PART III: STARLING.
14
Maddie Saros. The Phoenix.
Be The Sky.
Maddie Saros runs with Kiernan Alcraiz.
Out the mall, out the metal. Dance through the broken buildings, spin towards an abyss; step to step, rush and rumble, touch and go. Kiernan laughs with her as they near the edges of the end. She lets herself a laugh too, shorn through the throat, that desperate and fluttering winged thing - beating, beating, beating ground.
Run, rush, rampage the earth, leave room for an explosion some other time. It is not right now - they have no need for it. As it stands, they have time before the end.
They are in the hovercrafts, after the 56th Games' falls into rupture. Kiernan says not a word to her. Madison has a thousand upticks in her throat: words, not words, questions, not questions.
She arrives at the lasting one:
"What was she like?"
Kiernan chuckles. "Bold of you to say. You know more 'bout her than I ever will. You tell me."
He ruffles his hair with his fingers, sinks his index and thumb against his forehead. His fingers slide down his face and he pushes them against his eyes. The meaning is clear: he doesn't want to talk.
Madison does not.
They stop a stone's throw away from Snow's mansion. Kiernan pulls up at the end, exhales in and exhales out, his flushed cheeks stirring his breathing.
He lets go of her hand, the one he clasped while guiding her.
Maddie holds his shoulders.
"Thank you," Maddie says, a halfway smile there, "for running with me."
Kiernan grins. He sniffs, and the tears spill from his shining blue eyes; she feels it splatter on her hands. "Yeah, 'course," he says. "I wouldn't, uh, let you go alone."
He wavers. "I'll take care of her for you," Kiernan says, and he shrugs her hands off his shoulders, presses an emblem into her hand: it's the cuckoo.
Maddie's lip twitches. She shakes her head. "I trust you."
She closes his fingers over the cuckoo necklace. I'll always be with you.
"Take care of my sister for me, 'kay?" Kiernan says. "You gotta return a favour."
"I will," Maddie says, and whispers this is it, go, go.
He doesn't go. Kiernan hugs her. His warmth is an assault - Maddie gasps, then hitches a breath - when he squeezes her hand. Then Kiernan's hand falls away from hers, and he runs, runs away from the abyss, the destruction, the holes, to a - home, a home, a home.
Keep going, Maddie.
I know you're runnin' out of breath. I know you're losin'. I know you're dyin', blind-frayin', goin' at it with the last tears of yer soul, darlin', all of'ta soul-bits ya have left.
Keep running, Maddie.
Do it for me. Pretty please an' a cherry on top, 'cause ya love me and I love ya. An' you should breathe an' breathe an' breathe 'til they scream at you not to. And you'll breathe in too.
Maddie navigates her way to the entrance of Snow's mansion. Her fingers trail on debris, half-handholds. Rocks crunch under her soles. She's used to this kind of affair: Maddie had taught herself the art of seeing not-seeing.
The hope, at the time, was futile - once he throws me away because I can't be used, I'll be able to live, somewhere. Maddie taught herself, closed her eyes and moved blind from warehouse to warehouse, balanced herself on the edges of her bed, and walked on her own to the cages' bars. Trial and error; for the sweet inevitable day.
Thank you, she whispers to her past self.
And when her hand falls upon rough quartz, colder stone - Maddie knows.
She had a dream once.
The shades of flowers dipped upon her cheeks, spilling sunshine into her skin and eyes. Laughter's on the tip of her tongue. She twists and bumps into the body beside her. The angel girl giggles, high-pitched. She grazed her lips past the angel girl's cheeks and kissed her. Sunshine infiltrated from the angel girl's mouth and spilled into her lungs and she was breathing serotonin.
Did people live like this?
But too fast was she snatched back to reality - dreary grey, mattresses upon mattresses, a wretched ring for her march. She blinks and she is Madison Saros again, dead girl walking, alive despite.
"It's near the end," Levine tells her, and she nods.
How can this chapter end?
Just like that, a voice in her mind says, and the angel girl's wink is right there, tongue stuck out against her cheek, a grin in her finger snap. It's bout time, isn't it, Mads?
Madison Saros rises, and readies herself for the Reapings.
They let Maddie in: accost her, solider boys and soldier hands, roughening to her armour. They drag her in, harsh whispers and orders filtering between them, as if she is deaf as well as blind.
