you can always bleed a little more.

❛ i will do the burying. ❜
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life of the party , olivia gatwood.

┆彡ೃ✧࿐ chapter fifteen, act two

The Train, Somewhere in Panem. July, 72 ATT.

                    𝔇reams are such vicious, vicious things.

The Cayden household: before the games. Built with tooth and nail by her grandfather so many years ago. She never met him, but the proof of his labour and love holds strong. Slanted walls and Mercy's hammock strung up over in the corner. A roof that hasn't caved in under the force of the storm yet, although there's the steady patter of rain drumming down. It's soothing; it's the sound of childhood winters. The windows may be dark, but Mama strikes matches and lights some candles. An amber glow flickers and wanes around the room.

Family dinner. All four Caydens present.

Alec sits on the far end, not quite a statue but in one of his better episodes ─── he's moving and talking, even if every word has an unspoken hush behind it. "I know we're in a strange place, you and me, little bird."

She glances around. Mara hasn't heard that nickname in a long time. The windows are black outside, as black as the darkest night. His clothes are tattered and dirty, as if torn apart by badgers or wolves, but his eyes are unhazed and wary.

"Are we?" She asks.

"Mhm," he nods, face crinkling in a grin. "Pass the salt?"

Everything is slow and tortured. Mara takes an age to reach her hand out ─── only to find there's no food on the table. There never is, and she'd tell him that, but the words just don't leave her mouth.

"Sera," he says over to Mama, who is on the other end, "this daughter of ours won't listen to me."

She laughs distantly. "Who would?"

Her parents haven't been affectionate enough for nicknames for years. Mama carries on laughing, and it sounds more like sobbing.

Mara is locked away in her own body. She looks to Mercy, to find her grandmother's weathered features ─── she's there, opposite her, white hair reaching into a grey halo around her head. Mara stares as years are shed from her face, still underscored by Mama's hideous laughter. Mercy's skin smooths, her back straightens, and her hair grows and fades to black.

Mara stares at another version of herself. Her vision shifts. Blurs. The laughter dies out.

The Cayden household: before the games.

Sunlight pours in, bathing her in gold. It's as warm as a furnace here, and Mara relishes in it ─── she never realised how cold it's always been. She's in her old, crooked camp bed pushed up against a wall ─── making space for the family table; a large upturned box, still a luxury by most standards. And she's not alone, she's warring over who gets more of the blanket.

"Give it back," she complains ─── her voice now comes freely.

Lian pokes her in the side and she flinches. Some pressure point, he proudly calls it. His way of getting her to surrender the blanket. Whatever, she thinks. It's summer. It's warm.

She still kicks him, of course ─── just because.

Lian smiles as he returns the gesture, dimples on his cheeks. And she'd cling to this moment forever, but Lian was taken away and came back in a box.

Mara's eyes go glassy. "Come back."

He just grins, parading his victory, and then goes to sleep. He's so still she's not even sure he's breathing, and Mara shakes his shoulders, but his expression never changes and his eyes don't open.

She wakes with a scream buried beneath her ribs. A dream is everything you could ever want and never have dangled before you, just out of reach.

A jolt in the tracks forces her eyes open. Sprawled on the floor, a sharp pricking digs into her skin. It takes a few moments to look past the brightness of the sunlight filtering in through the blinds and let the rest of the metal box come into focus. Metal box? No ─── she's on the floor of the compartment, looking up at the ceiling.

Mara lays there in a daze, slowly blinking as she tries to remember how she got here. Glass digs into her back. It litters the floor of the compartment, glittering like little diamond shards. She brushes it away, hands smeared with blood; mindlessly, she wipes her hands on her dress and looks around. The head of a bottle rolls towards her, its edges jagged.

She can guess what happened. It wouldn't be the first time. Nor the last, she thinks ruefully as she pushes herself up onto her feet and stumbles into the bathroom. She keels over the toilet as if her tendons are suddenly cut and wretches, though there's hardly much to bring up. It burns nonetheless, sour and acrid, and she shudders violently until it subsides.

Mara grasps the basin and uses it to drag herself up, cupping some water into her trembling hands and rinsing out her mouth. She leans against the sink, and makes the mistake of tilting her head up to see herself in the mirror.

Who is that deranged girl staring back at her? Is this what Sommer and Oren have to rely on?

Oren still clinging onto hope that she'll do well and Sommer righteously angry that she won't. Together, they're the bitter and the blind.

