Trigger Warning: Mentions of ageism and bullying.
Sotope
Luka told me to wake him up at noon. I decided not to do that.
The Twenty-Ninth Games lasted two months, the longest of all time. My tribute was the last to die. By the end of the games, I was in the hospital because I'd gone too long without getting a good night's sleep. And I hadn't cared that much about my tribute. She'd just been some girl. I'd just wanted to mentor a victor.
I know Luka barely slept at all the night before the games. I know because I came back from Caesar's apartment and half-past-four in the morning and found him pacing around the living room, unable to sleep. Then he spent the next twenty-five and a half hours spending eighty percent of his energy worrying about his grandson. When he woke me at six in the morning, so I could start my shift, he could barely string a sentence together. Manel from Ten had to explain to me everything that'd happened in the night, before he went to sleep as well.
When Tesoro comes back from whatever club he's lost himself in, I shall have to tell him that a Ten is doing a better job at monitoring his tribute than he is.
I know that Luka will be mad at me for letting him get a few extra hours of sleep. He can be mad. He'll thank me when he realised that Gus didn't do anything today. There was a brief scare when a section of the castle wall collapsed but that was on the opposite side of the courtyard to Gus' camp. Once I realised he was going to be fine, I asked around the Control Centre and determined that the tribute who'd been killed by the collapse was Axel from Three. Then Rory from Six was killed by Spruce a few moments later.
Part of me is a little disappointed that my tribute is missing out on the action. Another part of me is relieved because I don't want Gus to get hurt.
A few minutes after the wall collapses, everything returns to normal. Gus and Lucinda go back to guarding the supplies. Hephaestion and Spruce carry on searching unsuccessfully for Petra.
The next change comes at about two in the afternoon.
"Last night ruled!" I hear a voice behind me and turn around to see Fawkes sitting up on the sofa behind my station. Manel is beside him, also just waking up. They've been sleeping together on that sofa for the last eight hours.
"It did," Manel says. He looks me in the eye and gestures to one of the buckets sitting under my desk. I'm confused for a moment.
Why would he want a vomit bucket? Also, why are there four buckets? Back in my day there was only one.
"Do you remember any of it?" Manel asks Fawkes.
"About ninety percent of it," Fawkes says. "Maybe it's seventy-five- Oh, crap, I'm gonna be sick."
I suddenly realise what the bucket is for. I pick up one and roll it across the floor. Manel picks it up and puts it on Fawkes' lap. Seconds later, Fawkes starts vomiting.
"Thanks, Sotope," Manel says. He's holding Fawkes' hair back from his face. He must've been prepared for this from the moment he woke up.
"Is he okay?" I ask.
"Hangover," Manel says.
"Oh," I say. I remember that Manel briefly mentioned going clubbing with Fawkes last night. That explains a lot. I've never had a hangover in my life. I've always considered alcohol unhealthy and much more fun to set on fire than to drink. Hangovers look rough.
Fawkes stops vomiting and looks up from the bucket. He gives a breathy, nervous laugh. He looks completely drained.
"That was smooth, Manel," he says.
"I know what hangovers are like," Manel says. "You need someone to take care of you."
Fawkes laughs again. It sounds a little different. I realise that I'm the third wheel in this conversation and silently return to my screen. It's good to know that Fawkes is awake. He's very good at reading people so it would be useful to have his insight when it comes to Gus' opponents and what they have planned. But, currently, he seems too sick to help.
Eventually, Fawkes and Manel both leave. Two more hours pass without much going on. This is always my least favourite part of mentoring. The waiting. When I was in the arena, I felt like I was constantly moving. I was thinking about my own survival and there was always something I could do to improve my odds. I used to work out when I had free time in the arena. I did stretches to keep my muscles working. All those hours of nothing seemed to pass so quickly. But now, in the Control Centre, when I'm away from the action and my muscles don't matter, the wait is unbearably boring.
"You forgot to wake me up."
