"Stop that." Grace Chastity bats at the small hands of Hannah Foster as she fiddles with her plaits. "People will see that you're nervous."
Hannah stares her down, not moving from her spot curled on a lumpy armchair in the corner of her small bedroom. "I am nervous."
"Don't be." Grace sighs. She sits on the end of the bed behind her, then stands again, feeling that the risk of her falling asleep if she's off her feet for too long is significant.
"I'm trying, Grace, but everything is weird here." The girl moans. "It's like... stones. Stones and eggshells."
"That is weird." The older girl still hasn't quite got used to the floral way Hannah speaks. Its the far opposite of her 'as-few-words-as-possible' approach to life. "There are literally no stones down here, there's not anything that isn't manmade and bursting with computer chips."
Hannah reaches up to tug at her hair again, but Grace catches her hand. She keeps a hold of it as she talks this time, firm and sure like her own mother used to hold hers when she would cry before school.
"Hannah Foster, do not show them weakness."
They sit quietly in the bare room, white light washing the colour out of their skin and a faint buzzing from somewhere deep in the complex settling into the silence. Grace forces down the disgust burning in her stomach, but not at the little girl she shares a room with. She doesn't think this district is going to give them anything without taking first; Jane Perkins, with her messiah complex, isn't much better.
"I miss Lexie." Hannah's lip trembles.
"I know." Grace tightens her grip. "And you're still gonna miss her, whether you cry about it or not. But look, you know how I feel about Dr Perkins."
"You don't trust her, I know. Webby doesn't either."
Grace ignores the concerning mention of Webby; ever since the Games, the girl has started referring to this voice in her head, a spider who talks to her and helps her find her way. Before the Arena, she might have thought the girl had cracked and left her to the wolves - as of right now, she can see the steel in Hannah that proves she is stronger than that. It just needs some... polishing.
Jeez, the kid is rubbing off on her - she can barely keep up with her own metaphors.
"Well, Webby might have a point this time." She placates. "What do you think? I know you're sad but shall we pretend, just whilst Dr Perkins and her friends are around, that you're doing just fine?" She couldn't bear to lose the ally she has in Hannah via the emotional manipulation of a morally corrupt adult.
Hannah sniffs. "I'll try." Then a thought occurs to her and she brightens. "Will Pete and Steph be there?" She's been attached to the other kids the same way she has to Grace over the last few weeks.
"Probably. Emma said she wanted to speak with the tributes, remember? I assume that means all of us."
Hannah nods.
"Come on then. Are you ready?" Grace finally releases her hand, stands up. The younger girl rises from her chair and brushes the creases out of her slate grey trousers.
Without words, the pair make their way outside into the corridor, Hannah taking a deep breath before she crosses the threshold like she's about to dive underwater.
When her hand raises instinctively to her braid, she catches herself. And she lowers it to her side.
...
Grace can't help rolling her eyes when they reach the meeting room packed with Victors, tributes and senators alike, and are scolded for being late. "Better late and respectable than on time and dressed like a heathen." She snaps at one woman making a face who is wearing only a very short skirt and tightly buttoned blazer, both clearly items she has altered from the standard District 13 wardrobe.
"Grace!" Steph shushes her, but it works to her disadvantage because now Hannah has spotted her, and together they move to sit between her and Pete. Grace has to bite her tongue not to tell them they ought to be keeping a more appropriate space between the two of them, being as young as they are.
Once they are all settled, Pete having ruffled Hannah's hair affectionately and Grace having swatted him away, Dr Perkins makes herself known, rising up to stand behind a little podium at the head of the room. She's wearing a long, light grey tube dress and Grace thinks she has never looked more like the snake that tempted Eve. Something about the woman just makes her feel righteous. Or maybe its her sister, stood a little way away and trying not to fidget.
Grace didn't really know Emma before all this, except having seen her about as the relative of a Capitol celebrity. She at least seems uncomfortable with the unholy amount of attention Dr Perkins seems to govern, but that being said, she is getting more involved in the politics of District 13 by the day. For the first few days Grace had thought she'd been angry, but she recognises now that the fierceness in her eyes is something different. She hasn't figured out what it is yet, but its not anger, not in the traditional sense.
Whatever unplaceable thing Emma is feeling, she pushes it down now as her sister begins to speak. Dr Perkins thanks them all for graciously accepting her invitation, and explains that she has decided to update them all on the progress of the revolution and the plan going forward.
