♪

08:45.

THE CAPITOL.

“I have a son now, and he’s waiting for me back in Thirteen.” Jesse had said only yesterday, his smile bright and unaware of his own impending fate. “JJ deserves to live in a world better than the one we grew up in.”

For hours, no one dared move from where they were hiding—even when it was clear that the Peacekeepers had long since moved on. Night had bathed the sky in stars by the time Tommy announced that it was safe to resurface. Until then, none of them were certain of who died and who didn’t. The sorrow which gutted Dina was nigh unbearable to witness, but Ellie did her best to offer comfort. Tommy sent a letter out to Marlene immediately and, for hours, they awaited her response. None came.

There is a certain chill which accompanies the group this morning. The sun rose a few hours ago and with it came the acceptance that none of them were able to get any rest. Apparently, the security cameras still worked and their every move was being watched—hence the ambush. They anticipated a second attack, so they remained armed and ready for a fight all night. No such attack ever came.

“How are you?” Ellie sits down beside Dina, who’s staring blankly forward. It’s a stupid question, but she doesn’t know what else to say. And she’d prefer to say something dumb than say nothing at all.

“Jesse was so excited to be a father.” Dina’s voice is rough and, when she turns, her eyes are bloodshot. “I never expected that I’d have to raise JJ on my own, it– it never even crossed my mind. I suppose that makes me naive, thinking my little family would remain happy forever. We’re in the middle of a war, for fuck’s sake.” She drops her head into her hands, but she doesn’t cry. “Jesse survived so much. His first arena was notorious for its cruelty, yet he managed to make it out alive. The Quarter Quell was pretty fucking horrible, too, yet he survived that as well, didn’t he? And depsite all of that, he gets taken out by a fucking Peacekeeper. A nameless piece of shit whose face I’ll never get to see. I don’t– I can’t comprehend it. Jesse knows better than to face his back to someone with a gun, so– so there must have been a reason for him to run. There must have been something he was willing to risk his life for. So why did he go to you? Why did he leave the safety of his own hiding place and risk his life running into your building? Did he know you were in there? Was he just hoping to get somewhere more structurally sound? I don’t– I don’t know what– fuck. If he were here right now, he’d never hear the end of it. He’s such a fucking dumbass.”

Ellie has wondered the same thing. From the moment Jesse’s body fell in front of her, she wondered ceaselessly at why. 

There’s a possibility that he’d simply thought that the Peacekeepers were gone and, when he realized that they weren’t, he ran toward the closest building. But he’s not foolish enough to underestimate a group of governmental murderers. He ought to have known that they were still mulling about. 

Or—like Dina said—maybe he was just unsatisfied with his hiding spot and desired somewhere better. Ellie has to admit that she and Thea had one of the best places: a building that was almost completely intact with walls that could sustain at least twenty bullets before crumbling. But, again, Jesse is no fool. Was no fool. He wouldn’t have risked his safety trying to aim for something better. Perhaps he would have done so when he was younger, but he had a son; he would not have purposefully been so reckless. So why? Why why why?

Before Ellie is able to come up with a response to Dina’s rant, she can hear Tommy shouting orders in the distance. She glances over her shoulder to find that he’s currently instructing Ruben and one of the cameramen, Ivellen Hoare, on how to properly dig a grave. The two men are quick learners and pretty soon they’ve both managed to create two six-foot rectangles. 

“We can bring you back to Thirteen, if you’d like.” Ellie says, turning her attention back to Dina. “If we continue to not hear from Marlene, I’m sure Tommy will send someone back anyway just to be sure she received the letter and is sending the necessary aid. It wouldn’t be a problem for you to tag along. And no one would blame you either, if you wanted to see JJ and get some proper–”

“No.” Dina pushes herself to her feet, wiping her hands down the front of her shirt. “I’m staying.”

Ellie opens her mouth to respond, but Dina is already approaching Ruben and Ivellen. She yanks the shovel from Ruben’s hands and begins to dig. He allows it, taking a step backward to provide her with the necessary space. But she only manages two scoops before she’s pressing her forehead against the wooden handle and hiccuping on her own sobs. 

Ellie leaps to her feet and rushes toward the scene. Dina pushes the shovel far away from herself, then kicks it for good measure. She wipes at her face, but doesn’t manage to staunch her tears. At the sight of Ellie so readily at her side, Dina collapses into her arms.

Ellie cradles her head and tries to support her weight after Dina’s legs seem to give out. She murmurs consolations into her ear, but she doubts she’s listening. Over the dark crown Dina’s head, Ellie can see the concern which has painted itself onto everyone else’s faces. She meets Ruben’s gaze and knows that they’re thinking the same thing: what are they meant to do from here? Their job isn’t to attack the Capitol head-on, it’s to record pretty videos; but there is nothing pretty about grief.

Over the following few hours, six graves manage to get carved into the earth. Robert and Maria spend the whole morning poring over the clips that they got yesterday, trying to make something of them despite not being entirely happy with the footage. But they don’t dare requesting to refilm, not wanting to force anyone into recording today. Not after what happened. 

“I lost my cousin yesterday.” Says Solethia Lave, who is the last remaining stylist after the other four were killed in the ambush. Her hair is an odd color—she dyed it teal, but it’s now outgrown enough to reveal a few inches of her natural brunette roots. Her eyes are blown wide and her voice carries a Capitolistic accent. “I know that it is not nearly as calamitous as losing one’s own husband, but I wish you to know that you are not alone in your grief.”

Dina smiles kindly, asking, “which was your cousin?”

“The littlest one.” Her voice breaks at the end, but she quickly clears her throat and pushes on. “Ludo’s corpse is not little because he died young, he simply never seemed to gain any height as he aged. Oh, how he loathed it. He and I grew up very close, almost like siblings. This is because our fathers were twins, you see, so they lived very near to one another. Even in senectitude, their rollators were always pressed together. Oh, but anyway, Ludo hated his height. When I was a little girl, I would tease him for it and he would chase me around the yard yelling that he would grow taller than both our fathers once he hit puberty. He never did, though. He remained short until his dying breath.”

The three of them stare across the grass, watching as the bodies are lowered into the ground. Ellie cranes her neck just enough to see a small tuft of hair poking from the soil which has not yet entirely covered the body; she wonders who it belongs to. 

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Ellie says, once it becomes clear that Dina won’t respond.

“Thank you.” Solethia says. 

The group has unceremoniously settled into this area for the day. No one officially decided upon it but once they started to dig the graves, it was rather evident that it would be wrong to leave. And so this is where they have stayed: a small neighborhood-like area on the edge of an abandoned town. Once they pass through the remaining stretch of this town, they will officially be in the outer city—which is likely why no one is pressing to keep moving. 

They’re currently at the edge of the neighborhood, where the line of houses stops and a big stretch of land can be seen arching over a hill before giving way to more buildings. Ellie, Dina, and Solethia are sitting on the porch of one of the homes, where the wood beneath them is rotted and damp and even caved in some places. 

A few yards away, in the center of the hill, is where the graves are being dug. A few yards past that is where Cecil and Stephen are preparing the bodies for burial. It’s an oddly compassionate thing for them to do, knowing they’re too old to aid in the digging. And, considering most victims of war are left on battlefields with little grace, it is an undeniably human gesture. The two men wipe blood from the corpses’ skin, brush through their hair, fold their hands neatly over their cold chest, and take care to shut their eyes. Only then do the people doing the digging and burying—Tommy, Ruben, Thea, Penelope, Abigail, Ivellen, and the other cameraworker, Isolde—take the bodies to be lowered. 

Suddenly, their heads all begin to turn upward. 

For a moment, Ellie is confused as everyone ceases their duties in order to look up at the sky. That is, until she follows their gaze. High above the treetops, a hovercraft can be seen descending steadily toward the ground. There is a number painted onto the bottom of it: thirteen. So Marlene did receive the letter.

A ladder is dropped down from the door. Ellie lifts a hand to her hairline to block the sun from her eyes as she squints upward. A body starts to climb down the rungs, but she cannot make out more than a blurred silhouette from this distance. It’s only when Ruben drops his shovel and takes off into a sprint that Ellie realizes who it must be. 

But why on earth would Marlene send you?

11:37.

THE CAPITOL.

Hours were spent preparing you for this mission. Stylists pored over your appearance, hiding every bruise and cut which emerged during your isolation; strategists pored over your behavior, explaining how best to act in front of a group of war-trained victors so as to conceal your true motive. And, even after it all, Marlene saw it fit to visit you prior to your departure.

You were half-way inside the hovercraft when she emerged. Everyone fell still, dipping their heads in respect paid to her presence; you did not follow. She stopped in front of you, smoothing her hands over your shoulders and down your arms. It was seen outwardly as a display of motherly care. But once she was close enough to you to not be overheard, her words cut like knives. “Keep your hands hidden somewhere that their ugly twitches cannot be so easily seen.” She’d said, allowing her fingers to circle around your spasming wrists, holding them forcefully still. “It’s a tell-tale sign of torture, one that would go unnoticed by most. But not by Ruben and Ellie. So keep the damn things out of sight.”

As you step off the ladder, your feet finding purchase against the crunchy dead grass, you replay each word of advice you were given. Each stylist who told you to not touch your face or neck; each strategist who told you to keep your emotions shielded. It was easy enough to fool Marlene, but fooling your brother and past lover will be much more difficult endeavors. They know you better than you know yourself—which isn’t very impressive, these days, but the concept remains pressing.

You inhale deeply, turning toward the hill where everyone else is already perched comfortably. Your body stiffens at the sight of the graves. They’re the first thing you notice: deep, cavernous beds meant to swallow the dead whole. You adjust the hem of your vest, knowing that Marene is analysing every little detail of the place. The color of the grass, the plume of the clouds, the expressions of her pupils. 

Your mind is so enraptured by a woman who is thousands of miles away that you don’t even notice someone is running toward you. Not until his body collides with your own, hurling you both toward the unforgiving earth. Your head thuds against the grass, instantly eliciting a headache. 

When the fog clears and you set eyes on your brother who is laughing airily above you, it is evident that the embrace hadn’t been purposefully rough. Still, images of a murderous and faceless sibling flash through your mind—the ones that the Capitol put there. You shove Ruben away harshly.

“Sorry.” He’s still laughing. “I thought you’d have expected it. I mean, really, our mom trained us to–”

“Yes, yes, yes.” You rise to your feet, brushing the dirt from your back and straightening the hem of your vest. Ruben stands as well, grinning despite the way he massages his mechanical leg with a veiled wince. “She trained us to be perfect and I’m not. I understand plainly.”

His smile vanishes. “What? That’s not at all what I was–”

“I wish she’d sent a damn sign!” Tommy approaches you both with a great wide smile. He pats Ruben on the back heartily and offers a hand out toward you to shake. You don’t. “We didn’t know if Marlene even received our letter. I was ‘bout to send a couple men back to Thirteen to make sure everythin’ was runnin’ smoothly. Glad you’re here, kiddo, but y’all can bet your asses that I’ll be complainin’ to Marlene as soon as we get back. Damn woman.”

You internally grimace at his choice of words, wishing you could somehow convey to him that privacy is a luxury which he no longer wields. Alas, if you were to make any sort of allusion to the truth, Oakley would be the one whose life is put at risk. And, as much as you respect Tommy, you would not hesitate to put his career in jeopardy for the sake of keeping your son alive. The tradeoff is a laughably easy decision to make. You simply must hope that Tommy stops gossiping once he realizes that you’re not laughing along with him—regardless of how badly you wish that you could.

“Allow me to introduce ya to the group.” Tommy reaches for your shoulder, but seems to think better of touching you and instead lets his hand fall awkwardly back down to his side. He clears his throat and continues. “You’re already familiar with most of these faces, and I’ll let ya run loose after I’m done with my spiel. It’s their jobs that ya need to be informed on. Maria ‘n Rob are workin’ on makin’ the footage presentable enough to be aired. They’re in charge of editin’ the clips ‘n makin’ everythin’ pretty. Ivellen and Isolde are our remainin’ cameramen. We had a third, Taviel, but he unfortunately passed away last night in the shootin’. Their job is to record as much footage as possible so that Maria ‘n Rob have a good lot of shit to work with. Solethia is our last remainin’ stylist. The other four were killed, includin’ her cousin. She’s a lovely young lady, though, ‘n I’m sure y’all will get along jus’ fine. Everyone else– meanin’ Ruben, Ellie, Dina, Yasmin, Penelope, Abigail, ‘n Thea are all part of the propaganda cast. This is what you’ll be workin’ on as well.”

You nod along with his words, trying to remember all of their names. You’re certain you’ll get Ivellen and Isolde mixed up—despite them being different genders—simply because their names are so similar. You also try to commit to memory the fact that Solethia just lost her cousin, and to be kind to her. 