I turn to see Luka sitting down in the chair next to me. He doesn't seem angry, just a little confused.
"You needed some extra sleep," I say. "It's important you pace yourself. Time your burnout for when Gus is in the Remake Centre. There are still twelve more deaths to go."
"So two people died while I was asleep?" Luka asks. Dang, he's good at maths for a guy who's just woken up. "And you didn't wake me up tell me."
"They were two thirteen-year-old boys and Gus hadn't encountered either of them in the arena." I say. "I suppose Rory is kinda relevant, since Spruce killed him, but Gus wasn't even there, he was guarding the supplies while Hephaestion and Spruce were hunting."
"What about Axel?" Luka asks, correctly guessing who the other thirteen-year-old boy was. "I think he's pretty relevant."
I sigh. Luka and I have very different views about the deaths in the games. He thinks every death is important and meaningful because they punish the districts for their rebellion. But I view the games more as a competition than a punishment. If a death doesn't directly affect my tribute, I don't care.
"I think I know why the gamemakers killed Axel first," Luka says. "He was the less rebellious of the two. They wanted to teach Annette a lesson. If you rebel, the people you love die."
"Does it matter that Annette learns her lesson?" I ask. "She's going to be dead in less than a week. She's not going to make any impact on the world."
"I think it matters," Luka says. "I know it won't change anything. I just… hope she learns. That's the worst punishment, right? Knowing you've done something wrong? If you don't know you've done something wrong… does any other punishment really matter?
He stares into space with stormy blue eyes. I guess Luka regrets something. You can't live that long without regrets.
"Are you sure you got enough sleep?" I ask.
Luka laughs. "It's hard to be sure of anything, these days."
"Yeah," I say. "Everything's weird at the moment. I miss old times."
"Even Twenty-Eight, the 'worst games ever'?"
"Okay, maybe I don't miss that one. Or Twenty-Nine, that one sucked as well. Thirty was good, though. That was the first time I threw a chair at Mink."
"I didn't really like Thirty," Luka says, quietly. "But I did like it when you threw a chair at Mink. Your aim was terrible but you put the right amount of force behind it."
"I'll say, the chair broke."
I start laughing. Suddenly, we're both laughing. For a moment, I'm in my twenties again and I'm mentoring alongside my best friend in the entire world. Everything is simple and the worst thing that could possibly happen is Mink Ultramarine, the worst piece of sludge in the universe, gloating to me about how his tribute killed mine.
Then I hear a noise behind me and return to reality.
Fawkes and Manel are back. They're wearing new clothes and they both look like they've showered. I have no idea what they've been doing these last couple hours and I have no interest in it whatsoever.
"Hey Fawkes," Luka says. "Are you feeling better?"
"Yeah," Fawkes says. He perches on the edge of his sofa like a bird about to dive for prey. He still looks pale but there's an open notebook on his lap.
He's definitely feeling better.
"What's going on in the arena?" Fawkes asks. "I've basically missed the entire first day. Who's left?"
"Tsarina, Hephaestion, Annette, Valerie, Tornada, Gus, Petra, Lucinda, Spruce, Mitch, Mirabelle, Jesse and Herbie." I say. One of the first skills I learned as a mentor was recalling all the remaining tributes' names in district order.
"Thirteen in total," Luka adds.
"Unlucky for some," Fawkes says. "What happened to the Careers? Why are only two of them left?"
Luka, Manel and I spend the next few minutes explaining to Fawkes everything that happened while he was gone. We show him the screen, which shows Gus sitting in his shelter, waiting for his allies to come back from their hunt. He seems to take a special interest in Hephaestion betraying the Careers to join Gus' alliance. I notice him putting a lot of exclamation marks next to Hephaestion's name in his notes.
"There's one thing I want to ask you about," Luka says. He glances over his shoulder at Beta to check if she's listening in on us. She's got her headphones on and she's staring at her screen. "There's an alliance between Tsarina and Tornada."
