Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being honest with himself, Gil wasn't completely surprised when Uma Triskelion beckoned him over.

The room they were in was loud and full of food and alcohol. They had, all of them, only just arrived in the Capitol today, but most of the other mentors were old friends by now, so the "festivities" had started up rather immediately. That was what happened when you forced a lot of people with similar kinds of trauma together. That or crying hysterics, and there was some of that here, too.

It was the first day of Gil's second year as a mentor. Last year, he had been (as his much-older fellow mentor for District 10 later informed him) too much of a shrinking violet (although she hadn't used the phrase "shrinking violet"); he had barely looked up from his knees in most of these mentor gatherings. Even still, he'd noticed that Uma Triskelion occasionally glanced at him with what could only be described as "interest", although he couldn't imagine what kind.

That made sense. Uma, Gil, and Uma's fellow mentor for District 4, Harry Hook, were the three youngest mentors here by far: barely past reaping age. Most of the others were in their thirties or forties, and some were much older still. Younger victors usually didn't become mentors until they absolutely had to, but all three of them had become mentors the year after winning: Uma at fourteen, Harry at seventeen, Gil at eighteen.

This year, Gil wasn't looking at his knees; he sat up straight and made eye contact.

Uma beckoned him over, and he compliantly went to sit on the soft, purple couch (So much softer than anything they had in 10, even in the Victors' Village!) beside her.

He waited for her to speak; eventually, with her gaze fixed on Harry where he was drunkenly dancing across the room, she said, "Happy Hunger Games."

Even he picked up on the irony in her words. He tried to be ironic back: "May the odds be...Well, I guess not in your favor, because we're competing. I mean, our tributes are competing. Um...Happy Hunger Games. I guess."

A corner of Uma's mouth rose. "I guess," she echoed indulgently. She was sitting like a queen, with one leg crossed over the other, one arm straight with her hand flat on the sofa, the other arm bent at the elbow and holding a wine glass full of something multicolored. The fabric of her dress was shimmery and oceanic and bore a long slit up the side of the skirt. Her hair was braided and blue and draped daintily over one shoulder.

The men of the Capitol wanted her. Gil wasn't sure how long they had wanted her; something in the vague hauntedness of her resting demeanor made him think it had been a long time. He remembered watching the interview after Harry won his Games, watching him run up to his mentor on live television and kiss her, hard, on the mouth. And Uma had kissed him back, just as hard. The Capitol audience had eaten up the unexpected twist and the pair's palpable thirst, but Gil wondered if there was more to it. And he wondered if attaching himself to someone was the way to be safe; he had seen his share of Capitol citizens licking their lips as he passed, like the wolves in the stories his mother had told him when he'd cried about skinning the cows. ("Animals are no more innocent than we are, Gillyflower. You have to remember that.")

Whenever Harry or Uma was in front of a camera, the other was always with them. Usually, they were kissing, not chastely, and Uma was running her hands through Harry's hair or Harry was caressing Uma's face or somehow both. Any time Caesar Flickerman interviewed them, Uma was on or across Harry's lap and they had some story to tell, with unabashed grins, about a cocky boy from their district who made the mistake of flirting with Uma and had his face destroyed by Harry, or, at times, the other way around. Everyone knew that they were possessive of each other. Everyone knew that Harry's house in Victor's Village belonged to his sisters, and he stayed with Uma in privacy, since she had no remaining family (her mother dead since before Harry won). Wickedly, they teased the crowds when Caesar asked if there would be a wedding in their future. "Wouldn't you like to know, Caesar." "Guess we'll just have to see, won't we?" And then she pretended to bite him. The viewers loved it, devoured their love for each other heartily, greedily. Lustfully.

"We both thought you'd kill Fleet," Uma said, suddenly and with a slightly somber tone. "You didn't."

"No," Gil agreed uncomfortably. Fleet had been one of the ones from her district. Scrawny and confused, wandering into all the wrong places.

"You could have."

"I didn't want to."

"Lots of people don't want to kill but do it anyway."

Gil nodded and was quiet for a while. Fleet had made himself too easy a target, obliviously stumbling into the Careers' campsite. He was lucky that Gil had been the one guarding for the night. "He still died."

"Yes. But you didn't kill him."

He could hear the cannons, feel the marsh under his feet, trying to suck him in with every footfall as he fled his last opponent, praying that he wouldn't have to kill her. The marsh had been poisonous; the skin of his legs had remained inflamed until his victory, when the Capitol made it brand new. Sometimes he wondered if it was still his skin or if they'd given him new, synthetic skin. He was too scared to ask.

"Do you drink?" Uma digressed, indicating a whole bottle full of the strange, swirly substance that she was imbibing from her glass.

"Sometimes," Gil said cautiously. "Not around people I don't know."

"Fair rule," Uma relented. "I avoided this rainbow piss for as long as I could, but I can't help that it tastes like good dreams." She trailed off as if distracted. Her eyes narrowed suddenly. "Harry!" she called out.

Harry Hook was lying down flat on a table while two of the middle-aged mentors poured liquor from two different flasks into his open mouth. He was holding both his thumbs up. But when he heard Uma calling for him, he batted away the flasks and sat up, causing two separate streams of liquor to run down his shirt, front and back. His omnipresent eyeliner was smeared, and his hair was dripping, and the liquor made his white shirt transparent so that one could see the tattoos snaking over his arms and chest. Teal and red shone through the milky sheen.

He pushed past the other victors and plopped clumsily down on Uma's other side. "Hello again, my love," he sighed out. He spoke with an accent. Seemingly everyone from his specific region of 4 spoke that way; his sisters did, in interviews. Uma did not have the same accent; she had been raised in a different part of the district.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked him exasperatedly, ruffling his soaked locks and earning a purr in response.

"Taking my medicine," Harry said, his eyelids fluttering closed. "So I can deal with those prissy roaches tomorrow morning."

Gil tensed at his words, deeply aware that there were cameras and microphones everywhere that were picking up Harry's scorn. Uma took it in stride:

"You're gonna be hungover," she said. "Gil, tell him what you told me."

She made eye contact with him, penetratingly and expectantly. And Harry made eye contact with him, fiercely and curiously.