Tommy walks you around the hill, showing where all of the supplies have been stored safely in one of the abandoned houses. Some of the people wave and smile at you, others merely scowl. By the time Tommy has finished with his tour, you just want to lay down and rest. To everyone else, it likely seems as though that’s all you’ve been doing—sitting in your little cot in the medical wing, getting more rest than anyone else in the entire district. And, while that might be true, your mind has not earned a single ounce of relaxation since you arrived in Thirteen. Each day, you learn something else about the woman you were before the Capitol took you; something else about what is expected of you. 

No longer do you connect with people in the way you once had. Each conversation carries a burden of what was lost: laughter, touches, smiles, and a mutual understanding which comes only with shared memories. Ones which no longer exist in your own mind, yet continue to plague the recollections of everyone else. 

The lives you’ve taken are lost to the wind. Despite the ability to watch footage of the action, it’s not the same. You cannot remember the warmth of their blood on your hands, nor the sound of their gurgling as they begged you to stop, nor the expression on their face as they exhaled their final breath. You can acknowledge the loss you elicited in their families, but you cannot repent for having done it.

The relationships you formed are now entirely one-sided. Even with your own brother, fondness is stunted within your chest: a concept which struggles to fully form. With Ellie, too—your former lover—nothing feels quite as right as you’re sure it once had. 

Sometimes, you wish Doctor Fulmer were here. Not because he’s an inherently good person, but because he understands you. Perhaps he was the one to turn you into this horrible empty shell of a person, but he always understood what you attempted to explain. When you displayed a sense of passion, whether that be toward anger or sorrow or fear, he was more intrigued than insulted. He would inquire about your deeper motivations, taking notes and snapping pictures in hopes of understanding you deeper. In Thirteen, everyone seems to be concerned, or even fearful, whenever you show emotion—as though the mere idea of your fervor might be enough to destabilize everything they’ve built.

“Hey.” Despite the gentility of Ruben’s voice, you jolt when turning toward him. His eyes are sad, his posture crooked as he favors his non-metal leg. Tommy has long since ceased his mini tour, leaving you to sit alone in the grass. For a long time, you watched from afar as everyone bustled around, each person having a job to do and a motivation to get it done. Ruben lowers himself into the grass beside you, then nudges you lightly with his arm. You turn to find a small grin on his lips, and an evident attempt to make his eyes less rueful. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that Mother failed at making you perfect. I didn’t even mean to even bring her up, to be honest. It just– I don’t know, it just came out. I know your relationship with her is a bit more complex than my own. Especially now that your memories are shuffled.”

You glance down at your shoes, staring at the perfectly-shined toes. Your voice is quiet when it comes. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re walking on eggshells around me. If we used to talk about her, I don’t want to make you stop for my sake.”

“We didn’t, is the thing,” he says with a light chuckle. “We didn’t avoid talking about our childhood, either, we just let it mutually exist between us, I think. There weren’t many times in which it would come up in conversation, as child abuse isn’t exactly a popular topic, but– but sometimes, we would be reminded of it. And, um, during this, we’d slip easily into a reciprocated understanding. Some things would be addressed, others would be left to… continue existing in silence.”

You consider this: the notion of having a mutual understanding with someone who has been by your side throughout your entire life. It’s nigh unfathomable. Now, everything feels disjointed between you both. He still tries to treat you as the woman you’d once been; you still try to see through what the Capitol out in your head. You don’t think you could ever resort back into the exact person you’d been. But maybe—just maybe—you could be a little closer to her. Just a little more resemblant. And perhaps doing that is not about resorting exactly into old ways; nor is it about erasing the past which continuously nags at you. But maybe, instead, it’s about rewriting your relationship into something new. 

“You left me.” You keep your eyes pinned to your shoes, even when you feel Ruben staring at you. “For eight years, I was all alone in that house. It– I don’t remember every little detail, but I know that it was terrible. I know what I endured and I know who’s to blame for it.”

“I know.” He whispers. “I know, and I’m so fucking sorry. There’s no way for me to change what’s already done, but maybe I could atone for it… if you let me.”

You shake your head, trying to keep your thoughts on track. Every fibre of your being is itching for retribution: to hurt him and leave him to bleed. You squeeze your eyes shut, breathing deeply, as you remind yourself to place your trust in him. Because, while you cannot make your pain vanish, you can address it. You can attempt to overshadow it with understanding rather than blind hatred. 

“I don’t know how I could ever have forgiven you.” You say. “I watched the Quell and I don’t– I don’t understand how I could ever have treated you as though nothing ever happened. As though you didn’t abandon me when I needed you most. I don’t know how I could forgive someone who left me like that.”

“I don’t know how you did, either.” He admits, which finally drags your gaze up to his face. When you meet his eyes, he doesn’t even bother feigning a smile. “You were always a much better person than I was. You trusted easier, you loved deeper. You still do, even when you can’t see it.” He takes a deep, shaky breath before continuing. “Before I was Reaped, I was under the impression that it was the meaning of my existence to win the Games, and once that was done, there would be no use for me anymore. I thought life would fall into place once I fulfilled what I was meant to do. Instead, life only became more disorienting. I no longer had a goal to complete, nor a home to rely back on. I was meant to move into some empty house in the Victor’s Village, but I couldn’t stand being alone so I moved to the Capitol instead. They showered me with affection– it was artificial, of course, but affection nonetheless. I basked in it; relied on it, even. Before long, I survived off it. When they offered me an escape via Morphling, I didn’t even consider refusing. And, before I knew it, eight years had passed. You were grown up, and– and I missed out on your whole life. I spent almost a decade under the impression that I could hide from myself with drugs. For that, I face the consequences every time I look at you. At how much you’d grown when I wasn’t paying attention.”

Ruben’s voice cracks at the end, and you don’t have to look at him to know that he’s crying. Your gaze remains firmly trained on your shoes, interrupted only by the hollow blinks of digestion. It’s hard to process Ruben’s perspective, considering you weren’t there to witness it. But, somehow, it is the easiest thing in the world to imagine. Because you’ve lived the same—more or less. You’ve spent time under the influence of Morphling, which you learned only a few weeks ago while flipping through the pages of old newspapers from your and Ellie’s Victory Tour two years ago. 

You experienced the aftermath of addiction, you suffered the consequence of succumbing to it. You also know what it’s like to look at people who hate you for not being there. You know what it’s like to have missed out on an entire person’s life story. You feel this every time you look at Oakley: a boy you have allegedly known from birth, yet can remember only fragments of.

Still, you cannot see past your own selfish rage. You look at Ruben and you see your mother’s face as she forced you to train, train, train because ‘your brother would have performed better than this’ and ‘your brother would not have quit so easily’. You look at Ruben and you see your father’s hand reeling back, you feel yourself cower away from the touch of a parent. You look at Ruben and you see all which occurred in his absence—all which he could very well have prevented. You look at Ruben and you cannot fathom clemency.

“With time, I may come to forgive you again.” You say while standing to your feet. You look down at him, trying your hardest to ignore the way his eyes well with tears unshed. “For now, I just pity you.”

When you turn away, you can hear the shaky exhale which accompanies Ruben’s next breath. You can hear his posture shifting, and the hitch of his quieted sobs.

You love your brother. The reverence which is sewn into siblinghood is unbindable. It is written into the marrow of your bones and soaked into the blood rushing through veins. Despite the faces and experiences which mar your perception of Ruben’s being, you will always love him more than anything else. To have been the cause of his tears elicits an old, carnal anguish. One which defies all sense of sanity and logic. He could very well cut your throat, and your love would ring true all the same. 

Which is why, once you’re wholly removed from his line of sight, you descend into your own wave of tears. You wish you could have hugged him and forgiven him and resorted back to your old ways. But to do so would be to condemn yourself to smothering your true feelings. You told him that forgiveness would come in time, not because you were angry but because you love him too much to lie.

Your tears are not body-shaking sobs, as Ruben’s are. Yours are silent. They trace down your cheeks with the same quietude as your hidden self-loathing. You stand behind a particularly large tree, back pressed against its trunk. You wipe roughly at your face, breathing deep and evenly. And, after a few moments, you straighten your vest and remerge. 

Marlene is watching—and you will not let her see you falter.

There are a few large, white tents being set up at the crest of the hill. One is already done, two others are being actively worked on. You spare a split second to ground yourself before approaching the scene. 

From the already-set-up tent, Maria and Robert can be seen walking in and out with various sorts of equipment. They cart tables and weapons and cameras. As you pass, they both smile and wave. You’re certain they noticed your uneasy conversation with Ruben—as well as the aftermath—and yet they remain friendly and fond. It’s puzzling. They are indelible friends with Ruben, having supported him through all sorts of hardships. And, while they may once have been friends with you as well, you’re no longer the person they knew. Had they been forced to choose between the siblings, Ruben would no doubt be their choice. So why are they feigning cordiality with someone they have no reason to care for?

You brush past their tent and approach one of the others. It’s so large that it could house ten people easily. The legs are made of metal—which are currently being staked into the ground. The walls and ceiling are made of white fabric that would not easily tear. Tommy, Ivellen, and Thea are actively struggling to manage it all on their own. At your arrival, they offer the same fond smile that Maria and Robert offered prior.

“Could use an extra set o’ hands, if you’re willin’.” Tommy calls out. 

You consider it for a moment, though the answer is clear: you’ll accept, of course, as you have nothing better to spend your time on. And so you nod, offering your much-needed set of hands. 

On one side of the tent, Tommy and Ivellen are pressing and stomping on their stakes, trying to drive them into the dirt. On the opposite end, Thea can be seen on the verge of giving up, her expression exasperated and her jaw clenched. You take your place at her side, leaning over to help with the stakes. Sweat beads along her forehead, heat flushing her cheeks and nose. 

“Thank you.” Her voice is soft despite the evident frustration welling up within her. She heaves a deep sigh, leaning back on her heels to assess her work—or lack thereof. You spend a few minutes trying to press your own stakes into the ground, but to no avail. You’ve managed to drive one of them a few measly inches into the dirt before Thea opens her mouth again, having not stopped staring at you. “You do not remember me, do you?”

You turn toward her, shocked. “I don’t–”

“Do not lie.” She smiles a thin, sad smile. 

“Okay.” You drop the stake and turn your attention fully to her, your position and body wholly open. “I don’t remember you, but there is a fondness that accompanies your presence. I know you’re a friend because I feel safe around you. That, and because I watched the footage from the Quell.”

Thea sighs, her head tipping back toward the sky. She shuts her eyes. “I loved you.” You blink at her, unsure what to say. Slowly, she opens her eyes once more and looks at you properly. “Not romantically, but it might as well have been. I’d never trusted someone so much. I’d never loved someone so much. So what does it matter, whether it was romantic or not. The love was overwhelming and all-consuming. I would have died for you, and I still would.”

“Why?”

The question, to some, may seem asinine. Thea already explained how deeply she loved you, so the answer should be obvious: she would have died for you because she loved you. But the question is why would she still? Why, after all this time, and after everything about yourself has changed, would she still be willing to lay her life down for someone who cannot even recall her favorite color.

“I do not know how much of our friendship was cut from the footage of the Quell, but we had once held a conversation much like this one. We walked the beach at night, confiding in one another as death came preening at our feet. And, though it was ill-timed, that conversation is what solidified my love for you.” You’ve both entirely abandoned all attempts at fastening the tent into the ground, the stakes lying discarded and forgotten to the side. “Neither of us had many friends growing up, never formed true relationships with people prior to our first Games. When you killed Thalia, I spent weeks fantasizing about getting revenge. Only when I met you did it become clear that her murder was not so black and white as I made it seem. You and I are two sides of the same coin. Our childhoods are not entirely mirrored, but they resemble each other so much that it would be impossible to feel apathetic toward one another. We would either have to hate each other, or love each other. And I knew that I would be the one to make that decision, based on whether or not I held a grudge for what you did to Thalia. We slowly became friends, then something more. Something that transcends what I could ever explain. Perhaps that’s because love remains undiscovered by me, or perhaps because we do have something special. Regardless, I want you to know that you will always have a friend in me. You will always have someone who is indelibly at your side.”

You shake your head. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am dead serious.”

“I killed your baby sister?” You continue to stare at her as though she just grew three heads, unable to fathom the mental strength Thea ought to possess if she’s capable of such forgiveness. “I killed her without remorse, and you still decided to become my friend? My best friend?”

“Yes.” She does not falter in her reply. “I would happily assure you over and over of the finality of my decision, but I do not think that’s what you need. Right now, what you need most is a shoulder to lean on. You need someone who you do not have to second-guess the intentions of; someone you do not have to feel guilty for disappointing. I know you, Y/n.  I know how this must be for you. With Ruben and Ellie, you feel shame for not being the woman who you think they want to see in you. With everyone else, you cannot bring yourself to ever trust them—not after what the Capitol did to you. But that’s what I’m here for. You don’t need to feel any shame or distrust in me. I was taken by the Capitol, too, so I’m one of very few people who can understand what you experienced during your time there.”

