#robyn.

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.”

He watches Harbor in the water. As long as he can, until the cameras move away. He’s alive.

He’s alive, but Twig knows how little that has to do with him. He couldn’t count on his oldest friend in the Capitol to be a sponsor. He couldn’t help Harbor on the interview stage, when he raged backstage at every Capitolite standing by while Harbor sat on stage, hands moving but no one giving his words voice. Why did you even reap him? He’d demanded. If you aren’t going to let him compete? No one answered. He hadn’t expected them to.

And now he watches.

He finds himself gravitating, again, to Robyn. He doesn’t know if they can be a comfort to each other, but he knows that—now, at least—they feel the same. That, after all these years and all this distance, this is what it took for them to reach an understanding. “It’s good that he’s with Wren,” he says, though he can’t say how convinced he sounds. “He’ll protect her. And she—she’s well-liked. That’ll protect him, too.” 

It’s almost poetic. One of the most well-loved of this year’s Tributes, teaming up with one of the most hated. Though, if this Quell has taught them anything at all, it’s that love doesn’t always keep someone safe.

Everyone’s heard it all by now: Silver, Slate, and Cinna gone in one sweep after the Capitol’s favorite lovebirds’ wedding. But try as he might, Twig can’t make any sense of it. Everyone could see that Cinna was playing with fire, perhaps, but Silver and Slate were good soldiers. Silver and Slate were people Twig felt he had a lot in common with. And after his own display at the wedding, he feels like he dodged a bullet.

Or, really, he feels more like his time could still come. He’s dodged it for this long, but there doesn’t feel like there’s any avoiding it now. The only question left is when.

Robyn still comes to Seven’s suite like clockwork, waiting for Harbor to return. Twig almost wishes he wouldn’t—it’s hard to look at them without pity, without seeing a loss they don’t want to see. They don’t know what’s worse: that it’s a look into the past, a reminder of when Harbor was taken; or that it could be a look into the future, a warning that Harbor might be gone again, this time for real.

What could he even say to him? What wisdom does he have that Robyn doesn’t already have for themself from losing Harbor? The worst part of it all, perhaps, is that he wants to try anyway. That he sees them both so close to breaking and wishes he could somehow stop it. He’s not sure if he can, for either of them. For any of them, because they’re far from the only ones.

He only clears his throat. Sits across from Robyn instead of leaving them to wait for Harbor alone. A pathetic effort, maybe, but hopefully the start of a better one. “Any news?”

Twig has been avoiding Robyn. ​

He received the invitation for Harbor’s so-called wake, but he didn’t acknowledge it. He stayed in District Seven; he pretended it wasn’t happening. He knows, he knows, that it’s a decision he’ll have to answer for eventually. But he’s been cowardly enough to try and put it off for as long as he can—it’s easy to be busy in the Capitol, and so it hasn’t caught up to him yet.

In a way, no matter how morbid it is, he got lucky. While people who were in the know knew, he and Harbor kept their relationship on the quieter side—it was nice, Twig thought, for two people so used to the spotlight, to everything about them being for public consumption, to have something that was just theirs. Now, it means that Twig has a chance to survive this. To not let himself be tarred by whatever Harbor did or said that was a step too far for the Capitol to abide.

And, unlike everyone else, he actually got to say his goodbyes to Harbor, no matter how inadequate they feel now. Even if he didn’t know, then, exactly how final they’d be.

But, of course, luck can only be on his side for so long. It’s the morning he’s supposed to board the train back to District Seven, and here Robyn is, impossible for Twig to duck and avoid. “Robyn,” he says. And then, because he can’t exactly say such a pleasure to see you again: “It’s been awhile.”

His heart is still pounding. More of that same feeling that he’s had ever since the Reaping, of waiting for the other shoe to drop. For so long, he’s been so composed. So perfect in the public eye. Keeping his head down, keeping quiet when necessary, letting the Capitol fill in the blanks for him with what they want to see. Now, he keeps stepping out of line. It’s hard not to think that he’ll have to pay for it somehow.

But, then again, what can they do to him that they aren’t doing already?

He turns his back on the crowd, but he knows it’s useless. His fight with Cyprian will spread like wildfire. And, even for those who weren’t close enough to hear it, it’ll be easy enough to fill in the blanks. What could they be fighting over besides Harbor?

He resolutely doesn’t look for Harbor in the crowd. But who he sees first is even worse: Robyn. He can’t imagine them taking his failure in stride. Not when Harbor’s safety in the Games is his responsibility. When it’s his duty, as a Mentor, to get sponsors. And not when Robyn’s already been disappointed in him before. Thought he cared too little; that he didn’t do enough.

“There’s no use in pretending that was—” he can’t even think of anything, anything at all he might have caused a scene over. He waves a hand—his uninjured hand—vaguely. “About something else, is there?”

stella would probably take someone’s eye out with a designer earring, lucille would put her heels on someone’s throat, and robyn would end her opponent. they're the badass trio that the bikini bottom has always needed.