"W-which thing?" Gil stuttered out.

"About drinking," Uma said patiently.

"Oh! I, uh, don't drink around people I don't know."

"Aye, that is a good policy," Harry said, wearing an expression like he was evaluating Gil and wasn't yet displeased. "But my fellow mentors are hardly strangers." He rested his face on Uma's shoulder; Gil had seen enough of them, by now, to know that drunkenness made Harry kind of droopy and even more affectionate. Uma, on the rare occasions that she drank a lot, became angry and ranted on tabletops, saying things that Gil was surprised hadn't gotten her arrested. Then again, maybe her thick, sugary sarcasm protected her. ("We ought to thank our dear President Snow for bringing us here.")

(Harry's anger came out when he was sober. Gil remembered the chariot rides the year of Harry's Games, remembered watching the District 4 chariot carrying a nondescript girl in a dress covered with nets and, beside her, Harry, age sixteen, already pretty but certainly too young to be dressed in only nets and seashells. He remembered how Harry had glared into the camera, fists balled, as he was displayed around the stadium; glared so hard that his eyes became moist by the time the proceedings ended. It had earned him some sponsors, that glare. And probably lost him some, too.)

"They're certainly not your friends," Uma said gravely. "They were trying to drown you."

"So what?" Harry slurred coyly.

Uma smirked. "So, only I'm allowed to drown you, darling."

Harry barked out a laugh that gargled a little bit, and Uma kept smirking and sipped at her colorful drink.

"Why'd you call me over here?" Gil asked, and the deep brown eyes landed on him again.

She wasn't looking at him like he was a commodity, or an accessory to some plan; it was like she could see his soul. Like she could see his soul and didn't hate what she saw. "Because you're like us," she answered. "Not okay."

It shook him to his core, and made his eyes prickle. He had been raised to say "I'm okay" whenever he was hurt; say "I'm okay", and you can keep working, so the family can keep eating. And then, being reaped and winning the Games...it was taboo for a victor to say or even indicate that they were damaged by the experience. He didn't even know what would be done to him if he shattered the Capitol audience's illusion that victors lived glamorous, worry-free lives; that the ones who became alcoholics or addled themselves beyond recognition with drugs were outliers or strange characters. Having someone calmly acknowledge that he wasn't okay...Someone who understood...He took a deep breath. "But no one here is okay," he pointed out weakly.

"It's different for them, though," Uma said. "They're all jaded. They've suffered so long, they've forgotten that things could be different."

There was a light in her eyes that made Gil wonder if she was drunk after all. It felt like she was making him drunk; her candid words and her coarse-velvet voice made him feel warm. "What do you mean 'different'?"

Uma smiled. Then she kissed his cheek, and Harry whined for her attention back, and Gil was so enchanted, so fixated on these two people who seemed near-otherworldly in their ability to be Alive after everything that had been done, that he didn't even fully notice Uma pressing something into his hand.

It was a seashell, he discovered later on when he stopped being drunk on Harry's laugh and Uma's eyes and bothered to uncurl his fingers. A big one, from District 4, he supposed. He didn't get to really look at it until he had retired to his quarters for the night and held the shell under a lamp. Then he knew instantly that it wasn't from District 4, or not directly at least; it was painted neon purple. Even if painting shells was a common hobby in 4, no one in the districts could afford the color purple.

This was a decorative trinket for Capitol citizens. A more beautiful recreation of what was raw and belonged to District 4; seashells had probably become fashionable after Uma's victory, and probably again after Harry's. The biggest shells from the seabeds of 4 collected and gilded to feed the trends.

And Uma had owned it, for some reason, and had given it to him. Probably to be ironic, as always.

Gil set the shell on his bedside table and tried to force sleep even though his mind was a whirlwind of Harry and Uma and inexplicable anger over a painted shell.

He didn't get much opportunity to talk to Uma or Harry in the time that followed. They shared glances and even small smiles when they passed each other, but Gil was too busy trying to help his tributes survive. Trying desperately. Survive, survive, please, this time, one of you, please survive.

They didn't, and neither did the ones from 4.

He and Harry and Uma drank together.

"They were never gonna make it," Uma said between shots. "Too young, too scrawny; at least it was quick. I bet they could still taste the Capitol food."

Both of theirs and one of Gil's had died in the first bloodbath by the Cornucopia. Gil's second tribute, the tiny girl with the defiant set to her jaw, the girl whose mother raised chickens and geese, had taken a machete through the eye socket about two hours ago, if that.

"I feel like I didn't do enough," Gil confessed tearfully.

"Don't y'blame yourself," Harry ordered.

"I was useless. I barely knew anything to say to them, except to get water and make allies. They were just so small, it felt hopeless, and I couldn't...think right..."

"You didn't kill them," Uma said. "It's like they were thrown off a cliff, and you had to try to be their parachute- slow down their fall just enough that they land on all the other bodies." She downed another shot. "Capitol music sucks!" She smacked the radio and glowered at it as if it had personally wronged her.

"You could sing for us, love," Harry said.

Uma grunted irately in response.

"I don't want to keep watching them die." There was a desperation growing in Gil as he blurted out what he'd been feeling since hearing the cannons. "I don't want to do this anymore. I can't. I know there's no other male victor from 10 who's alive, but I can't do this anymore, or I'll end up like...like the morphlings or something!"

"Breathe, mate," Harry said earnestly, massaging at one of Gil's shoulders. It was weird to see Harry be earnest. But then, he wasn't very drunk yet. (To his credit, Gil was pretty sure that Harry hadn't gotten drunk at all since their first night here; he had been trying to help his tributes just as much as all of them. His scrawny, doomed tributes.) "Snow's got to melt one day."

Gil wasn't sure if he was speaking figuratively or if he was making a definitely-illegal statement about President Snow, and it must have showed on his face, because Harry grinned cryptically.

"That's what makes spring come early," Uma added once she had swallowed her mouthful of drink, in a by-rote tone as if this was a ritual for them, this exchange of words.