"Tsarina?" Fawkes asks. There's a slight tremor in his voice.
"Are you sure you're ready to talk about her?" Manel asks.
Fawkes nods. "She's just a piece in this games. The more I know about her, the easier it'll be to take her off the board."
"Our theory is that Tsarina threatened Tornada into being in the alliance," Luka says. "But they seem surprisingly friendly. What do you think?"
"It's possible," Fawkes says. "But they were close in training, right?"
"How do you know?" I ask.
"I told Hunter and Patty to pay attention to the other alliances and report information back to me. Tornada and Tsarina had quite a bond in the Careers, kinda like Gus and Hephaestion. Maybe Tornada's doing what Hephaestion did and abandoning her new alliance for the tribute she was closest to in her old alliance."
"Why would she do that for a girl like Tsarina?" Luka asks. "Tornada's a nice girl. She's a Five. Fives aren't supposed to ally with torturers."
"I think Tornada just doesn't like being around rich people," Fawkes says. "When she joined her new alliance, the only person she really spoke to was Hunter. Everyone else in that alliance came from fairly well-off families but Hunter was an orphan with no family who had to work at a ranch to survive. Maybe the same was true for the Careers. Tsarina isn't an orphan but I think she comes from a poor family. Cashmere told me last night that Tsarina used to mug other academy students so she'd be able to get enough money to afford a nose job. Apparently, a lot of One's academy students have had cosmetic surgery at some point in their teens but only if their parents can afford it."
I frown. I didn't know they had cosmetic surgery in One. I thought it was just a Capitol thing. I can't help but feel sad for all the kids who felt pressured into getting a surgery.
When Snow owns a victor's body and they start getting old, he forces them to get surgery so they still look desirable. He made me have surgery when I was thirty. Even though I'd been with Caesar for ten years at that point and Snow must've known about our arrangement, he still wanted people to bid on me so Caesar would have to bid higher than them. Snow told me that I was nowhere near as pretty as Coco.
Coco Montclaire, Victor of the Thirty-Ninth Hunger Games and recipient of the first ever full body polish. She fitted the exact same archetype as me - feisty, intelligent brunette - but she was eleven years younger than me. Therefore, she was better. And I know it was stupid of me to think of it as a competition between me and Coco but Snow had outright told me that I was losing. I hated losing.
Snow never forced me to have surgery again. He never had to. For the next eleven years, I'd worry that I was getting old and ugly and I'd get cosmetic surgery of my own accord. I told myself it was just for me, because I wanted to outrun old age but I never enjoyed it. I just felt low all the time.
It was bad enough feeling insecure about my appearance when I was in my thirties. I can only imagine what it must be like for those kids in One who feel insecure in their teens, who can't enjoy their youth because of all this pressure to look beautiful.
No wonder Tsarina's so angry. I'd probably want to punch people all the time if I lived in One and everyone was competing to be the prettiest. I wouldn't torture anyone to death, though. That's a step too far.
"What about Hephaestion?" Luka asks. "He's an orphan and the girls seem pretty set on killing him."
"He's an orphan?" Fawkes asks. "Hmmm, that's interesting. Did the girls say why they wanted to kill Hephaestion?"
"They called him a traitor," Luka says. "It must be because he killed Minaret in the bloodbath and joined Gus' alliance."
"What about the other traitor?" Manel asks. "I heard them say they were going to kill the 'traitors', not just Hephaestion. He's the only traitor I could think of last night but there has to be one more, right?"
"Gus," Fawkes says. "He's the other traitor."
"Gus?" Luka asks. "But he's done nothing wrong. He's been such a good ally to Tornada. He got her into the Careers!"