She blanches at the thought of the dream, her throat becoming even dryer. The details slip away like sand running through her hands, but her brother's face remains fresh in her memory, as it has all these years.

She tries to make herself look presentable. Rubbing at her eyes only makes them redder and throwing on a clean outfit doesn't hide the slight dip between her ribs and torso ─── even if she could gorge on three meals a day, Mara barely eats. What a waste.

Eventually, she opens the door and trails down towards the dining compartment like one of the ghosts who haunt her; silent and pained. The material of her dress is odd and colourful, but she has no will to sort through the pile for something to her taste. Whatever it is will have to do. It's been so long since she's had to worry about her public image.

Mara tells herself there are no cameras watching, that the focus isn't on her, but she's caught glimpses of reruns of her games when mindlessly flicking through the channels while at home. She reverts to what she did then ─── wiping her face into a blank slate until she can choose how to appear.

That's what she did when the other tributes died. Mara's nails dig moon-shaped indents into her palms the moment that thought flits across her mind. They're more than just tributes.

Hestia was a child forced to work machinery and lost a fingertip; she was bright in school and had someday hoped to be an engineer designing better, safer machines. Amira was a child as well, almost eighteen, yet she had a lover and a tiny child waiting for her back home ─── her tears were at least partially real. Mara doesn't dare think of it any more than that.

And Avens, dear Avens, bled all shades of crimson. She thought that she was going to marry that boy someday.

Sommer and Oren are no less human than them. Terribly human, and terribly fragile.

"How are you today, Mara?" Antonia dispels the silence while the Avoxes clear away the meal; her gaze switches between the mentor and the tributes. The food was an excuse for silence, and now that it's gone ─── it hangs heavier than ever. "Better?"

She knows Antonia is trying to be kind, but Mara is an open wound. All eyes on her, waiting to see how she'll react. Sommer disdainfully watching to see if she has another breakdown. Oren hoping that she won't. Even Chaff isn't distracted for once, studying her carefully. Her cheeks are dusted with rosy shame.

"Much." She says shortly, then pivots the attention away from her. She doesn't like being under the spotlight ─── even the glares of the many ghosts haunting her are less invasive. "We have a full day of travel. Lots to discuss."

"There's only one thing you can do." Chaff says. "Embrace the overwhelming probability of your imminent death, of course."

Antonia sighs, blue painted lips pulled into a frown. "That wasn't funny when you and Haymitch came up with it, and it still isn't!"

The truth of those words ring in her ears. But what else is there to do? She stares down at her plate.

Sommer, however, takes it personally. She glares at Chaff, and puts on a saccharine voice that doesn't belong to her. "We just cross our fingers and hope for the best?"

Chaff nods, but Mara doesn't grow angry at it the way she used to ─── another sip from his flask, just a quick one; he can't stay away ─── it's just sad.

Oren's voice wavers. "That . . . doesn't sound like the best idea."

"So?"

"It's your job to help us." Oren blinks, looking over to Mara for some kind of help. He finds none.

Chaff finishes the glass, and moves on to his flask, focusing on the drink rather than the two tributes steadily travelling towards their deaths. "Too bad."

Oh, she feels sick. She cuts in before Sommer can fire back. "Antonia and I will tutor you today." She offers, glancing over to the escort, who nods. "Mostly on presentation."

Sommer still seems dissatisfied, but she curls her lip and keeps quiet. Antonia ushers them into a room with a large screen where they watch the various reapings ordered by district ─── and while Mara tries to focus and discern those to dismiss as threats and those to pay attention to, she either blanks her mind or thinks back to her own train ride.

The Careers look the same ─── all tall and strong and striding on stage like the world is theirs for the taking. Don't they know what happened to Desiree? Don't they know that the arena is just as merciless to them as it was to Yoselin and Octavian? That the Capitol may like them slightly more, but will never truly love them? The sickness inside her only spreads as she watches them choose to march to the slaughterhouse.

"I volunteer as tribute."

Four has a Career this time as well, met with tittering from the crowd. A large brown haired boy strolls up, hands in the pockets of his trousers. Reeve ─── as he introduces himself ─── asserts himself well. The escort loves him. Mara knows that the Capitolites watching do too. He eclipses his district partner. Blinding. Brilliant.

Desiree was like that. Now she is simply buried bones.

