PART III: STARLING.

13

Jordyn Moriau. The Starling.

Go To Glory.

Hezediah Zenkovah is dead.

Her corpse is among the litter of Capitol soldiers, Peacekeepers, the remains of the Metal army and Phaedra Xianrith's dead body. The Hurricane has killed them all, and has fallen out of its devastation.

Hezediah is not a storm. She is a dead bird. A sparrowhawk, to be exact.

That good enough, Stealth? her staunch eyes say. If you'll do fuckin' anything for me. Get him.

Hezediah has a nuclear bomb upon her body, still whirring - and anticipating - a blow.

"Take it off," Maddie says.

Jordyn does. She pries the nuclear bomb off Hezediah. It doesn't belong with her, neither of them say. The Hurricane deserves her rest, neither of them say.

Jordyn hauls the nuclear bomb on her back. She does not wear it.

You should leave it here, Maddie does not say, for she does not see it. Instead, Maddie nods her head, at the direction of Hezediah's body. What are we going to do with her? it asks.

"I don't want to leave her here," Jordyn says.

"We'll come back for her."

Jordyn nods. How much she believes it is a question for another time.

(She grips the bomb on her back, and does not think.)

Snow has nuclear weapons.

He calls it a last resort; tells them it is a last-ditch measure, calls the destruction on such a scale their martyrdom (and for him; a pyrrhic victory). But Snow understands them too well now. He knows they do not want to fail when their victory is near at hand, and the death-wishes have quelled.

"If you don't desire brimstone and radiation to rain upon your homes," Snow says. "then I suggest you listen very carefully."

He wants an ultimatum. The Vultures must hand over leverage, to ensure all rebels all step down. In return, Snow won't kill them all, and they can negotiate a deal. The rebels can return to their homes and forget. The Capitol will remain.

What does Snow want? Does he want to live in a ruined empire, in his mansion with a troop of soldiers in his retinue as he rots into the old earth? Does he want debris and roadkill, so he can lay claim to a triumph in war?

He wants it all.

Stealth sets up camp within the hollows of a dead land.

The Capitol is as good as deserted in the debris. Cynane picks an abandoned mall to stay their night: it isn't like the sewers and the tunnels they've sheltered in, for the days past. They may as well, Jordyn guesses: a night of luxury for the nuclear countdown.

"Sure," Kiernan says out, underlaid with bite, "Let's take it."

"No," Talquin's fingers tighten upon the bandage he wraps around Alithyia's arm. "It's not over until we say it's over."

And who can blame him? Jordyn and Maddie found Talquin and Alithyia, amid the scattered dead on the streets. They were dying, for they were sent to die and they did not see their mentor die, but felt its fact still. They brought Talquin and Alithyia back, but Hezediah had saved them first.

Of course they don't want her martyrdom to be in vain.

From where he sits cross-legged, Kiernan glances up at the top of the mall. "It was a good run. Who's going?"

"What happened to stand and die?"

"Talquin…" Alithyia says, "This is over with."

"Yeah, Seasbane. It's done," Kiernan scoffs. But then Maddie kneels to Kiernan's side, murmurs something into his ear, squeezes his hand. And Kiernan squeezes back, placated.

"... Sorry," Kiernan says, meeting Talquin's eyes.

Talquin exhales. "Kiernan. I'm sorry too."

An uneasiness swims through the gaps between them.

Who's heading off to be held hostage. Who's off to a near-almost-death-not-really. Who's ready?

"Vultures."

All eyes fall on Cynane. Their leader is… exhausted. Her eye-patch is slick with sweat, and her skin is drenched with its pallor. To say the war has taken its toll would be an understatement. But Cynane is shivering, too, like a leaf to the wind, near…

Sick.

"I'll negotiate with Snow," Cynane says. "He wants leverage. I am your leader; I can be that."

"Can we talk about your lie?" Maddie says. "I'm tired."

Silence.

Talquin's bandaging twitches to a stop. Alithyia's mouth creaks open.

Kiernan and Jordyn look and look at Cynane. Their war leader is a mask of curated statue, colder stone. Her humanity lives only in her sweat-sickness.

