XXVIII: Banquet (II).
Milan Crusoe, 16
Victor of District Eight
Truth be told, Milan can't bring himself to care about the score attributed to anyone in this room.
Numbers fade even quicker than names do. When people are struggling to recall a victor, they certainly aren't fixated on the number associated with him. If anything it's a blurry image of a face half a century ago, the splatter of blood with no kill associated with it.
He'll do well enough. Slightly higher than average, if he was to guess, just like last time. There's no parading around acting like you're not a threat when you've murdered seven people in some fashion; there's no use in getting a terrible score to try it, either. With everyone knowing what exactly Milan is, he plans on embracing it.
Another story, another thing to weave.
Still, that doesn't mean he's not at least playing along, standing at attention for every name and every score like it truly matters. Lourdes' attention is far more rapt than his own, each flicker of her eyes a mental note to some degree. He knows these people, though, at least as well as he's going to without being close to them.
It still stings like he's been burned to fade away into an otherwise impressive room, to have the rich and doting of the Capitol look around for his allies so expectantly, waiting to wager on him based on what he's surrounded himself by as if Milan isn't good enough on his own—because he is. And now he's going to have to prove it all over again.
"Do you think he tried?" Kiran asks, his voice hardly audible as it drifts over Lourdes' much shorter form. He eyes Merride floating to the microphone, all smiles despite what the small tablet in her hand must say.
They can only be talking about Amani. It's a question he's wondered himself, though refused to voice. Milan knows nothing himself about giving up, lying down and waiting to die, and he can't imagine doing anything but trying. Not everyone in this room is the same, though. No matter how little he thinks of some of them.
"And we're onto District Four!" Married announces, the microphone shrieking for a brief moment. Something in her falters when she glances down at the tablet. A twitch of her eye. A quirk of her lips.
Nothing can ever go so smoothly.
"To start, with Amani Layne, who has earned himself a score of twelve."
The stragglers of the room, the ones too dense to realize, are thrilled. Everyone else—tributes, mentors, Capitolities alike… they grow uneasy. Half shift from foot to foot. Some glance around, not sure where to look. No matter how long Milan searches for him, Amani appears nowhere in sight.
A twelve would be a joyous thing to celebrate in any other occasion. If they thought to grace him with such a thing, Milan would ride the high for days to come. But with what he's done, the disaster behind it all… a twelve can be nothing more than a target.
Everyone is still whispering around him when Jordyn is awarded with a nine. Even then the awkwardness is not easily dispersed, though some try harder than others.
Lourdes' hand lands tight on his arm. "This is a good chance to distract them, if you've any ideas."
To win the crowd. To make them look at him. Milan straightens his shoulders, alarmed at how few ideas linger about in his mind. Foolishly, he wasn't expecting this. A bad score here and there was easily explainable, but seeing a target sprayed across someone's back was not. If anything, he had almost expected someone like Aranza to do it to him.
Aranza, though… that's an idea.
She's still out there, though, near the center of the floor. They're no longer holding onto one another, enough space between her and Tova that Milan knows he has the room to swoop in. Lourdes releases him as he moves across the sparkling dance floor, hand reaching out as he parts the crowd. Aranza lets out a quiet, yet undignified noise as he grabs her around the elbow, pulling her back until he's got a hold of her instead.
His smile is all for show, good for the cameras. "How about a dance, partner? Lovely afternoon, isn't it?"
"A lovely afternoon I wish you would be having elsewhere," she hisses through gritted teeth, her lips frozen in a grotesque but believable smile. Aranza grabs a hold of his hand, squeezing so tight he's unsure if he'll escape without bruises, but of course she obliges. There's no chance of her shoving him away or making a negative scene for herself.
She holds him at an arm's length, though her heels edge dangerously close to his toes, no doubt wishing to crush them to the floor. "Whatever are you trying to gain from this?" she wonders.
He refuses to answer for a while, leaving her suspended in silence as he glances around the crowd. Though he hasn't captured everyone's attention, he's gotten enough that there seems to be something better on the horizon, a more pleasurable experience to enjoy.
Milan wishes he was enjoying it, too, but there's nothing all that enjoyable about spending time with Aranza. She still killed Dorian. She still would have let him fall.
And, of course, she'll still leave him in her wake.
"I'm not done with this, you know," he tells her, looking her in the eyes. "I'm not done with you."
"Oh, I'm just trembling in my boots."
"One won't protect you forever, if she even bothers in the first place."
"And who's going to protect you?" she asks, almost innocently, batting her eyelashes like a child. "Other than your own shadow?"