Mara can hardly watch. Some start to cry, some simmer with rage, some choose to be there. Nothing changed after her games. A sobbing brunette from Seven. (Or is it a blonde from Five?) The lines between past and present blur. A whippet-like girl; a shaking boy. So many names that she can't attach to the faces. It was easy to keep track of them back when she was a tribute; any one of them might've been the one to kill her. But now she is safe from it all.

Oren stares at the screen. Sommer, when she thinks no one is looking, shuts her eyes.

Mara fiddles with her ring, twisting it between her fingers. It's hardly left her once in the past two years. It doesn't help the way it used to. Her home, after all, is gone. The Cayden family hut is little more than scavenged ruins, destroyed by a storm only a few months after she won.

Sommer and Oren have agreed to be taught together. They're talking with Chaff first, before he gets catatonic, and she and Antonia prepare to teach them the etiquette. The escort lays out cutlery on the table, just as she had two years ago. Mara can't bring herself to say anything, or to note that she's forgotten everything Antonia taught her that day.

Yet Antonia is oddly quiet. A weird sort of tension keeps her spine ramrod straight, and for once, her face isn't an open window into her thoughts. Mara's first thought is that it's because of Sommer, but even with the girl, Antonia was still . . . Antonia, still in her usual loud way.

Mara doesn't think too much of it. She has her own grief and guilt to contend with every hour of the day.

The compartment door slides open. Even Oren has a slash of a frown on his face ─── she tries not to think about the train ride that took her to the Capitol for the first time, but ends up seeing Avens' face anyway.

He had such hope. She doesn't know if that makes it worse.

"Right," Antonia chirps, reanimated. She clasps her hands together and her fake nails clatter against each other. "We're going to teach you to behave like normal people for the games."

Sommer scoffs. She glances at Mara ─── for once, her gaze softens. Slightly. Asking her to correct Antonia. And Mara wishes she could, ─── the Capitol doesn't consider tributes as people, except in the flimsiest sense of the word, but this isn't just about being a tribute. It's about being from Eleven.

But she says nothing. The game demands her silence, and she gives it.

"We'll cover good manners to things you should never say in an interview. There is a right way to do things!" Antonia continues.

Sommer's gaze hardens to a glare. "Let's get this over with."

"For starters!" Antonia gives her a look of equal measure, almost intimidating given her questionable appearance. While she's not made for brutality the way Mara and Chaff are well versed in, this is her territory. "We're not going to say things like that. You are grateful for every opportunity you are given."

"Of course," Sommer hisses. "Let's celebrate being stolen away and forced to fight."

Oren nods. "I just want to go home."

Antonia splutters; "well, you see . . . you've been chosen to represent your district to the Capitol, and ───"

"You talk about other things." Mara cuts in. Antonia, not quite sure of what she's saying, is grateful for her intervention. "There are a few highlights to focus on. The food, the tech, how beautiful the Capitol is. They like that."

"That's bullshit." Sommer says.

"I know. Get used to lying."

Sommer leans back in her chair, arms folded over her chest, studying her carefully. "Is that what you are, then? A liar?"

The honest ones never made it out of the arena.

Avens, Avens, Avens. Her throat closes up at the thought of him: of his rich, deep laugh, of his short coily hair and deeply comforting eyes ─── unseeing eyes. She remembers how much he bled. All he is now is bones laid out beneath a gravestone.

She's somewhere else again; thankfully Antonia carries on. The escort picks up control of the conversation quickly. "You'll need an angle to play with. Something to remember you by. We've spoken, and we think it'd be best to keep you both in the middle of the pack."

She doesn't relent. "Well? Don't deflect with the useless escort."

"Do not interrupt me, Sommer, unless you want to die." Antonia snaps, enunciating every word with barely leashed irritation. It clashes with her high-pitched voice and fluttery accent. "For someone so useless, I could ruin your reputation. When you're starving and no one wants to send you food, you'll wish I was kinder."

That wrenches her back from her memories ─── when has Antonia ever been that vicious? Oren, quietly stunned, stares at her with a mix of anger and resentment and that horrible dependence that tributes have on their mentors.

"I've been starving my whole life." Sommer spits, "and it's always their fault. Nothing new there."

Then she glares at Mara. "Have you been lying to us?"

"No."

Oren interjects with the same suspicion. "It's convenient how being in the middle of the pack is low maintenance. Would it really be as good as you say it is?"

Mara lets out a desperate sigh, shaking her head as her gaze lifts to the ceiling. "Yes. That's how I did it. That's the best . . . "

Chaff and Seeder were far from ready to mentor, she recollects. Only after she and Avens spat fire at them did they give them some kind of teaching. Perhaps those was just false words to placate their anger, haphazard teaching where they simply went with whatever was easiest ─── since they were both going to die anyway. Maybe staying in the middle was an easy way to keep the blindfold over their eyes as they were led to the slaughterhouse.