"And then he got her out of the Careers," Fawkes says. "I think Tornada was happy in the Careers. She had a solid alliance with Tsarina. But then Gus left the Careers and forced Tornada to join a new alliance. Then Tornada had to run from the bloodbath to escape Tsarina - she was right next to Hunter I- I remember. Gus didn't even go looking for her. In fact, he's seemingly replaced her with Hephaestion. I bet she's wondering, if Gus wanted to be in an alliance with Hephaestion so badly, why didn't he stay in the Careers? I don't think this is intentional on Gus' part but he's taken the exact path that would screw over Tornada the most and I think she's feeling pretty bitter about it. That's why she sees him as a traitor."
"And Gus is rich," Manel adds. "That's another reason why Tornada might be biased against him."
"That doesn't matter," Luka says.
"It does," Manel says, quietly. "My district partner was my boss' daughter. I hated her. Looking back, she was quite nice to me. She secured me an alliance. But her father was one of the richest men in the district and he'd been pushing my family around for years so I thought she was some spoiled brat."
"My family don't push people around," Luka says. He's getting frustrated now.
"Your peacekeepers do," I say. "I mean, they only push people who deserve it. But-"
"They're not my peacekeepers, I just give them money."
"You know what I mean," I say. "Caesar told me that Tornada's mother was hanged by the peacekeepers for stealing a loaf of bread. Maybe that's why Tornada is so eager to betray Gus."
Luka gasps. "Why didn't you tell me, Sotope?"
"I didn't know it was going to be useful to you. I just knew it was going to make you upset and that wasn't going to help. I told Gus. I thought he'd find it useful."
"This can't be happening," Luka says, head in his hands. "It's bad enough that my grandson's district partner is allied with that… that monster and they're hunting him down. I… I don't want it to be my fault."
"Hey, this isn't so bad," Fawkes says. "Gus' alliance is much stronger than Tsarina's. Plus Sotope told him about Tornada's mother so he should know to be wary of her. This isn't a death sentence for Gus."
"Caesar told me that Tsarina wasn't on track to be One's chosen volunteer until the Jack Frost murders started," I say. "She and Sceptre were both last-minute placeholders. They don't meet One's usual standards. Gus could beat her in a fight easily."
"You're getting information from Caesar Flickerman?" Fawkes asks.
"Yeah," I say.
"Has Caesar told you about every tribute, Sotope?" There's a dangerous light in his eyes. I have to remind myself that he's on my side. Both tributes from his district are dead. He has absolutely nothing to gain from betraying Gus and seemingly everything to lose.
"Yes," I say. "Why do you ask? You want to know about one specific tribute, don't you?"
Fawkes nods. "What did Caesar tell you about Hephaestion Dell'Anno?"
"He's an orphan," I say. "His parents both died in a mining accident when he was eight. He and his younger brother both attended Two's training academy. Iolaus is average but Hephaestion has consistently been top of his class. Apparently, Hephaestion only started training because he wanted to be a peacekeeper. Kid had his heart set on it. He wouldn't even break his vow of celibacy when he was selected to be the chosen volunteer. Of course, that might also be because of the bullying."
"Bullying, huh?" Fawkes asks. "Any idea how it started?"
"Nobody's sure exactly how," I say. "Caesar says it's most likely because a bunch of academy brats got jealous that a lowly orphan was getting better grades than them. It's been going on for years."
"Is that it?" Luka asks. "What about the rebel bombing?"
"What rebel bombing?" Fawkes and I ask at exactly the same time.
"Hephaestion talked about almost being killed by a rebel suicide bombing as a child. Did Caesar not mention that?"
"No," I say, confused. Caesar was supposed to know everything about the tributes.
"It seems like a pretty glaring omission," Fawkes says. "I've noticed a few things about Hephaestion that don't quite add up. I would ask one of the Twos about him but I doubt they'd answer honestly. Such a shame Minaret is dead. She had a lot of issues but dishonesty wasn't one of them."
"Do you think Minaret had anything of value to say about Hephaestion?" Luka asks. "Her last words were calling him a homophobic slur."
"What was the slur?" Fawkes asks. "Was it 'snowflake'?"
