XIV: Reintroductions.
Ravi Fusain, 17
Victor of District Twelve
They executed his mother three hours after he entered the arena.
Still, so many months later, no one has worked up the nerve to tell him the truth of what actually happened. Things weren't televised in Twelve like they were in the arena—while Ravi was wandering through the endless dark in search of his best friend, the mob had been coming for his mother.
He can imagine it all too well no matter how hard he tries to ward his brain from the thought. The front door of the house was smashed in when he had arrived home; they more than likely caught her unaware, still believing that her crimes were nothing more than trivial even after her son had aired out all of her dirty laundry for the entire country to hear.
They had dragged her to the square, the whole lot of them. Ravi knew that because that was where he had found her three weeks later, still hanging from the gallows, her body purpled and distended and stinking even when he finally cut her down and took her back home.
Her grave was unmarked, still, just behind the house. He hadn't had the courage to create anything to put over-top of it.
Perhaps she hadn't deserved it, either.
No one was going to care for her when he didn't return. If Twelve was smart, they would knock the whole house down and all its atrocities with it. There were much more pressing graves to be looked after, twenty-two others buried in a haphazard line along the fence.
He was seeing them again now in brilliant color, the funerals of the Twelves replaying on the television for all that wanted to see. The Capitol never got tired of showing it—the digging of the graves, the installation of the crosses and headstones, the meager wooden podium he had been standing at. It was the only way they were willing to assist him in having the services at all—if they could shove cameras in his face and make it another show.
And God, he hadn't wanted to. Ravi wanted nothing to do with a camera anymore, could hardly bear the thought of it, but he had. For them, it was the least he could do.
At the end of the day regardless of their crimes they were twenty-two kids who deserved more, should've had something better. Some had weeping families. Some had no one at all. Even the boy who he knew to have killed Dulia had two little sisters, one who was sobbing and one who stared at him blankly through his entire speech, eyes dry and nearly unseeing.
His words now on the television don't sound as if they're coming from his mouth proper; Ravi sounds like someone else. He wouldn't put it past the Capitol to have changed them, but logic knows the truth. Ravi had spent just shy of two weeks back of Twelve, and each moment had felt as if he was living outside of his body, operating without knowing exactly what he was doing. Preparing funerals. Using a handsaw to cut through a noose. Pushing a heavy wheelbarrow through the well-indented streets, arms shaking from the exertion.
Ravi hadn't come back to earth until he had seen Aldon, two days before they took him from Twelve and refused to give him back. They prepared Dulia before he got back—Aldon had said something about did it so you didn't have to, I know you would have—
Ravi would have, too, in some certainty. If he hadn't finally crumbled at the podium watching her body being lowered into the earth, screaming once again as if somehow that was going to bring her back.
That would have been his final straw. Giving in. Breaking down. Instead he got confirmation in Aldon knocking at his door to know that the one person he had left in the world didn't hate him, even if he had every right to do so. Of course, Aldon has been alone in Twelve for months now… Ravi hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye to him.
It may have only been worse if he had.
Of course they talk, still. Ravi has no one to call but Aldon, and it feels pathetic to never use the offered phone at all. Then again, it's not like Pietro reaches for it either… something about that is unsettling to him, but feels too wrong to call out.
Pietro did terrible things; he's the root cause for why Ravi was forced to stand in the trembling embrace of Rosemary's mother for several extended minutes, stiff as a board. His own mother had never held him in such a way, and he had never been a touchy person from the get-go. To stand there in such a hold while someone thanked you for no real reason at all hadn't made a lick of sense.
He may have let her go, but Pietro didn't save her. He didn't do anything good either. Gideon's father had screamed obscenities at him from the crowd. Colm's best friend at a mere thirteen years old had collapsed to his knees and stayed there for the latter half of his speech.
He had done nothing. He was as terrible as his mother, still, and the worst part was Ravi would never be able to prove that wrong. He was so close to going into yet another Games where he would almost certainly die.
And if he dared to want to live, after so long? Well, he would have just as many crimes to answer for as she did, if not worse ones.
She did it for their survival. For profit.
What could Ravi possibly claim he was doing it for?
Vadric Gaerwyn, 17
Victor of District Six
"I trust nothing has changed since we last spoke?"
"No," Vadric says quietly, watching on in further silence as Dr. Ayala taps away at her tablet further. The routine is so familiar at this point that Vadric has come to terms with it, the same old questions and the tapping. Always the tapping.
