Chapter 16:
The chromatifur coat Tigris clutched onto with her trembling fingers exploded with brilliant white light while the blast's flames licked at her back. Her savior's grasp on her palm went missing as the explosion thrusted them into the darkened, cold passageway sloping downwards before her. She wanted to scream out for help but something about the foreboding darkness that engulfed her there constricted any sound from escaping. Like a dying streetlamp, the shattered white glow of the coat in her hands coughed out sputtering light into darkness around Tigris. So lost in the claustrophobic void and disoriented by the taunting 'drip, drip, drip' of water droplets echoing around her- Tigris first mistook the colored light she saw at the end of the tunnel for a hallucination.
Red, blue, green, yellow- the deeply saturated hues spilled through the threshold ahead like a rainbow portal to another dimension. Tigris was transfixed by the dazzling light leaking into the narrow, stone passageway- mindlessly drifting towards its entrancing glow like a moth to a flame. The sounds and smells were just as enrapturing as the sights that flooded over Tigris' senses when she stepped through the concrete archway and crossed the vibrant point of no return.
They all looked at her like she was the one with something on her face. Beneath the shadowy shrouds of their multicolored, patchwork cloaks- the Animal's facial expressions were fixed on Tigris with varying degrees of surprise, distrust, fear, and confusion. Tigris mirrored nearly all of these emotions simultaneously as they all took one another in. Ancient, probably illegal music echoing around the colorful tunnel came to a screeching halt as many Animal people seated behind makeshift kiosks selling wares, lying prone on scraggly bedding, or simply passing by, all craned their necks to examine her. Tigris cleared her throat. She had no answer for the question she knew they all were asking internally, including herself. So, without an ability to explain it- Tigris didn't, clutching her bag closer to her body and wordlessly turning to stride down the train track that ran along the middle of the tunnel.
Tigris felt the curious shapes of their Animal iris' follow her as she trod on, her heels striking the floor being the only noise that bounced off the low ceilings and curved walls awash with painted light. Tigris pulled nervously at the fabric of her headwrap- now a scarf wrapped around her neck with its excess length trailing at her back. Soon, she could sense not only eyes following her- but at least one pair of pursuing footsteps. Tigris' leisurely stroll past the carpets and short tables laid out with black market goods became a brisk walk. The beats of feet following behind her increased their pace in turn. Tigris gathered the courage to turn her head and peer back over her shoulder- making eye contact with an Animal woman's searing yellow eyes, haunting pink expression, and rusted gray machete in her fist.
Tigris raced away as fast as she could along the tracks that stretched out before her, darting around a bend as fast as her high heels would carry her. As she ran, Tigris was washed in the red, then green, then yellow, then blue glow of the recessed lighting above her. She turned down another colored hall, feeling her pursuer gaining with every pounding footstep she took in flight from them. The throbbing scar on her forehead burned furiously as she felt her lungs and legs begin to weaken. The force at her back gained on her as Tigris rounded another corner and desperately sped on. The distance between herself and the Animal woman closed at the same time Tigris' legs gave way and sent her crumbling to the grimy floor exhausted.
Mavis raised the long, rusted blade in the air above her head. Tigris looked into her face and screamed:
"Mavis, please!"
The high-pitched whistle that came through next was so loud and jarring- Tigris couldn't believe a human had produced it.
Goneril Gaul stepped into a pool of colored light within Tigris' line of sight and silently held out an upward facing palm to Mavis.
"Let me kill her." Mavis pleaded with a shuddering grip on the machete. Goneril raised an eyebrow in response, sending ripples over the fleshy scars slashed across her face:
"Remember your tunnel voice."
Then, though no words were spoken, a discussion did begin. With rapid, twisting finger formations- Mavis used her hands to seemingly ask the same desperate plea via sign language. Goneril studied Mavis' fingers intently as she gesticulated and when she finished, Goneril pursed her lips and shook her head:
"If anybody does…" Goneril swapped the machete from one hand to the other so she could caress the Animal woman's cheek. "It'll be you, pet."
After a beat, Tigris watched as the hilt of the long blade was passed from the pink hand to the pale one directly over top of her without any further discussion.
