed down by their labored breathing. It's hard enough to breathe while simply standing in the shade. Effie can't imagine how much worse it is for them.
"Maybe everyone in town should have the day off," she says, watching Oliver and Harlan work on the roof of the building across the road. "It's been dry for days now."
"Marsh said it'll rain today," says Agrippa, adjusting the zoom on his camera.
"He said the same thing yesterday," Ismene protests.
"No, yesterday he said it might rain. This morning, he said it will rain."
"Well, who knows when that will be?" Quintus interrupts. "Let's not waste time arguing. I think it's safe to say the most interesting thing that could happen today is someone passing out."
"Quintus!"
"I'm only stating the facts, Effie. The best thing we can do is take it easy. No unnecessary exertion, no fishing for shots if it means you'll be out in the sun for too long."
"Well, if we aren't going to work, then neither should they," Effie huffs. Shielding her face with her clipboard, she marches off across the road, waving to Harlan and Oliver with her free hand.
"Your camera operators can try to get up here if they want to, but I don't recommend it," Harlan calls down to her.
"You should stop," she says. "The heat is only going to get worse."
"This has to get finished first," Oliver tells her. "Don't worry. The mines were tougher. We'll be fine."
It's small comfort, but she takes it.
In the shade of the lunch area, she and the team settle on a day and time to hold a naming meeting and head off on their separate ways. Effie's umbrella does little to fight off the heat. By the time she reaches Peeta's house, all she can think of is taking a long, cold bath.
The bath turns into a nap that leaves her with wrinkled hands and feet. Still, she gets up only because she must, and once in her room, she spares a glance out the window at the overcast sky. With any luck, the temperature has dropped a few degrees, and both the builders and her film crew will be able to get work done.
When she is dressed and powdered again, she plucks her umbrella from the hook by the door and heads out. It is decidedly cooler in the shadow of the clouds, and much, much easier to breathe.
The crew members are in higher spirits, but only Agrippa has been sent out with his camera, and that only at his insistence.
"He wants to capture the moment when it starts to rain on the town garden," says Theodosia, one of the camera operators. She nods in the direction of the plot of land where the residents have begun to grow crops and flowers. "Weather shots are his forte. I could do this my whole life and never manage what he does."
"Well, Plutarch recommended all of you for a reason," Effie tells her.
"You should go too, Theodosia," says Quintus. "We need to see the residents when they see the rain."
"In a second." Theodosia turns to look at Effie, grinning. "I want to see the look on her face when you tell her."
"Is something the matter?" Effie asks.
Quintus shoots Theodosia a glare. "Nothing serious, don't worry."
"But it could be."
"Theodosia, if you miss this shot, I will put you on the next train back to the Capitol myself."
"That isn't for you to decide," Effie interrupts. "Now, will you please tell me what's going on?"
Quintus wait until Theodosia grabs her camera and starts for the town garden, then turns to Effie and says, "I think we are all too aware that we're coming up on what used to be reaping day. I've heard several suggestions as to what we should or shouldn't do on that day in honor of those who lost someone to the Games."
Effie nods. A few of them are hers, though she shares one with Katniss. That part, of course, she has left out. "Do you like any one in particular?"
"Yes," Quintus says, "but that's irrelevant. We owe the existence of this project to the permission the people here have given us to be here. I don't want to start imposing anything on them now."
Thunder rumbles in the distance. Both Effie and Quintus look up to check for rain, but the clouds hold their water yet.
"I've been speaking with the residents about what they would prefer to do," he continues. "A few of them wanted to just ignore it, but most said they wanted to replace it with something. The sentiment is that to ignore the day is to confer power to the old regime, I think."
"That makes sense." Frowning, she adds, "Except it was just last week that I spoke with Oliver about the matter, and he gave me the impression that the majority would rather ignore the day."
"That's his stance," Quintus clarifies. "But, believe it or not, even though that seemed to be the predominant thought, it's changed over the last week."
"I wonder why."
"I blame the weather. No - I thank it. It'll make for a better piece if something happens on that day."
"That's hardly an appropriate way to see it."
"It's the truth." He holds up his hands and shrugs. "In any case, the idea of a midsummer celebration seems to be catching on."
"Goodness," Effie gasps, resting a hand over her heart. "Do you know, Heather Marsh told me she'd prefer a memorial service to be held, if anything."
"I think that's pretty much everyone's thought on the matter."
"If that's the case, then where are you getting this about a festival?"
"From the people who tell me that we should stow our cameras for a midday memorial service, but not for, say, a celebration of having survived." He shrugs when she frowns at him. "I'm only telling you what I've been hearing."
"I don't know, Quintus," she says, shaking her head. "I trust you, but I'd like to see for myself."
He nods. "Well, you should get started on that before the rain comes in."
"Yes, and thank you. This gives us more to work with." She undoes the button on her umbrella, readying it for action, and heads out to investigate.
She has time for only one little interview, but it's all she needs to understand. As he stows the ladder in a sheltered space between two buildings, Harlan tells her about old traditions on hot summer days.
"Your people liked to pity us," he says. The absence from his voice of the anger he held towards her that first time she came into town is not lost on her. "We danced during the rebellion, just to show them they hadn't broken us. Wouldn't it be something for them to see us now and know for certain that our sadness was a result of their ignorance?"
"Yes, it certainly would," she agrees. Her stomach twists when the truth of his words settles firmly in her mind, bringing up memories of the fault she had in their suffering.
In that moment, it starts to rain.
Half her skirt is drenched when she finally reaches Peeta's house. She leaves her boots and umbrella by the door and rushes upstairs, shutting windows along the way against the increasing fury of the rainstorm. Lightning flashes overhead, and thunder rumbles behind it, giving the wind its cue to gust in earnest.