Next thing Gil knew, he and Harry were dancing together to the crappy Capitol music, their movements sappy and circular, Harry's touch meaningful but not licentious, and Uma was cheering them on and occasionally joining in. He felt powerfully that he had become a part of them, and they a part of him. And the caretaking instinct in him, still bleeding over his dead tributes, patched itself up, reshaped itself around Keep Harry from passing out and bumping his head and Stop Uma's ranting before she gets herself turned into an Avox.

"This is what they want," Uma growled out, stomping the countertop. "They want us to grieve them every time, and they want us to rage to each other, because as long as we're raging to each other, we aren't raging against them!"

"Uma, please get down," Gil sighed, but the plea vibrated from a delirious laugh; he was pretty drunk, too.

"You're worried about me," Uma said, smiling and throwing her head back. "Harry, look; he's worried about me."

"I love you, I love you both," Harry slurred, stumbling and tripping over his feet.

"I love you, too, but that's your last one," Gil said, forcing the bottle out of Harry's hand and making him sit down on the giant bean bag on the floor. He noticed what he'd said, then, and marveled at how the drinking had loosened his tongue.

"Help me down," Uma said, stretching out her arms imperiously, and Gil opened his own arms and swooped Uma through the air, and when her feet touched the floor, she started dancing again to the music she hated. "They're so scared of us," she grumbled intermittently. "They know we could..." But she never finished that sentence; always trailed off. Even drunk, she wasn't stupid. She knew there were lines she couldn't cross. She danced angrier, and Gil with her. They were clammy, and clumsy, and they lingered tipsily in physical contact.

The radio bubbled out:

"Dye my skin the color of rain
And mark my body with your name
Dye my skin volcanic red
And wash away the markings

Dye my skin the color of grain
I only feel the same, the same
And you have flown clean from my head
I always lose the dark things"

Uma joined in for the second verse, but she sang the wrong words: "Dye my breath the color of pain," and "We only keep the dark things." She sang with confidence, though, clean over the Capitol singer's babyish lilt. Uma had a nice voice; it was rough, but it was strong and perfect.

"Isn't that one of yours?" Gil asked Harry. All the victors had to have a hobby, and since Harry's hobby couldn't be Uma (He'd asked, on live television. Caesar had been a bit flustered, which was saying something.), he was instead a songwriter for Capitol artists.

"Not really," Harry said, still draped ungracefully over the bean bag but now sitting up on his elbow. "They made me change the words; mine were too sad, they said."

"Sadder than this?"

Harry smiled tiredly as the ballad reached its bridge and started to crescendo. Uma took Gil's hand and spun him, which was no easy task for someone of her size.

It was a night of tears and twirls and anguish and sloppy kisses, of Harry's laugh and Uma singing different words to the same songs. A servant woke them up the next morning; they were all properly unconscious and drooling on each other and the bean bag. Two of Uma's braids had ended up in Gil's mouth, and Harry had an arm snaked tightly around each of them.

Uma turned alert and sat up instantly, whereas Gil laid there awhile, blinking, and Harry kept his eyes closed entirely and gave no indication that he was even awake, save a groan of protest.

Gil watched Uma take in the situation, her head tilted slightly to the side as she calmly thought something over. Then he watched the startled servant person awkwardly gather up their emptied glasses and bottles and make a brisk exit.

"Well, Snow definitely knows now," Uma yawned out once the servant had left the room.

"Knows what?" Gil asked, rubbing his eyes. Harry's eyeliner had rubbed all over the side of Uma's neck. It was probably on Gil somewhere, too, but there was no mirror, so he couldn't see it.

With a smirk, Uma helped him to his feet and softly answered, "That you're ours."

A pleasurable chill the likes of which he had never experienced went up Gil's spine while Uma worked to get Harry up.

They spent the remaining duration of the Games in each other's company as the last five, four, three, two tributes were narrowed down to one victor. Uma and Harry kept up a running commentary, somehow intensely invested even though their tributes were gone.

"Think it'll be him?" Harry asked, the light of the screen reflected on his face.

"He's strong enough to win," Uma said noncommittally. "I don't know if he's strong enough to be a victor, though. He's built up his bravado too much; they'll crush him if he cracks and they'll spend him if he doesn't."

"He's been open about loving his family," Harry said. "If he does win, Snow will own him, easy."

The tribute they were talking about had his head bashed in thirty minutes later. Neither of them flinched, but Uma made a sympathetic sound, and Harry sat closer and closer to the screen as the Games went on until Uma made him sit back to keep from hurting his eyes.

Gil tried to watch as shallowly as possible; he started shaking whenever he was in too deep. Uma held his hand, and she gave it a squeeze whenever he started to breathe a bit fast.

"Snow's gotta melt one day," she said to him quietly.

"That's what makes the spring come early," he recited back.

One of the few times he was off on his own (in pursuit of a bathroom, as it happened), he was waylaid by a familiar puffy-lipped man in a loudly-patterned suit with a white rose pierced through its lapel.

"P-President Snow," Gil observed, doing an awkward sort of bow.

The president's mouth curved into a disturbing smile. His posture was perfect, and not a hair on his head was out of place. "Mr. Legume. We haven't spoken much, since your victory."

"No, I guess we haven't," Gil agreed warily.

"Won't you walk with me?" That wasn't a choice. Boy was it not a choice. They walked. "How have these two years treated you?"

He kept his eyes on the hallway decor and wondered if throwing up would excuse him from this conversation. "I've...been eating a lot better."

"So I see; you're a fit young man." The president's voice was too perfect, too syrupy, like a voice concocted in a lab and then placed carefully inside him. "Everyone's talking about how well you've filled out since your Games. I can't tell you how many of my partners and associates have been clamoring for a chance at your companionship."

Gil's insides froze. It was happening. It was happening now. He'd been (comparatively) free for a time, but now it was happening. He kept his eyes moving for any escape, and blessing of blessings, he found one: "I actually have to use the bathroom," he said, pointing to the lavatory before they could pass it. "Is...that okay?"

President Snow's eyes were like shark eyes, probably. Gil had never seen a shark, but he knew the look of a predator. "Certainly, Gilbert," he said, his tone silken. No resistance; you didn't keep fighting when the mouse was already in the trap.

