XVII: Reintroductions.

Lilou Braddock, 15
Victor of District Nine

Ever since that dinner, she's been thinking.

Lilou does a lot of that these days.

There's nothing much else to do, really. Of course she'd rather have free reign to roam about as she pleases, but such ideologies have come and gone, if they ever existed in the first place. She misses Sadie and her parents and being able to walk. Simply walk.

Messing with Cajus is the only way for her to release the tension that's building up inside of her week after week. Of course it's not right, but at least she's not hurting anyone. It makes it sting far less when he calls her useless, when he tells her how doomed she is. It convinces her, too, to keep her mouth shut in favor of coming up with a new diabolical plan.

She still lingers on it, though. That word.

So she knocks on Casia's door.

It's late at night, but the hours of the day have never seemed to apply to the younger girl—Lilou can't find it in her to be surprised this time, either, when Casia cracks the door open and lets it drift just enough inches for Lilou to slip inside. No matter how many times she steps foot in here, Lilou can't shake the feeling that she shouldn't be, as if this is some monster's den. That vision of Casia covered in Malachai's blood is stuck in her brain, refusing to leave. It will be there until the day she dies.

Casia may be worrisome, of course, but more pressing is dying.

You're useless. You'll get nowhere. You're going to die like the rest of them and no one will even remember your name next year—

"Do you mind if I sit?" she asks, waiting for Casia's silent approval before she pulls her legs up onto the ottoman at the end of the bed. Despite their differences, they're at least tolerable of each other's silent company. She hopes Casia doesn't mind that the quiet won't last, for once.

"I was thinking," she continues. "About what Cajus said."

"Waste of time."

"Is it?" Lilou asks. "I mean he's right, I think... at least about some stuff."

"Like?"

She meets Casia's eyes, finally, finding her sprawled at the top of the bed, having abandoned her book of choice. "We're not exactly a sponsor's dream. I'm no one's number one and you... you're..."

"I'm what?" Casia challenges. There's that fire in her eyes, the quiet intensity that's more troubling than anything else.

Lilou swallows. "Your gig is up."

Casia rolls over onto her back with a heavy sigh, one that suggests she knows exactly what Lilou is referring to. No one will see her as a weak-willed, naive little girl anymore—she's a threat, unafraid to kill and seemingly even more unafraid to die with how she handles things. District Nine has painted a picture of themselves for the whole world to see, and there's no shaping it into something else. Their writing truly is on the wall.

"I'm useless," Lilou says. "And everyone knows who you are."

"You're not useless," Casia tosses back. "And you shouldn't listen to him, either. His opinion is about as worthless as his sponsorship advice."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

Casia isn't confident, no. She's tired, the same way everyone is. Try as they may to hide it, these past few months have been draining in their own right, no way to run or hide from any of it. Perhaps Casia is right in saying that she isn't useless—Lilou is the only one that manages to ruffle Cajus' feathers the way she does, but still. What good is that, in the long run, when she has nothing else?

Not nothing. Not yet. For now, at least, she has her life, and that must be worth something.

She looks to Casia once again, whose eyes are still fixated on the dimpled ceiling. That's really all they ever had, isn't it? No company, no promises. Just themselves and their beating hearts.

"Casia?" she asks.

"I know what you're going to say."

Until that moment, Lilou hadn't come up with the words herself, but she has no doubt that Casia is exactly right in her own suspicions. Something about a sixth sense finding a home in certain disturbing little girl's body just seems commonplace. That doesn't stop Lilou from barreling ahead regardless, unable to stop herself. It's all or nothing.

"Do you think we can do it?" Lilou wonders. "Me and you?"

Casia hums. Lilou's breath is held so tightly in her chest it feels as if it's a bomb, the seconds ticking down. Any moment now an explosion could rip through the room and destroy the both of them.

But Casia's voice is resolute, even despite it's deep quiet. "I think we have to."

Sander Elek, 18
Victor of District Two

The only solace Sander has been able to find comes in this room.

It's not the most grandiose place, by Capitol standards—this certainly isn't where they would have sent him to do such things had Sander given them a choice. It had been a random happenstance, a stroll that turned into Sander pushing open the door of a shop he had no reason being in, the buzz of a high-powered needle immediately assaulting his ears.

The guard certainly had been the most enthusiastic, but the artist was beyond it, pulling up designs and babbling in their haste to get any sort of point across. Each word had dropped through his mind like it was a sieve, as if the intent behind any of the artistry was beyond him. All Sander had wanted to do was sink down into that chair and distract himself.

