we are gods;

Carol’s smirk admitted to it. Suddenly, it all felt better. Even the fading death on screen felt better. “No, you shouldn’t be worried. I’m a smart kid, and I’ve been doing this for the longest time. Except he was alive and worse than my imagination. I can take this.” I want this – but this moved onto something he’d denied before, about this being caprice more than need. Eurydice Atlantica was spitting blood on live television. The alarms all started yelling on Carol’s phone as the vitals were dropping exponentially, exponentially fast. He turned them off with a discrete gesture. He kept watching, this time hardened, less projecting. After all, he had his own ghosts to tend to. There was promise for that. 

He watched Thetis cry with a knot in his throat, though. For the longest time, he couldn’t voice any of it. After a little, he relaxed. The camera passed from the older Atlantica sister to the girl from District Six. Carol allowed himself a deep breath. “Okay.” There it was, his first tribute loss. More sour than expected. Still, he was still taken by the prospect of getting to see Rio again. “This means the fucking world to me, but I know it shouldn’t. I’m working on it.”

“Don’t think I’d like that. It’s an invasion of privacy.” He was delicate enough not to bring up jerking off again. Granted, that was not the purpose. What was pulsing in his chest at the thought of getting to see Rio again, getting to talk to Rio again, had little to do with sex, and was by far more disarming and embarrassing to admit to for Carol. However, when Colette warned that he’d have to talk to her after – implying there was an after – Carol couldn’t suppress the contagious smile his lips tugged in, elastic. And, suddenly, he couldn’t fight the warm feeling of victory. Yes, victory, more than what went down as his Games ended. “Are you worried about me?” he teased, tone coy and proud and glowing. 

“Don’t assume. I told her. I’m a sincere person. She doesn’t find it a good idea because it lacks mediation and can get addictive.” Carol rolled his eyes almost loudly. He believed so much in his arguments that he put, all in, the downsides on the table, to show Colette he was considering all of it. “But you’re mediation, and I don’t plan on asking this favor again. It’s not something I could get anywhere else. And it’s an exercise I think would help right now, not a habit I want to form.” Carol flashed a nearly overconfident smile, trying, hoping.

“They aren’t inherently the same,” he retorted, back a little straighter, suddenly feeling what he imagined would be the feeling of a job interview. “I can be blunt. It’s not a matter of want. Don’t imagine this is some jerking off bullshit. This about the clarity of my mind which, Colette-“ his voice broke into a small, lingering chuckle, that sounded like desperation. “… it is not good. This would bring clarity. If there is a possibility for this that doesn’t hurt anybody, that doesn’t affect anything and anyone but me…” His voice almost broke. Dramatic moment on the television between the Atlantica sisters. With everything coming tumbling down, Carol did his best to hold onto reason. He knew it was now or never, or he’d become a broken record. “You can do something for me that no one else can. And I know it’s not real, but I believe in its utility more than I believe in the therapy I’m going to. Call it a help for introspection. I know it would not be Rio.”

“I think a strange experience might be favorable to no experience at all. You got something from it, even if not necessarily peace of mind,” Carol shrugged, advocating for the weird meeting with her dead teenager mother, advocating for himself, for Rio. “No, you cannot believe that. Closure is a better place to start from than uncertainty and asking questions into the void. Even if it’s sucky closure.” He raised his hands defensively. “I know I’m walking in boots all over your personal shit. I’ll stop here. But, for what it’s worth, I think it was an amazing opportunity for many people in here, to see their loved ones again even a little. I’m–” It took a little stepping over his pride to admit. “… jealous, yeah.”

.

Two very important conversations happened at the same time. Firstly, he wanted to consolidate a connection, and it seemed as if a wall of ice cracked unexpectedly. Then, Thetis and Eurydice were going through the hot point of both their lives up to that moment, probably. It was hello and farewell at the same time. Carol had to compartmentalize. 

