#ch6.

With his interview behind him Twig just feels—drained. This whole Games season has felt like that. Like there’s nothing left of him. And like maybe that’s been true for longer than he’d like to admit. All these years going through the motions, keeping himself safe because he doesn’t know how to do anything else, like survival is nothing more than a habit, not a real desire for anything.

If he wants anything now, it all feels just like he said in his interview: too little, too late. He can’t undo the past. He can’t go back in time and make himself a better man. Or a braver one. And whatever’s happening now, he knows he has no effect on it. He’s just swept up in it. Like, no matter where he is, he’s destined to be a pawn.

The space between the Mentor and Tribute interviews feels cruel. Not enough time, and yet still too much of it. Harbor keeps his own counsel, his thoughts and his plans as opaque to Twig as they’ve been from the moment they reunited on the train.

Robyn is still there, though, like clockwork. Also like clockwork, Twig wonders if Harbor is any more forthcoming with them. “Glad to see you’re still with us,” he says, something he can’t imagine saying to Robyn before this year’s games. “Caesar seemed to stop just shy of calling for your public execution on stage last night.”

It feels telling. Like this a new chapter in the story the Capitol is trying to tell for them. First they were doomed, then they were celebrated, but now it seems that—no matter how well they played the part after coming out of the Arena—they're supposed to be doomed once again.

Torn apart by the Games in the end after all.

But, well, they're not going to go along with that. Everything they've done since their Games is try to portray a united front, and though Hudson is alone on this stage they still clung to Fava before taking their seat, a stolen moment between their interviews half in and half out of the lights, like they could have thought it was a private moment—when, of course, the two of them knew that it was anything but.

They look to the wings of the stage for her now, but the lights are so bright that all they can see beyond Caesar is darkness. Still, they know that she isn't far. And, as it always does, the thought comforts them. No matter what happens, they never have to walk alone.

"The Quell is—I don't have any words for it. We both knew our first year as Mentors would be difficult, but we couldn't even begin to imagine what was in store for us. But, when we got married, we promised that we would be there for each other through everything, and we didn't take that lightly."

Maybe it isn't what Caesar wants to hear, but they don't want to seem confrontational, so they have to sell it. They pause for a moment, then duck their head, like they're trying to hide the hint of a bashful smile. "Actually, it's kind of strange being up here without her. I don't think we've done an interview apart since the very first time I was on this stage."

Of course, he should be careful what he wishes for. If he acknowledges Harbor on this stage, if he doesn't fall into line and pretend that he means nothing to him, then of course that means that Caesar will ask him about Harbor.

The biggest gaping wound in his life, and he's handed Caesar the knife with a side of mockery to boot. Of course Caesar is going to twist it.

"I was shocked," he says. Shocked doesn't even begin to cover it, the white noise that seemed to come over him, the way he threw himself against the Peacekeepers without even thinking about it, hardly aware of it, hardly aware of anything except for Harbor at the desire to get to him.

Somehow, it doesn't feel like that feeling has entirely gone away since the Reaping. Maybe it's because he still doesn't feel like he's really gotten to Harbor at all. Like even when he has Harbor standing right in front of him, he's not all there. Like the part of Harbor that was once Twig's is gone forever.

But he's never been a poet. Shocked will have to do.

"I never imagined that I would see him again. I thought he was dead, just like everyone else did." He should stop there. He really should. There are things that he hasn't even said to Harbor, because he couldn't imagine that Harbor as he is would want to hear them, but here he is saying some of them on Caesar's stage anyway. Rising to the bait like maybe he’s still following the script laid out for him, even if it leads to ruin. "And—to see him look so different, to think of what he could have suffered in the time that he was away. To think that I could lose him again just as soon as I got him back....I was so glad to see him alive, but it broke my heart all over again, too."

Really, it made him furious. But heartbreak is a more passive emotion, less dangerous. And he's playing with danger enough.

Getting up on that stage makes them feel like a different person. Like they're no longer the Hudson Overgrove that they always knew. That Hudson, growing up with their family in District 12, felt like they could scream and scream and no one would hear them. But now he's someone different. Now he could whisper, and everyone would be hanging on his every word.

In this moment, they embrace it. They let themself feel like someone else. Someone who's strong. Someone who knows what he's doing.

"I haven't thought much beyond the Quell, to be honest," they say. "But it's hard to imagine Fava and I doing anything for a honeymoon that compares to what we've already done together. After the Games, we were able to travel to each District, to see all of Panem and meet so many of the people there. We got married in the Capitol, and the Capitol and all of Panem celebrated with us."

Caesar has a preternatural ability to look on the bright side, to put a cheerful face on the Games, skipping over the funeral to come to talk about a honeymoon that never will, but Hudson stays somber. They're mourning, because they want the Capitol to mourn with them.

"We—we've really been very lucky. There's not much more we could ask for. Except—except to have our siblings with us for whatever comes next. Except to keep our family intact, when we've only just become a family.”