Once a long time ago, before the Vultures and before her suicide (but after her lover's death and after she died) - Madison wished for her dream.
The forest-dream, when she had her lover's hand clasped in hers. As they gazed into the river and threw out their legs to skip upon the plops of the water flow, and they shared stolen kisses upon through the twilight eve.
Maybe, her lover had said, and Madison let her eyes relax - glitch - and then their maybe became her truth then. Maddie was living her dream with Maeve, spending time by the forest's edge, their cottage home just someplace away, not far away, just a skip and they'll be back in their forever.
(She knows the word for that now. Oneirataxia is too rough on her mouth to describe the beauty they had together.)
Now? Now, she is in Thirteen, a crisis inhabiting her insides. Her cuckoo's necklace is just another tchotchke piece, spread round the desk like a nothing-piece. Her heart constricts as she snatches it from its stay, cradles it tight in her fist till its wings dig into her flesh, and decides to keep it within the vicinity of her flesh forever if she could.
Why did she leave this here again?
How did she forget?
Discomfort bottoms out her stomach. She shakes the thought away.
Rebellions have a tendency. They make you forget things.
(Even precious items like these? How much has the rebellion been affecting your sanity, Saros?)
Maddie smiles, for they do not take the armour off; do not realise they bring a bomb back into their homes.
The golden forest is just like the 56th Games.
The Gamemakers have stolen their aesthetic as blueprint. The thought crawls on her skin; how perverted was it to take a sanctified world the Alcraiz's called home and make blood gush into its grounds.
They have found Kiernan Alcraiz in its hiding. Maddie cannot see much, now, but he must be watching her; eyes to her neck.
"She made that for you."
Kiernan's voice is tight. Hard. Tense.
Maddie swallows.
"Yes."
His fingers rise, graze on her neck, but they abruptly snap back, recoiling from—
Fear?
Pain?
(Memory?)
"... Can I touch it?"
Every syllable is hesitant.
Maddie nods. "Yes," she finds her voice, clears her throat. "Yes, of course."
She unravels the rope that holds the necklace together. The necklace slides into her fingers, easy, and she cradles the cuckoo in her palm.
Kiernan reaches out to touch, his finger tracing over the wooden ridges of the cuckoo, every rough mark and splinter. As if he's tracing starmaps. A collage of memories. A spark, a time-back-then, a before-again.
He sniffs. She can't see how his eyes shine. But she knows - in the way his fingers shake. Hers had quivered, too, when she'd received the emblem for herself, from a starry smile.
Her cuckoo necklace was the first declaration of love she'd ever received. Her cuckoo necklace was the first time she'd been allowed to breathe. Her cuckoo necklace was— Maeve's hands, twisting to carve out a heart for her chest, caressing that little thing with her fires that shaped clay, till her infernos went to her cheeks and kissed her silly, deeply, killed her into eternity.
Her cuckoo's necklace was her sanity. She'd held onto the coarse rope and forced herself to breathe. She held onto her necklace till the wings digged into her skin begging access to the world again of her memory. Even if it remained a broken key, it was still evidence of what she once had.
(the everlasting glades. the once-upons.)
Her cuckoo's necklace was her lover. Maeve, loving her with every clumsy cut, every giggly kiss, every hair-twist. Every rope-tie round her neck and her hands gracing her neck, her breaths hitching, her lover grinning, here, there, now it's yours, no one else's.
Live for yourself.
Her necklace carried those words in its heart. For in the very beginning, those three words were carved into its soul. It was not always that, no - live for them had been yanked from the necklace's soul, by a grinning cadaver, no less - and twisted into the amalgamated mastery as it stands now.
Maddie understands. She doesn't need the cuckoo's necklace, not anymore, even if it was her soul.
"I want you to keep it," Maddie finds herself whispering. "Keep it safe, Kiernan."
Kiernan's eyes flick to hers, surprised. But he grips the cuckoo necklace tighter. He doesn't speak. Doesn't give an acknowledgement. A realisation. But he grips it tighter.
Maddie's heart squeezes. Wetness brims by her eyes, but she smiles. She doesn't need to repeat the words. They've all seen the broadcast. He knows what she means.