She reaches out, grabbing and clutching your hands in her own. They spasm and shake, but she remains wholly firm: the other side of your coin. She leans forward, resting her forehead against your knuckles. You stare down at her, unsure what to say or what to do. Your shoulders and spine are tense, unused to such a blatant display of affection. Ruben adheres to words when expressing his love for you; Ellie keeps herself at arm’s-length, never truly expressing what she means. But this? This feels entirely new.

After a few moments, Thea lifts her head. She pulls her hands away, but this time you’re the one to surge forward and grip her again. She blinks, shocked. You hold on tight. While you might not know what to say, you know that you don’t want to let this slip through your fingers.

Thea was right about one thing: she might be the only person in the world who you will eventually feel entirely comfortable with. You don’t need someone who loves you unconditionally as Ellie and Ruben do; you don’t need someone who will look past your flaws and love you anyway. You need someone who is capable of standing up to your weaknesses and making you better for it; you need someone who has once hated you unconditionally. 

Thea knew you. She watched you kill her sister, and she wanted you dead. She plotted on how to get her revenge. For this, she saw you in the absolute worst of lights. She saw you as a monster, and yet she loved you anyway. Thea suffered at the hands of the Capitol, experiencing a torment that the ordinary person could never dream of imagining. 

“If you need anything,” she says, “anything at all, come to me.”

You continue to hold her hands, continue to watch her three heads triple into nine. A million things lie on the tip of your tongue, but you reel them back. You don’t want to place all of your burdens on her shoulders for fear of scaring her away. But, on second thought, she has likely known worse. So with the confidence of a million suns, you blurt the thing which weighs heaviest on your shoulders. “I told Ruben that I can never forgive him for something that he’s already atoned for. What if– do you think I’ve pushed him away forever, in doing that? Do you think he could ever forgive me for not forgiving him?”

Thea remains silent for a moment. Then she laughs. “Oh, Y/n. The bond you and your brother hold is insurmountable. There is no world in which he does not forgive you. No matter what, he will never leave you. His devotion is scary, honestly. Had you murdered a king in cold blood, he would plead guilty to keep you from the pyre. Your inability to forgive him is no fault of yours, but of the Capitol. He knows that your mind is still healing; he knows better than to expect infallibility from you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

23:08.

THE CAPITOL.

There is a leash on you. Ellie can see that something in you has changed; something is holding you back, and she believes Marlene to be at fault. Whenever someone begins to speak ill of the interim president, you’re the first to argue in her favor. Whenever someone complains about the way Thirteen is run, you’re the first to argue that it is a paradise unimaginable. 

No one else has even seemed to notice. But Ellie has; of course she has. 

The sun has long since set, putting a pin in a long and exhausting day. She was relieved to finally retire into the newly-assembled tents, only to find that nighttime will likely be the hardest of all to surmount. Lying cold and alone in the dark leaves her yearning for your touch—your warmth. And, now having been rotated on watch, it has only gotten worse. She sits on one side of the tent, fiddling with a braided band of grass that she’d been working on through the night. Across from her—on the farthest opposite side of the tent—you lay sleeping next to Thea. Your head is on her shoulder, your hand draped across her stomach.

Ellie knows Thea very well, and so she knows that the situation is entirely platonic. But that does not diminish the ache in her heart at observing such a scene. It seems as though there are spotlights from the stars, shining down on you to accentuate the fact that Thea lays exactly where Ellie longs most to be.

Earlier today, it did not escape Ellie’s notice that the two of you spent hours chatting. Atop the hill, sprawled in the grass, your mouth hardly stopped moving as you talked and talked and talked. Ellie doesn’t think she’d heard your voice for longer than a few minutes, none of your conversations ever lasting more than a few sentences due to mere necessity. She assumed that was due to the fact that you were forced into obedience by the Capitol. She assumed, for sure, that it was no fault of hers. But now, she begs to differ. Had she been more like Thea—however that may be—perhaps you would have confided in her as well, rather than avoided her all day.

Ellie does not know, honestly, whether she is strong enough to continue like this: loving you in silence. One of her paramount attributes is the intensity with which she loves. To bottle it up is to diminish her own soul, and she cannot continue like this. 

From afar, her eyes trace your every feature. She memorizes you, as she always has done. The way you breathe, the way you shift, the way you exist. She etches it into her mind, making note of all which is the same and all which is different than before. She watches your fingers spasm, even in slumber. She watches your chest rise and fall with each breath. And when she notices a hitch in your exhalation—a tell tale sign of a night terror—she stifles the instinct that claws at her to console you. Instead, your arm tightens around Thea’s torso, drawing her closer. 

Ellie turns away, unable to stomach the sight any longer. She does not know how much time has passed during which she stared and stared at you, but she knows that it is over. She turns her attention toward the other sleeping figures in the room.

Tommy and Maria share their space, curled together as though they were born for it. Ellie thinks, deep down, that perhaps they were. The relationship they share is one which she idolizes—one which reminds her of the one she shared with you, before. 

A few yards away from them, Robert is asleep sitting up. His arms are crossed over his chest, his head slumped forward in a way that promises a pain in his neck come morning. In his lap, documents and cameras are perched at the ready. Robert’s machines and papers are to him what a bow and arrow are to Ellie: a means to aid in this war. And, come to think of it, she can see why. Without them, he has no way to prove his worth. Doing his job and remaining at Marlene’s side is how he assists this revolution. 

She casts her gaze around the room, seeing each and every person who has come together in spite of everything. Every person who is willing to lay down their life to see this country become a better place. 

Stephen and Cecil lay together, a tangle of limbs and snores. Solethia, Isolde, and Ivellen sleep in proximity, having since bonded over the disregard Marlene holds for them all. Yasmin and Penelope do not sleep close together, for that would display fondness—which, to the L/ns, is deemed a weakness—and so, instead, they simply face one another, unknowingly displaying that fondness all the same. Abigail is alone, shivering and cold, in the corner of the room. Her back faces the rest of the room, but Ellie can still see the way she breathes unevenly: not yet wholly asleep. Dina, too, appears to not be wholly in slumber—for which no one could blame her. Her eyes are closed and her body is shrouded in a blanket, yet she remains conscious. Ellie wonders if she will ever be able to truly sleep without Jesse by her side. 

When she turns to where Ruben lays, she jolts at finding that his eyes are open and piercing cleanly through her. Only a few moments ago, she could have sworn that he was asleep. And yet: “we’re all going to die on this mission.”

Ellie quickly assures herself that his voice—albiet quiet—did not wake anyone who was not already awake. Then she turns to him again, unsure whether to rebuke him for having spoken so negatively or console him for having suffered such a heavy thought. She settles on something in the middle. She scoots toward him, closing the distance stretched between. Her shoulder nudges his own, and he only slumps at the contact. 

“Sending us here was a gamble on Marlene’s part.” He says. “She knows that her presidency will never thrive while you and Y/n are here to challenge her. She knows that, in order to dictate the whole of the country, the two of you must be made into martyrs rather than revolutionaries. And so she gambled on it. She placed all of her ‘wild cards’ on the front lines. If we die, her power will not go unquestioned again. If we survive, which I doubt, she will probably find another way to be rid of us.”

Ellie sighs, watching as Ruben drops his chin onto his bent knee. He stares at the grass in front of them, illuminated only by the stars that filter through the overhead tent canopy. A long silence stretches between them as Ellie ponders what to say next. She wishes she were better at this—at consoling the people she loves. And yet, she has always felt powerless in the face of their sorrow. What she’s good at, however, is rooting out the cause of their pain. Perhaps, if she can do that with Ruben, she can try to eradicate whatever is weighing on him so much that it has pushed him into such a terrible mindset. The problem, however, is that there are so many reasons. His fiance has been taken from him; his sister has been taken from him; the country is at war; his life is a bargaining chip. But, over this past year, she has gotten to know him quite well. Well enough that she knows what it is he cares most about—what pains him most.

“What did she say?” 

Ruben laughs a quiet, dry laugh. “I should’ve known you’d ask me that. Afterall, if anyone understands what it’s like to be hated by the person you love most in the world, it’s Ellie Williams, isn’t it?”

“What did she say, Ruben?” She asks again.

“When she was eight, I was Reaped. You know this. You know that I left home and never came back to save her from it. You know how pissed she was at me. But you also know that she has long since forgiven me. She came to terms with what happened and she let it go. We finally, finally were able to be best friends as well as siblings. Everything was perfect before Fedra killed her.” He winces at his own words, knowing very well that you’re not actually dead, despite how often it sometimes feels like you are. He drops his head into his hands, breathing deeply. “That happened years ago. I’d nearly forgotten about it. I put the past far behind me. But, for her, the past is at her heels. She remembers it as keenly as what she ate this morning. I dont– what am I supposed to do? She said she can’t forgive me, but– but I was twelve! What the hell am I supposed to–”

“Make up for it.” Your voice cuts through the air like a knife, as sharp and precise as the sword you wielded in both Games. Both heads snap toward you. You’re sitting up, hair and face still mussed by the sleep you’d been priorly enraptured by. “I saw how we used to be during the Games, back before– before all of this happened to me. You’d made up for what you’d done, and so I forgave you. In order for me to forgive you again, you must amend your mistakes again. And I know that’s not fair to you, but– but I don’t think I could ever–”

“I understand.” Ruben’s voice is a solemn noise. “I’ll try to make up for it.”

You sit there, staring at him, for a long time before you finally nod and lay back down. Ellie watches as you take your place beside Thea once more, this time keeping your hands to yourself. She wonders if you did it for her sake, or simply out of your own comfort. Regardless, she is grateful.

08:35.

THE CAPITOL.

You’ve been following Thea around like a lost puppy since dawn. Wherever she goes—private or not—you’re never too far behind. If Tommy calls her over for a confidential discussion, he has come to accept that you’ll be present as well; if she needs to urinate behind a bush or a tree, you’re somewhere close, albeit with averted eyes. 

She doesn’t seem to mind, although you cannot be entirely sure. Thea is not one to wear her emotions plainly, as she favors keeping them shielded away and hidden from the naked eye. Before all of this, you’re sure that you’d once been able to read her like an open book. But now, she’s as foreign to you as everyone else. Still, you console yourself with the lie that she wants you there—she wants you to be within her reach no matter where she goes. You tell yourself, over and over, that she would let you know if you were annoying her. Afterall, she did say that she would always be by your side. Even if she hadn’t meant it literally.

“You’re not bothered by me, are you?”

Thea turns, mouth still agape as she sips from a rusted water hose. She is hunched over, the front of her shirt growing damp. Her eyes find your face and she pauses her drinking only long enough to respond. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

“I don’t know.” You glance down at your hand, twisting the moth-shaped ring around your finger. “I’ve been following you around all day, and I didn’t want to make you feel– I don’t know, crowded? I don’t want you to be annoyed with me, is all. If you want me to leave, you can say so and I will, I promise.”

She straightens, wipes her face, then twists the faucet of the hose off. You watch her wearily, anticipating when she inevitably tells you that, yes, she has been annoyed by your constant proximity. Instead, she looks at you with an expression of pity, her hands planting themselves on her hips. Her eyes rake down your body, tracing each and every one of your kinesics. You force yourself still, dropping your hand away from your ring and squaring your shoulders to appear more confident.

“To be completely honest, I enjoy having you around.” She says decisively. “It has been so long since either of us have had a companion. It is wholly normal for you to cling to me, and, if you weren’t, I would be the one clinging to you. No matter what, we would be inseparable, I think.”

A small smile crawls onto your face. “Really?”

She grins in turn, “really.”

11:42.

THE CAPITOL.

The group has been walking toward the outer city all morning. 

As soon as the sun peeked its head over the horizon, Tommy and Maria had already started packing everything up. Within a half hour, the tents were torn down and everyone was on the road again. The sun beats down on their shoulders, even more scalding than usual due to their black clothing. 

Ellie’s fingers twitch toward her arrows at every noise. If someone suddenly coughs, if a rabbit rustles a bush, or even if someone steps on a twig, she is seconds away from releasing an arrow in their direction. And, with each benign noise, she is disappointed to find that it’s not an enemy at the other end. Not because she necessarily enjoys violence, but because she is itching for some way—any way—to extract the building frustration from her chest. And she knows that it’s nonsensical, but every time she sees you with Thea, the frustration grows. Every time she hears you laugh at a joke that’s not hers, it grows. Every time she sees Dina walking alone without Jesse at her side, it grows. Every time the sun makes her skin itch, it grows.

“Let’s take a break!” Tommy calls from the head of the group, signalling for them to all pull off into a little space between two buildings. Their cement walls and ceilings have crumbled, and it disgustingly reminds her of the first Games: of clicking mutts and a love unrequited.