Two Days. That’s all the time they have left. He never really believed that anything could stop the Games, and yet he still feels taken by surprise.

He should be making the most of it, but instead he’s doing something else. Running away. It hardly feels like it matters: give him two days or twenty, he still isn’t going to say any of the words he might want to say, and he isn’t going to do it because he already knows he won’t receive any of the words he wants in return. Time isn’t the problem, when he can’t reach inside Harbor’s mind, find the memories that went missing and bring them back to surface.

Years from now—(if he makes it that long)—maybe he’ll look back on this with regret, but he doesn’t know what he could do differently now that would change anything. He made his bed a long time ago. This is just him living with it.

Living with it, but he can’t say for how long. With the shitshow this Quell has become, to say nothing of the number of them that already haven’t made it through, it’s easy to imagine the Capitol cleaning house of anyone who was a part of it.

Five’s suite feels as good of a place as any to hide. Aven’s never judged him, he’s never judged her. They’ve both always been survivors; or maybe just cockroaches. He can’t imagine that she feels sanguine about the brink that they’re all teetering on, filled with revolutionary fervor.

Though of course, it’s not only Aven and Emory in Five’s suite, their Tributes, not anymore. Though when Aven opens the door, there isn’t a blonde head in sight. “Thank god,” he says, still keeping his voice low enough not to carry. “For a second I was afraid I’d have to make small talk, and I can’t say I’m feel very sociable.”

Nowhere in the Capitol is safe, but their Suite has always felt like closest possible thing to it: when the doors closed, Hudson was with the people who knew them best, loved them most. The people who would protect them.

There’s a snake among them now. In one fell swoop, the Capitol took Cinna and put someone else in their place. Though, if Cinna felt like a blessing, Crane Crestfall can only be a curse.

They know, even if they aren’t supposed to, about the message the Capitol sent to all the Escorts and Stylists upon their arrival at the Training Center. An image of Fava and Hudson, stitched into chaos in the Districts. They know that because Cinna told them. If the Capitol is giving them a Stylist now, it’ll be one they’ve handpicked, one that thinks Fava and Hudson are as dangerous as the Capitol seems to.

But they’re not flying blind. Nelly never seems to want to talk about anything too heavy, but she’s always been their guide to the Capitol. Nelly brings them tea in the morning, just one of the ways she takes care of them, takes care of all of them in Twelve, and they can’t help but ask, even if it feels like ambushing her: “It’s—kind of late to be getting a new Stylist, isn’t it? Do you know the Crestfalls? What are they like?”

He wonders what Caesar knows. If he knows that the Harbor the Capitol pulled out of whatever godforsaken torture chamber they'd put him in is one who doesn't even remember Twig, let alone love him. If somewhere, behind the wig and the facepaint, Caesar's laughing at him.

If he was laughing at him, all those years past, and Twig just didn't see it.

He wonders, then, what all of this will mean for Harbor's interview tomorrow. If Harbor will get up on stage and they'll ask him questions about Twig, now, instead of about being a traitor to the Capitol. That would be nice, wouldn't it? To think that he's done some good, instead of just sitting up here on this stage and pulling his heart out of his chest for nothing.

But, then, he doesn't know what questions Harbor would rather answer. If Twig's done anything to help him at all, tonight or any of the days that came before.

More importantly, he doesn't know how it's going to go at all. Harbor is going to get up on that stage, and he's going to sign, and are they even going to translate the words that he says, or just decide them for him? Are they going to steal his voice from him one last time?

But here Twig is. He has his voice, for all the good it's done him. When he hasn't said any of this to Harbor.

"I couldn't tell you, Caesar. Harbor obviously has more important things to worry about right now. And I—" he says, his jaw working for a moment before he continues on "—I made mistakes, when I was with him. I gave him up when I shouldn't have. So I don't think I exactly deserve a reunion now. No matter what I may want."

Their suite doesn’t feel safe anymore, but there’s always the roof. The wind, taking away their words before they can be overheard. Keeping them safe.

The roof makes them think of their Games, just last year. Being up here with Fava, talking without fear of being overheard, feeling like they were truly seeing each other for the first time. They’d felt desperate for it, then: something real for them to hold onto, take with them into the Games. One last good memory.

They’re still here, though, and it still feels just as necessary. That Fava sees them, and they see her.

Hudson has been put in front of the Capitol cameras so many times since their first Tribute interview a year ago. Each time, they’ve played the part: Tribute, Victor, Lover. But this time it’s different: it’s not for them, and it’s not that will be pay the price if they mess up. It’s Wren and Gage.

But, just as they did last year, they feel so small when faced with the Capitol. Like nothing they say or do can change what’s to come. But they still tried then—made a confession to Caesar Flickerman that Fava hadn’t known about, that had made her so angry at the time—and they’re not giving up now.

Only this time, they’re not alone.

“We should make a plan for the interviews.” They say, knowing that Fava must be thinking the same thing. Remembering, too. With a poor attempt at a smile in the face of what’s to come, they add: “I promise there won’t be any surprises this time—at least, not from me.”