Luka nods. "Tarquin says it's a slur in Two."
"That's funny," Fawkes says. "Because Cashmere got drunk last night and she started calling Tsarina a snowflake. And maybe the culture's a little different in One but Cashmere said it was an insult for Jack Frost fanatics. Psychos, wannabe serial killers. I have a feeling it might carry over to Two, since they have Jack Frost killers as well."
"But Tarquin wouldn't lie…" Luka says. "We're allies. I trust him. He wouldn't want anything bad to happen to Gus. They're friends and Gus writes to him all the time. When did Cashmere start saying this? Was this before or after you had a drinking contest with Lumas?"
"I remember her saying it," Manel says. "And I wasn't drinking last night."
"Need more evidence?" Fawkes asks. "My tributes overheard Minaret call Hephaestion all sorts of names during training. But the one that seemed to offend him the most? Snowflake. Hephaestion barely reacted to any of those insults, not even the f-slur. I think he must've been bullied a lot to the point where he's become desensitised to it all. He's not going to react to being called names because it's been going on for years and he doesn't have the energy to react. But if 'snowflake' means what I think it means, it's not an insult. It's an accusation. And the way he reacted to that accusation… Let's just say it's the way I'd react if someone accused me of being a district traitor."
"What does that mean?" Luka asks.
"I think Minaret knew that Hephaestion was guilty of something," Fawkes says. "And she did the dumbest thing possible. She rubbed it in his face until he snapped."
"Do you think Hephaestion is one of the Jack Frost killers?" Luka asks.
"Worse," Fawkes says. "We know who the Jack Frost killers are. Every one of them was named and shamed by the peacekeepers, executed in the town square, save one. The first one…"
"No…" Luka and I say in unison."
"Yes," Fawkes says, eyes glinting like a bird of prey's. "I think Hephaestion Dell'Anno is Jack Frost."
15th Place: Axel Vincent (D3), Crushed by the collapsing castle wall
Axel's death recap is already one chapter overdue so I'll do it now before I address all the… insanity. I was always going to give at least one of the Threes an arena death and I thought it'd be more interesting to kill off Axel first and let Annette, the more rebellious of the two, live. We'll see how she copes with he childhood sweetheart's death later on.
Welcome back to the Control Centre, where everything was fine until Fawkes showed up ("Everything was fine until Fawkes showed up." basically sums up all of my stories and is probably written on at least one gravestone in the Career districts). I enjoyed having this little group of mentors sit down and talk strategy because they all have very different mentoring styles. Sotope and Fawkes are a particularly effective combo, since they both have so much dirt on all the tributes and they can compare notes. Also Cashmere is the unofficial fifth mentor in this conversation, as Fawkes used his birthday party as an opportunity to get Cashmere to spill some District 1 tea. Cashmere going rogue is now an official subplot in this story.
Bad News #1 is that Tsarina and Tornada are potentially out for Gus' blood. Tornada definitely has a motive to betray Gus. Plus there's the reveal that her mother was a criminal. However, Luka is still holding out hope that Tornada hasn't willingly chosen to ally with Tsarina. Speaking of Tsarina, she might be a monster but she's also a victim of her own district's toxicity. The other POV characters see Tsarina as pure evil but Sotope has some sympathy for her because she's also been hurt by toxic beauty standards. This chapter gave me an opportunity to explore Sotope's insecurity about her age and how it stemmed from Snow's ageism and sexism towards her. I also got to set up some parallels between Tsarina and Hephaestion, two Career kids who had similar experiences being shunned by their districts but have completely different personalities, at least on the surface…
Bad News #2 is that Hephaestion is Jack Frost. Maybe. Is Fawkes right or is there a more innocent explanation as to why so many things about Hephaestion just… don't add up? Why didn't Caesar tell Sotope about the bombing? Why didn't Tarquin tell Luka the truth about Minaret? Somebody is definitely hiding something.