The group is quick to disperse, everyone finding a way to make themselves useful. They sit against the fragmented walls, relishing in the weight taken off their legs. They pass around a canteen of water, each person only drinking a fragment of what their body actually needs so that it will make it around to everyone. When it reaches Ellie, she does not drink from it. She tips her head back and swallows, but does not actually allow any water to enter her mouth. It’s not smart, maybe, but she’d much rather everyone else get their share. 

This is their second break today. The first time, they’d been in someone’s abandoned back yard, where a rusted garden hose was passed around the group. That time, they’d drank more than they could stomach, relishing in the rarity that accompanies not having to ration food and drink.

Beside her, Ellie can see Ruben massaging his leg. He removes his prosthetic, propping it against the wall beside him, and tries to ease some of the pain from his severed thigh. She feels for him, but knows how much he loathes when people pity him for the leg. For anything else, he does not mind being pitied—he doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t hate it, either. But the leg is a sore subject. If he knew that she was watching him, he would almost instantly bristle and demand that he is perfectly fine and not in-need of her sympathies.

“Ruben!” Robert calls out. 

They both turn toward his voice to find that he’s standing just out of the clearing, his hands on his camera. Ruben turns to Ellie with a heavy frown, and she knows exactly how it feels to be beckoned for propaganda. Even if the videos are short, they’re still oftentimes miserable to film. With a sigh, Ruben begins to put his prosthetic back onto his leg, then pulls himself to his feet. She watches him, trying to keep the compassion from her gaze.

She watches from afar as Ruben stands in front of the camera, listening as Robert explains the contents of what must be filmed. They’re just out of earshot that no one can hear their words, but Ellie can read the expression on Ruben’s face well enough to understand how terrible this particular filming is about to be for him. She wonders what it regards. You, perhaps. But that’s so overdone, she thinks Robert would prefer something less seen by the Capitol—something easily forgotten but horrible nonetheless.

Ellie peels her eyes away from Ruben, looking across the clearing to where Dina sits alone. Her legs are pulled against her chest, her arms crossed over her knees. She stares at the ground, eyes bloodshot and burning like asphalt under the summer sun. Ellie shifts, about to approach her, when shuffling can be heard to her left.

She turns to find you lowering yourself down beside her.

You don’t look at her, gazing forward at Dina in silence. Ellie watches you, as she has done so many times before, trying to read your emotions and elucidate your motives. Your eyes flick all over Dina’s hunched form, like you’re attempting to decipher an unintelligible text. Like you could never imagine the pain of losing a loved one—which seems so impossible, as you’ve lost more people than anyone should ever have to suffer through losing. And yet you can remember none of the pain. You can remember none of the losses.

“You and she are the same.” Ellie blinks at the sound of your voice, lowered just enough so that only she can hear it. The softened tone feels almost intimate. You continue to stare at Dina, not caring to check whether Ellie is listening or not. Maybe it makes no difference to you; or maybe you know how desperate she is to hear your voice. “The same grief she experiences lives in you, too. I might not be dead, but I might as well be. The person you loved is gone just the same. Only you feel that you have no right to mourn her.” Finally, your head twists and you meet her eyes, eliciting a collision of souls. “I want you to know that you’re allowed to mourn her. I won’t be offended if you do.”

“You act like you’re two different people.” Ellie whispers, slumping back against the wall at her spine.

You appear genuinely confused. “Are we not?”

“No.” She says, wishing she could somehow make you believe it. “You’re still the same person, only changed. Sometimes in drastic ways, sometimes in subtle ways. Sometimes not at all.”

“I don’t think so.” You turn back toward Dina, who has still not yet noticed your staring. Who is still so caught up in her grief that the material world is something far off. “I watched the Games and I’ve heard rumors. I don’t relate to that woman at all—which is a shame, because she sounds amazing. But her kindness and her empathy– the things people loved most about her… they don’t live in me. It takes a great effort for me to be kind, and I have to direct all my focus in order to empathize with anyone. So, no. I don’t think we’re the same person at all. She is a version of me, sure, but she is long gone. Dead.”

Ellie wishes you hadn’t said that. Or perhaps she wishes you hadn’t said it like that. She knows that the version of you that existed before the Capitol took you has long since evanesced. But she likes to think that version is just hiding somewhere deep within your chest, and she simply has to reach down and pull you back to the surface. To think that version is entirely gone—never to be seen again—is an unbearable thought. To imagine that the gentility you worked so hard to develop has been entirely rid from the world is unfathomable. You have to be there; you have to come back to her.

“No. She’s not dead.” Even to her own ears, Ellie’s voice is a pathetic plea for something unattainable. 

You shake your head, looking at her with a sense of pity that rarely ever crosses your face. “If you say so.”

A long silence stretches between you. Neither seem to know what to say. She wants to bring up the time you visited District Nine together and you said that she was warm—that her proximity felt benign amidst a world of cruelty and pain. She wants to get on her knees and beg you to search deep within your chest, to feel around until you find her wife again. She wants to cry into your shoulder until you say her name like you used to. But she knows how foolish it would be to do any of those things. Because, like you said, that version of you is deceased. Ellie is clinging to a corpse that has already gone cold.

She wonders whether you miss her—subconsiously or otherwise. She wonders if there is a fragment of your heart which yearns for the woman who had once made it whole. She wonders if, at night, your hand reaches instinctively toward an empty part of the bed. She wonders if you dream of moments you’d once shared, if you wake in a cold sweat longing for them to come again. She wonders if you crave the taste of her lips the way she craves yours. Even if you’re unaware of it, she wonders if you miss her too.

As the silence stretches and stretches, she notices multiple moments in which you open your mouth just to close it again. She allows her mind to wander, to imagine all those things you’ve left unspoken. Are they declarations of love that died on your tongue the moment you remembered you’re supposed to hate her. Or are they vicious insults that faded upon realizing that you’re trying to grow past that. 

But, regardless of what you’d been wanting to say, it makes little sense that you’d have left them unsaid. Whether it be declarations or insults, you have more reason to verbalize them than to hide them. Unless—as she’s been pondering since your arrival—you’re being monitored.

“Something happened,” she suddenly blurts. “Before you came here, something happened, didn’t it?”

Your expression is wiped clean when you turn to her. But she knows you. She notices the tiny details of your composure within which your facade slips. Your thumb spins her ring—just once. Your jaw ticks. Your pinky finger spasms. Still, you tip your head to the side and ask, “what are you talking about?”

Ellie sighs. “You might have changed, but there are aspects about you that you can never hide from me. I once knew you better than I knew myself. I noticed, Y/n, as soon as you got here, that something was wrong. Your behavior is just– odd. It took me a while to figure it out, but I’ve seen you like this before. During the Games, or during the Victory Tour, you act like this… like you’re being watched. Like every decision you make could be used against you, or like–”

You’re standing up, shoving yourself to your feet with a huff. The scowl you shoot her way is deadly. You shift the collar of your vest before speaking next. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

But before she can respond, a scream cracks through the air.

Ellie leaps to her feet, an arrow instant nocked and at the ready. You begin to rise as well, but she grabs your shoulder and insists that you stay put. Of course, you slap her hand away and demand that you’re just as capable as she is. Ellie is forced into silence as she tries not to think of Dina—whose lover was murdered within a split second for having only made a singular mistake. And, as though her silence settles it, you take off in a sprint toward the scream. Ellie—as always—rushes after you.

When she reaches the scene, everyone has already crowded around, making it difficult to see what exactly happened. But when Isolde buckles over and vomits, Ellie is provided a clear line of sight.

Lying motionless on the ground, Cecil is covered in his own blood. Hovering over him, a clicker actively feasts on his mangled throat. She can see each artery and vein that has been split by the mutt’s teeth, draining the life from his soul one rivulet of crimson at a time. 

Before anyone else can rationally react, Ellie has already shot her arrow through the creature’s throat. It gurgles and thuds to the ground—just as she’s suddenly being shoved harshly into the person beside her, evidence of someone having pushed their way to the front of the crowd. Too late, she realizes that it was Stephen. And he is now bearing witness to the gruesome happening. He drops to his knees. He grabs Cecil by the shoulders and sobs, loud and wrenching, into his husband’s bloody chest. For a long time, no one moves; no one dares to make a sound. Then–

Bang! No one noticed that Stephen had a gun on him. Worse, no one noticed that he’d pulled it from his waistband, his actions half-hidden behind Cecil’s corpse. 

And, just like that, there are now two more people to mourn tonight. Two more bodies to bury.

notes ⸝⸝.ᐟ⋆   rip

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07:15.

DISTRICT THIRTEEN.

You did not sleep for more than a few minutes through the night. Each time, you’d wake up gasping and screaming. Your legs would kick out and your hands would fly to your throat, ensuring that you can breathe. Each time, you’d be disappointed to find that you are alone.

Ellie and Ruben were both forbidden from leaving their compartments through the night, as Marlene did not wish for them to lose any sleep before this morning’s big mission. Unknowingly, all she accomplished was condemning them both to restlessness—Ellie due to Oakley’s wails, and Ruben due to his own inability to relax when he’s alone. 

When two guards file into your room with a metal tray of food, you find yourself curling away from them. Their masks are identical to the Peacekeepers’ only they’re a different color; you wonder if Marlene is aware of this, or if it’s just a horribly ironic coincidence. The guards which frequent your room are well aware of your distaste for their masks, and so they typically remove them prior to entry. Not these ones, though. These ones approach your cot with the masks firmly over their faces.

“We won’t hurt you, little light.” Says one of the guards as he lowers the tray onto your lap. The metal is cold. His hand lingers on your thigh for a moment, causing the other man to chuckle behind him. “We’re on your side now, right? We’re on your side.”

You have been in this situation more times than you can count during your stay in the Capitol. But only in the beginning, as Fedra quickly learned that you don’t play nice with touchy Capitolites. 

These men simply haven’t learned yet, you tell yourself. They don’t know.

Sometimes, Capitolites would visit you and touch you but they would eventually leave when you did not reciprocate. You hope that is what these men will do: leave once they are disappointed. Unfortunately for them, they push onward. 

The man’s hand travels higher up your leg as the shield over his face reflects your face back at you. It is oddly disturbing, looking into your own eyes as someone does this. He doesn’t get far, however, before your hand snaps up to grasp his wrist. His uniform is padded all around, but bones are bones and they break just as easily regardless of fabric. He shrieks with pain, staggering backward as he clutches his own awkwardly-bent arm. You are admittedly shocked by how easy it was to send a rebel-trained soldier away crying. His friend is not so facile.

As the first guard slumps against a nearby wall, speaking frantically into his walkie, his counterpart grows rough. He does not make the same mistake as the other man; this one does not underestimate you. He braces one knee on the side of your cot, sending the metal tray clattering to the ground and your breakfast spilling over the floor. He grabs at your shoulders, shoving you down into the pillows. He straddles your lap and leans forward. 

“You’ll have to try harder than that.” He whispers. “We were expecting to get a little sunburnt.”

You thrash your legs and buck your hips, but the guard does not falter. He holds your firm by the shoulders—but that is precisely his mistake. He should have held your arms down instead. Focusing on your shoulders means that your hands are free. 

You bite your tongue until you taste blood. Then again until you start to cry. You wait until he leans forward again, this time to coo something seductive and mocking into your ear. While his face is close, you take the opportunity to reach up and yank his mask from his face. He gasps, scrambling for it. But you have already dropped it to the floor beside your breakfast tray.

You look him in the eyes. The same guard who has been so sweet and gentle to you since your arrival is now pinned you to a bed. You are not shocked so much as disappointed. 

The man bares his teeth, reeling an arm back. He punches you across the jaw once, twice, three times before you gather sense enough to surge forward. Your forehand collides with his and he groans, but does not stop. So you move to the side, just slightly—and just quickly enough that he does not notice until it is too late. Until his head is gushing blood and you are spitting his ear onto the ground. He screams, grasping at his own skull and stumbling backward as his voice goes raw.

“You are both weaker than any little girl I’d ever met.”

Before either can react, your door is being thrown open, the handle banging against the wall. A triad of soldiers file into the room, all their masks already removed. They take one glance around the room: you, smiling with blood drooling from your mouth, and the two guards, both on the ground writhing in pain. 

It doesn’t take long before you’re being handcuffed and escorted to Marlene.

08:21.

THE CAPITOL.

Ellie is not a soldier today, she is a character in Marlene’s play. 

Squad 451 was informed this morning that they would not be fighting in the Capitol for their country’s freedom; instead, they would be flashing smiles and pretty words at a camera—as usual. She really shouldn’t have expected anything different, but she’d been hoping to be of importance in the chapter of the Capitol’s official downfall. Everyone else remains moderately composed, though Ellie is seething.

“Lighten up,” chimes Jesse as he approaches her. She’s currently pouting, sitting on the ground as she flicks pieces of gravel into the grass. He sits down beside her, nudging her shoulder with his own. “Perhaps we won’t be risking our lives to save a ton of ungrateful Capitolites– so what? We get to spend our time getting pampered, instead of trying not to die.”