Antonia must have known. And she's here, again ─── questioned, again ─── yet she offers no loud assertion of the truth. She only looks uncomfortable.

She was complicit in the lies Mara was told. She let that happen and she's actively trying to do it again. She was almost grateful that the escort was here, that she at the very least seems genuine, but that thought shatters. Now she can't stand the sight of her.

"Right," Oren says coolly. "Good to know."

Sommer doesn't even say anything. The fight has deflated out of her, and she pointedly looks away from Mara and Antonia. She gets up and starts to leave before either of them can see the glassiness of her eyes.

No, no, they're slipping away and they won't ever come back! Mara is condemning more ghosts to the arena. "Please," she says. "We're here to help. We're not your enemies."

"I couldn't tell." Sommer says quietly as she leaves through the doorway.

⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹ ⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹⭒

City Circle, The Capitol. July, 72 ATT.

                    𝔗hey say that this year's tributes are the best dressed yet. The exception, of course, is poor little District Twelve ─── those two were completely naked, bar a small modesty strip, slathered in black dye and covered in coal dust. They had helmets on too. The humiliation, in a roundabout way, brought them attention ─── but not the right kind. Tributes need awe, interest, faith; not pity. Mara is glad she chose not to watch, but the images from the chariot rides are plastered everywhere.

Opal's popularity skyrocketed after her victory. She could launch her own fashion brand, so she has no need to dress up little children anymore. Mara, and her district, are forgotten and discarded again.

Mara doesn't know who the new stylist is. Sommer and Oren had a flower motif between them and most of their skin was covered. They stood straight, unbent and unbowed, which is better than some of the others. Disgust coils in her stomach, but what else can she do? It'll only get worse. Soon, she'll have to talk to some of the Capitolites and see what they think of Eleven's latest harvest.

She stares at the sign on the building. The Playing Inn, written in neon lights across the doorframe. There's toy weapons on sale in the front window as well as the various posters about the tributes plastered on the windows. The Capitol children have wooden or styrofoam swords ─── but the ones that they give to District children are live steel.

She stands just outside the threshold, trying to collect herself. The expressions her tributes had during the train ride are seared in her mind. Mara exhales shakily. She can't do this. Why was she stupid enough to think it was over as she lay there in the jungle of the arena, holding Avens and half dead, when the last cannon fired?

A shift in the air behind her sends a jolt up her spine; she knows instinctively that they're much larger and heavier than her. Mara wheels around, tense, knife already slipping between her fingers─── she's been caught off guard. She's going to die. Isn't it frightening how mortal she remains? The knife is at the man's throat before either of them can blink.

"Woah, woah, sweetheart!" He raises his hands in the air, one palm flat and open, the other wrapped around a flask. He stumbles, which presses the knife into his skin. He doesn't seem to notice the small cut. "I'm afrai . . . we don't have rooms! We don't!"

"I'm not here to stay." She hisses.

He's drunk. Very drunk. Not dissimilar to Chaff, actually, he reeks like him. He's tall, with a large hooked nose and olive skin weathered with something beyond age ─── it's in the frown lines more than anywhere else.

In an instant, he becomes more serious. His dark brown eyes glint, muted by the drink but still there. "Now get away from me."

"Ah, Hay ─── what are you doing?" She recognises the third voice in a heartbeat; it's Chaff, and he sounds honestly surprised given the way his voice is ever so slightly higher than usual. He laughs at the sight. "Don't be so tense, kid. This is Haymitch. My friend."

She puts the knife back up her sleeve, cool metal comforting against her forearm, but doesn't take her eyes off the man. Haymitch, a name she vaguely remembers. "I didn't know you had friends." She says coolly, watching the man carefully for a reaction.

Chaff's face slackens but Haymitch bursts into uproarious laughter, hitting her on the shoulder. "Oh good one. She's right, isn't she?"

The tension dissipates instantly. He's not a threat.

"Who are you then? My next door neighbour?" Chaff grumbles but doesn't disagree. None of them have particularly fulfilling lives. "Let's just get this over with."

And though she doesn't want to, Mara follows them in through the door.

The first floor is a front. It serves as an actual inn, but Seeder has told her not to worry about it. They usually don't have many guests, and an agreement with the owners ─── for a hefty sum of money, though little more than a fraction of what the victors are showered in ─── means they own the second floor.