Mavis gave Tigris a vicious glare and departed with a deep sigh into a winding passageway that broke off from the main tunnel. Then, Goneril was the only thing standing over Tigris, pointing the machete at her:
"Get up."
Tigris promptly did so.
"What are the Animal's doing down here?" Tigris asked, climbing to her feet. "How did you get them out of jail?"
"They never went in." Goneril explained. "Mazza had their tongues cut out- threw the muscle down one hole and the Animal it belonged to down another." Goneril's magenta eyes narrowed on Tigris with the pointed glare like the pointed end of the machete she prodded her with: "Better question- why are you down here, Miss Snow?"
Tigris wanted to roll her eyes at the Socratic tactics so annoyingly characteristic of the Gauls. But she had a three-foot-long blade jabbing at her, so simply shook her head and parroted the question back:
"Why am I here?"
A beat. Goneril breathed in the moist air.
"Your cousin is trying to kill you."
Tigris instinctively rejected the idea:
"No, he's not."
"I have eyes and ears upstairs." Goneril casually gestured to the tunnel's concrete ceiling. "Who do you think sent your three little friends after you like that? You think they just disliked you that much?"
"How do I know you're not the one who sent them after me?" Tigris asked.
"Because, when I want you gone- you will be." Goneril replied. "And right now, we both should want Coriolanus dead more than anyone else."
"Absolutely not." Tigris rejected again. "I'll go to the police. I'll tell them everything-"
"Did you know the Plinths effectively owned the entire military and police force by the time they died." Goneril interjected. "Coriolanus inherited more than just their wealth."
"I don't want anyone dead."
"Least of all your ex-husband...?" Goneril turned to Tigris: "What about the person who killed him?"
"He killed himself." Tigris denied. "He jumped."
"He actually was likely already dead when he was thrown." Goneril retorted.
Tigris emphatically denied the idea with as much surety every word of it was true.
"That… that can't be." Tigris looked at the ground and shook her head. Goneril studied Tigris intently and leveled at her with what sounded more like an accusation than an observation:
"I believe you have a child's heart." Goneril reached out and tucked a loose strand of Tigris' hair that hung over her face behind her ear, admiring the dull pink stripe on her forehead. "You've proven that to me, whether you realize it or not. But it's time to grow up. And I'm giving you the option to choose who will rip that heart from your chest: him, me, or you."
Tigris could only stare into Goneril's vengeful, magenta eyes, practically chewing on her.
"I don't believe you." Tigris bit her bottom lip. "About Corio, about Virgil… or about me."
Goneril took a threatening step towards Tigris, pushing her back against the stone wall where a paint chipped metal ladder extended upwards into a dark opening in the concrete ceiling above.
"This is the way to your place." Goneril looked up the rickety rungs into the dark overhead abyss they ascended and disappeared into. "Fed your pretty, white kitty-cat for you. Sweet girl, that one is." Goneril clicked the machete's blade against the iron rungs embedded in the wall. "And just a ladder away from my army of Animals."
Tigris' face went white.
"You believed that." Goneril smirked. "And I believe you can kill him."
"I can't." Tigris begged. Goneril shoved her up against the tunnel's damp wall, knocking the wind from Tigris' lungs as she tore into her:
"If you had no fight in you- you wouldn't have made it out of that Palace." Goneril hissed at Tigris. "Or out of that shop. But here we are, Miss Snow."
Goneril released the pressure she held down on Tigris' shoulders as a dull rumble began to roll down the long tunnel towards them.
"I don't care if you believe me or not- I'm done convincing Snows of my authenticity." Goneril began to push Tigris backwards down the corridor. "But I have only ever told you, and your cousin, nothing but the truth- regardless of whether you were willing to hear it or not."
The droning hum echoing in the tunnel gradually built itself up into a louder and deeper tone vibrating in Tigris' skull as she was forced back further and further by Goneril.
"Your cousin killed my mother. He killed your husband. And he is going to kill you." Goneril held her hand out to Tigris once more as the headlight from a train came rounding the bend of the tunnel behind them. "I'm getting my revenge. My army is coming for this city. And they'll be coming for you, too, if you run from the truth, Miss Snow!" Tigris could barely hear Goneril's final words to her as the clamoring of the train thundered towards them nearer: "Kill Coriolanus Snow- and do it before we kill you!"