From then on, Gil went nowhere alone. He stuck with Harry and Uma without fail, timing his bathroom breaks with Harry's and ensuring that he was beside at least one of them at any given time.

"Seriously, Gil, what's wrong?" Uma asked when Gil waking up from a nap to find both of them absent (Uma having stepped out momentarily for a chat with another mentor and Harry having gone for food) resulted in something close to a panic attack.

"Nothing," Gil wheezed out unconvincingly.

She placed her palm against his cheek. Her hands were somewhat calloused, a comforting texture that he leaned into instinctively. "Gil?" she probed.

"I just get scared," he said, half-true.

She accepted this answer, probably gathering some, if not all, of what couldn't be said aloud, and accommodated it with her presence, as much as she could. As did Harry.

Their remaining time together was filled with snatches of Games footage when Gil had the constitution to look at the screen, meals in which they joked around to try to forget for a moment that kids were killing each other, and long conversations through the night and the quiet moments.

He learned that sometimes Uma was a sad drunk instead of an angry drunk. She murmured stories into his collarbone as they drifted off; stories that he could never quite remember when he woke up, only retaining a feeling of protective outrage and a deep sense that his assumptions had been right.

Uma was usually the one who woke up early enough to bring them breakfast, and Harry was usually the one to bring in the rest of the day's meals, as it was easy for them to forget to eat. They were still growing into it, but they had their rhythm.

But eventually, the Games ended.

Uma let out a shaky breath when the last tribute was killed, leaving only the victor. Gil tightened his grip on her hand. Harry stared intently at the screen until the footage cut away.

The interviews with the victor came and went, and the "festivities" dissolved.

Out in the deceptively-warm air on a deceptively-blue day, they said their goodbyes.

"Thank you," Gil said, and kept saying until Uma gently covered his mouth.

"Let us know if anyone tries anything," she said, just loudly enough that the very nearest Capitol citizens in the crowd seeing them off could probably hear her. "Anyone. You tell us, alright? Swear to me you'll tell us."

"I swear," Gil answered, hoarsely, into her hand.

"Remember, we've been at this longer than you have," Harry said, more confidentially. His eyeliner was especially thick today, and he had been drinking up until the very last minute, which meant that he wore a slight lazy smile even as his eyes bore solemnly into Gil's. "We can take care of you."

Gil couldn't imagine that was true, but still he leaned in and let Harry's arms trick him into feeling safe; he left some tears behind in the crook of Harry's neck when he pulled away.

Uma and Harry left on their train first, and they both kissed Gil right out in the open, and the Capitol audience screamed and kept screaming even after the train had disappeared with them on it. Gil stared after them, at the faint horizon, and tried to ignore the feeling that President Snow was eyeing him from his pedestal. Harry and Uma had done their part to take him off the menu; he would have to believe that was enough, because worrying otherwise would take him apart.

Then Gil got on his train with his fellow mentor from 10 and the heavy absence of the tributes they'd failed. The broadcasts took a break from discussing the newest victor to buzz about Uma Triskelion and Harry Hook and Gil Legume. People were very excited by the kiss, by the blush in his cheeks, by the seashell in his hand. Correspondents asked, "Is this legal? Can they...? You know! They're from separate districts, I mean." "We heard what Uma said, but what did Harry say?" "I don't care if it's legal or not; not only do I want them to all get married: I want footage of the wedding night." Gil found a room on the train where the "news" wasn't playing, and he curled up and slept, in sporadic intervals. The Capitol was always taking what didn't belong to them.

Chapter Text

Winter was the only time of year in which Uma stayed in bed for as long as Harry did.

Their house in Victors' Village had a heater, but they rarely used it; when she had first moved in here, Uma had tried to house every child from her old neighborhood and the next few neighborhoods surrounding it, but she had been found out by the Peacekeepers and was now subjected to random house inspections to be sure that she wasn't giving comfort to those who hadn't "earned" it. Since they couldn't share the heat with everyone, they went without it most of the time.

Harry liked waking up to the cold, both because it symbolized Uma's fierce moral compass and because it meant he got to open his eyes and see her curled up close to him. Today, the world was entirely white outside the bedroom window, and she was framed in the dreamlike pale haze, a bundle in the bedcovers, her limbs all pulled close to her torso. Still asleep, and even sleeping well, from the looks of it, which was a rarity.

He listened to her breathing, knowing full well that the sound of an Uma at ease was a caliber of song he could never hope to write and would sell to no one even if he could. It was almost enough to lull him back to sleep, but it was harder to get to sleep, nowadays; both of them had gotten used to feeling a third weight on the bed with them, and it had become slightly uncomfortable to sleep without it. Without him.

Someone banged on the bedroom door, causing Harry to sit bolt upright, reflexively shielding Uma with his body, and Uma to vault over him, instantly awake, and fling the door open with the knife they kept between their mattress and headboard tightly in hand.

On the other side of the door, fist still raised for more vigorous knocking, was a dark-haired girl in her twenties, dressed in the loose flannel shirt typical to the people who worked on the water and a pair of thick, dull pants that had belonged to their father and only stayed around her waist thanks to the rope with which she tied it in place. (Faintly, and despite her scrubbing and scrubbing it over the years, there was still a vomit stain on one of the knees.)

"Harriet?" Uma sighed, relaxing her shoulders and lowering the knife from shoulder-level to hip-level.

"How'd yeh get in? We keep the door-" Harry was trailing off even before his sister interrupted him, because he noticed her frazzled expression:

"Snow is here. He's in our house. Come on." Then she turned on her heels and departed without a glance to see if he was following.

He was.

Catching the sweater Uma threw at him and pulling it on as he walked, stepping into his boots on his way out the door, Harry sprinted across snow about four inches deep and through the front door, which Harriet was holding open for him, to the house that was technically his, right across the street.

The entryway was full of the president's security staff.

"Where's CJ?" he whispered.

"Where d'yeh think?" Harriet hissed back.

Harry's already-balled fists clenched tighter. Snow could not have made his message clearer with a pencil and pad. The president knew where Harry and Uma stayed; he could have visited them at their actual home, but instead he had come here. Instead he'd sent Harriet to fetch them while Calista Jane, still Games age, stayed behind.