It's the closest you'll get to discretion, she'd told her. Remember: windows have eyes and the walls have ears. Nowhere else is truly private.

Chaff checks his watch and punches in the access code, which changes every hour. Mara keeps her head down for fear of being recognised, though it's become usual for victors to frequent this place. She follows Chaff and Haymitch up the stairs, almost afraid they'll fall over and onto her with the way they're swerving around, but they get to the top with no crashes. Another door, with another code, and they're in.

It's a large room, with the windows tilted open to let in some of the hot summer air. Though the Capitol is much further north than Eleven, with much milder heat in comparison, it's still hot enough to be uncomfortable and sweat a little. She's glad for whatever tiny breeze reaches her face.

It's mostly empty, with just a few people drifting around. A game of cards sprawled on the sofa and a table dedicated to drinks. Haymitch, who seems to have forgotten all about her despite the fact that she held a knife to his throat only a few minutes ago, gravitates there immediately and after picking up the nearest bottle, he gets dealt into the game.

Chaff wants to follow him but stays around for a while to introduce her to the other mentors. She recognises some of their names from the past few years, but not their faces. She dined with them on her victory tour, but that was so long ago and she was so muddled in her own pain that she's forgotten.

He introduces her to Cecilia and Woof, the pair from Eight. She vaguely remembers Antonia and Cecilia spending so long talking about her newborn children that they didn't leave until close to midnight during her victory tour. Woof is so old he's almost completely forgotten that he has two tributes, not just one. There's Porter from Five ─── who, she realises with a sickening lurch, must have mentored Amira back in her games.

Amira, Amira, Amira. How is your child that you'll never raise?

But the brace-bound woman holds no grudge about that. In fact, none of them mention the games at all.

"There's others." Chaff says, though he keeps on eyeing the game and the drinks. "The more popular ones . . . they're hardly here though. Cashmere, Gloss, Enobaria, Finnick."

"Just go and play. Don't wait for me."

"I'll introduce you to the ones playing," he sighs. "Seeder told me to keep you company while she isn't here. Y'know, to show you around."

"I've seen plenty." Mara says curtly, her skin feeling too tight over her bones. The lie comes easily but is bitter in her mouth. "You've done your job. Is there a balcony I can go sit on? For some fresh air?"

He waves his amputated arm towards another door and she doesn't waste another moment.

Cecilia stops her. "You alright, dear? You seem . . ."

"Distracted." She says, hating how her kindness seems to cut her more deeply than a knife. "I'm fine though."

There's something in her grey eyes that knows Mara is lying, but she nods graciously and leaves it at that.

Mara goes out onto the little balcony out in the Capitol air. It's tainted like everything else but on the first floor, it's high enough for the wind to properly pick up. She sits on the railing, legs over the edge. There's no barrier here to stop people from falling off ─── they're not tributes any more. They're already been used for entertainment and if she were, hypothetically speaking, to fall, she'd probably break her legs and die.

It seems like a good idea until she thinks of her family. How they're trusting that she'll return. How if she dies, they'll have nowhere to go.

The flask somehow winds up in her hands. The burning is warm and pleasant, and makes her a little less miserable.

She should be doing more than dangling her legs off a balcony, drinking, and semi-seriously contemplating her death ─── she should be out there, collecting sponsors, spreading flattering lies about her tributes, or at least something. It's like boarding the train, though. Her body simply won't cooperate.

How can she hate Chaff now? How could she have ever despised Seeder? She didn't understand back then. She couldn't comprehend the depths of torture they were drowning in, are still drowning in ─── and she wishes she still didn't.

"Oh, Mara . . ." A voice comes out of nowhere, so sudden that she starts and almost falls. There's no force field keeping her safe. She clings to the railing, tense and staring down wildly.

(If you want to die, throw yourself into the sea, and you'll find yourself fighting to survive. You only want to kill something inside you.)

Her heart pounds in her ears. She recognises that rich, honey-like voice and scowls. "Oh. It's you."

She turns her head, already glaring at Finnick.

"Mara!" He croons delightedly, face breaking into a grin at the proper sight of her. She hates how awfully handsome he looks when he smiles, even more when he knows how it winds her up. How she knows it's fake. "I haven't seen you ───" He points from himself to her while he speaks, "─── in ages. Don't jump, yeah?"

"If you don't stop talking to me, I might." She says, though both of them know it's an empty threat.