She sighs heavily; perhaps dramatically. Her head falls between her knees and she stares at the little spikes of grass growing between cracks in the pavement. “You don’t get it, Jesse. I’ve been acting like a goddamn symbol of peace for the past year and a half. But if I’m being completely honest, peace is the last thing I want.”

“I do get it.” His voice is suddenly much more serious than it’d been when he first approached her. She risks a tilt of her head. She rests her temple against her knees as she watches Jesse struggle to straighten out his thoughts. “I have a son now, and he’s waiting for me back in Thirteen. I don’t want to shake Fedra’s hand and ask for a royal pardon. I want his head on a spike and his dick on a kabob.”

She laughs at that, unable to help herself. Jesse smiles, tipping his head back to gaze at the sky—clear enough that he could drown in it. She watches as his smile slowly evanesces, replaced by solemnity. 

“JJ deserves to live in a world better than the one we grew up in.” He tells her. “One where he doesn’t fear his twelfth birthday, and he doesn't have to watch his friends get murdered on television. I want him to blow out birthday candles with a smile. I want his television to show bright colors with hand puppets and talking animals. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“Neither did we.”

For a long time, they sit in silence. On the curb of an abandoned street in the Capitol, they allow the weight of such a truth to stretch and expand in the space between them. Ellie wonders, for the first time in a long time, what her life would be like without the Games. 

Riley would still be alive, and she would be laughing. Maybe they would hunt on the weekends, or maybe they wouldn’t—because, without the Capitol starving out the districts, they would never have had to learn how to hunt to survive. They would get into petty arguments about who stole whose shirt, instead of their fights ending with an axe to the brain. They would have been able to laugh in the woods without fearing a Peacekeeper shooting them dead. Ellie would have been able to see what Riley looked like when she grew old.

Marlene would perhaps not hate Ellie so much as she does now. Without the rebellion stuffing her full with an insatiable hunger for power, perhaps Marlene would be a pleasant woman. Somehow, Ellie doubts it. 

Or maybe, if Ellie were to go even farther back into her past than that, she would never have had to be raised by Marlene if her mother never died. And, without the Hunger Games, perhaps her mother would have had access to a hospital in District Seven and the childbirth would not have killed her. Ellie has long since overcome the grief of not having real parents but, for some reason, the wounds now feel fresh—like a bruise which only aches when pressed on. And, boy, did she press: thinking about an alternate reality in which she had loving parents, all while caged away in the capital during a civil war. Yeah, someone needs to teach her when to stop pondering on shit like that.

“Gather ‘round!” Tommy shouts from across the field. 

The group isn’t as small as it typically is during her campaigns, but it’s not nearly as large as the other troops which were actually sent here to fight rather than smile. Marlene almost refused to send Tommy on the mission for fear of losing her most trusted advisor but—upon his and his wife’s insistence to not be separated—she acquiesced. Robert and Maria are both present for the sake of having the propaganda footage be collected properly. Alongside them is a crew of about five stylists and three cameramen. Dina, Jesse, and Ruben are all here too, of course. All the victors are; even those who should perhaps have not yet been dispatched from the medical bay. 

Yasmin was not taken by the Capitol, but if you ask Ellie, she has always had a screw loose. One which would prevent a less influential person from accompanying on a mission which could very well change the tides of this war. But alas, Ellie was not included in the planning for this particular job. Stephen and Cecil were also both brought along, for appearance’s sake. Being the faces of District Twelve, Marlene thought that their insight into the tragic destruction of their home could make for some good footage. 

And, most controversially, the triad of maltreated victors: Thea, Penelope, and Abigail. The three of them have improved drastically from when they were first brought to Thirteen, but they’re not entirely yet whole. Thea is the most improved, though she was deemed the least impaired from the start. She seems almost herself, bar the severe flinching at abrupt movements and sounds. Penelope—despite now being mute and partially blind—is also pretty resemblant of her past-self. So, really, it’s Abigail who is the main issue. Ellie is biased of course, but no one could possibly deny that she is the least sane of the three. She still mumbles in her sleep about god, and cannot walk without pausing to rest every few minutes. 

And that’s the golden group. Honestly, as much as Ellie wishes she could fight, it would be an absolute nightmare if she were to attempt it with this particular crowd. She might as well jump off a mountain—the likelihood of survival would be around the same.

“Listen up!” Tommy shouts again once everyone has formed a circle around him. “I ain’t gonna pepper y’all with kisses ‘n tell ya this’ll be easy ‘cause it won’t. We might’ve been put into Marlene’s pretty lil’ propaganda unit, but we’re still in an active war zone. There are landmines everywhere and some of the buildin’s have even been infested with spores, which are a dangerous and poisonous gas that’ll kill ya if ya breathe it in. Which is why everyone was given a mask on the way here.”

“Also,” Maria chimes in, “we have reason to believe that the Capitol might have released mutts into the outer city. We will not enter this city until tomorrow morning, but it is a good thing to keep in mind.”

A few of the non-victors shudder at the notion of having to face something like this. The stylists appear especially shaken by the image, eyes blown wide and jaws slackened. Ellie wonders if their group will truly face these atrocities or if Tommy and Maria are simply hoping to scare the group into something more formidable. She would not blame them for the latter, considering most of the members have been gallivanting around like headless chickens unless a camera is on them. But to imagine the former—to imagine facing a clicker or man-eating mountain goat after so long of believing they were left in Ellie’s past—is almost too terrible to bear.

08:55.

DISTRICT THIRTEEN.

“I received an extremely disturbing report this morning.” 

Marlene is standing on the opposite side of the room, seeming to not desire lowering herself to engage with filth like you—which is hilarious considering she was born into rags and poverty while you were born into an aureate crib flooded with praise. Your parents would loathe to see you like this: chained like vermin to a concrete wall, being stared down by a poor little woman from Seven. Perhaps all of their fears were not so unfathomable as you’d have believed them to be. Perhaps interacting with Seven as you did is what got you here, but you cannot recall very much from that time and so you must merely trust that your past-self did what was best. You must trust that it was worth it—worth this.

“I cannot recall anything very eventful taking place this morning, can you?” You respond, tilting your head as though this entire thing were vaguely amusing. It’s not, of course, because it reminds you far too keenly of the Capitol. But you would rather drown than allow Marlene the pleasure of knowing that her scare tactics are working. Plus, you think she already knows. 

Your wrists are manacled to a length of chain that pulls them toward the ceiling. Similarly, your ankles are bound together with the same thick metal. You think it’s rather overkill, if you’re honest, but you Marlene would know nothing of that. Considering she has never had to fight a day in her life, she does not know how to gauge what your strength means. So she treats you like an animal, for fear of you behaving like one. If you were to strike her, she could do nothing to defend herself. All of her defenses reside purely within her guards. And all of her best ones are currently fighting a war in the Capitol.

“You bit a man’s ear off.” 

You grin at her, the lower half of your face still stained crimson. You lick your lips and the man’s crusted blood flakes onto your tongue. It’s horribly disgusting, even to your standards, but you hardly mind when the outcome is exactly as desired. Marlene visibly baulks, her entire body going rigid as her eyes trace the movement of your mouth. Good. You lean forward, ignoring the chafe of metal against your skin. “Did I?”

“Yes.” She flattens her hands down the front of her shirt. “Not only did my men find the mangled cartilage on your floor, but his partner attested to it. You acted completely demented and I cannot allow such insanity to run free in my district.”

“Ah, but it’s not your district is it?”

Again, she tenses. “What are you babbling about?”

“See, I’ve only been here for a few months and I’ve not even been permitted to leave the medical bay, and yet I can observe that the power does not reside wholly in your hands, Miss President. You are a rational and powerful woman, yes, but you are not a scary one. You elicit nothing in your people. Not the way Ellie does. She gives them hope for a life after this war. She talks to them and eats with them and, for that, they can see themselves in her. They love her. But you? Oh, you’re nothing. If you were to die in this war, it would be a minor inconvenience. Luckily for you, Ellie is moral enough to not immediately seize control of your beloved district. She would grieve your loss and that would be the only reason your people would spare a second to mourn you: in condolences to her. In the end, however, she would refuse power because she saw what it did to you. So they would hold an election instead. I predict that Tommy Miller would be elected president in your stead and, fuck, would he do a damned good job at it. Much better than you ever did, at least.”

Marlene’s thick-heeled shoes click against the floor as she approaches you. She is so poise and clean that, for a moment, you are naive enough to think that she would not dirty her own hands in hurting you. You expect her to say something snide, then call a guard in to do the dirty work of torture. Alas, Marlene is still a bit of a mystery to you. Her district is not, and nor is the corrupt power which is currently rotting away all semblance of humanity within her soul. But Marlene herself is wholly foreign to you. So when the back of her hand collides with your jaw, it is a mild shock.

Your head snaps to the side, and a bubble of laughter sparks from your chest. You cannot help it. She is so determined on being different than Fedra that she is unaware that even their hits feel the same. The same sting blooms across your cheekbone, the same line of blood traces down your skin, the same disappointed tut comes from their lips right after. She even calls a guard forward with a handkerchief to clean her hand off afterward, just as he does.

“You have threatened my guards and, in doing so, you have threatened my district as a whole.” She speaks plainly, but you know that she is trembling. You doubt anyone has ever spoken so bluntly to her as you just have. She takes two steps backward and you lift your head to meet her gaze with as much dignity as you can muster from so far below. “If you were anyone else, I would have you exiled from my district. You would live in the deadly woods which surround this place, struggling for food and for shelter until you eventually die alone and cold. But you are a victor of the Hunger Games and therefore would likely thrive in such an environment. I do not wish you to thrive; I do not wish you even to live. But you are stubborn, so you will anyway.”

You laugh at that, deliriously pleased to know that Marlene is aware of your resilience. But that’s before she calls a second guard forward. This time, with a small boy waddling beside him. Every ounce of valor drains from your chest and you are reduced to a pleading mess. You thrash against the chains, screaming as Marlene lifts Oakley—your son, your boy, your baby, your life—into her arms. 

She runs the sharp nail of her index finger down the side of his soft face. He squirms away from her, already beginning to whine. You beg her through sobs to set him down. You promise that she can hurt you all she wants, that you will tell her what the Capitol did so that she may repeat it. You yank and yank and yank against the chains. Oakley watches you with wide eyes, clearly unsure what is happening. He starts to cry, rivulets of tears running down his rosy cheeks—rosy like Remy’s.

“You see, I do have power here.” Marlene nicks Oakley’s cheek with her ring, just enough to draw a thin line of blood. It drips slowly down his pale, porcelain skin. “And, because you are far too stubborn to die, I will make living just as bad as death.”

She hoists Oakley into the air, holding him under the arms as he squirms and whines and cries. You cannot breathe. You hunch over, gasping and choking on empty air. But you refuse to take your eyes off your son for even a moment. Ellie lived here for a year with Marlene, during which you assumed she’d been docile and obedient to her parental figure. You had not even imagined that she was doing it to protect Oakley. 

“It’s great to finally meet you, Oakley.” Marlene coos as her fingers dig into his sides just hard enough to make him wiggle. “I’m your grandmother, though I doubt either of your moms ever officially told you about me.”

“Please–”

“Shh shh,” Marlene holds up a finger in your direction to silence you. Pathetically, it works and so you fall quiet at her mercy. “I won’t hurt him, little light.”

Everything suddenly falls into place, doing so too quickly for you to catch all of the pieces. 

The men at your door were never randomized. In the beginning, they were on a rotation so that Marlene might avoid you growing too comfortable with any. But then she saw merit in doing so. Because, if you felt comfortable with two men entering your room thrice a day, that gave her an immense amount of power—enough so to elicit an assault from you. One so bad that she would have reason enough to punish you. Oh, and she timed it perfectly: Ellie and Ruben are both away on a trip, Oakley is left completely defenseless.

“M-momma…?” is Oakley’s final cry as he is taken away in the hands of a monster.

19:35.

THE CAPITOL.

The day wanes on in increments, like a snail with nowhere to go but forward. The work which the group is forced into pulling through is not hard but it’s tedious. Recordings upon recordings of Ellie shooting an arrow, only for Robert to remain unsatisfied with the footage. 

They march through the Capitol, slowly making their way toward the outer ring of the city. Despite having been walking all day, it remains far in the distance—unreachable. The sun beats down on Ellie’s shoulders, dragging sweat along her hairline and her brow. And her heavy black uniform does little to help. She feels drowsy with heat exhaustion, but her job is not to sit in the shade and drink water, it’s to stand right under the sun and shoot these damn arrows until Robert is pleased.

“That was closer,” he says while replaying the most recent shot, “but not yet perfect.”

Ellie groans, thudding her head back against the trunk of the tree she is propped against. Ruben is beside her, fanning her face with an oversized leaf. He turns toward Robert with a deepened frown. “Why don’t we all take a break and get some rest? I understand how important this is, but you’re overworking everyone here.”