Harry took a second to breathe, the better to ensure he didn't attempt to stab the president with a ballpoint pen as soon as he saw him, and looked over his shoulder to see Uma, now dressed as well and with her hair pulled back, making her way over to them through the snow. She had caught up in the next second, and she slipped her hand into Harry's.

They followed Harriet down the hallway into the "study", and there they found President Coriolanus Snow sitting at the desk, his posture perfectly upright, his expression cloyingly polite as he pretended not to notice that they had entered.

CJ was there, too, in a flannel shirt that was much too big for her, with her arms crossed, her honey-colored hair unkempt, and her lips in a slight pout as she stared down the president. She looked over as soon as they entered and flatly announced, "They're here."

"Splendid," Snow said, finally turning his head to where both Harriet and Harry were gesturing for CJ to leave the room (not that she complied) and Uma was standing mutely behind them. "I was just asking young Calista Jane why she isn't in school."

"And I was just asking Snow why he isn't at work," CJ tacked on, which was enough to turn Harriet's attempted subtlety in silently urging her to leave into a choice to physically remove her from the study. CJ allowed herself to be dragged away, and soon Harry and Uma found themselves alone with the president, the door shut behind them.

"She's a delight," Snow said with a smile.

Uma squeezed Harry's hand, and he became aware that he was glaring at Snow outright. He moved his gaze to some far wall while she said, "We weren't expecting a visit, sir. What an honor."

"Do sit," Snow said.

CJ was the reason they sat, the reason Uma spoke calmly, the reason Harry tried not to think about all the pens on the desk. He wondered if Uma still had the knife with her. Probably best not to think about that, either.

"You two have started up quite the little buzz, around the Capitol," Snow chuckled.

"Is that so, sir?" Uma said coyly. She had her legs crossed regally and her head tilted pensively. She had just woken up, as any casual observer could tell from the state of her hair and clothes, and yet she was ready to take on the world.

"It is. Or, I should say, the two of you and Gilbert Legume."

"Is that why you've decided to...honor us with your presence, dear president?" Harry asked airily, and he was unable to quite remove the venom from his tone.

Snow was clearly basking in Harry's displeasure, and in his helplessness. "More or less," he said.

"We're not breaking any laws, are we?" Uma asked.

"Do let's dispense with the notion that a breach of law is the only way to measure defiance, Miss Triskelion. The districts are kept separate for a reason; undermining this, and making my constituency applaud you as you undermine it, is an unambiguous act of rebellion."

The r word.

They had agreed that they wouldn't rebel until CJ was too old to be reaped, but it had snuck up on them anyway. And over this? Snow had to be reaching, making an excuse, to throw a fuss over something that mattered this little. He was using their tiny non-infraction to advance something he'd already been planning; it was the only explanation.

Uma removed her hand from Harry's in order to let her hair down, then retie it more neatly, which meant that she was at her most focused right now. "I thought victors, as public figures, were allowed to act outside the bounds of district lines."

"Victors, as public figures, are allowed to act only in ways that further entertain the Capitol audience," Snow riposted.

"And that isn't what we did?"

"You went past entertainment; you moved them to ask questions. You moved them to request laws bent around you. And I have trouble believing that it wasn't deliberate, Miss Triskelion."

Uma's face slackened. Harry could tell that she was doing some very fast thinking.

"The way I see it," Snow said, "the only way to diffuse what you three have chosen to set aflame is by changing the story, moving the tension away from your tryst with Gilbert, placing it instead somewhere...closer to home."

Elsewhere in the house, CJ was stomping up the stairs, and Harriet was calling after her, "And comb your hair, while yer at it!" The door to CJ's bedroom slammed shut in answer.

"I invite you to change my mind," Snow said gloatingly.

Harry was thinking about the pens. He found it hard to think of anything else.

Uma placed both of her hands flat on the desk. Her nails were chewed short, unglamorous, where Snow's were buffed and glossy. "Are we being honest, sir?" she asked.

"I certainly hope so," Snow chuckled.

"You don't want to use CJ," Uma said, cautious but confident. "Use her, and you lose your best weapon against us."

Snow's eyebrows rose. "You think so?"

"Unless you choose to physically torture or execute us," Uma conceded politely. "But you don't really want to do that either. Am I correct?"

Snow smiled in a cryptic way that made Harry really want to hide Uma behind him (or run with her, better yet, and take Harriet and CJ with them as he went) and prompted, "What are you getting at, dear Uma? Surely you don't think I can allow future victors to believe that these bold acts can be tolerated."

Harry inhaled hard, hearing the snake say Uma's name, hearing him call her "dear", hearing his sweetly chastening tone.

Uma leaned forward, fingertips pressing firmly into the desk either to anchor her or to inflict upon the wooden surface the pain that she couldn't inflict on Snow himself. "You don't want to bend laws? Don't want to show any weakness? I was the one who reached out to Gil first; address whatever punishment you apparently need to get out of your system to me-"

"Uma!" Harry protested, turning in his seat to face her.

"-and then pretend to force us to keep it up," Uma finished, sparing Harry only a brief soft glance. "If you make us stop, then your people will be mad at you; pull out some made-up law that says we have to stay together, all three of us, and you get to keep them happy while recontextualizing our relationship as something mandated. Punish me for starting it, then make us see it through."

"That sounds convenient...for you," Snow noted lightly.

"Not for me," Harry growled, still trying to catch Uma's eye. He knew there was probably something clever behind her words, knew that Uma wasn't dumb enough to make this sort of proposal without a plan, but he couldn't for the life of him get past her first suggestion. "I kissed him, same as you did."

"So you did," Snow agreed. "You two have given me a lot to think about."

President Snow rose to his feet and strode toward the exit.

Harry didn't feel moved to stand, and by all appearances neither did Uma; they remained in their seats, their bodies inclining gradually closer to one another as Snow's departure promised privacy. But then the president halted just before his hand could touch the door handle, and he calmly said:

"Oh! You should probably expect a train to come and collect you in the near future. Probably not in this irksome weather, but then...the snow's got to melt sometime." And with a final grin at their matching furious expressions, he left.