Finnick walks over, every movement fluid like water, and sits on the railing too, nudging her with his shoulder. "It's been forever," he says. "The parties haven't been the same without you. Every time I throw back a shot, I think to myself, Mara would like this."

"You clearly don't know me well." She says, skin prickling at the thought of drinking. The empty flask hangs heavy in her pocket, and she's heavily aware that he can probably smell it on her breath.

"I could get to know you," he says smoothly. It's not suggestive, exactly ─── but his reputation speaks volumes. Capitol darling, playboy, whore. She tries to keep out of it as, simply, it disgusts her.

"Or you could jump," she suggests sharply, shuffling away from him. Mara tries to ignore him, but there's something about Finnick, about the way he acts and speaks, that simply demands attention.

He puts a hand against his chest. "Surely I'm not that repulsive, sweetheart."

"You are." He isn't, and that's the problem.

"You see," he says, taking a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it, "this is why you have no friends."

"Then why are you talking to me?" She asks without dropping a beat. He offers her a drag and she curls her lip, but takes it anyway. Why not?

Finnick watches intently as she puts the cigarette to her lips and inhales ─── she coughs. It's acrid and substanceless. The taste stays in her lungs long after she's coughed out the smoke ─── taste? How could it be a taste?

"You dropped it." He sing-songs. "Hasn't rained in a while. Trying to burn down the building?"

Mara scoffs, but ends up doubling over and coughing some more. It subsides. She sits back up, eyes wide and watery. "What the fuck? How can you suck on those?"

Almost imperceptibly, his grin gets pulled a little tighter. "It's an acquired taste."

She shakes her head to herself. "Mental," she mutters, "just mental."

He takes another out from the pack, lights it, and takes a deep drag with his eyes shut. Mara notes the easy movements ─── the practice. Quiet settles over them, only the faint indoor chatter and bustling of the Capitol below. He tilts his head back and blows out the smoke in a perfect ring, then grins at her as if to say impressive, right?

She heads inside.

He hasn't changed a bit; glowing bronze skin, charming and calculating eyes, a face that draws attention from all angles of the room. Never serious, never anything but an odd mix of humour, flirting, and warning. Plain as day, it's an act, a mask ─── but she doesn't particularly care to try and take it off him. His voice is the same too, still deep yet somehow light and airy ─── but she remembers when it was a mix of terror and relief.

He's always acted this way ─── but not the first day that they met. That voice cemented her brother's death in history. Whenever she thinks of Lian, invariably her thoughts shift to the boy who took the ticket home. To the boy that stood before Eleven's battered Justice Building and delivered a hollow speech supposed to honour Lian.

Standing on a raised platform designated for the families of the deceased, it's like all the cuts viciously reopen the moment the bronze-skinned teenager walks on stage. As her mother always says ─── there's a difference between healing and simply not bleeding anymore.

It's impossible to ignore him. A ten-year-old Mara looks young for her age, short and thin with permanently tangled hair, and doesn't understand the cost of the games. But she's old enough to know what Finnick Odair's survival means. Enough to hate him for it.

It's also impossible not to notice the way his gaze flickers to her, dropping to guilt for a moment. The pause as he sees the tear stains streaked on her cheeks, the angry glare that tells him exactly what his victory costs. How can she ignore the rain that falls as he dines with the Mayor, the smell of food wafting over to the streets?

If only it were Lian instead of him.

⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹ ⭒ ➷ ⭒ ➹⭒

The Study, Snow's Mansion. July, 72 ATT.

                    𝔗he letter arrived last Tuesday. Pure poison sealed with white wax and smelling strongly of roses. She didn't tell Mercy or Alec about it, hiding it in her room until a few days later, when she gathered the resolve to open it. They found out about its contents the next day: the President wishes to speak to her, face to face, before the games begin.

Alec tore it to shreds, ripped paper scattered over the kitchen floor. "They're not taking your future as well," he had said, furious, but it hadn't mattered much.

She had to get on that train and here she is, sitting in a study; waiting, waiting, waiting.

What could be so important it couldn't be summarised in another letter? What could the most powerful man in Panem want from her, even after playing her part in the games?

Moments before he crosses the threshold into the room, there's a waft of cold air heralding his approach. She stills in the chair, just as stiff as she had been while he crowned her. Though, she could just be imagining things ─── Mara is so jumpy, so attuned to the finest details. Every flake of paint on the walls; every petal of the white roses in the vase. Every beat of her heart, thumping in time to the President's footsteps.