Tigris clutched the bag around her shoulder, her fingers digging into the chromatifur coat radiating icy white lightning bolts and ran.
Goneril slashed the concrete wall where Tigris had been standing with the machete, leaving a light gray slash against the stone before she tore off in pursuit. It was a single file line of three racers: Tigris, Goneril, and the train quickly gaining on one another. Tigris tried to listen to the sounds of Goneril's pursuing footsteps growing closer but could only hear the train's heavy chugging and clanking metal wheels screeching. Tigris felt what she thought was the front engine of the train slam into her from behind. She went spilling down onto the tracks, looking up to see Goneril bringing the machete down onto her. Tigris recoiled as Goneril thrust the blade down onto the excess fabric of the long scarf wrapped around her neck, embedding through and pinning it to the wooden track beneath it. Tigris clutched the fabric and attempted to rip it away with her full body weight but was snagged at the neck like a chained beast. The train barreled towards Tigris; its bright headlight glaring just as blindingly white as the chromatifur coat's colors firing off in the bag at her side.
Tigris looked up to a stone-faced Goneril, who expressionlessly watched Tigris' desperate efforts to rip free from the scarf locked around her neck. The train was mere yards from her now- moments away from turning her to a red mist against the concrete walls of the tunnel. Tigris let go of the scarf, giving up her fight against it to cry out to Goneril with a frantic, unrestrained acceptance:
"I'll do it!"
The only thing Goneril moved was the corner of her lips to grin. The train was less than a moment away, now. Tigris panicked as she cried out with a vicious urgency:
"I'll kill him!"
Tigris screamed with bloodthirsty tears over the noise of the train barreling down on her:
"I'll kill the bastard!"
Goneril reached out and ripped the machete from the wooden plank, freeing Tigris' scarf just in time for her to roll across the tracks as the train raged past with a heckling cackle of rumbling steel.
Tigris sat up and caught sight of Goneril on the other side of the tracks through the openings between the train cars speeding by with a violent gust of wind. The two stared at one another while the thunder of clanging steel and screeching of sparking wheels ripped past between them. Tigris watched Goneril's toothy grin morph into a wide smile and release a bellowing laugh that she could hear even over the ear-splitting cacophony of metal raging by. Tigris looked down the tunnel to see the train's final caboose car quickly approaching. She stood, taking in Goneril one last time as the pale woman offered the menacingly gentle parting waves of her fingers. Then, Tigris reached out and grabbed a hold of the metal rungs on the exterior body of the caboose car racing past.
Her shoulder was nearly ripped from its socket as Tigris leapt up and was pulled along with the speeding train, clutching onto the side of its final car as tightly as she could. The concrete caverns and stone tunnels of industrial catacombs bathed in artificially colored light seemed to stretch on forever. So did the collections of various Animal black market vendors gathering up their wares to accommodate the train as it passed. It was a city beneath a city- with a population, culture, an economy, and apparently a leader in Goneril Gaul. And now- Tigris too was following her orders, at least that's what she'd told her.
Kill Coriolanus or rat out Goneril- both options seemed destined for death and disaster at best, and total and complete backfiring and failure at worst. She'd thought she'd already faced that chaos and won the rewards of having survived it. She got the license back. She was a stylist in the Games again. Tigris had thought she was on the path to greatness. But as the train dragged on into the colorfully dark unknown, Tigris had to admit she was completely clueless where she was headed. Soon, the echoing screech of the train wheels braking brought the several ton hunk of steel to a prolonged stop. Sparks shot out from its skidding wheels as the train's speed decreased enough for Tigris to take a bounding leap off the body of the caboose car into a heap of rags piled up against the wall of the tunnel.
Tigris landed with a dusty poof of air as the old textiles cushioned her impact against the ground. She then watched the train pull around the bend and disappear along with its decelerating hiss. Tigris reached down to make sure her bag was still strapped over her shoulder- the chromatifur fabric at her side responding to her examining touch with a flash of relieved green light. But the ripple of veridian traveled beyond her side, flooding over the crumpled fabric she laid on like it was momentarily catching on a green-orange fire. Then, the flow of color faded and left Tigris in the dark when the hand reached out to grab her shoulder from behind. She yelped out in fright, turning around to face the purple-teal and gold iridescent skin of the black-eyed old man grimacing at her with a scowl. But the Animal man then began to simply shoo Tigris off the pile of textiles with waves of his spiny, blackened fingers.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry- is this your… merchandise?" Tigris apologized, unsure of what to call the messy pile of fabric rolls and scraps the man began to reorganize with a huff. Tigris nervously inquired: "Excuse me, sir- I'm looking for directions back to the surface."