He watched the screen while registering Colette’s words. “No, not from her side. Still, you were a different type of close. A different type of holding the knife.” He nodded at Thetis, proposing that she puts Dice out of her misery. It was a difficult sentence for her to say – Carol could see that. He inevitably projected, stupid watery eyes and all. Sniffing away the thought, he circled back to the Quell. “It had to be nice, seeing her again, even if for a limited time.” He swallowed dryly. Was he flying too close to the sun? A retreat, tactful, was in order. “Did it answer any questions? Sorry, of course, about the intrusion. It’s just, as your friend, I can’t pretend you’re not the legend arena baby. Let me know if I’m overstepping.” Surely it couldn’t have been easy to talk about. Carol did not completely lack empathy.

.

“I’ve been a little worried over when this moment would come. Worried about her, I mean,” Carol mused, his eyes not leaving the screen. The terrible feeling of sitting next to a lurking death, powerless and barehanded. He spoke through the gut-punching emptiness. This was a bad time to win over a Gamemaker. “Sure, it was predictable that it would happen, that it couldn’t go on forever. It’s still hard, when it imminently happens.”

“And you can’t even be relieved it’s not the other way around.” Sure, when you’re right in that spot, an inch away from someone’s death, you don’t think in terms of self-preservation, because you can’t. Even Carol would have traded places, in the spur of the moment. That had to be some sort of love.

“But you know all that. Wasn’t your mother cloned into the Quell?” It felt like a bold accusation to imply, but Colette was a Gamemaker. She’d understand more of the Career harshness and pragmatism. She couldn’t be so deluded to think she hadn’t, in fact, killed her mother in a way. “Fuck, that had to be weird.”

.

Carol spoke as someone who was close to the situation, closer than she was now, and she did sympathize for him, and for Thetis and Eurydice. For everyone who went into the Games with a loved one, which was far too many, she thought. She would never understand it except that hormones likely played a big role for those like Rio and Carol, and perhaps family honor was at the heart of it for the Atlantica sisters. Perhaps it was something else.

It wasn’t hormones or family honor that Carol hit when he mentioned her mother, though; it was something deeper, something she hadn’t yet been able to build armor around. The Quell had come so quickly, and then it had gone. With its going had come the bombs, Olympia, and then the rebellion in full swing. She had never managed the time to heal the wounds of Apple; not just Apple’s death, but meeting her at all. Having all of her expectations of her mother switched, or at least troubled, stirred up like dirt on a country road, and never able to settle, as Apple had died.

These thoughts didn’t necessarily go through Colette’s mind in that moment; instead, the feeling of murkiness, of confusion did. She softened a bit with it. “Very weird,” Colette said, “but I didn’t watch from her side. It was always her on the chopping block, not me. Even when we were in an Arena together.”

Ash nodded in agreement. In spite of everything else, the bar was an advantage. She would rather not order drinks from avoxes for obvious reasons, while the fountains were a little too strange for her liking. “Have you even had the time to really take it all in, though?” There was a touch of suspicion in her voice. The gamemakers’ absence earlier in the evening had worried her. “You and your team showed up rather late.”

.

“Yes, well, we were taking something else in,” Colette said, knowing that if the news of where the Gamemakers were -- or at least, a large contingent of them -- hadn’t yet gone out, it would soon. That news, too, may soon be buried under a pile of ash as the Arena erupted. “But these things are all more or less the same, just with different colors and themes.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry, you’re obviously a god! I was only joking.. heh..” Mac quickly defended, putting his hands up in defense. “Obviously only an idiot would think like that, but not me, I’m not an idiot.” He smiled. “But, nonetheless, god or monster, you look amazing.”

.

Lysander pursed his lips together. “Differences in the utility of the temples’ gifts,” he breathed out, not quite enjoying the imbalance of dynamics, not on the account of sex and gender, but pointing out something previously discussed. Life was unfair. That was kind of the point. “It sucks.” He didn’t want to say anything else, but he found himself already speaking, knowing he was preaching, uncalled-for, to the choir. “Surely people fear you still.”

.

She didn’t really ask for his dissertation on gender dynamics, and was glad when he didn’t give it. So many men did when they felt like their feminism was being challenged. “Of course they do,” she said, self-assured, but there was definitely a bit of insecurity beneath it. The worry that no one would ever fear her as much as they’d feared Lysander -- should she get his role, of course. Something she thought about so often that it almost felt inevitable at this point. “They just act differently with that fear.”