"Madison," Cynane says. "I apologise."

Maddie chuckles. "Okay."

"I am sorry."

"If you were," Maddie says, "you wouldn't have lied at all."

Maddie learnt that Levine Saros was dead when she met The Vivisector. There was a shadow where Levine's puppet-mastery should've been behind The Vivisector; a shadow behind the Metal Commander; shadows and shadows in the shape of the Scientist, and soon she realised it was a trick of the light.

(Jordyn tried to reassure her, when the bitter tears fell from her eyes. He's gone, Dyn, he's, he's dead, why am I here it's over I don't get it I wish I could've slashed his fucking nec didn't get a chance how how am I meant to live I didn't get a chance he's in my head I didn't get a chance.)

("He's dead, Maddie," Jordyn told her, held her, and whispered in her hair. But the dead-dead-dead fell from her lips, again, and again, and the meaning in those words fell away too.)

"I'm dying of metal poisoning," Cynane says. The atmosphere wearies upon them, heavies itself thicker. Alithyia's jaw sets, and that is when Jordyn understands exact.

Jordyn asks, still. "How?"

"Talon," Cynane says. She meets Maddie's eyes - and they are level, for the first time. "It's fine that you don't believe me, Saros. I'll make it up to you."

In the morning, they watch as their war leader leaves the mall. Watch, as she reaches her way towards Snow's mansion, to the-end-of-it-all. As she repents a lie. Slits the Vultures' throats. Saves their souls, maybe.

Cynane dies on film.

Cynane has been choking on her blood, for a long time now: three days' rebellion time, since Talon Ivory tried to murder her. Snow speeds up her death: has her die, shot through with his few soldiers left. Her blood splatters against the cabinets of his study.

"I said," Snow echoes, the hollows in his eyes staring, "Negotiations. Not regicide."

Cynane has been plotting Snow's murder, for a long time now: since the start of her life, when her parents fell by his wrath. She told the story to convict Jordyn into war. Cynane must've wanted it to end with a bite: a knife to Snow's gut, a knife to his neck, a knife through his eyes. That gave Cynane resolution, much as the Vultures' victory.

(But Cynane must've attacked too early and been stopped too early. Mother and daughter aren't so different, after all.)

"This is your final warning," Snow says. "Bring me the name of a true negotiator by dark. Then we'll talk. Or," and he sits, beside his desk, "you're welcome to kill yourselves."

The broadcast, overcast upon the dark skies, dies.

No one talks. They stare at Jordyn, though, with the weight afforded to leaders and heirs to the throne.

Because the New Vulture is dead and burning in her mother's arms on an evergreen reel. Because the Original Vulture is dead and executed by the dictator's decree.

They want the not-Cardinal to make a response.

All starlings rise at dawn.

"Dyn," Maddie says. "Can we…?"

Jordyn nods. Maddie grabs her hand, knots it tight into hers, and takes her up the escalators, around the railings, up the highest floor of the mall. The roof is plated with glass, and above and through are stars.

All starlings fall at evensong.

"Is it pretty?" Maddie asks. Jordyn blinks, then realises where Maddie nods at.

"Yeah," Jordyn says, swallowing the thickness in her throat. Jordyn raises her head to look at the stars, scintillating through the glass, calling up constellations and beings and names, bigger things, better purposes.

"Yeah," Jordyn repeats, "it is."

"What does it look like?"

Jordyn begins to describe it. She talks about the slosh of deep sea above-head, inked with oil and swirling blacks. She talks about the stars' magnanimity: that is, their carelessness, that is, nothing on earth is important enough for our concern. It's cold-hearted, comforting, somehow.

Jordyn tells Maddie of the stars' glows, too. Too many to count, equal in soft shine, curling through the dark sea. But Jordyn thinks stars aren't Maddie's concern.

(Maddie has always cared for the skies more, anyhow.)

"I can see Pisces from here," Jordyn says. Its story is a well-worn one: felling wood in Seven swallows time and swells creativity. The lumberjacks pass tales from the stars to exhale the sweat and splinter with something else.