Once she has changed, she can find nothing to do. Her notes are up-to-date, and she has no pressing phone calls to make. If it weren't storming, she might go over to see Katniss and Peeta or Haymitch and his geese. As it stands, all she can do is have an early dinner and hope the rain lets up before late.
Downstairs, with a light on, she goes over the filming schedule for the following week and adds Memorial Service and Festival? in the memo space. Putting her doubt on paper makes it more palpable - even if it is in pencil. She wants to believe such a celebration could happen, but isn't it too soon, and will the people here really want to throw a party after what will indubitably be a solemn event? Will they really be able to move away from the sadness their ghosts bring them and look to begin to enjoy in full the gift that was won by so much sacrifice?
Staring down at her planner, she fights against her own specters with little hope for victory. The rain goes on until late in the night, cloaking the house in a grey solitude that shows her the faces of old friends and loved ones. The only apology she can give them is for the sudden end to their lives; she will never regret having allowed herself to see the cracks in the veneer of the Hunger Games.
It rains on and off for the next three days and in a steady drizzle for the next two. The parched earth drinks its fill, the grass and trees regain their vibrant greens, and the plants in the town garden begin to grow in earnest. What little damage the wind of the first day caused is fixed by the evening of the third; the few children currently in the district play in the puddles, delighting film crew and builders alike; Heather Marsh has false labor contractions; and the residents begin to make plans for the summer festival.
The first day of blue skies ends with a spectacular sunset of vibrant oranges and pinks. Effie watches it from Haymitch's back porch, a pitcher of her iced tea between them. He likes it better with liquor, of course, but he hadn't been able to keep from his eyes the praise he might have given if he weren't so adverse to simple acts of kindness. She had settled instead for recalling Katniss' compliment and taken no offense to his addition to the tea she poured into his glass.
"Maybe this should be my contribution to the summer festival," she says, watching puffy clouds shift and morph as they flow across the sky.
He snorts.
She turns to look at him. "You don't think I should?"
"Do what you want," he answers, shrugging.
"You know it wasn't my idea, right? I certainly thought about it, but I kept it to myself." Except for when she discussed it with Katniss, but Effie doesn't think Haymitch needs to know that. Best to let Katniss decide if she wants to be involved in this or not.
"Really? Huh." He frowns and takes a drink. "Sounds like something you'd suggest."
She rolls her eyes.
"Anyway, it's like I said. Just do what you want. It isn't my problem."
"You will go, though, right?"
Again, he shrugs. "Don't know. I'm sure Katniss and Peeta will try to convince me for a minute or two on the morning of festival day."
Already, "festival day" sounds a whole lot better to her than "reaping day," but she keeps that thought to herself for now. "Festival night, actually," she corrects, and he rolls his eyes. "In any case, and even though I know you don't want to hear it, I think it will be nice if you go."
"With all the things I've seen, I really don't think so, but I'm not going to argue the point with someone who's been through her own set of horrors."
"I meant for everyone else." She tries to be strong, but her voice comes out quiet, reserved. He more than anyone understands what reaping day was like for her, how it was to be onstage and look out at all those faces, all those people, those children with their names in the glass reaping balls even just once. That alone was one time too many for some.
Like Primrose Everdeen.
Effie holds her breath and shuts her eyes. The girl had been too far from the stage for Effie to see much more than her blonde hair and plain dress, but the fear in her frame had been enough to etch itself in Effie's mind. Being liberated from her punishment by her sister had only made it worse. That year, perhaps more than the year of the weeping boy, had made her wonder if the descendants of the rebels hadn't learned already their lesson and earned their freedom from the Games.
"You're missing Venus," Haymitch tells her, but what she hears in his tone is come back, those days are over now.
She opens her eyes, finds the bright shape of the evening star in the sky, and inhales deeply. "I really did mean it when I told them all they were lucky."
"They were, in a way," he says, sounding for all the world as if they are not discussing the children they took to be slaughtered. "You don't have to worry about where your next meal comes from when you're dead."
"I never thought of it like that."
"You wouldn't have. You didn't grow up like we did."
"What I meant was that-" The words sound ridiculous in her head, but she has begun this, and she will finish it. "For those few days before they went into the arena, they got to eat all they wanted, wear nice clothes, sleep in comfortable beds… They got to be famous. I really thought it would be good for them to know a better life before the end."
"Depends on how you define 'better,' I guess."
She sniffs and clears her throat. "It was so difficult to talk with people after the Games. You got to come back here and get away from everything for a while, but I had to stay in that world."
The worst had been seeing Seneca after the post-Games interviews. Everyone wanted to hear his perspective on the tributes' performances, what he had hoped for going into the Games, what he was proud of, what he would have done differently behind the scenes. He would go to her after each interview, and they would discuss the questions and his answers, and she would have to pretend to have loved the carnage at the Cornucopia or the surprise attacks of mutts or falling trees or whatever new element he had tried that year. On those nights, she had hated him, because every year since the weeping boy, she had hated the Games more and more.
"Yeah, I bet all those parties were tough."
"Stop it," she snaps, glaring at him. He bows his head deeply in a slow nod, his gaze flickering to her glass. When she looks down at it, she finds that she is gripping it far harder than necessary.
They sit in silence as the sky grows darker, until finally he stands and flicks on the porch light. He refills his glass with equal parts liquor and tea, and sits heavily beside her on the bench.
"All right," he tells her. "I'll stop by the festival. But I am not going to the memorial service."
She nods, giving him the smallest and briefest of smiles. "I'll make sure no one films you."
He snorts, a wry smile pulling back his lips. It's the most relaxed she's seen him look since she's been here, and she is the only one to witness it.