The man briefly communicated something to Tigris with his hands. She didn't understand, and so went on explaining herself with a lie:
"I took a wrong turn and-"
As the man refolded and rearranged his stock, his own insect-like fingers came into contact with a length of furry fabric that lit up a dull red as he frustratedly scooped it up. Tigris found herself distracted by the glorious fabric- forgetting for a moment about how lost she was here:
"…can't find my way out." She bit her lip, about to inquire about the textile: "Can you tell me-"
"I can get you out." A familiar voice interrupted.
Tigris turned to see Zagros.
"What are you doing here?" Tigris was taken aback and relieved at the same moment.
"Same as you it seems: my craft and whatnot." Zagros replied, adjusting the satchel on his shoulder and stepped up to the Animal man selling the fabrics who he addressed by name: "Don't overcharge her, Beetle. She'd give you the coat off her back."
Zagros took in the series of finger formations Beetle replied to him with and assured after the Animal man's fingers finished:
"Just trust me- I'm a good judge of character." Zagros smiled at Tigris: "Got a bit turned around?"
"More than a bit." Tigris did not want to let on just how twisted things had become. That was a matter of principle for her, for better or for worse. She shook her head before she turned it to Beetle, gesturing to the color changing fur fabric: "How much?" Tigris asked, sounding out the fabrics name as she dug in her bag: "For the chro-mat-i-fur?"
The man flashed a formation of thin fingers at her that could have been communicating anything from a price to an outright refusal of sale. But Zagros read his hands and translated:
"He says that fabric is not being produced anymore… a hundred panars per yard." Zagros verbalized as Tigris' facial expression sank. "Is that a lot?"
"For a whole little." Tigris dismayed, releasing the hold on her wallet in her purse. "I need at least three and a half- four yards. I can't even make a crop top with the money-"
"Five yards, please." Zagros interrupted Tigris, placing the order with Beetle. Zagros dug in his leather satchel and produced five, crisp hundred panar bills.
"Oh, no- please I'm-" Tigris began to argue against this, but after everything she'd just been through, she remembered Ada's advice. Tigris batted her eyelashes: "I'm so thankful- you're too sweet."
Zagros accepted the compliment with a gentlemanly nod just as graciously as Tigris accepted the folded length of chromatifur that instantly began glowing vibrant yellow-green in her elated grasp. Then, it was less than a sixty second journey around an adjacent corner, up a slimy, concrete stairwell, and through a loose metal grate in some storage cellar to the world above. Though, Tigris did not realize the dark room around her as the basement of Dare2Dine until Zagros was ushering her up a wooden flight of stairs and into the unlit restaurant itself. She was overjoyed to see the vibrant Corso through the front windows until in that same instant- she wasn't.
"Do you want me to get you a cab home?"
"Zagros…" Tigris murmured, skeptical of every face she saw pass by outside. "Can I stay with you, just for tonight?"
He looked at her with simultaneous excitement and dread.
"Oh- um, like in my place?" Zagros wiped sweat from his thick brow before shaking off nerves. "We're closed tonight, anyway… Yes, let's do it. On one condition…"
"Hm?"
"You don't judge me."
It was hard not to. Tigris was stunned by the haggard state of the apartment Zagros led her to just up another flight of stairs from his restaurant at street level. The man himself and the space he lived in were one in the same. Stains soiled the plush carpets while the sleek, marble countertops were a mess with trash and dirty laundry. The furniture looked tortured. The shiny walls were scarred and scuffed with dents and holes.
"Sorry about the mess." Zagros apologized, pulling out a handful of what appeared to be small jars of spices from his satchel and setting them on a glaringly clean and meticulously organized island countertop in his incongruously spotless kitchen.