No, there's two sets of footsteps.

"Miss Cayden," he begins, voice raspy and unsettling, yet a certain twinkle in his stony grey eyes. "A pleasure to see you again. Have you met my grandson?" He gestures to the boy beside him ─── tall, sharp, with a perfect head of platinum blond hair. He doesn't look much older than her.

"No." She says.

Truly; it takes a moment for her to figure out that he's jovial, smiling, deepening the lines on his face. If she didn't know better, she'd say he looks more like a rich grandfather than the leader of the nation.

"This is Verona." He says as the boy draws a seat beside his grandfather, mouth pressed in a sullen line and studying her carefully.

"Is he mute?" The sardonic question slips out; Mara immediately regrets it.

The boy raises a blond brow. "No."

The moment of silence stretches too long; she rushes to cover it. "Oh. Sorry." Then, an afterthought: "Sir."

Snow chuckles, leaning back, sunlight shining through the window and illuminating his pale white hair. But a snake is a snake, no matter how much it may look like a flower. Tension is an instinct of danger, coiling in every inch of her, and while she may not trust her mind, she will follow her gut. He wants something from her.

She doesn't want to play anymore, but when has there ever been a choice?

"I do sometimes wonder what it is to be a victor." Snow says, studying her carefully. Mara fights the urge to turn away and hide. "To be plucked out of the masses, and yet, survive."

Verona still studies her, grey-eyed and clinical. "I did my university thesis on it. On the Psychology of Victors."

Mara keeps her expression blank, purposely so ─── Verona must know, then, how deeply she suffers. He's studied it. And yet still, he delivers it in that composed, almost calculated way. Completely detached. Completely cold. Just like his grandfather, except with none of the pleasantry.

University, she recollects dimly, is some kind of school. That puts him maybe a few years ahead of her.

Snow continues; "We have become friends, have we not, since you won?"

Her first instinct is to run. Run, far from this man and his horrible grandson, with his laced words and discomfort radiating from him; leave this place and whatever he wants along with the star-studded skyline of the Capitol. The next is to shoot them. Though, the security guards found the knife in her sleeve when they frisked her on the way in, and no doubt, she's been watched by more than two pairs of eyes right now. What good would holding a gun to his forehead do? She tried that sort of thing once.

Threatening Peacekeeper Stirling meant she couldn't see her family. Threatening the Snows doesn't just mean death, it is death.

"Yes, Mr President." She forces out, thinking it better to agree. "Sir."

He tilts his head slightly to the side, as if she has already fallen into the pit of snakes. "Then, as friends, I will be frank with you. I need your help. Do you know what a desirable is?"

"No."

Play dumb. Mara has never heard that word used in that context before, but she knows. Desirables are people like Finnick Odair and Cashmere; like Enobaria with her sharpened teeth and Gloss, Brutus. The successful Careers. So brilliant, so blinding, so wanted by everyone in the room.

"A desirable is someone who keeps the Capitol company during the months between the games," he says, with that jolly smile never faltering.

Her mouth goes dry with disgust. "I want to see if the people of my city will take to you."

"What?" Her voice is brittle, weak; she doesn't quite understand.

"I don't think they will." Verona remarks, as if she's some kind of specimen behind a sheet of glass. As if she's a toy to be tested. "She looks . . . dirty."

"We don't generally associate with Eleven," Snow continues, "and up until now, I never had reason to doubt that."

There is a certain regard laced in his voice now, more menacing, and she is frozen in her seat, helpless as the snake swallows her whole. "I propose an experiment."

All she can do is blink slowly, stunned, as the details fall into place. As she realises what he's alluding to. This is the punishment for . . . for what, exactly?

Snow's smile vanishes like evaporating rainwater. "You will attend every social event you are invited to. Every single one, Miss Cayden, and I will know if you don't turn up. You will smile. You will laugh. You will not reject any . . . advances."

She presses her lips into a line to keep herself from sobbing. Her nails dig half-moon shapes into the flesh of her palms. "I'm ─── I'm just a kid," she tries to deflect, "it's not legal."

That throws him off, for some reason, if only for a moment. "Only for the next nine months. You turned seventeen last April, Miss Cayden." He says, raising a brow at her delusions. "Not that it matters. It's the perfect time to test the water."

"Do we tell her what happens if she refuses?" Verona asks his grandfather, glancing over at him.

"Oh, Verona, my boy," Snow chuckles softly. "She knows."