"Pisces?"

"Imagine two fishes springing into water. But their tails are woven as one. They were gods," Jordyn says, "terrorised by a monstrous storm. The monstrous storm was destroying everything of earth, and so they transformed to escape through the flood."

"Did they survive?"

"They become fish and swim away," Jordyn says. "There isn't an ending,"

"Did the monster kill them?"

"No," Jordyn says. "They both escape."

"And there isn't an ending."

"No," Jordyn says. "No, there's no ending."

Silence.

"Dyn?"

Jordyn exhales. "Yeah?"

"You're leaving tomorrow."

Maddie's face is still: carefully neutral.

Jordyn could lie. But she won't.

"I'm the Vulture," Jordyn says. "I have to go."

"When are you coming back?"

"I don't know. For as long as Snow wants to keep me for."

They don't say forever. They never say that word of late.

(When Jordyn dreamt of the Capitol when she was a child, hungry and dreaming — she didn't think of being held in this capacity.)

(It's funny to think about, now. Her dreams.)

"I'm sorry," Maddie says.

"Don't be," Jordyn says. "I'm glad there's an end."

Maddie's jaw works, but she doesn't speak. Jordyn waits.

Then: "Dyn, please don't go."

Jordyn feels the pinprick by her eyes. She and Maddie have shared understanding. Solace. Pain. Company in a world of pain they've shared.

But love…?

Jordyn exhales. Maddie is breaking, as Jordyn is. They are shatterglass pieces finding shatterglass pieces, searching for sense in brokenness. They both need it, in the middle of a crisis.

They both do, when they know the way they descend:

All starlings fall at evensong. All nightingales kill themselves in the end.

This isn't love. This can't be.

(Maddie still holds her hand, though.)

"It's okay, Maddie," Jordyn says, squeezes back. "I've made my peace."

Maddie doesn't meet Jordyn's eyes. Maddie's broken eyes turn upwards to the night.

"Okay," Maddie says, to the constellations of Pisces. "Okay, then."

Jordyn will be the Vulture until time immemorial.

It is a good name. A valiant name. A name for the dead, a mantle for the next. She is the Vulture. That's what Jordyn wanted, wasn't it?

Does she like that name?

…

Jordyn treks out into the ruined place and into the moonlit roads, where Snow called rendezvous. She tilts her head into the night sky.

"I'll make negotiations," Jordyn yells. "I'll make negotiations!" she yells again, and again, and again.

It is only near when her throat is hoarse and breaking - only when she thinks this is it, Snow's fucking joke and we're all fools - that it happens.

Jordyn inhales and Cynane's dead corpse flicks on static, back at her on the stars. Snow nods, mouth parting as a red pomegranate, fleshy and ripe.

"Good, Moriau," Snow says. "I thought that it would have been you. I expect your arrival by dawn, Vulture."

The screen flicks off to death.

Jordyn exhales.

Vulture. Jordyn Moriau, Vulture. Rolls off the tongue. The syllables marry well together, creating a cross close towards martyrdom.

She doesn't know.

(She does not think so but she does not know.)

Some names are dead and still on the tongue and it is a given. (And it is still dead and dead). Some halfway names are spurned with a burst of life and dragged through their existences. (Jordyn Jordyn). Some names hurt, some names don't. Some names are still.

The Vulture is a still name. So is Jordyn.

(She supposes still is the way to go.)

Jordyn is a dead woman walking and the camp tracks her exact.

Their eyes are wide, when she re-enters the mall. Their eyes follow her, when she kneels at her sleeping bag, starts to make her bed. They have all seen her go to Snow's rendezvous at midnight, and return.

Those with sense would stay their distance; they may contract death by being too near her. Nobody wants to be next in line to die.

But they may well be diseased, because Jordyn Moriau forgets her company.

Kiernan Alcraiz - of snark and heartsick bite - drags her aside. "Where are you going?"

Jordyn's heart breaks.

"Nowhere, Kier," she says. "I'm going nowhere."

