#nelly.

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?”

Once, Twig and Nelly ran in similar crowds. Capitol crowds, of course. That ended, and it ended because of Twig. He was younger, then, but he can’t say that he was worse. Can’t say that he’s better now. He turned his back on Nelly, who had been something like a friend, when that friendship had grown heavier than Twig could handle. And, over a decade later, he’d turn his back on Harbor, who he loved more than anyone in his life, because he feared he’d grown too dangerous.

And it doesn’t escape him that he hasn’t apologized to either of them. With Harbor, he can say that he doesn’t want to be selfish, self-indulgent, beg for Harbor’s forgiveness when there’s so much that’s more pressing than their relationship, than Twig’s guilt. (He could say, too, that he’s sure his penitence is clear in every line of his body when Harbor looks at him.) But that doesn’t make it the truth. The truth might be closer to this: he’s a coward, and he’s never learned how to say I’m sorry.

He doesn’t know how to say it now, either. Maybe the kinder thing to do would be what they seem to have been doing for years, silently skirting around each other, but today he doesn’t. They’re all in this shit together now, aren’t they?

“Nelly.” He says, keeping his voice low. “Is it true what they’re saying? You haven’t—you haven’t seen Cinna?”

All the time they spent worrying yesterday: about the surprise that Fava had up their sleeve, the thin line that Griffin was planning to walk, the responsibility they’d given themself to do the seemingly impossible and move the Capitol to compassion—and they hadn’t worried enough about Nelly. They didn’t think they had to.

Even before they ever truly knew her, Nelly was the Capitol to them. She came to Twelve every year, more colorful than anything else there by far, and she brought the Hunger Games with her. She took two of their neighbors away to die. And once it was Hudson she was taking away, she was their guide to the Capitol, the one who told them everything they knew about how it worked, about what they had to do to fit into it.

They knew that Nelly wasn’t like the rest of the Capitol. That she was lovely, and she was kind. But they somehow hadn’t put it all together, that if Nelly was kind when the rest of the Capitol was cruel, than that must mean that the Capitol was cruel to her, too. Not until last night, when there wasn’t a thing they could do about it.

But they can do something about it now. Nelly’s always given them affection so freely, the belonging they never knew in Twelve but always craved. And maybe they’ve been offering her the same this whole time, too—but now they really know what it means. “I’m so sorry about last night, Nelly,” they say immediately when they see her, not wanting to waste any time. “You didn’t deserve any of that.”

Wren and Gage are off to training, behind closed doors where none of them can follow. Watching them go, Hudson had felt sick: in his own Games, he’d looked at the youngest of the Tributes and felt so much older, so much bigger compared to them, and so horrified by what he was expected to do—and their brother is seven years their senior. A fully grown man, with a child of his own on the way.

But Wren is still a child. As small as anyone in Hudson’s Games, but in a field full of adults.

Hudson thought the Rebels would save them. It was the only hope they had. And yet, here they all are.

It’s been fractured between them. Griffin with his bruised face, his lack of explanations. Fava with her anger. Even Nelly’s been quieter since they arrived. Maybe that leaves Hudson in the middle, to be the one to pull them all back together. Though they’re not quite sure how.

But they have no choice but to work together. Maybe they need a reminder of that. “So this is happening.” Because the Rebels failed them. “So we need—alliances, we need sponsors. We need to do something.”