Which has done well enough in the past. She needed his help to get there, to send Venecia plunging to her death. The power was always his. He may need some help, from his own shadow or otherwise, but at least he knows he can do it.
Milan knows, with proof of a reasonable doubt, that he can win this.
Ravi Fusain, 17
Victor of District Twelve
Kai has nothing more to offer than an embittered sigh when his score is announced, more focused on collecting the perfect bite of chocolate cake.
Score aside, at least he's eating without getting all green about it. "A three's not that bad," Ravi had told him—or at least he had tried to.
"Sure isn't," Kai responds. But it was. Sure, it wasn't bad for a kid who could barely hold his own weight some days, but in the grand scheme of things? It was pretty bad. Not that Ravi cared; it wasn't as if his own would be anything out of this world. That wasn't why he was sitting here with Kai now or why he had bothered to in the first place.
It was good to have a purpose, to feel like he was doing something. If he wasn't sitting here with Kai, Ravi isn't sure what would truly be left. A chair in the corner somewhere, a table that no one really cared to look towards. Cress and Embelia were good people, well-meaning… one of them would be keeping him company, at least.
Instead he had this, which was a choice most would certainly deem questionable, but it was the one he had made and stuck with. At least this way he could hunker down and go largely unseen anyway.
Unlike some people.
Immediately following Kai, Zoya's score is met with raucous laughter when he gets to his feet. Ravi can't quite tell if his outrage is genuine or not when he moves, clearly, to clamber onto a chair until Sarain grabs him round the collar and holds him still. "I was aiming for a zero!" he crows, apparently unimpressed that he's managed a two, of all things. "Cowards!"
Anyone else uttering such a word would wind up with their head on a silver platter delivered to the President's private suite. Zoya, however, has a certain charm about him that seems to simply amuse when alarm should be raised instead.
"He's an idiot," Kai mutters, pushing crumbs to the edge of the plate and back. If there's any malice behind it, it's lost to Ravi's ears in the surrounding cacophony. He wishes, even for a moment, that they could be allowed quiet. Something resembling it, even. The music was much too jarring, the chattering over-the-top.
There's no breathing in a place like this. All Ravi can do is hold his breath and wait for it to end. A shame, really, that they're still shy of halfway through.
"You can still leave, if you want," Kai says suddenly. "Clean break. No offense taken."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't actually want to be stuck with me. No one wants that."
"I said it wasn't pity."
"So not pity, then," Kai says. "But you're attaching yourself to someone who is dying more actively than anyone else here, and I had already accepted being alone. I wouldn't be upset if you left."
He's truly resigned to it. Being alone, the score, all of it. For as much as he clings to life, Kai has looked nearly every inch of death in the face and is more than prepared to walk into its arms. And then there's Ravi, as he said, clinging onto someone who already has one foot in the grave.
"If you have the strength left," Ravi says carefully. "You want to win?"
"Of course I want to win." Kai scoffs, as if the idea of anything else is foreign. "I just…"
"Just what?"
"The strength is one thing. It's the days."
And that, truly, is the most frightening thing of all. Days, and how many they have left. For the Five's, it was less than a handful. For him, nearly three weeks. There's no telling how long it could take.
There's no telling if Kai's body will hold on long enough to even get there, the rest of it be damned.
Is this a fool's errand, what Ravi is doing? Is there any point in the end? There has to be. Even if Kai can't make it to the end, Ravi is capable of doing more than just standing around, waiting and watching it happen. When he's been doomed to fail so many times in the past, this is his opportunity, the thing that keeps him putting one foot forward in front of the other.
What else does he have, after all, besides the image of a frayed rope wavering in the breeze, the ghosts that keep him company when the sun sinks below the horizon?
"You can't chase me off," Ravi tells him. "It doesn't matter how many days we have left."
Kai ducks his head. There's another sigh mixed somewhere in there, but perhaps a slight smile, too. He was being generous in offering Ravi an out, resigned in his own fate, but even he is glad to not be left alone in his dying days.
Having relied on himself for so long, it feels good, albeit terrifying, to harbor something resembling closeness with another person. For once Ravi isn't allowing himself to think of what will surely happen; he's been surrounded by death for so long, a constant in his waking hours, that thinking of it produces little anyway.
The promise of something more, though… that seems better. Like helping Kai. Seeing someone with a bright future claw their way to the end, a human worthy of winning and living and seeing a life worth it all.
It was never going to be him, was it? Ravi knew that.
Oddly enough, however, Kai isn't the only one who has come to terms with his supposed fate.
Robbie Creston, 17
Victor of District Ten
"Have fun with the masses," Sloane drawls, tipping her head off the back of the chair. "I know you'll miss me terribly."