It had worked, too. As the artist, Ciel, peppered ink across his skin, as the needle burned permanent lines of ink into him Sander had been able to go elsewhere, even for a few hours.

When he had returned to the apartment, his arm wrapped in plastic and a nasty smelling salve tucked into his pocket, Rohana had smiled. Matthias had nodded approval.

Levi hadn't done anything, because Levi wasn't in the room. To be frank, he's not even sure Levi knows about any of these additions—that would mean speaking to one another, or spending long enough in the same room that they could make some progress.

And neither of those things were happening.

Sander wants to, don't get him wrong. He wants to fix this. He wants to be able to trust Levi again, to move on, to act like it never happened. He's quickly shown just how little chance of that there is in the form of anxiety that rises like a wave over his head, crashing down over his skull whenever he even thinks about going back to how things were before.

There is no solution. No erasing the scar that mars his brow, the fear that bled through him as Levi swung that sword at him.

Instead, he worked on solutions. Half-hearted ones that would only work for a bit of time, refusing permanence for as long as he remained in the Capitol. If Sander could go home, there was some peace to be found—his parents would be there to welcome him back, his sister to wrap him in a warm hug. Beau, too, who would kiss him and tell him that everything would be alright, and Aurelius who would actually make it so.

Their phone calls did not do his struggles justice. No amount of speaking through a receiver could make a doctor's words permeate like being there in person would. There was no recounting how many hours he had spent hyperventilating into the phone, trying not to sob on his bedroom floor because the bed felt soft enough to swallow him whole.

Aurelius just kept telling him the same thing. Breathe. In and out. Focus. You know what to focus on.

Even now, in this room, Sander pressed his fingertips into the tattoo that wound its way down his opposite forearm, exhaling deeply. As long as he doesn't move otherwise, the artist is fine with him.

It's easy not to move when they work. What weight does a flinch hold as the needle drags over-top the back of his hand, when he's felt so much worse?

It feels like practically nothing at all.

"You're lucky this will heal in time," Ciel says, though their eyes never break away from the curved line they begin to trace, laser-focused. "Wouldn't want a handicap in the arena."

"I'm done, after this," he explains. "They're cutting me off."

"Smart."

Sander has enough anyway, he thinks. The few tattoos that adorn him now are more than enough, each of them grounding in their own right. Once this one is finished and the scabs clinging to the back of his hand flake away, he'll be complete.

As complete as a shell can be. That's all he feels, most days, that he's been hollowed out, unable to fill the vacancy left behind.

He has no idea how this all went so wrong.

Does Levi think it, too? Does he watch the recap like Sander does and listen to Erryn's words, wincing as if each one is poison? What else could he do, when every waking minute of their respective lives seems dedicated to giving the other a wide berth.

Two months ago they were side-by-side, fighting together. Saving Levi's life once they stepped off those pedestals was second nature, ingrained in him like breathing was. In two weeks they were expected to step back into an almost identical situation and… and what? Do it all over again?

Just like that, the sickening thud of his heart caged in his chest ratchets up, each beat seeming to leap from his skin. Ciel doesn't notice—they never do. They have a job to focus on in not butchering art laid out across the body of one of Panem's newest victors.

Sander taps his fingers against the older ink, tracing the lines down to where the ripple of greenery ends. It's easy, when he knows he's safe, to close his eyes and allow the terror to wash away.

It won't be so easy, from here on out. Sander has nothing but an uphill battle before him.

"I'll be rooting for you," Ciel says. Their voice is proud, not unlike Aurelius' after every session they spend together.

This time, though, Sander is able to keep it together. There is no threat of tears, nor apprehension crawling up his throat. "That means a lot," he responds, allowing himself a true smile. "Thank-you."

There are people out there cheering for him. His family of course, Beau and Aurelius. Their mentors, too.

If only it was so easy for Sander to root for himself.

Maderia Elvario, 18
Victor of District One

There is something uniquely troubling about being dead—Maderia would know.

Since the day she woke up, Tova's screams echoing into the room and beyond, it's felt as if everything has moved in slow-motion. She sees everything in a stark clarity, unable to look away even from the most menial details. Every noise, every movement, and it's as if it's all she's meant to notice.

Circe has asked her more than once if she saw anything, as if their escort has some sort of morbid fascination with the afterlife. It does not matter how many times Maderia can explain to her that no, there was no bright light, there was no other side. It's as if, with some time to ponder it, Circe expected a different answer months after the fact.