Carol rolled his eyes freely, not at all bothered. “In my defense, it’s a stupid rule. It’s almost like you don’t care about your friend.” But he neither pressed further, nor meant it. It was whatever. So he changed the subject. “Is being a Gamemaker even worth it? It sounds like rough business.”

.

“I don’t really care,” she admitted, not even trying to be particularly cold or coarse. It came naturally. “It’s worth it for me. It’s not easy, no, but I had a cushy job before and I hated it. But there are bigs perks. For example, visiting the Arena just before the volcanic eruption -- knowing what’s about to happen -- it’s indescribable. Surely very different from being a tribute. There’s power in being a Career; there’s even more power in being a Gamemaker.”

“Have you been to the other room? It’s worse.” The words left her mouth before she had the chance to really think them through. Did she really dislike the monster room more than this one, or was it just her general unhappiness about being at the ball? The latter actually seemed more accurate. “Or just as bad anyway.”

.

“Oh, no, I think ‘worse’ is an apt descriptor,” Colette said, amused. “At least it has a bar, though.” She didn’t hate all themes, and yet she didn’t like the way they were approached at these balls. It got to be a bit too much; gaudy.

“I think that in itself is the point,” Lysander sighed. Life was purposefully unfair. He didn’t want to cheat the balance in nature. “I told you you need to stop letting people feel like it’s their right to complain to you personally. It shouldn’t concern you. Sure, feedback is engaging, but you’re giving them too much room to talk to you. The Hunger Games are not up for debate.”

.

“You think that because someone spoke their mind to me, without my permission, it’s somehow my fault?” Colette was not amused. “I’m a woman, Lysander. People are afraid of you but they are not afraid of me, even if they should be. They’ll say anything they want to me. It’s not really my fault what others say.” She didn’t care if she was talking a bit too forwardly for someone who was Lysander’s subordinate.

“My, my, let’s keep your head on your shoulders for now, then,” Carol clicked his tongue, not quite fathoming the seriousness of the threat on Gamemakers. A bitter laugh slid through his teeth. “No, no. We’re going to court soon. It’s going to be very much fun.” A nostalgic smile unintentionally found its way on his lips. His next statement was a little more intimate, though still strangely upbeat. “He’d fucking love this.”

.

"I thought we weren’t going to talk about boys,” she said. Was it technically her who’d brought it up though, considering the lawsuit was -- in the most technical sense -- about Rio? “You’re already breaking the basic promises our friendship stands on.”

“Colette, don’t you know? Victors with a Career upbringing are typically very cool about the Games.” There was irony in there somewhere, self-mockery too, but it wasn’t at all false. In all this time since his own Games, he couldn’t get himself to hate the chessboard itself. It’d been him and him alone who did everything. “And, sure, I’d love to know all about the arenas like the next guy, but I don’t want you to lose your job either. It’d ruin our Victor/Gamemaker bestie dynamic.” 

.

“Exactly. While we’d look good in a matching prison-orange, I’d be executed for my crimes. I assume your lawsuit situation has cleared up?” She hadn’t followed it very closely, and now that Radia Thorn was dominating the headlines, her knowledge of Carol’s situation had faded.

A shiver passed by him, leaving Lysander seemingly indifferent, though he held enthusiasm for the eruption. It was going to be one of the most beautiful disasters they have had in a while, an arena melting away, its undoing intentional and all on them. “You surely don’t think God decides, if God is, to begin with,” Lysander breathed out. This all had a purposefully sacrilegious connotation to it. “I’ve always thought that, if I am to play God, the God I shall be playing should not be a dictator, but merely an observer. Someone who prepares and then lets it go.” 

.

“Exactly,” she said. “But I believe that, if there is a God, he stacks the odds. And we’ve done that. I had a mentor complaining to me about the differences in utility of the temples’ gifts.” She rolled her eyes, then returned her gaze to the window, unable to get enough of the view.