"It's not that bad." Tigris tried to convince herself more than him, knocking a few crushed aluminum cans off the cushion of a leather sofa in order to find a seat. "The kitchen is nice."
"You're too kind." Zagros tittered. "Always seeing the best in things."
"I used to show off Corso properties when I was a pretty, young thing." Tigris explained.
"...When..?" Zagros looked her up and down. Tigris smiled:
"This apartment is gorgeous… under it all. Just needs some tender love and care."
"Care. Who cares?" Zagros mumbled. "It doesn't really matter- well it hasn't really mattered." He corrected himself, insecurely scratching the scruffy hair hanging at the back of his neck. "All that interior design stuff is… surface level, anyway."
"It's not." Tigris rejected. "Style is a reflection of a feeling. That doesn't just go for pants and shirts. It's drapes and bed linens and… floors you can actually see." Tigris pinched a wrinkled t-shirt up off the ground and tossed it back down at her feet. "You don't see how stunning this place could be?"
Zagros looked around and shrugged. "…No." He crossed to Tigris. "But you see things I can't."
Zagros knelt down at Tigris' feet to collect the discarded t-shirt and cans while she took him in with his full color. Pink, ruddy cheeks. Hopeful, hazel green eyes. Blue veins running down his tanned forearms. Bushy brown eyebrows and scratchy, peppered beard, and cowlicked auburn hair. The man was an absolute mess. And Tigris saw a crystal-clear beauty in every last color.
She blushed- reaching out to smooth the untidy crown of hair sprouting uncontrolled from Zagros' head. "You wouldn't happen to have a pair of scissors?"
He did, though the particular style of clippers he pulled from a kitchen drawer were more suited for trimming fat off beef than a mullet off a man. But, after some convincing, Tigris got him to take a seat on a barstool and allow her to shape him up.
"Why do you speak sign language?" She asked, snipping away the wispy, flyaway hairs at his sideburns.
"My little sister- Darby…" Zagros' voice trailed off. He cleared his throat. "She lost her hearing as a baby after a rebel air raid in 2 during the war."
"Oh, that's awful." Tigris replied numbly as she clipped at the nape of his neck. Her own mother, Clothilde, had been killed in an air raid before the famine set in. Tigris had to still her shivering grip on the clippers as the dead woman's memory was revived: "Lower your head."
"She wasn't my mom's choice." Zagros lowered his head. "We never caught her father. He probably got drafted or starved to death anyway with half of District 2 once things really got bad… so, Mom never took to Darby."
"I think the war broke something in my mother, too." Tigris swallowed the lump in her throat. "But it didn't make her less hands off in my case…"
"I was all hands on, literally." Zagros scratched his beard. "Darby picked it up instantly but learning all the signs in the first place was the hardest thing I've ever done."
"How do you learn that?" Tigris asked.
"Illegally." Zagros snorted. "My dad had a lot of books he shouldn't have. It's a long, confusing story."
Tigris picked at a stubborn cowlick protruding from the top of Zagros' head:
"We're going to be here a while."
Tigris felt as if she had opened a floodgate after this comment when years and years of built up and walled off tragedy came pouring out of Zagros.
His father had been Capitol born: a gentle, jovial son of the wealthy Dare family- who had made their fortunes developing firearms patents for the country's military. The man was on a temporary job assignment in District 2 where he met Zagros' mother selling her rutabagas in the marketplace. When he revoked his Capitol citizenship after his son's birth- Zagros' father secreted away a collection of Old-World books upon his expatriation: items very controversial in the city and outright banned in the districts.
Soon after the birth of twin girls and a decade before the war, Zagros' father was abruptly summoned to District 13 on a classified project. The checks he sent back home got smaller and smaller over the years of his absence until Zagros was forced to begin working in the marble quarries as a preteen to help make ends meet. Shipments of food rations from the Capitol began to dry up as social order began to break down. In the brutal chaos- cooking insubstantial morsels of scrap food with his green-thumbed mother into something edible was his only solace. Darby was born right as Zagros' jaded, catatonic father returned home to 2 and the civil war officially began countrywide.
The consequences of whatever his father did in 13 didn't come until after the district was turned to rubble, the war had been won by the Capitol, the Treaty of Treason was signed, and the Hunger Games were announced. Zagros knew his name had not been chosen randomly- the only accident he really recognized was his ultimate survival in that Arena. Within a week of his victory and return home, Zagros' entire family was dead- spare Darby.