He just barely resists the urge to yank the chair out from beneath her, trying to look at least halfway dignified. Both of the Nines had gotten up for their scores, though it looks as if that had been more on the behest of their mentors than not. They're returning now, slowly, easing their way back to the chairs opposite Robbie's as he peels off in the opposite direction.
Casia keeps her eyes firmly down as she passes him, but something in Robbie still feels compelled to step away, leaving her enough room to move so that she doesn't come nearly close to brushing against him. She was bad enough to watch the first time, something weird alight in her eyes that didn't fit any normal thirteen year old, and now she had a score to match Sloane's.
So no, Robbie was not frightened of a literal child. Anything Daisy-adjacent was worth staying away from, though.
He wishes it was so easy to keep his distance from Hawke.
He ends up not five feet from him, both of them waiting in stony silence. All Robbie can do is tell him that it doesn't matter; regardless of what he feels on the inside, no one is going to look at him any differently if his score happens to be slightly shy of ideal. They know he's capable from what they saw two months ago—that hasn't changed in such a short period of time.
There had been a woman hanging off him, earlier, all candy floss hair and cherry-red lipstick as she promised to send him any help you need, don't worry about it darling, I've got your back—
He had never been so grateful to get back to Sloane, of all people, in his entire life. But it proved that no matter what Robbie did or didn't do, someone out there would be his aid if he so needed it. Would Hawke be able to say the same when he hardly spoke?
His District partner has backed up now, too, as the spotlight finds Merride. If he could get further without knocking over the banquet table, no doubt he would be gone entirely, refusing to let so many eyes within the crowd find him. Robbie can't say he's quite a fan of the idea either, going stiff as she raises the microphone and says his name. It's as if he's the only person in the room, magnified tenfold. They have eyes for no one but him.
"... a score of seven!"
Robbie exhales. It's good. Nothing astronomical, but he matched Sloane, at least. There are no disappointed looks, no discomfort to fill the room.
"And of course, Hawke Rabanus, with a score of eight!"
There's no use in getting upset; another thing he tries to tell himself. It's a fucking number. Back in Ten, he would allow himself to fume and Pierre would encourage it and sooner rather than later some type of fight would break out, his knuckles bloodied before he knew what he was really doing.
This has to be different. His future is not going to fill out the same way as his past.
"As expected," Hawke says behind him, voice carrying properly just so that Robbie can hear him. "Bested again."
Y'know what? Robbie's changed his mind. Fuck civility.
Somehow, Hawke is much closer than he really expected—still backed up against the table but easy enough to reach. One of his hands darts back, but Robbie is quicker. He grabs a hold of his shirtfront, buttons digging into the calluses that line his palms. It helps that they're about the same height, locked so closely together by proximity of the space around them that Hawke couldn't rip away even if he wanted to.
And he no doubt does, judging by the fury in his eyes.
"If I find you in that arena, it's game fucking over," Robbie hisses. "You hear me?"
"Things turned out a bit different last time."
"Always does when the playing fields are uneven," he grits out. Something digs up against his abdomen, ice cold, but Robbie doesn't bother looking down. Whatever he's managed to grab isn't going to do anything.
"What are you going to do?" Robbie asks. The crowd around them is alive, and still no one is moving. "Gut me with a fucking butter knife?"
"You'd be surprised."
Sutton is there, with no warning at all. It's Grange's eyes that look much more stern, directly behind him, but he's too focused on Sutton's hand locking around his arm, trying to force him into releasing Hawke's shirtfront. His other hand is working away at the knife Hawke still has a firm hold on, the pressure relieving second by second.
Finally, it clatters to the floor, but Robbie's not certain anyone hears it but them. Grange kicks it into the crowd, where it will no doubt go missed by everyone. Sutton shoves his way between them with much difficulty, one hand working Hawke back and the other pressing Robbie away.
"Of all the times," Sutton mutters.
"You said they liked entertainment," Robbie reminds him. He lets himself be steered away. Now that the anger is easing off, it's easier to make sense of his surroundings. Hell, he's even gotten Sloane on her feet. That ought to get him some type of reward.
"Not now. Not yet."
Oh, but now seems as close to perfect as one can get. Robbie catches sight of that still nameless woman and the glee in her eyes, lipstick smudged around the lip of her champagne glass. She has the audacity to wink at him.
Sutton never had this. No one did. They're in unprecedented times, and each of them has to pave a way previously untraveled.
This was the time, and Robbie feels more alive than ever.
Farasha Oriani, 14
Victor of District Eleven
They're like vultures, the whole lot of them. One possibility of a kill and the Capitol descends.