It disguised, at least, the sound of their own foot bouncing up and down the way it did every single time, no matter what.
"Alright, then," Dr. Ayala says, getting quickly to her feet. Same as always. "There will be enough to last you through this next week—smaller dosages by the day, so that you get used to not having them."
Vadric swallows around the lump gathering in their throat as Dr. Ayala unlocks the cabinet behind her, sorting through the neat combination of pills that is Vadric's nightly cocktail. They're grateful, of course, that since arriving in the Capitol people have been trying to help, but that's all about to fade away. Vadric will soon be the same person she was a year ago—plagued. Crawling with unexplainable fear and anxiety.
The dread that fills them at the mere thought would be enough to knock them over if they weren't already sitting.
"There you are, dear," Dr. Ayala says, handing them the little crinkly bag. The doctor straightens her shoulders, folding her hands primly before her. "This will be the last time we see each-other, I'm afraid. Good… good luck."
Vadric blinks as the realization washes over them. There won't be a reason to talk to any sort of doctor once they're finished this round. Not long after they'll be leaving this place behind and returning to the Tribute Center. Dr. Ayala has been a constant since mid-Summer, when Vadric finally had enough of the others. There had been one, Dr. Vargas, who Vadric had been too uncomfortable to even be alone with. The way he looked at her, the judgment, the confusion…
None of it was worth it.
"Thank-you," Vadric says, finally seeing the worth in getting to their own feet. "It—it was nice to meet you, Dr. Ayala."
"Likewise, dear."
They try to manage a smile, but something in it wavers as the move for the door. The nightmares haven't disappeared entirely. That seems like something possible. They have, though, become less frequent, more tolerable when they do seep through her defenses. Though they still don't go out often, Vadric doesn't feel outright fear when they dare to take a walk.
Being back in Six, even for a few months, had been akin to walking through the gates of hell. Back in the relative safety of their home, they once again had no reason to leave—that's what Vadric has believed, anyway. It was as if they had been merely transported a few weeks into the future, the death and destruction placed in-between a mere figment of their imagination.
Their mother had embraced them. Pharix gave the same looks he always did.
Nothing got particularly odd until Weston came knocking.
It had been a few weeks, at least. Vadric is still unaware of how he came to locate their house in the first place; it wasn't as if he frequented the type of people Vadric lived around. But Pharix had answered the door the way he always did, and finally called back to them to say there was someone waiting.
It had taken Vadric nearly thirty minutes to make headway for the door, and all Weston had said when he caught sight of her was: you look like shit, gremlin.
Because he didn't know what that phrase meant, at least in association with himself. He was a God and people worshiped at his feet and he didn't hide away in his home, not like Vadric did.
And Gods, apparently, were quite keen on dragging people out of said homes.
"How's your friend?" said God in question asks, legs sprawled out over the side of the sofa as Vadric closes the door to the make-shift office behind them. He is, it appears, pretending to read a book. If Vadric were to hazard a guess, until a few moments ago he was more than likely eavesdropping.
"We're not friends," Vadric responds. "She's a doctor."
"Is that why she wears that coat?" Weston drawls. "Shit, I had no idea."
Weston's never even had a conversation with Dr. Ayala—he's been vehemently against the idea since day one, apparently so well-adjusted that he disbelieves in the idea of needing therapy or medication to help him along. Somehow, despite that, he's still the same person Vadric met nearly a year ago, while everything within themselves has been shifting ever-so violently.
But it's all going to go away. As soon as Vadric swallows the last of those pills…
What are they going to do once all the terrible things come back, one after the other?
"We should go for a walk," Weston announces, throwing himself off the couch. "I'm bored."
"I know."
"It's almost as if you've been forced to co-exist with me for seven odd months." He grins, crossing over to toss an arm around their shoulders, calling for one of the many guards that surely must be lingering about. "You bringing those, or what?"
Vadric eyes the bag still crumpled in her hand, knuckles white around its edges. They reach over, pulling open a drawer nestled within the entranceway's table to tuck them away. They'll come back for them later. There isn't much of a choice. They have no desire to begin the awful process any sooner than they have to.
To ignore it, for now, is blissful ignorance, but not everything is so sweet as that. Soon, everything is going to crumble. Their mind, their body. Their sleep. Weston's odd affection for them, the even odder kind they have in return.
What are they going to do when it all falls apart?
Sloane Laurier, 17
Victor of District Three
She misses April.
Though, to be more specific… she misses being high.