Uma buried her face in her hands as soon as he was gone.

Gil only ever watched the mandatory broadcasts; never any of the everyday Capitol news. So, when the notice came that the broadcast that Saturday night would be a mandated watch, he had no idea what it could possibly pertain to.

"Is it an execution?" he asked the nearest Peacekeeper as the adults of the district, having been gathered to receive the announcement, dispersed. "What's been going on?"

The Peacekeeper shrugged gruffly.

It was a random passerby whose name and face Gil did not know who gave the answer, "Snow was in 4 yesterday," before hastily vanishing back into the crowd on its way back toward the factories.

It was a simple statement, but it was enough to send Gil into a panic.

District 4. It couldn't be a coincidence. Well, it could, but who was he kidding? Snow didn't just go to the districts. And when he went anywhere, they weren't told about it, unless there was some message being sent.

He regretted his cowardice, hiding behind Harry and Uma. Regretted it so much. It was his fault, allowing himself to be Not Okay with them; he knew better. He had been taught better. Would Snow execute them, for his stupidity? And force him to watch through his screen? No, no, victors almost never got executed. Right? And the Capitol loved them. Right. It couldn't be an execution. It couldn't be an execution. Something else. He was being stupid, panicking. Like when he had cried when he was supposed to kill the pigs and had gotten kicked out of the factory with no pay, and his father had called him useless and his brothers had mocked him mercilessly even after he found work collecting eggs for the chicken lady. It was like that; he was becoming emotional over what was probably nothing.

The crowd was dissolving around him, petering out as people reached their destinations, their work days, and he just stood there. None of the passersby questioned it; while to the rest of Panem he was a victor, to District 10 he always remained, on some level, Gaston's boy who cried a lot and cheerfully conversed with the chickens. The child with too many feelings who somehow doddered his way through the Hunger Games and came out alive.

"Gil," a voice prompted.

He turned around and saw his fellow mentor: Fa Mulan, who had won her games twenty-something years ago by more or less dropping a mountain on the competition, earning herself a reputation for ruthlessness that was intriguing when married with the graceful way that she always carried herself. She had a serious face, not quite stern but not indulgent either, framed by chin-length black hair that wasn't tied back today, which was how Gil knew to refer to her in female terms.

"What's it about? What's the mandatory broadcast about?" Gil rambled helplessly.

"We don't know. We'll know tomorrow. Keep it together, Gil; they're watching." Mulan was in her riding clothes; she had been on her horse, probably, before they were called here. All of the children in the district loved Mulan's horse; Gil remembered being young and gathering at her fence with the other children when the workday was over, watching her ride and calling out her name in the hopes of having her smile at him directly. And one day, his brothers had dared him to sneak into her stables and steal the horse's saddle; he had successfully picked the lock but cried as soon as he was in, and she'd found him there, sitting in the hay and crying while her horse stared at him indifferently. She had told him that true courage was having the strength to be one's truest self. And then, after he'd won the games, she had been the one to teach him that they were always being watched, that every move they made mattered for the rest of their lives.

"They're watching?" Gil repeated hollowly.

"The newer Peacekeepers are watching you," Mulan said. "Come back to the Village; worry where it's safe."

He did.

They sat at Mulan's table and drank tea wordlessly. There was incense lit somewhere; Mulan said it improved her focus, and Gil found it comforting.

After watching a cricket roam the tabletop for two minutes, Gil broke the silence:

"Snow was in 4. Does that mean it's about Harry and Uma?"

Mulan didn't say no immediately, and Gil's heart thudded the longer her pause drew out before she answered, "You guys took a big risk, surprising Snow like that. I could see that he didn't like it. But the audience did, and it matters what they think. It always matters." Mulan drank deeply from her tea. She had all the right habits- herbal tea where others turned to booze, physical exercise where others deteriorated -but they were her drugs, still. She brewed the same steaming pot of tea and lit the same incense in the summer that she did in the winter, and she sweated through it and burned her tongue; she took the same brisk runs and horse rides in the winter that she did in the summer, until hypothermia forced her to temporarily stop. "I do think Snow will want to do something about it, but I doubt it will be as direct as an execution."

"What does that mean?" Gil asked. "Why'd he go to them and not to me? I'm the problem; they were fine before I came along."

"That's not how Snow likely sees it. Harry and Uma have been cleverly defying him for years; you kept your head down until you met them."

Again, Gil thought about the moment when Harry ran to kiss Uma after his Games, the moment when the two of them became each other's protection, to thunderous applause. It had to have bothered Snow, that master play that he could do nothing, reasonably, to stop. And just a few months ago, they had done it again, for Gil.

"But the fact that he went to 4 means that he probably spoke to them directly," Mulan added, and she sounded somber even though the words gave Gil a tiny bit of hope.

"Well, that means maybe they could bargain with him, right?" he hedged.

"Snow is a snake," she answered simply. "The reason he has power is because he is able to twist circumstances to benefit him at others' expense."

Reflexively, Gil became uncomfortable at Mulan's bluntness. She spoke coolly, purposefully, completely in control of herself, but nobody went around calling the president a snake. "They're smart," he insisted. "They'll know how-"

"And Snow doesn't like it when people are good at playing the game with him," Mulan said patiently, tiredly. "He hates being challenged, and he despises being beaten."

"He can be beaten?" Gil said.

"Anyone can be beaten. But if you beat Snow, he'll make sure that you pay for it more than he does." Mulan shut her eyes, drained the last of her tea, and opened her eyes again, just a crack, so that she could refill the cup.

Her whole family had disappeared one day. The story around the district was that they had been killed; Gil had believed that, believed that she had defied Snow and he had arranged for her family to be killed off. It was only after becoming a victor that she had entrusted him with the truth: She had arranged for them to escape. At seventeen, the year after winning her Games, as soon as she had learned the strings that Snow was able to pull, she had cut the strings entirely. Made it so that her family escaped to the wilderness while she was away in the Capitol, blameless. Freed herself of his blackmail by freeing the ones she loved: her father, her mother, her grandmother. She never saw them again, but they were safe from Snow. At seventeen, she had made that calculation, had beaten him.