One minute, agonizing pain. Tova's remorseless face staring down as her blood washed over the cobblestones. The next, waking up in that hospital bed with nothing but a stranger there to comfort her.

The bitterness that claws at her throat from the memories of the experience is what makes it all so much worse. There was no good reason for Tova to do it other than vengeance, and it was that precisely that drove her to plant the axe in Maderia's chest without thinking twice about it.

That same spot within her now feels empty. Where she should be furious in her own right, some days Maderia can hardly manage to walk around the apartment, legs carrying around a hollow husk. She's a skeleton and a revived heart—nothing more.

Instead of hatred, she only feels wronged. Not by Tova, but by all the things she thought she knew.

Maderia Elvario was not raised to believe there was any sort of reality where she could die.

That's why it's so hard to take a place at the table, now. She would do this with her mother, and with Ceziah, and listen to them sing praises about her training. Her mother always prattled on about how perfect she would look as a victor, a crown upon her head. There was never any talk about the in-between, about the killing and the blood soaking down her chest and waking up stuck full of needles, pulled back from the blackness by a team of doctors and their machines.

It's easier now to sit down because her mother isn't here, and she doesn't have to entertain any more false realities. She takes her place across the table from Tova—Circe's on that side, too, and any distance Maderia can put between them the better.

Hanelle sits down to her right. Vermeil on Tova's other side.

It feels as if you could slash a sword through the haze in the air and watch it split apart.

"Whatever this is, I don't like it," Tova announces, echoing Maderia's very thoughts. "You wanted to talk about something. Can we get it over it?"

Maderia had her own set of worries when Vermeil asked to talk to them all. With the five of them collected around this table it's even worse. She tightens her hands against her thighs, digging her nails into the fabric of her pants. Hanelle glances down, lingering on her whitened knuckles, and doesn't say a word.

"If you'd rather I get straight to it, I can," Vermeil says. "This is about the future. Two weeks from now. Put everything that's happened in the past behind you even for a second and answer me this: can we expect the two of you to work together, or no?"

She swallows, and the sound is surely audible to everyone else gathered around her. Tova stares, gaze intimidating as always, but Maderia doesn't feel the need to shrink down in her seat. Perhaps, once upon a time, but not anymore. When you've been tucked beneath the sheets with someone, wrapped up in each other's arms, something shifts.

Maderia isn't sure that she's supposed to speak first. Before May, she most certainly would have.

"I'm assuming your resounding silence is a no."

"I will," she bursts out, feeling all the more foolish for her stumbling words. "We will. If that's… if Tova is willing, of course."

Tova's mouth is drawn not quite into a frown; twisted enough at the side that she can't quite discern what the expression means. "You trust me not to kill you again?"

"Yes. Unless you're giving me a reason not to."

Tova would frighten anyone else. The kills, the brutality, the iciness in her eyes. Something in Maderia, though, believes deeply that Tova wouldn't be able to do it now. They know each-other now in ways too intimate to simply break it apart without thinking.

She killed Tova's closest friend. A long time ago, Maderia would have said she didn't deserve it, but now?

Maybe she did.

"I'll do it," Tova says. "Rest of the Careers are gonna be a fuckin' disaster, anyway."

"We've spoken to Rohana. She's not confident about the Two's working together. As for the Fours—"

"Not happening." Tova pushes back from the table, chair grinding harshly against the floor. "Guess it's me and you, Mads. You happy with that?"

The nickname drives something like a nail into her chest, lingering dangerously over her heart. She's given permission to Tova on more than one occasion to drop the formalities, but she never has. It's always Maderia—nothing more, nothing less.

Until today.

She nods in response, unable to trust that her words will be anything dignified. It's just another thing that has changed. Maderia never had any reason to doubt herself, before. Now she has every single one.

"Oh, this will be much more trouble-free now," Circe says, a bright grin blossoming across her face. "The two of you as a pair—so much easier to sell!"

Like she's fodder. Stock, meant to be bought and sold. Maybe that's what Maderia really was, all along, just another body sent out of the Training Academy to live and die before she was given the time to truly understood what either of those words even meant.

And who knows, too, if she has any time left at all.

Milan Crusoe, 16
Victor of District Eight

Writing was always his strong suit.

Not killing, not mechanics, not getting his mother to stop holding herself up in her study like any good was going to come out of it.

Milan was a storyteller, born and raised. There was something different trying to tell one in the aftermath of chaos, once the dust had settled and there was nothing to really tell. In the arena, the words had come out easily, as if he had been practicing them for months in anticipation of the moments he could use them.