Robert, for all his faults, has grown less rigid in the time Ellie has known him. No longer does he lash out at the smallest criticism; no longer does he pull her aside to demean her. If she were being wholly honest, she would have to admit that he’d become a decent enough guy. He’s learned how to laugh and smile and take a joke; he’s even started to see that Marlene is perhaps not the perfect goddess he’d formerly deemed her to be.

“Fine.” He surrenders with a wave of his hands. But when he passes by to grab a bottle of water, Ellie can see that he’s just as doused in sweat as she is. He slumps against the crumbling wall of an abandoned building, breathing deeply. “Just for a few minutes, though.”

Ellie takes what she can get, allowing a small smile to crawl onto her face as she relaxes against the tree trunk. The sun is not so vicious when she is hiding under the canopy, but she is admittedly peeved that this is not a species of tree that can be found in Seven. She typically enjoys being near foliage, as it reminds her of the time she’d once spent with Riley in the woods. But this tree is an anomaly; a Capitolistic abomination.

The group relishes in the momentary rest period, though Ellie was the one doing almost all of the work—aside from Robert and his trio of cameramen, who had to run around to get different angles of the arrow being released. But, if you ask her, it’s their fault for becoming cameramen. They signed up for tedious exhaustion, she signed up for none of this. And yes, she is in a bit of a foul mood due to the heat. But nothing she is thinking right now is particularly wrong, it’s just a bit crueler than she’d typically be.

“May I sit here?” 

Ruben and Ellie lift their heads in unison, wearing equal faces of shock when they find Thea to be looking down on them both. She holds her prosthetic left arm in her right hand, allowing it to dangle from her fingers in a rather grotesque manner. She is looking down at Ruben, eyes sharpened to a point. He does not immediately move at Thea’s request; instead, he turns to Ellie and waits for approval to leave her alone with Thea, who, no doubt, despises her. Only when Ellie nods at him does Ruben finally stand from the ground with a grunt and meander away, providing them privacy but remaining close enough to attack—if need be. 

Thea takes a step forward before lowering herself into the grass beside Ellie. There is a long pause during which neither of them are brave enough to speak—that, or neither is yet certain on what to say. Or maybe not. Knowing Thea, she likely already has an entire speech prepared and is just biding her time in order to unnerve Ellie. If that’s the case, it’s working. 

She picks a blade of grass from the soil, turning it over and over in her hand. She spins an invisible ring around her index finger, round and round again. Really, she’s just scratching at her skin because there’s no actual band around her knuckle. Finally—finally—Thea begins to speak.

“You never watched the footage from the Quell, did you? You never saw how horribly your absence affected her.” Thea does not need to clarify who she is referring to; they both already know. “My memories are a bit skewed, but I still know reality from fabrication. You were everything to her—and you left. Because of that, she was taken by the Capitol and tortured for a year. And now that she has returned, she is treated like a monster. Like something to be isolated and caged, to be feared. You expect her to forgive you and accept you back into her arms as a loving, doting wife. You don’t deserve that. You should be the one isolated and caged. You should be the one everyone fears.”

“It wasn’t my fault.” Ellie’s voice is hardly above a whisper. She stares down at the dirt beneath her fingers and tries to convince herself of her own words. “It wasn’t my fault that she was taken.”

“No?” Thea laughs. “I’ve watched the footage from the Quell. I’ve watched it over and over, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. And, each time, I arrive at one single answer: when you left. Had you stayed by our side, everything would have been different. Y/n would not have gone insane after Ruben lost his leg if you were there to console her. So then she would have been more level-headed and better fit for combat when the Peacekeepers arrived. So then she would not have gotten taken so easily.”

The logic is a bit disjointed, but it makes sense enough that Ellie cannot materialize a sound argument against it. If she were by your side instead of chasing fruitlessly after Abigail, your entire experience within the arena would have been ameliorated drastically. And, if she were to go by Thea’s logic, then, yes, it could very well have prevented all of this. 

“There’s no way to change the past, Thea. What’s done is done, we can only move forward.”

Again, she laughs. “Is that what your therapist told you?”

“I’m just saying that there’s no point pondering how things could be different. We need to accept what has happened and try to overcome it. Otherwise, you’ll just end up in a bottomless pit of regret.”

“There’s no point? Really? Do you truly think I calculate all of these variables because I deem them to be worth my time? I do it because it is all I can stand to do. I’m not sure if you noticed, Ellie, but I have no family left living and no friends left sane. Waking each morning is a battle against myself which I desperately hope that I lose. That way, I might find a semblance of peace in death. I might reunite with my mother and my little sister, I might see all of my friends again, and I might feel a sliver of contentment.” Anger bleeds through her voice, seeping in each word that flees her lips. “The medics say I got off lucky because I didn’t go insane in the Capitol, but they don’t understand what it’s like to live with the burden of all which I’ve survived. They don’t understand that I would have preferred to be a babbling mess like Birdie because at least she isn’t able to comprehend the complexities of the world. Maybe once a week, I hold a knife in front of my heart but cannot bring myself to push it through my ribs. I don’t fear the pain, nor do I dread death. I fear that I won’t push it deep enough, that I’ll be brought back and I’ll have to face the world once more.”

Ellie doesn’t know what to say. She wants to cry and offer advice, but she knows that’s not what Thea needs—nor is it even what she wants. Nothing she could say would make any of this better. Her entire family is dead and her only friend in the world has gone insane. Thea has no one left to love, and no one left to mourn.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re still here.” Ellie says, to which Thea scoffs and prepares to leave. Immediately, Ellie reaches out to grab her arm. “You didn’t let me finish. I’m glad you’re here because you mean a lot to me as a friend, sure, but I’m also glad you’re here because you deserve to watch as Fedra is killed. You deserve to live in a world that he no longer occupies. You deserve to breathe air that isn’t shared with his lungs. Thea, I promise that all the people you’ve lost will be rightfully avenged.”

She pulls her arm out of Ellie’s grasp, but not as rough as expected. In truth, she appears to be more disappointed than angry. “You cannot possibly promise such a thing. Not in a world like–”

“Get down!” Tommy’s scream is louder than the gunshots that suddenly echo across the block. 

Peacekeepers, she thinks, they’ve found us. Windows shatter overhead and fickle walls crumble like sand. Everyone in the group is suddenly diving behind the nearest structure, or under the nearest cover. 

Ellie wastes no time in grabbing Thea by the shoulders and dragging her into a dilapidated building. It reminds her keenly of the first arena, what with glass crunching under her boots and the tangy scent of rot filling her nostrils. She tries not to tremble as she presses her back against the wall, listening as the Peacekeepers search the area for the rebels they tracked down.

The sour air suddenly is too thick for Ellie to inhale. She breathes heavily through her mouth, shutting her eyes in an attempt to place herself somewhere else—anywhere else. A few bullets crack through the air, and it’s all she can do to hope that they were not fatal. She thinks of Ruben, lying dead in the grass. She thinks of Jesse and Dina, bleeding out somewhere they can never see their son again. She thinks of Tommy, always so similar to Joel, with his head bashed in the side.

A firm hand on her knee brings her back to reality. Thea holds her gaze, steady and unwavering. Ellie manages to nod, assuring that she’s okay. Thea removes her hand, but it’s clear that she’s struggling with all of this as well. Her lips are thinned and her posture is rigid. But if can have a sound enough mind to persevere through this, so can Ellie.

For a long time, there is only silence. Ellie counts her breaths, measuring the time as it passes. Thea remains tense, even though the Peacekeepers have likely long since moved on.

A sudden pair of footsteps are heard approaching the building that they’re in. Whoever it is, they’re running. Ellie reaches for an arrow, unsure how helpful it would even be against a Peacekeeper who’s practically wearing a suit of armor. In the end, the person isn’t even able to cross the threshold before a bullet has wedged itself in their skull. Their body falls forward, thudding against the floor—half outside, half inside. Their blood, thick and warm, seeps slowly toward Ellie’s feet. 

When her eyes fall onto the victim’s face, she has to press both of her hands against her mouth to stop herself from either screaming or vomiting; perhaps both. Still, she manages to elicit a small sound that causes Thea to also press a hand over Ellie’s mouth. Together, they stifle her sobs as best they can with Jesse’s blank eyes staring back at them.

02:43.

DISTRICT THIRTEEN.

When the door opens again, you dread the face staring back at you. For a moment, you allow yourself to believe that it’s someone benign—someone who does not wish to see you hurt. Instead, as always, it is Marlene standing in the doorway. She is holding a piece of paper in her right hand which is neatly folded into a small square. You wonder if it bears the mark of her approval to have you exiled; or, even better, publicly executed.

She remains in the doorway, allowing the blinding light from the hall to pour in around her silhouette. You blink furtively, trying to let your eyes adjust to the sudden light after so many hours spent in the dark. Even when the guards were sent to douse you in water and shock you just for Marlene’s amusement, they did so in the dark. You’ve long since dried, but your nerves continue to twitch and spasm—though you’re used to that by now.

“I received this letter from Tommy a few hours ago. I knew immediately that you would be interested in its contents. Alas, I waited until nightfall before relaying the information simply because, well, I have the power to. That, and I enjoy watching you squirm.” 

She unfolds the paper, clearing her throat before beginning to read at a deliberately agonizing pace. Her words are slow and careful, taking time purely for the sake of pissing you off.

“‘To Marlene, I won’t waste time with pleasantries because, frankly, I don’t care for ‘em. But also ‘cause this ain’t the time nor place to be wastin’ any sort of time. I’m writin’ to you to relay news of the deaths of six of our group members. They’ve all been shot ‘n killed by Peacekeepers. We didn’t know that some of the security cameras in the evacuated towns still worked. But they do. And, because of that, we lost six good men. I hope that you’ll provide the necessary compensation for their families’ losses. Here are the names of those who were killed: Nerwen Harte, Catell Isley, Ludo Lave, Ascall Petley, Taviel Rowdon, and Jesse Woodward. The first four of ‘em were stylists who gave their lives fightin’ for the rebels even though they were raised in the Capitol. Taviel was a cameraman from District Nine. He has three daughters, a wife, and his older sister all livin’ in Thirteen. And lastly, Jesse. A good friend of mine and a two-time victor of the Hunger Games with a wife on mission ‘n an infant son livin’ in Thirteen. You’re a good woman, Marlene, so I expect you’ll do the right thing: give these families your condolences ‘n send aid as soon as possible. From, Tommy.’”

Marlene folds the paper back into fourths, taking her time to slide it into the breast pocket of her blazer. All the while, she keeps her eyes trained firmly on you. She watches every little expression that crosses your face. You know she is disappointed, too, because you were taught to hide your emotions from a very young age—you let nothing show. So, in a need to always have the upper hand, Marlene steps closer.

“Imagine how poor little Ellie feels.” She says, her voice dropping to a musing coo as she walks back and forth in front of you. “Watching one of her best friends get shot in the head ought to be hard. I wonder if it happened in front of her. I wonder if she wished it were her in his place.”

You grit your teeth to stop from shouting at her. Marlene wants to hold all the power, and it’s your fault for antagonizing her into holding this quantity of loathing for you. Had you kept your damn mouth shut, she’d probably have left you here to rot without caring to torment you. Had you kept your mouth shut, Oakley would not be in such danger as he is. At the thought of his chubby little face, you bite your pride and give her what she wants: you pretend to cave under her taunts.

“Please.” You drop your head between your shoulders, practically bowing down to her—the picturesque display of submission. “You win, Marlene, just– please just don’t hurt me anymore. You win.”

Her heels click against the floor as she stalks forward. You listen to the fabric of her pants shuffle as she crouches down in front of you. She grasps your chin between her fingers, lifting your eyes to meet her own. You bite your tongue in the same spot you’d bit it this morning: just enough to draw tears to your eyes. For good measure, you tremble your lower lip. 

She tuts, “oh you’re such a pitiful little thing.”

If Oakley’s life was not on the line, you’d bite clean through her thumb. Instead, you continue to cry and let her wipe a tear from your cheek. It’s pathetic, really, how easily fooled she is. Considering you faked your way through your first Hunger Games, she should know by now how adept you are at falsification. Alas, power—like decay—does strange and terrible things to even the brightest of minds. 

“Luckily for you, little light, you’re going to be reunited with your estranged.” She says, patting you on the cheek. “You are going to serve on a very special mission. While the rest of squad 451 are on direct orders to behave as a propaganda unit, you are going to be my little soldier. You will wear a camera and microphone on your vest at all times, allowing me to keep eyes and ears on the group. If you remove or damage either of them, Oakley will pay the price for your misdeeds. You will be tasked with the job of killing Fedra, but you will allow the rest of the group to believe that you’ve merely been sent as retribution for the loss of Jesse Woodward—a replacement, of sorts.”

She releases your chin and calls for her guards. Two of them file into the room and hastily unlock the cuffs around your wrists and ankles. You collapse against the floor, your body spent and fatigued at having been suspended for so long. 