Some of them seem almost dismayed when the Ten's are broken apart, as if they were ready to wager their bets before the Games had even begun. She can only imagine what they'll look like once the real fun, in their eyes, begins at least.
Enough blood has been shed this year to last a lifetime, and yet still they clamor for more. Farasha feels sick at the mere sight of a torn butterfly wing lying in the street, it's body cast far away—no amount of talking herself into the idea will allow her to believe that any of this could actually be entertaining.
But worse, still, she knows she isn't going to change that. She's wandering through this banquet hall much as she wandered through the Games, without specific patterns in mind and with little idea as to where she would end up. This time, at least, she has Alia, who grabs a hold of her hand the second the tens are separated and doesn't let go.
Farasha is not the type of human that people offer comfort to. Her parents were always pushing her harder, refusing to coddle her in the hopes that she would rise up and use her brain in the exact way they wanted. Eleven was brutal to everything that dared step foot into its unforgiving sun, no matter the proximity to the fields. Even Helian, who is by all accounts a fair mentor, does not hold her close like some would at the prospect of a fourteen year old about to be shortly murdered.
Alia has cared, though, unreservedly. Even if she is just as frightened as Asha, deep down, she remains standing tall and firm, allowing no sign of weakness to penetrate her crafted facade. Asha appreciates it in a way she can't put to proper words. Having something to rely on is so new, and if she's not careful it's so fragile it will very well break.
"Remember that whatever it is, it doesn't change anything," Alia murmurs down to her. Her ally could have gotten a twelve and Asha still doesn't believe she would even bat an eye at hearing anything lesser. To her, it doesn't matter if Asha's performance was poor or worthy of note—she's just grateful to be here.
That's what she's trying to do, as well, but truthfully she just wants this afternoon to be over with. The only thing she's found appreciation in is her dress, though it's begun to irritate her skin in their long time spent here. The hooped skirt creates a spacious circle in which people can't get too close to her, every inch of it covered in butterflies of all shapes and sizes. Their wings gleam under the light of two dozen chandeliers, green shifting to blue and back again, gold to pink.
It makes her feel older, more beautiful. Farasha knows it's all a show, that no one truly sees her that way, but the feeling will be nice when it lasts.
Helian said the crowd later is sure to love it, too, but she refuses to think about the interview. Last time upon ascending the stage she had nearly been sick—the sooner she gets to crawl into bed tonight, the better.
"Here we go," Alia says. She gives Asha's hand a squeeze, letting her cling on just as tight until her knuckles are discolored. Merride seems to lock eyes with her specifically, as if Asha is any great presence in the crowd.
She can hardly breathe over something that doesn't matter. She made it out the first time with a four, and certainly she can—
"Our darling little Farasha Oriani, with a score of four!"
—do it again? Can't she?
It could have been worse. She could have fallen to an even worse status. Though she knows her parents would think the number a massive disappointment, they aren't here before her to voice it.
Thankfully.
The unpleasant roar in her ear camouflages what is most definitely Alia's congratulations, as little as she deserves them. It also has the unfortunate side-effect of her missing whatever announcement Merride makes next, though in hindsight it may just be for the best. Until that moment Clementine's location was lost on her, but an incredulous, almost hysterical laugh cuts through the haze of it all.
"Wow," comes Clementine's voice, clearly unimpressed. "Just had to bring me down a few pegs, didn't you?"
It can't be good, then. Her hands are balled into fists, scraping along the bright green sequins that line her hips. In the span of a few seconds, what little attention that had been focused on Farasha is stolen, and the tightness in her chest releases.
"A four's not so bad," Alia says, aiming for gentleness and missing by a mile. "She shouldn't be so angry."
A four. The name number both of them got, too, and a noticeable downgrade from their first time around.
Farasha doesn't smile. Really, she doesn't even think about it. The thought is nowhere near her mind, not even when Clementine finally turns from the edge of the crowd and quite literally stomps back into it. Farasha too has wanted to run all night, but not quite like that. She's wanted to slip away and disappear.
Everyone watches Clementine go.
It's almost over, she reminds herself. Just District Twelve, and then a bit more time for mingling she won't partake in and dancing she doesn't know a thing about, and then Asha won't ever have to think about this place again. She can go back to the garden—they both can.
She can enjoy what little time she may have left.
It's officially bloodbath month.
There's not very much time left, now, so I've put up a poll asking who you'd want to die in the bloodbath, not think, purely because I'm interested to see who you'd like to be rid of and whether or not I'll be obliging such a request. We'll see soon enough.
Scores are all up on the blog as of now. If they're wrong, no they're not.
Until next time.