"Okay," Kiernan says, his breaths shaky. His eyes are glimmering. "Okay, I will. I will."
"Thank you," Maddie says back. "That's all I need."
When Snow realises what she wears, he laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
"Madison. You impress me," Snow says, from his study that smells of war-dust and roses and corpse-rot.
He tells his soldiers to leave; they trickle into another room, have no clue that within six minutes, they will be doomed. That the Capitol will level and nobody will be anything anymore.
Maddie is the bomb. She lets the quirk pull her lips.
"I'm only returning the favour."
Two is up in flames.
Orange was Maeve's second-favourite colour. A partial smile tugs at Madison's lips. Maeve would have loved to see the sight. She would have created it from her mettle.
Mads, you and I, we're apollyon herself, and all the world shall reign down at our hands!
And a kiss, and a kiss, and another kiss silly: that is how their rebellion would have gone. Maeve tilting her head, her mouth moving, eyes twinkling:
We're gonna burn it all t' the ground, Mads. One an' Two, twins of dust, done and done. But b'fore the Capitol can do their vengeance— a hand tilts up to her lips against her giggle— we're gonna be in the skies. We'll break the night. How's— how's that?
I like it, Maddie murmurs, our revolution.
Just ours. A smile. Ours t' be bound forever.
Together.
"Maddie?"
She blinks.
"What is it, Kiernan?" Maddie says. Her words still come out too methodological, too soft. She knows Kiernan hates it: hates how she sees his quiver and hates how he takes solace in her warmth. But he also doesn't protest it: not anymore.
"Can we… can we go somewhere else?" Kiernan whispers. "It's… it's too fucking dusty."
"Yes," she replies, automatic. "Yes, of course."
(She could care less for the realm that killed the Alcraiz's.)
Kiernan mimes a reply, but coughs instead. Maddie's heart constricts. She takes his hand— she expects a flinch away, but Kiernan just holds onto her tighter— as they navigate away from the burning city.
Out is orange. Out is gold. Out are the colours, and they are gone too.
"You understand," Snow says, "that I can level the Capitol right now, if I wanted."
"You could," Maddie agrees, "but you want to live. A minute more. A second more. You want to see how all this ends."
Snow raises himself from where he sits. The rake of his chair; the draw of his cabinet. The thump of a heavy weight, aside - Cynane's corpse.
A cork's pop. A wine's fizz.
"Red," Snow says, and he pours out a glass. He sips it down, clatters the stem upon his desk. "You're correct. Would you like a drink, Madison?"
They're on the train embarking towards One ritching lurching like her first time to the Capitol and Madison's mind's spiralling lurching ritching—
Not now, please, she begs, pleasepleasepleasenot now—
She clutches at her neck and there's nothing but air. Remember, she chokes, amid the swirls of wretchedness. It isn't here anymore, remember?
Her fingers scrabble for an answer, a touch somewhere, into her pockets and out again. Gulps swallow her and her breath's tight, so tight tight tight, heart's hammering out of her chest, fuck she can't bear it, fuck it's so much, fuckfuckfuck—
The necklace, says her blind mind, give it to me please I need it - flesh into the splintered wing and ground myselfgroundmyself again—
(It's not here.)
She can't feel her bones and she can't feel her shake, she can't feel her breaths she can't feel anything, she's huddled in on herself and doing her best not to kill herself
What a sham you can't breathe, might as well—
Go.
"No, thank you," Maddie says. She curls her fingers into her palm, then out again, undulating as if waves; until her pinkie catches onto the bracelet dangling from her wrist.
"Suit yourself," Snow says. He sips his wine again. Clatters the glass upon the mahogany. Even though Maddie's sight is misted— Snow's eyes bore into her body. He's curious, as cats are with their prey.
If Snow wants something out of her, he'll have to say it.
"When Doctor Levine engineered a perfect tribute," Snow begins, "I did not expect it to be you."
"What did you expect?"
"Well," Snow says. "I expected them to kill themselves, sooner."
Jordyn finds her huddled on the train.
To her credit, she doesn't mention Madison's panic— just slips down by her side, back against the wall just like Madison, turning her gaze out towards the wall in front of them. It's becoming tradition, at this point. Shame it always comes out this way.