"Okay," Kiernan says. "Okay, Jordyn. I'll see you sometime."

Jordyn's throat dries. Kiernan leaves off into the mall-somewhere, somewhere beyond her reach.

She forgets her company. A man that has won and died when his best friend's back hit the shores. A woman that has died and become mechanised and lives-and-not-lives at the same time.

Talquin embraces her, whispers a stay safe, Jordyn to her ear. Alithyia nods at her; of understanding, of a thank you: she knows what it's like to martyr yourself for your friends. (Jordyn thinks about Hezediah, too. She thinks of Cel and Sadie and Cynane and the dead. Thinks of what they might say.)

Jordyn is the Vulture-starling. If dawn rises by her doom, then she'll let that be.

There is hope in the horizon.

"Dyn—"

Maddie pushes past everyone, Maddie holds her, Maddie kisses her slow. Maddie caresses her cheek like she is forsake, like any second Jordyn would— go.

"I'm not an explosion," Jordyn whispers, flustered, breathless, and what is not said: I won't leave you like that.

"I know, Dyn," Maddie says, and what is not said: That's why we're in love: we're both on the ridges of falling apart.

She forgets her company. A girl that has wanted to die, for so long, who was cheated of her due twice. (A lover that understands, for she has seen as Jordyn has. Who is practised in the art of letting go.)

Those are their goodbyes. They are lovers for the night, and only this night: 12 hours is the time they will have. That's enough.

(Kisses as a whisper; touches to salve the burn. Love, and not love, fleshed with a lukewarm kindness; they cannot take flames, of late. Sleeping, side by side, to quell the monsters of the night.)

Maybe they'll get more, in the next life.

Jordyn will count on it.

The morning arrives.

"You should wear it," Alithyia says. She nods at the nuclear armour, hoisted upon the escalator's handrail. "Show Snow that you have leverage too. You won't just be his pushover."

Jordyn considers it. She'll have protection. She won't die as Cynane had - at least, not so fast. She'll be on equal ground when negotiating with Snow.

(Snow says he wants a negotiator, but he truly wants leverage.)

(Will Snow bomb all the Districts, once he realises…?)

(He will.)

(That's not a question.)

"I'll think about it," Jordyn says, and that appeases Alithyia enough. Alithyia leaves, and Jordyn swallows as she glances at the armour. She looks away.

It's surreal to think. Jordyn hasn't let herself think. To enter Snow's mansion, of her free will, and surrender herself as leverage? To negotiate with Snow, to reach a compromise between them? To be at a standstill, to die-maybe, to live-maybe, to be locked in a cage until when?

There's no promise of freedom.

"Jordyn. Jordyn. Jordyn. Hey, are you listening, are you—"

"Yes," she exhales, and turns towards the child, "What is it, Kiernan?"

"Jordyn," Kiernan exhales. "Need to talk to you."

He takes her away from the escalators, and towards a store by the very end of the mall. She feels the guilt curdle in her gut: they haven't talked about Jordyn's leaving, yet.

(They need to.)

The tension is laden when they step through its doors. Jordyn glances at the merchandise, and nearly baulks. It is fashion, designer and Capitol and old in vogue, teeming to the tips. Kiernan doesn't notice.

(It knots her stomach.)

"Kiernan…" Jordyn starts. The knot's crawled up to her throat: what does she say?

I'll figure out an out from Snow.

(I'll try to save us from death.)

I'm sorry, but I'm about to leave.

(I promise I'm not like Maeve.)

Who is she to say?

"Look…" Kiernan says. He heaves out a breath, twists a finger round a garment (cashmere scarf; fresh-made; a silk of gold river; glowing). It tears between his fingernails. He snorts, then."... I probably can't talk you out of this, huh?"

"... Kiernan."

"No, it's fine. I get it. You made your choice and you're gonna go lie in it. I get it."

"I'm not dying," Jordyn protests.

He gives her a look.

"You're gonna tell me goin' to Snow isn't the same thing. Okay."

"I'm not taking it lying down."

"Dyn."

It is like whiplash to hear that name out of Kiernan's mouth.