And that was why Snow had ensured that every child she had was reaped. She had borne three, with a year dividing the eldest two and two years dividing the youngest. And each one, at twelve years old, had become a tribute and had died in the Games.

And the herb man had sold out of tea each time.

Gil and Mulan drank in silence again.

This time, it was Mulan, glaring at her reflection in the tea as if it withheld the secrets of the universe, who broke it: "Do you love them? Do they love you?"

"I..." He faltered for only a moment before, "Yes. We love each other. Why?"

"Then that's all that matters. That's what makes any of this matter: love. Everyone I've ever loved is gone now, and I don't regret not loving them more carefully; I regret not loving them more recklessly." She looked up from her tea, met his eyes with her fierce, dark ones. "Snow is going to use your love to hurt all three of you. He'll use it to serve him like he uses everything. But the only way to survive it is to love anyway."

Shortly, Gil started crying, because he always eventually started crying, and because it would hurt so much if Uma and Harry were killed, even one of them, and despite Mulan having said that she doubted Snow would be so banal as to execute them, he was afraid that anyone had the power to so swiftly break him. He understood rebellion, now, so much better, understood those rare fools who rose and fell and tried even though they knew they would only have their tongues cut out in the long run.

Mulan left to go riding, but she didn't ask him to leave.

Gil sat at the table, staring at the cricket and listening to Mulan's periodic wall-muffled yells ("Yyaaa!") as she rode. When the light from the window started to dim and his lower half felt numb, he finally stood and walked out into the dusky outdoors. He lived at the end of the street, even though there were some houses available closer the Village's entrance; those houses had belonged to people who were dead now, and he didn't want to sleep in a dead person's bed. That was also why he didn't take Mulan up on her offer to stay in one of her extra rooms instead of always returning home to his brothers and father. He would take his family's crap over strangers' ghosts.

That didn't mean he wouldn't still avoid his family where possible, though, which was why he made a point of walking up and down the street until it was properly dark and he expected that everyone in the house would be asleep. The lights in the windows were still on, but sometimes if they conked out after work, they were too tired to turn them off.

In the yard, Gil detoured for a few minutes to greet all of his pets; he had bought several pigs and two cows, to save them from the chopping block. (The Capitol had tentatively agreed that pet care counted as a hobby, and then had been fully won over by footage of him cuddling the piglets.)

Finally, he entered the house, and he was prepared for the smell of unwashed laundry (since Gil hadn't been home all day and Gaston didn't have a wife at the moment) and for the sight of piled up garbage bags (mostly full of eggshells and chicken bones) by the door, but not for the ensemble of uniformed men who stood in the entryway or his father and brothers, all wide awake and still dressed in their work clothes, sitting around the living room.

"There you are," Gaston Jr groaned. "We've been waiting for hours. Well, these guys have."

"Gilbert Legume?" one of the strange men said, pointing at him inquisitively as if it wasn't close to mandatory that everyone in Panem knew his name.

"G-Gil, yeah," he answered, trying to embolden his voice as he saw his father in the corner of the room rolling his eyes. "What is it?"

"We have orders from President Snow to extricate you."

"What does extricate mean?" Gil asked, trying not to sound flustered.

"There's a train waiting for you; come on. Your tardiness has already thrown us off schedule."

In his mind, Gil felt like pointing out that one couldn't really be tardy for something that hadn't been mutually arranged, but he was too startled and anxious to even get a word out.

It was Gaston Jr who spoke up for him, in a serious tone: "Is he in trouble?"

"That isn't ours to say," a different uniformed man replied, and all of the men were moving toward the door, ushering Gil along in their current. "We are only here to extricate him."

"I still don't know what extricate means," Gil choked out, now in a high panic as gloved hands started to land on him and maneuver him out the door.

"Just come with us."

The door closed.

The faces of his brothers filled the lit windows as he was led, stumbling but not resisting, down the street. They didn't look sad or worried about him; just solemn. And seeing their solemn, detached expressions made him feel like he was being reaped all over again, alone and in danger and why was no one storming out to help him? Why did they just stand there, watching?

"Yyaaa!" Mulan's horse cantered up to the fence, and she loomed over them from it. "What's going on?"

"They're extricating me. I don't know what extricate means," Gil said desperately.

"Right now it just means 'take from one place and move to another'," Mulan told him briskly, then returned her attention to his abductors. "Where are you taking him? What's going on?"

Other victors (old or addled, all of them) watched through windows or cracked doors. Gil's face was red, his eyes burning. Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry. There might be cameras when you get to the train; don't let them see you cry.

"We don't know anything other than the fact that he's going on the train," said one of the men gripping Gil's upper arm.

"And not me? I'm his fellow mentor."

"We have no orders pertaining to you."

They had reached the end of Mulan's yard; she couldn't follow on horseback anymore, so she dismounted Khan and hopped the fence to keep pace with them. Gil was deeply touched by her persistence.

"Ma'am, please don't force us to subdue you."

Mulan made a face as if she invited them to try but said, "I'm just accompanying him to the train. Then I'll leave."

Gil struggled to be okay with the last part, the leaving-him-alone-on-the-train part.

"Gil," Mulan prompted as they left Victors' Village behind them, and when he looked at her with what must have been a pitiful expression, she earnestly said, "remember what I told you."

He sniffed and sluggishly replied, "About love?"

"No. Remember what I told you before your Games."

It only took him a second before: "Look at my reflection when I can; it helps me see if someone is sneaking up behind me, and it helps me remember who I am."

Mulan nodded. "And also the thing about love, I suppose." She flashed him a smile. "You're a brave kid, Gil."

There were cameras waiting for him by the train. He straightened his spine and tried to be what Mulan had said she saw in him as the camerapeople swarmed. He didn't relax his shoulders until the doors of the train closed behind him.

He was alone.

Even the security detail who had ferried him from his house were now in a different part of the train. He had never ridden by himself.

He considered drinking, but the idea didn't appeal to him much; the relief would be minimal, since he had no one to drink with, and anyway, he wanted a clear head. Maybe Snow would be talking to him, too; a terrifying idea, but not quite as terrifying as the idea of having to talk to Snow while drunk or hungover.

