#ah134

She'd had to step out of the wing, into a quiet side room to tap out frantic messages to Reina, digging for details. Her heart felt torn, between getting on a train immediately bound for Twelve to be with Ansel, whose injuries sounded grave-- passenger or cargo or whatever it may be, she'd live-- or to be with her son who had just endured the unthinkable, recovering just up the hall. She wished she could split herself into pieces for each of her children, to give them what they needed right now. She felt like she wanted to sob, scream, tear her own hear out, but it all got stuck in her chest, behind a stopper of numbness. She couldn't break down. Literally couldn't, her body wouldn't let her, numb with what felt like unending disbelief and grief. It all felt too big to be real, like a dream, and for a long while, she sat on a rubbery hospital chair, staring at the white wall across from her. There was a painting there, something abstract, blue and green. Probably chosen to be soothing to patients. By the time she remembered to move again, the arches and curves of each brushstroke were burned into her memory.

"Any advice for me?" Slate asked. He and Mahlon were both sitting in a back room in the justice building of District Eleven. Everyone else was busying themselves with something, prepping for his speech in some way -- but he had no energy to bustle around like them. Plus, the Peacekeeper shadows were eerier when he was moving than when he was still. When he was still, they were still. He could pretend they weren't even there. "Better yet, any liquid courage I could borrow? Or powder. Intravenous -- don't care."

"Well hello there, your royal highness, aren't you supposed to be... I don't know, milking some cows? Is that what you do in Ten?" It was all in good spirit, and as he greeted Greer he held out a shimmering glass of champagne. He sipped at his own thoughtfully, casting a glance to the guests of honor, and added, "Wait, is it disrespectful to call people who aren't the birthday king and queen royal highness?"

Abel was doing what he usually did when the world felt like it was falling apart around him. Pretending it wasn't happening. Easy, when you mix some whiskey with some pills and you find someone like Cain Gunn to indulge you.

Luca wasn't in the best. He'd left Luna with Hestia, but it had felt so wrong to leave and come back to the shiny Capitol after being in twelve. He had done his best to help out where he could, under the table so as not to cause any further trouble, but with peacekeepers lurking at almost every corner, it was difficult to say the least.

It was the first time in hours that he'd been left semi-alone with Cress. The Peacekeepers still hovered, but they were out of earshot. Joe had pointed the way but had declined to come with them; he was processing, he'd said, the information Slate had given him, Bram's final request. Slate could understand that, was trying his very best, was trying so goddamn hard, to be good. To be everything he needed to be right now: the reformed rebel; the apologetic victor; the dutiful survivor.

Rush had been kind to invite Slate over to his mansion, and maybe Slate would have been kind in return -- it had been the plan, to be kind, to be good -- if it weren't for the fact that, as soon as he saw it, he was reminded that not only did he not have a mansion of his own, Hestia's was destroyed, and in that destruction, Ansel's body had been crushed, killed. Cruelly and horribly.

"Next Victor's Ball, I'm throwing you an underground birthday party," Cade grinned, downing the rest of his drink and setting it on the table next to Everett. He felt a little off, but not in a bad way-- in a fluttering heart, too warm kind of way, and in a way he didn't want to go away, exactly. It was probably the wine, he told himself-- he was never much of a wine person, and wine-drunk felt different from liquor. Or maybe it was the atmosphere, so different from his usual kind of sweaty, grungy, neon sort of party-- this was plush, decadent, dark high-society.