"The necklace," Jordyn says, finally, "You gave it away."
"I did," Madison huddles her legs closer to her chest. "Kiernan needed it more than me."
"Maddie…" She hears a click - the unclasping a bracelet. Maddie blinks, as Jordyn gently takes Madison's hands into hers, and runs her fingers through the chain: they are links of cool silver, of -
Infinities.
"I know it's nothing that can replace your necklace," Jordyn begins, softly. "But I thought you might've liked to have something to hold on to. Just in case these moments come again."
Oh.
Madison doesn't speak. But slowly her head inclines in a nod. Slowly, Jordyn wraps the link of infinity around her wrist; it hangs off, quiet, loose, but there.
"Thank you," Madison says quietly, not daring to glance anywhere but her hands. Not anywhere near Jordyn's eyes. Her smile.
Her lips.
"Don't mention it."
Maddie smiles. She twists the necklace between her fingers; infinity, infinity. "So did I."
Snow hums. He sips his red wine, again: the putrid stench mixes with the corpse's. "You understand you were the Doctor's unbecoming. Your suicide attempt— and his egotism— made his downfall."
"I understand that well."
"Are you glad?"
The destruction of One should be a fast operation. It is a siege, an infiltration. It is the death of her old home.
Madison only has one goal.
She lets One's war fade away until it is a pinprick of a point in the back of her brain. With Jordyn's help, Madison ascends the steps into the mansion of One's most prominent patriarch. Raised above the rest, overlooking their world, a conqueror marvelling over territory that was now his.
The door creaks and gives way under her hand. She steps onto marble, and wonders if they have kept their aesthetic: of dulled silver, streaking like veins in their tiles. Of statue stone, broken into the heartlands of their house.
"There's nothing here," Jordyn says.
It may have been true. But conquerors don't leave their territories easily.
Stirrius Stolvania is in the sixteenth room they enter. He's a whimpering figure, amid his palace of white-pristine and sheens that should not be. Gasps stick in the back of his throat; breaths are puffy in his mouth; words leave that she can barely hear.
"Madison Saros? How—how are you alive? You're dead—"
A thin smile makes by Madison's lips.
"No," she says quietly. "Sorry to disappoint."
He is a blob of flubbing and rage. Had he reacted the same way, after his daughter's dead corpse was blared across the national news, glassy-eyed, sinking in the bathtub, fissures of red wisps the only sign of her self-made fate?
"You can't be here. You'd died. You've fucking—you've fucking killed yourself."
"I did. So did Sterling Stelvein."
"Don't bring her up."
"Oh?"
Her smile's thinner than it has ever been. It's hard to keep the quiver in. It's hard to keep the tears in: which threaten to bubble by her eyes. It's good, then, that her eyes are too dry.
"Why do you think I'm here?"
"Don't you dare. Guards!"
"Why do you think I'm here?"
(I'm your haunt. I am Sterling's, forever until you die.)
He dies: a thump against the ground.
(Levine dies: a thump against the ground.)
He's put to rest. Madison Saros exhales. One District One girl's life avenged.
Only 55 more to go.
"I'm glad Levine's dead."
"You have us to thank for that."
"I'm thanking you now."
He laughs. He nears her and raps on her armour, the thermonuclear bomb.
"I appreciate that."
Snow is the final patriarch to fall. He asks a question. "When did you warn them to go?"
"An hour ago."
"Then your friends have left the Capitol by now," Snow says. He returns to his desk, and finishes the last of his wine. "It's time, Saros."
Under the mall, starlit by darkness, they rest; in their sleeping bag; Madison asks a question.
"Dyn," Madison says, "Have you picked a name?"
"Eva," is what her lover says. Madison tests it on her tongue, and it's her.
She's scared of death.
Oh god, Maddie's scared and she laughs so loud, so loud tears spew from her irises and trail down her cheeks, her mouth. She's scared, thank you Snow, she's so fucking terrified, thank you thank you thank you, oh this is living. Oh, this is living, this is fear, this is want, this is loss.
This is living. This is breath. Oh, she had something to live for.
"Do you have any last words?" Maddie asks, smile by her lip.
Snow tilts his head. "No. Do you?"
"No."