Only a single, sympathetic paternal granduncle Zagros had never met held onto the family fortune in the Capitol- the city where Darby received her ear surgeries and the first place she truly absorbed spoken words. Things got vaguer as Zagros approached this point in the timeline. Tigris was stuck wondering what had Zagros glazing over the years between Darby's surgeries to his granduncle's death this past January when he absorbed the remainder of the astronomical family fortune. So, Tigris had to pry further. She finished snipping away at the last of Zagros' fly away hairs and dusted off the clippings stuck to his neck before she asked:
"And Darby?"
A beat.
"She's gone now, too." Zagros murmured.
"Zagros…" Tigris walked around the barstool he sat on to face him: "I'm so sorry."
"Me too." Zagros replied with a hollow grief, pretending to itch a spot under his eye.
Tigris had been right, of course. But also so wrong. Zagros was just as handsome as she expected he'd be- but she hadn't anticipated the way she'd uncovered it. Sure, his hair was cut and he was leaps and bounds more physically attractive for it- but nothing she saw on him was as beautiful as what she felt from him. Tigris ran her fingers through his hair as her stomach growled like thunder. She was mortified.
"I'm really sorry." Tigris wanted to evaporate while the vile sounds of her bile bubbling in her gut rumbled. "That's so embarrassing."
"I'm a chef." Zagros chuckled and put a hand on his heart and stood from his stool, grateful for the shift in mood: "That was music to my ears." He beckoned her in the direction of his kitchen. "Take a look in my pantry and tell me what you want for dinner."
"Oh, please. I don't like men watching me eat."
"Tigris- when I tell you this arrangement is only natural..." Zagros crossed into his kitchen. "Let me feed you."
Tigris had to take several passes over the contents of his fridge, cabinets, and pantry until she settled on requesting a simple ham and potato hash.
"Ladies are supposed to cook for their men." Tigris self-effaced with her mother's intonation. "I learned that young."
"I learned young that the Zagros feeds the Tigris."
"I'm sorry..?"
Zagros began organizing his ingredients and cooking supplies and began chopping the potato as he went on:
"I'm named after a mountain range. I used to sit on my father's knee and read about the Zagros in his Old-World atlas."
"The 'Zagros?'" Tigris asked. "I've never heard of those mountains in Panem."
"That's because they're not in Panem. They're far, far away on another continent."
"I have a hard time visualizing that." Tigris admitted, the scope of her world always having begun and ended within the boundaries of Panem. Zagros began frying his minced potatoes in a buttered skillet on the stove.
"They were there a thousand years ago when the book was made. And mountains don't pick up and walk away." Zagros began slicing ham.
"What does that have to do with ham and potatoes?" Tigris asked.
"It doesn't." He tossed the chopped ham into the skillet with a sizzling hiss. "Do you like spice?"
"No." Tigris and Zagros answered at the same time.
"It has to do with snow. And salt." Zagros added a dash of salt and grinned to himself as he sifted the ham hash with a spatula. "In the springtime, the Zagros' meltwaters flow down the mountainside-"
"Actually, I'll try some spice." Tigris interrupted to prove something.
Zagros added a pinch of red powder from a small glass jar into the skillet. "And those meltwaters get pulled down further by rains into all the pretty little marshes and lakes in its foothills…"
Tigris watched him tell this fantasy story as he cooked with all the same romantic wonderment Virgil would have her dreaming up in her head once upon a time. The smell of frying meat filled the air and brought Tigris to a place, no matter how slovenly and disheveled, that felt like home again. Zagros began to plate the dish, sliding the steaming hash onto a plate before crossing to the cluttered dining table.
"Water, right?" He asked Tigris, pulling a dining chair out for her. Tigris nodded as she took the seat. Zagros fetched a pitcher of ice water from the fridge, pouring it into a tall glass as he went on: "And so that water travels all that way, and goes through all that trouble from its origins in the Zagros, to feed into the tributaries of a river..."
Zagros crossed to Tigris with the glass and plate, setting both down in front of her with a proud smile:
"A river called the Tigris."