No, it had not been the proper thing to do. It had merely been the easiest one. Sloane had no home to return to, no parents that had shown up at the train station even if she had dared to think just for a moment that maybe…
What she did have was a working knowledge of Three's back-alleys, its seedy streets and dealers and undergrounds where the worst sort of things dared to hide. Lastly, a desire to forget more than anything else, to relinquish a hold on the entirety of her memories in exchange for forgetting the atrocities that had been committed by her stained hands.
Morphling was an old friend, the bruises that re-emerged on her arms in pretty patterns like the very things she had hastily sprayed on brick walls.
What they found of Sloane Laurier come the next year when they found it fit to collect her wouldn't have been much of anything at all, had it been allowed to go on. She had disappeared back into the filth she called home, welcoming it back with open arms. Here, in the Capitol, there was no one who would provide her with such an escape. Euxodia scoffed at her the first time she even made a joke about it as if it was the worst thing she could have possibly heard.
The Capitol truly would have found a husk of a girl left in Three, had it not been for Caeda.
She doesn't remember the girl finding her. Doesn't truly remember Caeda guiding her, holding her hands. All Sloane has of it are the vaguest, hazy memories, each color blending into the next and all sounds too far away to properly absorb.
She had walked with a girl she did not know with eyes so blue that something in Sloane had stirred, but not enough until she pulled her through the front door of an unfamiliar house. There to greet them had been an older woman, her slightly graying hair pulled back into a loose bun, her eyes so warm when she smiled—
"Sloane, dear?" she breathed. "I'm Zentha Duzell."
She had recoiled. Tried to pull away. The sound of Talos' surname reaching her ears, finally, was almost too much to bear. Sloane hadn't cried, but a part of her had wanted to. If she hadn't been in the thralls of such a good high she thinks she just might have.
Talos' mother and sisters—three of them, in fact, with Caeda as the oldest, were perhaps the nicest people Sloane had ever met. It wasn't as if she had a high bar to compare them to, but they were so gentle. They gave her a bed to sleep in. Brushed her hair back when she was puking her guts up. Fed her dinner, finally, when she came out of the withdrawal once again and could see them clearly for the first time.
For those two weeks, she had a family. His family. The only one she had ever known, and the one the Capitol had fucking ripped her away from.
Sloane hated them. The Duzell's, just a little bit, for thinking she could be a part of something, but the Capitol even more. They stole it from her but they robbed her of bliss, too, keeping her entrapped in this apartment with people who didn't truly care for her.
Every single day she wasn't high Sloane saw the worst of it. The bodies. The blood.
And Sloane hadn't been high since the day after Zentha Duzell took her in.
"Who pissed in your cereal?" Isa says, and Sloane glares harder into her bowl as her mentor brushes past, refusing to acknowledge it. For all her help, Isa enjoys riling her up more often than she does being sincere.
It would be too much energy to hate them, though, too.
She misses April, and she misses being high, but she misses the what-if most of all. What if Sloane Laurier could live a semi-adjusted, halfway normal life?
Fucking what-if, right? It's not like it was anything more than a nonsense fantasy anymore.
"Can I ask you something?" Sloane says, barreling on forward regardless. "Did you do anything for the families after you got back?"
"Nope."
"Did you not care?"
"Nope," Isa repeats. Of course Isa didn't care, though. Isa had a family to return to and the thought of a prosperous future. Sloane is supposed to be the same, some uncaring beast who moves and tears things apart without thinking and doesn't shed a tear for it. For a while, in the early days, she thinks she had almost achieved such a thing.
"If you don't make it out and you want me to do something…"
"I don't want you to do anything," Sloane mutters, shoving a spoonful of cereal in her mouth. The Duzell's will be fine if she's dead—in fact, it would almost be preferable, she thinks, at least for them.
At least then they won't have a walking, talking reminder of their son's death. The girl who failed to save him, living under their roof.
At least Sloane will never have to say the words I'm sorry.
Amani Layne, 18
Victor of District Four
The best part about his room is the holographic lights that dance across the walls.
The apartment itself is sprawling—so large, in fact, that if it weren't for everyone else's constant check-ins, he wouldn't have to see them at all. Jordyn's room is across the central area and down two adjoining hallways, the guest rooms not much better.
They really have pulled out all the stops to keep them here in the Capitol.
If it hadn't been entirely his fault, Amani may have managed to find a way to enjoy it.
He doesn't remember getting here. The Capitol had made good work on transferring him from the ICU of Clearwater Memorial to private care before he had even regained consciousness. The last time he had seen his father, his step-mother, even Carrack, had been the evening before.