(Why is it whiplash?)

"... Don't call me that."

Kiernan scoffs. "Fine," he says. "Fine, Jordyn. If it's what you want, it's what you fuckin' want, huh." He teases the cashmere scarf from its shelf. It falls into his hands. Slipping a hand into his jacket, he takes out an— envelope.

He wraps the cashmere gold around the envelope, misting the white with a glint.

"Maddie wants you to have this," he says, shoving the envelope at her. "You'll know when to open it."

Her mouth is dry. She doesn't think she can speak. So Jordyn takes the envelope. (She tries to forget the guilt crushing her insides. Tries.)

(But she refuses it to stop her from saying this.)

"Kiernan?"

"What?"

"I'm proud of you," Jordyn tells him.

"Yeah, yeah," Kiernan says. "Tell me that when there're no more birds on the planet."

With Cynane gone and dawn rising to the heavens, Jordyn can see clearly now. As nonsensical as that may sound.

She chose this role for herself.

Perhaps Jordyn shouldn't be The Vulture, because of Sadie's claim, Cynane's, Rendevez's in line to die; perhaps she shouldn't be the sole survivor of the 55th Games, because Brynn's the deserved Victor, Maddie's truer; perhaps Jordyn shouldn't be anything, for everyone should have what Jordyn had in her fingertips.

But fuck that. She's done with that.

Jordyn is the Vultures' leader, for today and come tomorrow, until she dies by Snow's hand. Her sanity's a melange of hell, but it is a frenetic hell. Jordyn's sacrifice is the best way to honour their memories. Brynn. Scott. Maeve. Maddie's.

I come, hand in hand, she thinks, and near-laughs. Last one of the pack. Don't mind I'm late. Had unfinished business to tidy up. Went by the name of war.

But it's done, now. I'm home, now.

Jordyn returns to the escalators.

There is no nuclear armour on the escalator's handrail.

It's gone.

What the fuck!

Oh. The envelope.

Dyn,

I'm sorry. You must be wondering why.

I'm calling Snow's bluff. If he did have nuclear weapons he'd have used it on us by now. Lay waste, make examples out of One and Two, let us watch helpless from the Capitol. Kill our homes and kill them total. But he's only used firebombs.

I think he has a failsafe bomb. The kind Levine told me he had under the warehouses. If I stepped out everything'll blow. I'd kill myself, and I'd kill him too.

Snow can only destroy the Capitol. He can't launch weapons when they can't be launched. So go. Get everyone out to One and Two - they'll be untouchable there. I'll force an end to this.

Live for yourself, Eva. Cages search for their starlings. You're not a starling. In my eyes, you're a phoenix.

Love,

Maddie.

(PS. Take care of Kiernan. He understands. He hopes you like the scarf, too.)

Maddie kisses her slow, caresses her cheek like she is forsake, like any second Jordyn would— go.

"I'm not an explosion," Jordyn whispers, flustered, breathless, and what is not said: I won't leave you like that.

"I know, Dyn," Maddie says, and what is not said: I've taken that role on as my own.

…

"Fuck you, Maddie," Jordyn whispers and starts to laugh. She runs out of the mall, throws her feet on the winding debris roads, to the mist moulding angels to her back - godforsake to that.

The winds carry a noise singing with wings, like I love you, I hate you, I'll save you. Like I'm sorry, I love you, I'll never forget you.

(And if she listens closer: We'll kiss, 'til the end, and then I'll take arms and blow.)

This is how the rebellion ends, for Jordyn Moriau.

Jordyn Moriau dies a death. It has been overdue. She was meant to perish in the 55th Games, yet her back has flourished in a vulture's wings. It has created her a saints' burial. Or at least, it was meant to.

She is not a starling, nor a cardinal, nor a nightingale or a saint or any of their kinds. She is not art and she is not rebeller and not leader and not sinner; not guilt-torn and war-broken and arena-shattered and deathborne.

(She is a best friend, though; a lover with her heart on a sleeve, hope in a soul.)

Upon the darkest night of the rebellion, a girl called Eva is reborn.