"We have made great strides in our plan to end the Hunger Games and the tyranny of the Capitol. District 3 has, unfortunately, fallen, but its sacrifice is not in vain; District 12 and 11 have been the first to officially stand in solidarity with us, and there are factions in District 5 who are following suite. Just last week, a group of rebels took out two of the hydroelectric dams there, as some of you here know already, cutting off power to the Capitol for a full day."
People clap, but Grace doesn't think that one day without power is going to bring down the Capitol. A glance to Pete and Steph shows that they feel the same way. Their home is gone, and this is the only consolation they get?
"This revolution is about every person here. But if we all talk at once, nobody will be heard. We need a united voice, a handful of carefully chosen representatives who the people respect and look up to. So, going forward, my sister and I have been producing some video and audio clips which we can use to infiltrate Panem media. We can spread the word of our good cause and show the President that he cannot keep us out of every home, every school, every workplace."
Emma steps forward now, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I decided when I was a teenager that I didn't like the Games." She says quietly, eyes seemingly searching for someone in the crowd. "I saw a boy, my own age, dying on camera. He was kind and strong and so afraid, and I thought to myself, 'there is no point to this'. It was like waking up. One person's story changed my own, completely and irreversibly. And the stories of more tributes, four of whom are with us in this room now, are now doing the same for the next generation."
Pete flushes and Hannah looks down at her lap, braids hanging over her face. Grace matches people's curious gazes with the same ferocity as Steph by her side. She will not be ashamed for being here.
"My sister recently lost a friend." Jane takes back over and Emma looks relieved. "A good man who I am told is the reason she is even a part of this rebellion. I am hoping that, even though he is gone, his story will continue to change the way Capitolites feel about the Games, until the day that it is stopped forever."
She presses a button on a keypad on the wall behind her, and a video is projected onto the wall behind her. It's Capitol footage of Paul, at the most recent Reaping, taking Steph and Pete by the hands and guiding them, shellshocked, off the stage. The Pete in the room with them now shudders as the clip cuts to one of Paul, at a party, moving to stand just in front of a pre-Arena Pete as they talk with a tall, blue-haired lady draped in rich velvet. What appears to be CCTV footage of the event shows the woman reaching out to touch Pete's face, and Paul tugging him out of reach. He says something to the younger boy, who darts out of frame before the clip ends. Another video then, this one of Paul with the other Victors of District 3. It seems like an interview outside the Victors' Village, but he isn't looking at the camera, busy bouncing Bill's daughter Alice, barely five years old, up and down in his arms. A different interview shows him with his arm around Charlotte as she tells the camera how she feels about her new life as a Victor. There's shaky home footage of him and Ted talking in front of a fireplace decorated with shiny trinkets and delicate chains of string lights, and sat between them on the floor are a tiny Pete, Richie and Ruth, playing with tin toy cars.
The video seems to shudder and the image melts again, to a lanky boy folded over on the ground of what is clearly an Arena, covered in blood and surrounded by three corpses. The drone footage of the Games shows in high definition a teenage Paul grasping at the handle of the knife embedded in his side. He cries out weakly and sinks to the floor, eyes fluttering closed. The image changes to him holding the hand of a girl his own age with freckles and green eyes, and as they sit over a fire she smiles shyly. Another cut and the screen shows him, still young but less bloody, leaning over the contorted body of a small girl. He tugs at the axe still gripped in her hand, easing it out gently, before smoothing her matted blonde hair out of her face, and closing her eyes carefully. He wipes a tear away and the clip flickers away into the footage of a Reaping, over a decade ago. The District 3 escort calls out a name, Paul Matthews, and a bright eyed boy steps out from the crowd of children and up onto the stage. He takes the hand of a dark haired girl taller than him who glares at everyone in her line of sight, and the escort sings out: may the odds be ever in your favour.
The screen goes dark. Then, writing; in a sharp scrawl evidently handwritten yet still clearly legible: 'if you come for one of us, you come for all of us'.
Grace takes a deep breath. Nobody breaks the silence, but a quick look around the room shows that these are exactly the kind of dramatics that will win them supporters in this fight. Hannah leans over and whispers to her. "They'll go wherever the story is."
The older girl knows that she means the Capitolites, and knows that she is right. Show them that we're people, in a way that they'll understand - consumable media; propaganda.
"If they want to kill any more of us," Emma announces to the captive audience. "They have to know that they'll only be making more martyrs. Because every single life is worth something, and we're not the kind of revolution that will let people die in vain."
Leaning forward, watching her every movement, every expression, Grace sees it now. That look in Emma's eyes, the way she carries herself and seems never to be able to just sit and be - its grief. Grief, wrapped in determination. And so much the better, she thinks grimly. Nobody ever won a war by being happy.