He still remembers being on that stage with Aranza and Merride Whitelock, listening to the surrounding crowd cheer out for him. No one believed, before him, that the madness delivered from Sanne Levesay's hands could be outdone; nine kills to her name, after all, and a broken heart to boot.

But his had been intentional. They had his name written on signs. People called out his name and practically swooned when he dared to look in their direction.

He could do anything when faced with that. No matter what sort of questions Merride had asked him, Milan had fired back answers with well-timed precision, the words everyone wanted to hear. It was as if, finally, he had the chance to channel his mother—the one that had existed years ago, when she had first took off. Milan's memories of the cameras and the interviewers were vague due to his age, but brighter still was his mother's face, the poise and elegance in which she addressed her fans and followers.

To know that he had that within him now felt better than winning in the first place. They loved him, just as he intended, and would hang onto his every word.

In the aftermath, as he said, it was different. There was no one in this apartment bowing before him, throwing themselves at his feet to turn him into some sort of idol. That would have been too much, even for Milan, but it would have been better than this nothingness.

No one prepared him for the quiet. A time previously the best for writing had now become his worst enemy.

The tablet they had given to him was helping, along with the assortment of notebooks he had collected and hidden in various places around the apartment so that Aranza wouldn't go snooping when he looked the other way. Kiran was too busy most days trying to wrangle her to care about whatever Milan was doing. Only Lourdes showed any sort of consistent interest in his on-goings, though Nerilla seemed to be growing more curious. Their escort's fanciful, upbeat attitude didn't often leave her time for reading, but it's not as if Milan ever would anyway.

Milan wasn't sure he would ever truly get anywhere—all he could be grateful for now was that his mother's name was back out there. He had heard whispers of it in the streets when he went out—oh, that's Milan! You remember Scarlett Crusoe, right? It's no wonder where he got it from. Occasionally, he would see her name flash across the news.

According to their phone calls, she was making progress on the novel she had been dedicated to for so long. Milan could only begin to imagine what would happen if he really, truly won. They'd have agents lining up outside their brand new house, ready to re-sign her. She'd be planning and writing and signing books until she was old and gray.

It was a dream, perhaps finally come true. They could mean something again.

Or at least she could.

Milan didn't know why he was struggling now, when it felt like he had finally rediscovered his passion for it.

If he won again, maybe he could have that too.

A knock at the door has him shoving the notebook he's been pondering over away, tucking it beneath the corner of the mattress where it's safe. "Come in!"

He knows it's Lourdes before her face even appears—Aranza doesn't knock, Nerilla neither, and Kiran doesn't have enough of an inclination towards him to check in. Though her head isn't stuck in the clouds, Lourdes reminds him of his mother still. Being so bright and idealistic is a godsend in a place like this, when she's already watched twenty-two kids come and go. She has faith in him though, the unfailing sort.

"I haven't seen you all morning," she says, eyes roving over his tidy room and well-made bed. "Just wanted to check on you."

"I ate breakfast before you got up. Thanks, though."

Lourdes nods. Though his notebook has been tucked away, she doesn't notice the pen still gripped between his fingers. "How's the writing going?"

"It's going," Milan responds, trying not to sound too mournful. There's no reason to have a pity party when he's more than capable. "Half-heartedly, but it's going."

"Don't forget what you promised me. You said—"

"That I would finish something up and let you read it before January, I know."

She sits down at the edge of the bed, hand stretching forward to pat him on the shoulder. "If you don't, that's alright too. Can I ask you something, though?"

"Sure."

Lourdes seems to hesitate, and even in his relaxed position he can't help but tense up, even a little bit. "Before January. The last day, even. Will you show me where all of your notebooks are? Just in case."

In case he's not around after that to show her. No matter how idealistic his mother may be, Milan could still very well be dead in a month's time. This apartment will be vacated and sold to the highest bidder. With none of his writings signed, whoever finds them will dump them in the trash as if they were nothing at all.

At least Lourdes will appreciate them. She'll take them back to Eight, give them to his mother.

"I will," he agrees. At least then there's no chance he'll be gone for good.

Fading into obscurity is not something this name was born for.

As of today alliances (among other things, later down the line) will be officially updated on the blog as they are confirmed. Therefore, if you don't see something on the blog, it's not confirmed. Or I just forgot. We'll see.

The pre-games stockpile has been officially completed as of yesterday, which means Games planning (and eventually writing) now begins! Wish me luck as I cry myself to sleep, probably.

Until next time.