“Any questions?” Marlene asks.

You lift your gaze to find her staring down at you, head tilted. You consider killing her right now. You could probably do it, too. It would be so easy to wrap your hands around her throat until she suffocated; or snap her neck like breaking a stick. But, on the off chance that you fail, it would be Oakley who’d have to pay for it. So instead, you remain in the frame of that picturesque docility.

“No,” you respond, “none.”

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18:00.

THE CAPITOL.

The color gold is prohibited in the Capitol. All the aureate utensils have been replaced with silver; all the gilded architecture has been felled. No longer does there reside an inch of gold in Fedra’s Capitol, because no longer does there reside an inch of a threat to Fedra’s Capitol.

Each of the lower districts have been overcome with spores and mutts. The rot has infested all sorts of animals, both big and small: dogs, cats, deer, mice. Thus, there is no possibility that any of the residents have survived—which alleviates a burden from Fedra’s chest. He is now able to sleep at night knowing that there are no little girls training to destroy him in Four, nor any little girls rising to dismantle the Capitol in Seven. With no districts intact, there are no threats. With no threats, there is no chance that his empire will fall.

“A sennight ago, Ellie Williams was shot while fleeing District Nine.” Says Commander Lysander, raising his silver glass with a flourish. His yellow eyes meet Fedra’s, convivial. “The rebels’ symbol is dead, sir.”

A ripple of support washes around the table. The other officials take to raising their own glasses with their own thin smiles. Fedra does not reciprocate. Once the officials notice his stagnancy, their smiles drop as well as their hands. They sit in silence for a long time, waiting for someone to break the tension; to explain why Commander Lysander’s comment is undeserving of presidential celebration.

“The symbol is dead, you say?” His voice carries through the room without needing to be raised. He lifts his glass to his mouth, and no one dares to assume it is a jubilation so much as a mock.

“Indeed, sir.” Commander Lysander’s tone is much less confident in the face of contradiction. He attempts to remain firm in his gaiety, but Fedra sees right through him. Right to the marrow. “If her wife had not killed her, her own arrogance did.”

“Of course.” Fedra places his glass on the table with a light clink. “This is the same asinine thinking which led you to send our best Peacekeepers into District Nine, foolishly hoping to neutralize both Miss Williams and Miss L/n in one clean sweep. But it was not as clean as you had hoped, was it? Although every last one of those Peacekeepers fell to the rebels that day, the rebels are not who condemned them. No, that was you. Commander Lysander, you have quite the habit of burying people before they’re dead. If Ellie Williams were gone, the rebels would already be using her as a martyr.”

The air sits stale and silent around them. No one dares glance at one another, though it is obvious that they want to. They want to gauge their peers’ reactions so as to better hide their own. And this desire only multiplies when Commander Lysander begins choking. 

“It will not be long before the rebels make a move on my Capitol.” He must raise his voice now in order to be heard over the commander’s gags and wheezes. He gazes around the table, gauging the officials’ reactions in a way which they can only wish to do. “We shall evacuate the outer city and let them in. I want all aircraft defenses ready so that we are secure from the sky. Lure them close. Then our Gamemakers shall make them pay for every inch with blood. I want every camera watching. We will turn their pacifistic revolution into a celebration of suffering.”

When Fedra stands from his chair, an Avox is already rushing forward to pull it back for him. Each person around the table watches as their president crosses the room toward the hallway. His steps echo against the pristine tile flooring. When he is halfway out the door, Commander Lysander Estrada takes his final breaths with his face pressed against a glistening table. 

There is a Peacekeeper standing sentry outside of Fedra’s office when he reaches it. 

“Send for Commander Lysander’s family.” He says while brushing past the uniformed man. “I want his wife, his children, his brother, and his father all executed at dawn.” 

“Yes, sir.”

19:06.

DISTRICT THIRTEEN.

“The world believes that you are dead.” Marlene’s voice is disgustingly excited about that fact. The footage of Ellie being shot in the back was filmed by a tiny camera pinned to one of the Peacekeeper’s uniforms. From there, it has been shown all across the country. Everyone is under the same assumption that the rebels’ symbol is dead. And Marlene, in particular, has been obsessing over it. “We can use that, Ellie. We can–”

“Stop.” Ellie leans forward, her ribs aching at the motion. “I will not listen to someone who risked mine and my wife’s lives last week. You sent us to District Nine knowing we’d likely not make it back. If you put no value on my life, why should I listen to you?”

Something in Marlene steels at that. All prior excitement in her voice fades away, leaving room only for the stern intonation of a ruler—a tyrant. “Had you permitted me to finish, you’d have understood that this plan will benefit more than only myself. You will be sent to the Capitol; you will be given what you want.”

“You don’t know what I want, Marlene.” She sneers. “You know nothing about me.”

“No. But I know this.” Marlene’s eyes narrow into small slits which resemble that of a snake moments before it strikes. Ellie wonders, sometimes, how bad it would be to simply allow herself to be ruined. How bad it would be to just give up this endless fight and die. “Since the moment you were brought to District Thirteen, you’ve been begging at my feet to be sent to the Capitol. First, you wanted Y/n back. And so I rescued her for you. Now, you want vengeance for what they’ve done. And so I am offering you this: a mission to infiltrate the Capitol and help bring ruin to Fedra’s regime.”

She wonders what it would be to give up. To stand from this chair and shout every last insult she’d been storing for the past year. She wonders what Marlene’s face would contort into upon hearing the truth. She wonders how many guards would be called in to seize her—to bring her to the basement and torture her the way they tortured Alice and Tilly. She wonders whether it would be worth it, to risk everything for a moment of satisfaction. 

And perhaps she might have done it: given up everything she’d worked so hard to maintain solely because she is so fucking tired of being the symbol to a war she never wanted to fight. But she doesn’t. Because you’re here. And she knows Marlene would not stop at physical torture; she would need to break Ellie’s mind and spirit as well. And what better way to do that than to torture you in front of her? To kill you in front of her?

But there’s another reason, too. And it’s also affiliated with you.

Last week, Oakley said his very first word. Since then, he has not stopped babbling on and on about his momma. It was endearing at first, to listen to him talk about you as obsessively as Ellie thinks about you. It was so beautiful to hear his voice after so long of fearing that it would never be found. But the repetition quickly got old when he would not sleep or eat without crying, “momma, momma, momma!” so she did the only thing she could think to do: she brought him to his momma. 

And then, as one might assume, he fell silent for the first time in three days. He sat in your lap with a contentment that could never be found elsewhere. His head fell onto your shoulder and he slept for the first time in two nights. You cuddled him and cradled him and cooed at him. But, oh, you were so fucking scared. 

Ellie could see it in the way you breathed and the way you blinked. Every little action you took was done in fear of breaking him. You rubbed his back without really touching his skin; you kissed his head without really daring to look. When he woke, you’d not slept a wink. You’d stayed up all night watching him, making sure your body didn’t try to hurt him. It didn’t—which felt obvious to Ellie, who knew your body must recognize him; but was shocking to you, who no longer trusted yourself to touch anything without shattering it.

Every night since then, Ellie has to bring Oakley to your room in order for him to sleep. Otherwise, he will happily keep her awake all night as he cries your name without reprieve. And, each night, she has watched from a chair in the corner as you slowly grow used to the weight of your son in your arms. She typically falls asleep in the chair, waking each morning with a kink in her neck. But sometimes, you’ll whisper-yell her name until she jolts awake. And she tries not to be frustrated when you ask, “will you stay awake, please? I don’t want to hurt him. But if you’re awake, I know you’ll stop me if I try.” 

Needless to say, sleep very seldom visits Ellie’s restless mind. If it is not Oakley keeping her awake, then it’s you. But she’d be lying to say she wanted it any other way. Even when sleeping in an uncomfortable chair across the room, she sleeps more soundly in your proximity than she has in years—since before the Quell.

“The mission will commence tomorrow morning at dawn,” Marlene is saying. “I want you to be there.”

It’s not a request so much as a decree. Ellie knows she has no power to deny Marlene anything. The propaganda campaigns can be done without her, what with Maria’s and Roberts’s conjoined skill with technology and cinematography. They could film those campaigns using anyone who has suffered at Fedra’s hand—which is quite literally every single person in Thirteen, if not the entire country. But the worst part is that Marlene knows that Ellie has no power to deny her. So when they argue like this, all ruthlessness and wrath, the winner is decided before it even starts. 

“Right.” Ellie turns away from the desk and pushes out of Marlene’s office. The guards bracketing her door are different from the ones who were here when Ellie first arrived. They must have a rotated schedule. She wonders how many guards are on this shift—how many people waste hours of their life standing at Marlene’s door. She wonders how many of them have spouses and children they’d rather spend their time with. 

She thinks of this all the way to the medical bay. Her feet carry her there without much thought, weaving through crowded halls of people and pushing through creaking doorways. By the time she reaches your room, Ellie has arrived at the conclusion that there are probably hundreds of soldiers on that schedule. Hundreds of families disrupted for Marlene’s personal gain. No one has even tried to attack her before, so having two guards outside of every door in her quarters is unreasonably cynical. 

She walks past each of the empty cots lining the walls of the med bay, knowing that they’ll likely all be filled after tomorrow’s mission. Infiltrating the Capitol is no easy feat, and will likely require an enormous platoon of soldiers and medics accompanying the usual group. There will be more hovercrafts deployed than they’ve ever done before. And, when they return, there will be a great many patients occupying these cots; and even more casualties to be accounted for.

When she passes Abigail Anderson’s cot, the curtain is open. Normally, the medics make sure to leave it closed in order to protect any passersby from suffering Abigail’s reverent rambles. Someone must have forgotten today. That, or they collectively hate Ellie and knew she would walk by and have condemned her to this.

“Ellie?” Still, the sound of Abigail’s voice grates at her nerves and sets alight an old rage she’s not yet learned to wholly overcome. “I know that you are helping Her, and I thank you for that. She does not scream as She used to.”

“Abig–”

“I know you think I’m crazy. Everyone thinks I’m crazy.” She almost appears to be tearing up—which is a repulsive thought. Ellie glances toward your door, yearning for an escape from this conversation. “I know my god is not worshipped by anyone except for me, but that does not mean She doesn’t deserve to be worshipped, does it? She deserves to be helped and heard and saved, doesn’t She?”

Ellie shuts her eyes and sighs through her nose, “she does.”

“I knew you would agree!” 

Abigail leaps to her feet, a blanket falling to the floor to reveal the scars that litter her body and the tubes that protrude from it. She is dressed in a thin hospital gown that does very little to hide the horrors which she has endured. She favors her right foot, putting almost no weight on her left. Still, despite the pain which must be overcoming her, Abigail is smiling. She grabs Ellie’s hands, squeezing them between her own. Ellie winces, her entire body tense with the urge to fight. 

“My god is not real, Ellie, I know that, but– but I still worship her for the help she provided while I was in the Capitol.” Abigail’s words rush from her mouth almost too quickly to understand. She is shaking. “She is not a god, she is a girl. I know this, I do, but– oh, but I knew you would understand! She helped me when I was enduring the worst pain of my life. She– she helped me remain sane. She helped me measure time, and count names. Without her, I would have killed myself.”

Ellie flinches at that, yanking her hands out of Abigail’s grasp.

“You–” she shakes her head, trying to breathe. “You are crazy. Y/n isn’t a god, nor is she your savior. She was being tortured the same as you. The screams you were hearing were not to help you, they were her own pain. And– and you offered her nothing in return.”

It’s not fair of Ellie to blame Abigail for what you suffered, and she knows that, but she just can’t handle this anymore. Being around you and seeing the difference in who you’ve become due to the Capitol is hard enough. But to face Abigail as well—to see that she has suffered worse at the hands of Fedra, who had no reason to hate her, than she would have at the hands of Ellie, who hated her more than anything else. It’s too much to stomach; too much to bear.

Abigail drops her hands to her sides and gapes. Her eyes are blown wide and her mouth is parted. She stares at Ellie with such horrible pain that she almost feels guilty. Instead of allowing herself to assess what she has done, Ellie turns on her heel and walks straight toward your door.

“You’re a terrible person, Ellie Williams.” Is the last thing she hears before she enters your room.

20:37.

DISTRICT THIRTEEN.

Water, water, water, water, water—and more water.

You cannot breathe around it; you cannot see through it. The liquid seeps into your lungs as the salt stings your eyes. Every limb is thrashing and every nerve is in agony. You’re crying, though no one can hear you over the sound of crashing waves. Your feet graze the sand and you hastily push upward, only to be yanked right back under the surface. You cannot swim, you cannot breathe. You are dying.

A hand grabs your wrist, hauling you out of the water. Their grip is bruising and your shoulder aches under the weight of your body. You blink furtively, trying to see through the water and through your tears. A man is standing in front of you: Ruben.