"What else is there?" She asks, hollow.

A mistake. His eyes narrow, and the smile drops. "Don't ask those sorts of questions, dear. You might discover the answer. If they like you, I shall have no choice. If not," his gaze sweeps over her dismissively, "you will have served your purpose."

To Verona: "We shall see if your hypothesis is correct."

To Mara: "You may leave now."

Mara physically cannot move; two Peacekeepers briskly march in and grab her around the arms. They drag her out, and she does not fight back, letting them pull her out and away, away from the poison she has been forced to ingest ─── Snow watches from his desk, his kindly smile propped up on his face once more, then resumes conversation with Verona.

She is thrown without care onto the floor outside his study; the soldiers shut the door and march off, to torture some poor soul who doesn't deserve it. But this is not Eleven, and citizens aren't constantly punished. Only the victors.

A shadow looms over her, tall and blonde, but she doesn't have the will to get up. "Hi, it's Mara, right?"

Cashmere asks, but her charming smile seems ever so slightly dull, if she looks more closely. Which she doesn't. She tilts her head, looking down at her with a mix of amusement and concern, still with some reservations. (When Snow demands to speak to a victor, it never ends well.)

She extends a hand, reaching down, and Mara surprises herself by taking it. With Cashmere's help, she makes her frozen limbs move until she stands, and immediately leans for support on the wall.

The expression on her face must be more visible now, because her amusement fades faster than twilight on a summer's night. "What did he want?"

She shakes her head. Cashmere's eyes bore into hers, with something she never thought possible for a Career. Sympathy. The moment passes, and she shakes her head again.

"I have a chance to get out of it." She murmurs, over and over, neither of them realising how unintentionally cruel her words are.

"Wait, wait." She says, as her name is called from the other side of the door. "What do you mean?"

But just as Mara was dragged out, Cashmere is escorted in, and does not come out for a long time. Peacekeepers line the corridor, and Mara doesn't dare loiter. She stands, now, at the brink ─── either to escape, or be sucked into the Capitol's lurid grasp forever.

Eliya's Notes:

── :: 6,838 words!

── i: well ... that was a long and very depressing chapter 😔 but we're getting more about sommer and oren! i'm really trying to humanise them beyond just "angry" or "avens 2.0" bc they are KIDS with a KID mentoring them. whatever you have to say about chaff, it's deserved, but also hopefully explainable??? i get why he is the way he is. there's only one scene of them on the train as i didn't want to drag it out, and we'll have more insight into how things work as a mentor.

── ii: delving a bit into the lore around mentoring and ofc mara has now met haymitch, cecilia, and ofc others, but the real star of the show here is finnick 🤩 and boy oh boy is this just the start. i used to call them enemies to lovers, but it doesn't quite fit them. they're not enemies or friends they're a secret third thing ─ esp bc mara despises him, but he has never disliked her. i really really hope i got his characterisation right, bc i felt it 'twas a bit lacking in the last version. 

── iii: and the snows! yes, plural snows. in the buried bones universe, coriolanus has three grandchildren: verona, ▇▇▇, and ariadne. all are my oc's, since canonically we know nothing other than he has two granddaughters ─ they will all play a role within inured, asystole, and the companion anthology i'm planning 🫣. verona was not originally in that scene, but a. it felt like a good way to introduce him and his personality and b. it added another layer of insidiousness to it all?? like you see the disconnect of empathy and humanity in someone not much older than her?? you see him groomed for power by his grandfather?? much more on the snow dynasty to come. the whole scene was icky to write however,

── iv: i have always thought that a forced prostitution storyline would serve no real purpose for mara or anyone else beside really making inured dark. we'll already explore it through finnick, so why traumatise her further? it's a very serious story, but i don't do things for the sake of them. instead, mara's rebellion comes from actively seeking a way out of this, aided by the racism and colourism surrounding district eleven. most of the capitol thinks that people from eleven (predominantly african americans) are sub-human and therefore mara is not worthy of their affections because of this. they'll still talk and invite her to social events because she is a victor, but most won't desire her this way.

── v: this is not accurate in real life. fetishisation and exoticisation are real and harmful and will be explored, but not to the point where mara is sold. it's horrible, i know, but it so i can write out that storyline. i don't mind saying now that sort of thing won't ever happen to mara because i don't want to write it. in terms of finnick's character, nothing explicit will ever be shown, only the impact that it has on him 😔

after a very long and serious author's note, have a lovely day!

───e.