Since May… nothing.
It nags continuously on Amani's mind how many people must despise him for this—the tributes he robbed of going home, the ones who were ripped away and brought back here without proper time to process it. He knows his father must hate him for doing what he did, and half the Capitol too for daring to try and off himself.
He thinks about that, tracing the scars that line his arms, every night before he goes to sleep. He's only got two more weeks to wean himself off the drugs they've put him on, before sleep becomes impossible again.
It's easy to lie here, but not so easy to close his eyes. He can set the lights to a soft gray-blue, so that they look like the ocean rippling across the walls that enclose him in. Immersing himself in that, it's almost easy to pretend that he's back home, never having volunteered. In an ideal world, the one he dreams about, none of them ever did. He's home, with Tiernan and Kona and Carrack, and nothing is wrong in the world.
Amani never would have done what he did had he stayed home for good, safe with his friends. When he saw Carrack the evening before he slashed his arms open, it didn't feel like a goodbye—Amani hadn't known then the full extent of what he was going to do the next morning. Until the blissfully empty house had presented itself, devoid of any life for the first time in what felt like months
It was supposed to be easy. Painless. For everyone else, that is. There was nothing painless about cutting into his own skin.
He's still not even sure who found him, or how long it took. They never told him. Still won't.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
All that matters now is the endless therapy sessions they've shoved him into, the cameras in the apartment and the lack of locks on his bedroom door. A crew showed up the second day they were here and removed them from all the bathrooms, too.
Jordyn had thrown a fit about that, supposedly. That's just what Avonlea told him; he hadn't been discharged until four days later.
It feels like he missed years in that time, a week or so that had stretched on into something like eternity. In comparison, the months following had seemed drastically shorter. Perhaps it was because the Games got closer every waking minute, drawing him closer to death once again.
Odette had said something like that, not five minutes after he set foot in the apartment for the first time. If you wanted to die so bad, why couldn't you have just waited until next year and stepped off your plate like every other wasted, unhappy kid in the world? There goes the sponsor money now, the cheering crowds. You've ruined us, ruined Jordyn, who gave you the right—
It had been shrieking, the entire monologue. Their escort hadn't shut up until Kaleya had stepped forward and threatened to slap her across the face.
At least Amani had their mentors. They cared, if no one else did.
They're not the only ones, though. He knows she's coming just by the sound of her feet in the hall outside. Odette always has heels on, at least three or four inches. Avonlea walks silently, a ghost amongst the living, and Kaleya always announces her presence, leaving no room for denial.
Jordyn always knocks, just as she does now. Lock be damned.
"What?" Amani calls out. He doesn't bother trying to sit up or turn the lights on brighter or do much of anything—Jordyn's seen him in enough sorry states by now that it's stopped getting under his skin. As always, she looks ready for the day when she steps into his room, her eyes lingering on the lights that dance across the wall.
He's never had the courage to ask her if she misses Four, if she resents him for taking it away.
She probably does, if she's like everyone else.
"I'm going for a walk," she tells him. "You want to come?"
He wants to tell her that the middle of December isn't exactly prime gallivanting time, but Amani doesn't have the heart. For as much as he's refused, Jordyn has never stopped offering, even when her missions seem hopeless. Jordyn has never made a show of caring, but she always checks on him—whether it's subconscious or not, he cannot tell.
Amani shakes his head, even as the guilt gnaws at his stomach. It still does that, most days.
"Tomorrow, then," Jordyn says. "See you later."
Her eyes are on the wall again before she leaves. Amani knows that she will make him leave this apartment tomorrow, no matter the cost. They have nothing linking him, no true connection, but they have little else. Jordyn is latching onto whatever she can get.
Amani can't blame her for that.
At the end of the day, no one is to blame for this but him. Odette's right. He should have just waited, let himself die in the most unobtrusive way possible. At least that way everyone else could have lived.
Instead, he's given them this hell.
It's most fitting that he's likely going to rot in it, too.
I see you've missed your kids. Me too. Sorry for torturing them, some more specifically than others.
The rest of our pre-games will be much shorter (read: bearable) in length because that's how I've always rolled and, really, there's enough content on all the kids with their initial chapters plus their upcoming POVs that I don't think you'll really need any more than that before I get to killing them. We will be checking in with everyone before training and whatnot officially begins, so for now enjoy the minimal ride.
Meant to get the poll public before now but I'm lazy so have at it for another week, if you must. See you then with the results.
Until next time.