He is holding you by the arm, looking so much larger than yourself. He is shining and golden where you’re dull and rusted; he is large where you’re pathetically small. He is everything you’ve always yearned to become. He is everything you will never be. 

“You are the worst thing that ever happened to me.” He says, yanking you toward the shore. You cannot keep up with him, your legs stumbling and tripping in the sand. You slip multiple times. He does not look back. “I wish you had never been born. You have ruined everything. You have tarnished everything. I cannot wait to be Reaped so that I might spend some time without you ruining my life.”

You’re crying again, and this time you’re heard. Only, he does not care.

Ruben is watching you from across the room. There are dark circles under his eyes, but he does not dare fall asleep because he knows you prefer to have him awake. He watches as you rub Oakley’s back and smooth your hands through his hair.

You wonder if he remembers that day on the beach, if he remembers what he said. You try to forget it—to pretend that it never happened—but it’s so real, so vivid. And whenever you see your brother, that is one of the first memories pushed to the forefront of your mind. You can still feel his hand around his wrist; you can still feel your tears staining your cheeks; you can still taste the salt in your lungs. He wanted you dead, you know that, but you loved him anyway. You loved him because he was your brother and he was the kindest thing in your life, even when he hurt you. But still, he left you. He abandoned you and didn’t care when your parents hurt you.

But how can that be right, when Ruben is watching you so lovingly right now? How can he look so fond of the little sister he never wanted? You start to think of what everyone has said about your memories, how you cannot trust them. But memories are what make a person who they are. How can you distrust the very fiber of your being without unraveling yourself completely?

“I was seven.” Your voice grabs his attention, snapping his head up to look at you. “We snuck down to the beach while our parents were away on a trip to the Capitol. I begged you to go and, finally, you relented. Do you remember this?”

He nods slowly. “Yeah, you got sucked out to sea. You were screaming for me, but I couldn’t hear.”

“But you eventually did. You yanked me from the water, and you said that I was the worst thing to ever happen to you. You said that you wished I was never born.” You watch his expression, all the tiny shifts in his face as it contorts into horror. “Do you remember this, too?”

“That’s not what happened.”

Ruben stands from his chair, shaking his head. He walks over to your cot, slow and careful. When you flinch away from him, he does not pretend to be surprised. Oakley continues to snore on your chest as Ruben kneels beside your cot. He rests a hand on your arm more gently than anyone has touched you in months. You look at him, unsure whether you should push him away or pull him closer. You look down at his hand and remember the way his fingers—so much smaller back then—had wrapped around your wrist until there were purple spots on it for weeks afterward. 

“You are the very best thing this life has given me.” He says, never looking away from your eyes. “The first time I held you, I knew you would be my best friend. I promised to always, always protect you and I have failed and I am sorry. I am so, so fucking sorry. I should have been there to save you; I should have been there when you were growing up. I have failed at so many things in being your big brother, but I have never ever stopped loving you.”

You know why he wasn’t there when you were taken: his leg had just been chopped off. 

All of last week, you spent hours upon hours watching the Games. When you requested a television be put in your room, a pair of guards wheeled it in on a cart before handing you the remote. Since then, you’ve spent very little time doing anything else. Your days are split into two junctures: when you are all alone, watching the Games; and when you have company, trying to solidify your own existence.

You started with the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, during which you met Ellie. It was an odd thing, hearing yourself talk in the interviews and watching yourself wave during the parades. You were such a different woman back then—so alluring and beautiful, but also so calculative and smart. Now, you spend your days lying in bed feeling sorry for yourself. 

Ellie was right when she said that the two of you were ‘a lot of things’. In the beginning, you were enemies. This is because Ellie had insulted your family during the interviews. And, considering what she said, you assumed that you would spend your time in the arena hunting her down and feasting on her bones. Instead, you found her curled up in a costume shop beside her best friend’s dead body. It was the perfect opportunity to strike: her back was turned and she was weakened. But you didn’t do that. You welcomed her into your group and divided your supplies. It was completely insane. You would never do that, now; you would kill her, now.

Slowly, the two of you learned to coexist and survive together. It was like watching a character in a film rather than yourself. She was so confident and strong; she is not you. Now, you would never form a soft spot for a little boy; now, you would never develop a bond with the enemy. But that’s not right, is it? Now, you have formed a soft spot for a little boy: Oakley. Now, you have developed a bond with the enemy: Ellie. 

You decided that it was easier to stomach the Hunger Games when you pretended that the woman on the screen was not you. That way, you do not have to process the fact that she is so vastly different from yourself; you do not have to process all the things which make you vary and which make you similar. 

Through a screen, you were reintroduced to Remy Wilson and his beautiful soul. His chocolate eyes and ash brown hair, his crooked teeth and rosy cheeks. You do not remember him, in your memories. Try as you might, there is no recollection of that boy in your mind. Instead, you find only a shadow of a child running through a field of grass—but you doubt that is a reputable memory, so much as one implemented by the Capitol. You miss him all the same, though. Something deep in your chest cracks at the sight of him: something carnal and uncontrollable. You miss him like a limb. You miss him like a son.

Through a screen, you watch yourself mourn a great load of people you will never remember. Selene Jones and her doe-like gentility which grew fangs. Ariadne Evans and her striking strength which softened over time. Dahlia Hart and her unshakable naivety. 

Each of these people deserve to be remembered and mourned, but you cannot find it in yourself to do it. They are characters on a screen; they are not real to you. But that is just the problem, isn’t it? With that mindset, you are no better than the Capitolites watching characters die in the Games. Perhaps that was Fedra’s goal all along: turn you into one of them, so that you may never become yourself again.

You lost everyone. Your friends, your allies, your son, your brother, your parents, your lover. And, in the end, the last person you lost was yourself. And you can mourn none of them.

“You used to love this stuff,” Doctor Fulmer laughs while pumping your veins full of death. “Morphling was once your salvation, you know. You L/ns always get addicted to something, in the end. Whether that be to a drug or to murder, it’s always something.”

The door to your room swings open to reveal Ellie standing in the doorway. Her hair is all mussed and her chest is heaving unsteadily. She leans against the doorframe, struggling to hold herself upright. 

You watch, more curious than anything, as Ruben leaps to his feet and rushes to her aid. He guides her toward the chair in the corner and tells her to breathe. He reminds her that she’s safe, that you’re safe, and that everything will be okay. So, really, he’s lying to her. But she must believe him anyway because, eventually, her breathing evens out and she calms down.

Ruben remains by her side, a hand kept on her shoulder at all times—possibly to ground her in the present, possibly to make sure she doesn't run. The former is more likely what he is doing, but the latter is more likely what he would do if it were you in that position. When you wake, screaming from nightmares, or when you are assaulted by a memory that sends you into a spiral, people don’t help you because they care about you. They help you because they don’t want you to kill them. They speak in gentle tones, but their voice shakes with fear that they might not be able to soothe you; they offer soft touches, but their hands tremble with fear that you might lash out despite their attempts.

“Sorry,” Ellie drops her head into her palms as she hunches over herself. “It was my fault, anyway. I got all riled up with Abby when I shouldn’t have. She just– none of this is fair on anyone. Shit.”

She is now wiping roughly at her face, but you’re not sure whether she is crying out of frustration or sorrow. It doesn't matter, though. Tears are tears and they spill regardless of what elicits them to—same as blood.

You watch Ellie with a much different eye than the one you watched her with before. When you first arrived from the Capitol, you watched her in hopes of catching her off-guard and finding a way to kill her. You watched her like a predator. Now, you watch her in hopes of finding something different than what you saw in the footage from the Games. You want her to be a different woman so that you might not feel so guilty for being the only one who has changed. You crave evidence that you’re not alone in your moral stupor.

Alas, she is the same girl that you’d loved so long ago. Her hair is a bit longer than it was in the arena, but you can tell she cuts it herself because the ends are all scraggly and frayed. Her eyes are much more tired than they were, but they carry the same empathy and valor as they did before. Her hands and skin and ears and nose are all the same, only with a few new scars. Her body is thinner than it was when you first met her, but that can be caused by the stress and lack of appetite which accompanies all war-beaten soldiers. 

Even her mannerisms haven’t changed. She still buries her face in her hands whenever she feels ashamed of something. She still walks with the quiet precision of a hunter. She speaks a bit more eloquently, but you pride yourself in thinking that’s partially your doing.

“What did Marlene say?” Ruben asks, standing shakily from the floor and massaging his thigh. He leans against a nearby wall, sighing relief at taking the weight from his leg. “Nothing good, I presume?”

“No, of course not.” Ellie lifts her head from her hands and scowls down at the floor. “All the districts have been swayed to our side, which is good but– well, now the only remaining territory to seize is the Capitol itself. She’s planning to deploy all the soldiers tomorrow at dawn. It’ll be a fucking bloodbath. She isn't communicating with anyone, just informing them to be prepared by morning. There’s no plan, either, just– just ‘go in there and try not to die, or do I don’t care’. She doesn’t give a fuck who she loses so long as she manages to control the Capitol in the end. It’s all power to her. There’s really no humanity left in her reign.”

Ruben sits with that information for a moment, thinking about what to say. But when he opens his mouth to respond, you beat him to it. Your voice comes out raw and slightly rueful. “You’re leaving tomorrow?”

Ellie blinks, shocked. “Um, yeah, but–”

“How long will you be gone?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t give a timeframe. She just said when we leave and to–”

“Are you going to come back?”

“I mean, I intend to but–”

“Ellie.” You shift Oakley in your arms so that you might lean forward to portray your sincerity. He squirms but remains soundly asleep. “You have to come back. If you don’t I– I don’t know what I’d do. I can’t raise Oakley on my own, and I can’t– I don’t know how to live without you.”

The candor of that confession is wholly too much for you to bear thinking about. The only days in which you’ve not been visited by Ellie at least once throughout it are while she is on campaign. And, during those times, someone else always steps forward to take her place—Ruben, Dina, Jesse, Tommy. But no matter who attempts to fill her shoes, none of them feel nearly as right as she does; nearly as warm. While they struggle to hold a conversation and keep their distance, Ellie never falters away from you. She sits right beside your cot, even when she knows you might attack her. She speaks about the hard things, even when she knows you might shout at her for it. She is the only person here who knows exactly what you need and exactly how to give it.

If she does not return from this mission, you don’t know what you’ll do. Every aspect of your day will change for the worse. Oakley will have lost a mother, Ruben will have lost a best friend, and Tommy will have lost a niece. Everyone in your life will mourn her, but none so much as yourself. Although you may not wholly understand your own relationship with Ellie, you know that your bones and your sinew crave her. You know that, when she is around, nothing feels so terrible as it does otherwise. She makes the world brighter and the facts make sense. Without her to visit you each day and remind you that you’re loved, you may very well forget. All the progress you’ve made since arriving in Thirteen may very well be reduced to nothing. And then Oakley will have lost both mothers alongside his biological parents. And you can’t– oh, you can’t bear to do that to him.

“Hey, hey.” Ellie is suddenly in front of you, a hand coming to rest on your shoulder. And when you pull away from her, she does not appear offended. You turn to find that Ruben has left, likely to provide the two of you some privacy after hearing such an unadulterated avowal. “I’ll come back, okay? For you, I’ll come back.”

“I don’t–” Your voice cracks and you realize that you’re crying. It annoys you—not the fact that you’re crying, but the fact that you hadn’t noticed it. You’re so out of tune with yourself that you can hardly process your own damn emotions. And if you can’t understand yourself, how could you possibly understand how to raise an entirely separate person? You exhale a deep, shaking breath. “I can’t do this on my own.”

“You won’t have to.” She tries again to touch you and, this time, you allow it. Her hand settles on your forearm and she glances down at the point of contact, breathing slow and steady. After a moment, she looks back up at you with a determined mien. “I will always be here for you, okay? After this mission, there won’t be any more. After this mission, I won’t ever leave you again.”

You nod, sniffling. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You L/ns always get addicted to something, in the end. Whether that be to a drug or to murder, it’s always something.” 

Doctor Fulmer was right about one thing: L/ns always fall prey to addition. They’re raised to be independent, to put faith in their own abilities rather than anyone else’s protection. This way, they’re ready for the arena when it inevitably comes for them. So, really, who’s to say that they’re wrong for becoming dependent on something? Who’s to say they’re evil for wanting a reprieve?

Your father’s addition was to alcohol. Your mother’s was abusing those closer to her. Theodore’s addiction, just like his brother, was to alcohol. Ruben’s was to the Capitol—always seeking, always needing its approval. Penelope’s was to blood, cruelty, violence, that sort of thing. Elina, like her mother, was addicted to that same cruelty. Yasmin’s was to manipulation, using secrets like weapons to destroy the lives of Capitolites. 

You, as many would assume, became addicted to Morphling. And, while they wouldn’t be particularly wrong to assume that, they’re not wholly correct either. Because you fell victim to a much more compelling substance: love. 

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