Her trembling fingers fall upon the bomb. Her grin widens. Oh, she's terrified. It feels like fucking bliss, that terror, saints and souls, sweet, sweet joy. She doesn't want to die. Oh, she doesn't want to die.
She yanks the mechanism.
To the vivified saints:
They say endings come in fours, a countdown to oblivion.
Her grin parts to begin.
One. Maddie lives again. Madison dies again.
She cheated death twice. Once, on the streets, shivering and left on death's doorstep, until Levine Saros decided to give her his last name and take her away from One's wretched streets. Twice, when she'd entered the Games, bitterness lining her own mouth, broken in every part, a knife trembling between her fingers, holding out to Brynn, please, please, let me kill myself.
Both times were not of her choice, not really: Madison Saros had not wanted the Games, and she had never asked to be saved.
And so neither death was hers. Neither death could be hers, and so she came back, she rose again, blinking and bewildered, because surely she shouldn't be here. Surely she shouldn't have been given another attempt. Once, twice—
Two. The world rocks to explode in stardust. Starlight, stardust, starlight again.
And in that starlight:
She is amid cityscapes and flame-rain and she is Sterling Stelvein, kissing Sappho Zelasko in putrid metal and smoke—
She is Hezediah Zenkovah, meeting Avansika's lips in the seabreeze cliffs—
She is Maddie Saros, pressing her lips so desperately to Maeve Alcraiz's, in the earthy scent of tents, a breath, a pulse, a moment, as if every press meant life-or-death itself—
Three. She's here.
Maeve's before her eyes. A smile distinct. Head tilted. Wings uprising.
No. Maeve isn't here. She can't be.
Maeve's ethereal. She's smiling. Her hand's out. Reach out, she begs.
(Why can't Maddie believe?)
Why not?
Maddie's hand claps onto Maeve's. It's smoke. It's dust. It's nothing. It's golden. It's golden. It's hot. They're burning, bursting-to-full, brimming for a ramshackle explosion.
Maeve. Maeve. Maeve. Maddie breathes. Maddie chokes. Maddie imagines. Her smile. Only so ethereal. Only too wide. Only a figment in her mind, amid the breaking-place, amid the ruins and rubble and the shaking heavens above.
Only a—
Four. Madison has cheated death twice. She does not expect to do it a third time. The her that had died in the 55th Games is not too different from her now. Weary and all too aware of how things die. Except—
There is hope of a kind. There is joy and there is pain and she has endured through the worst of times, the best of hells. Madison's never really lived a life.
But Maddie has.
(Lips in the dark; warmth in a hold, a slumber. A campfire of friends, bandying at once on the coldest ground on earth. A shared death, hand-in-hand into hell. An earthquake. A friend-lover's hand, steadying her amid the nightingales. A cuckoo's necklace, a will to live, knotted in a child's fist.)
(Eva, live. Kiernan, live. Do what I couldn't, please.)
(I love you, I love you, I love you.)
Their faces coalesce before her, ScottJordynBrynn, and then the rest flood her vision, EvaEvaKiernanKiernan, and the last one comes, and Madison chokes, because oh—oh, she didn't think she'd see her again.
Maeve.
Oh, Maeve.
The world goes up in white.
Maddie breathes again.
They have called Maddie a nightingale, a starling, a phoenix, but from the beginning till the end, she is a soldier first, and a soldier has but one purpose. It is, often, what has been assigned to them.
Her end had once been to kill all and claw victory for herself. Her end is that no longer.
She has chosen one for herself.
All starlings fall at evensong, and Maddie refuses that end for yet another girl the world yearns to rip apart. No longer will any more girls fall. Not like Sterling. Not like her.
Not if she can help it.
For Eva Moriau is the starling, and Maddie knows Eva will fight tooth and nail for the children the world has damned to die. Eva will preserve. Eva will make a world better.
Eva Moriau is the starling.
Madison Saros is the phoenix.
And with a death in fire and ashes, with a roar of pain, a scream of triumph, of blood and blood again, of an explosion through the night -
She will die, and the world will rise.
That is what Madison Saros will do, till her very last breath.
She will live for herself.
(I've done it, Eva. I've done it, Maeve. Thank you. I… love you.)
With Madison Saros's death.
That is how the Vulture Rebellion ends.
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may I forget.
— Christina Rossetti, Song.