He paced the train car several times before retiring to a bed and worrying himself to sleep.

"Mr. Legume?"

Blearily, Gil opened his eyes.

Before him stood a squat, middle-aged Capitol woman (although he had learned that people from the Capitol did not like to be called "squat", nor "middle-aged", which he didn't completely understand) with a baby blue aesthetic that covered the obvious accessories, like her shoes, dress, and jewelry, and the less obvious, like her hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, and contact lenses. The only things left out of the baby blue bandwagon were her actual skin (pale) and her lips (rosy pink and slathered in gloss).

Gil had thought that he was used to Capitol fashion, but this was a rather surprising something to wake up to.

"You've reached your destination," the woman said. Her blue fingernails tapped against a clipboard, and despite the fact that she was standing still, she sort of buzzed with a nervous energy, like she was late for something. "You've got to get dressed and get prepped; the cameras will be around in less than two hours."

"Two hours?" Gil repeated while the tiny woman manhandled him out of bed and towards the bathroom.

"Hurry!"

In the ensuing two hours, a prep team descended on him, plucking at extraneous hairs and combing and brushing the approved ones, moisturizing him, cleaning and buffing his fingernails and his toenails. It would have been nice to think They wouldn't waste all this effort prettying up someone they were going to execute, but knowing the Capitol, they absolutely would.

When he was finally allowed to be free of his prep team, he was dressed in brown leather pants, a brown leather short-sleeved shirt, and a brown leather vest. Being fair, it was...comparably tasteful, for the Capitol. The designs were understated, as least. But then, seeing the lady in blue (now beckoning urgently for him near the train doors) had given him context for how silly he could have looked, and he was feeling forgiving of the fashion because they had buttered him up by making him smell nice. He loved smelling nice.

"Come on, come on," the blue lady whispered.

When Gil met her at the exit, she immediately pressed the button to open the doors and led him out into the sunlight.

It was very bright out. That plus the camera flashes made him reflexively cover his face.

"Gil!"

...until he heard that voice.

He dropped his hands, scanned his surroundings for the voice's owner until he located both Uma and Harry swiftly descending the stairs of their own train, hand-in-hand, running toward him.

He broke into a smile and a sprint.

He collided with Uma, first- she was the fastest runner -and the impact might have knocked her off her feet were it not for the combined contributions of Gil immediately wrapping his arms around her and Harry coming up behind her and embracing them both.

For the moment, Gil didn't think about Snow or the cameras: only wholeness. Only skin and fabric and sweet smells and warmth and they were really here, really here with him.

It was Uma, concealed between him and Harry, who eventually whispered, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Don't answer this out loud, but did Snow talk to you?"

Gil shook his head no.

"We don't know what's going on," Uma told him. "Snow threatened to have Harry's sister reaped, then he said he'd be sending a train for us. And now you're here, too."

"He threa-?!"

Harry prevented Gil from finishing his incredulous question by quickly breaking the hug and saying, "Think you've got enough leather on yeh, Gilly? You've got more cow skin on you than human skin!"

Gil managed a weak chuckle. He knew how the banter was supposed to go; he was supposed to say, At least I'm wearing clothes!, or something of the sort, in reference to what they'd put Harry in: a black fishnet in the shape of a shirt covering his upper body (rendering him functionally topless) and a pair of black trousers with extremely skinny legs and plentiful holes. That was what he was supposed to say. Harry had started them on the clothing banter as implied permission to make that quip. But he couldn't find it funny, because he knew how Harry hated showing the Capitol this much of his body. He couldn't turn it into a joke.

So instead, he dove into Harry's chest and said, "I missed you so much," and let Harry wrap him in his arms again.

One of Uma's hands made circles on his back, and the other stroked his hair, and he knew that he was the one who should have been comforting them, after the ordeal that they had apparently been through, but thinking about that just made him want to weep for them, so he tried not to think.

"We missed you, too," Uma said softly. "Hasn't been the same without you."

"Tha's true," Harry drawled mischievously. "Y'know, I never realized, but Uma's actually a pretty crap dancer."

"Excuse you!" Uma said, mock-affronted, and Gil really did chuckle this time. Uma was no such thing, and Harry knew it.

"Sorry you had to find out this way, love," Harry sighed coyly.

"You will die by my hand, Hook," Uma said, then stroked Gil's hair a last time and took her hand away.

Gil, too, was ready to withdraw; he took a step back from Harry so that all three of them stood in a tiny triangle, everyone facing everyone else.

The air was chilly on Gil's skin, but his face was hot, and somehow the world felt lighter than it had before. He still wasn't completely sure that Snow wasn't about to kill all of them (or, perhaps worse, some of them), but they were together. Uma and Harry were right here, where he could at least try to protect them and they could try to protect him: a precarious situation, but better than the helplessness of being separated.

Gil's eyes lingered on Uma's dress: short-cut, sleeveless, clearly designed to compliment her specific figure, and visually reminiscent of fish scales. Her hair was braided again, but now the braids went in a spiral pattern like a conch shell, and tiny puka shell adornments dangled from it.

Harry's eyeliner was especially sharp, as well.

They weren't just presentable; they were beautiful, and he supposed that he must have been, too, or at least he was probably supposed to be.

A part of him began to worry that something very different from an execution was taking place.

"Hi, excuse me..." And then the blue lady was inserting herself between them, jittery and restless as ever. "Hello," she said, waving her hand in a slow but over-the-top way. "My name is Fairy; I'll be your coordinator for the...foreseeable future."

"Coordinator?" Harry repeated.

With a helpless shrug, Fairy said, "I don't know much more about it than you do, doll. We're all just waiting for the president's broadcast."

"Don't call him doll." Uma extended a hand to shake. "Uma. Enchanted to meet you."

Fairy shook her hand with a very formal smile, then said, "I'm sure we'll get better acquainted as time progresses, but for now I'm supposed to get you three settled into your new house."

All three of them made the same sharp head turn. "Our what?"

The house was beautiful, and it terrified him. Somehow, nothing was more frightening than a lavish gift from one's greatest threat. Snow was not generous; he was only cruel with a candy coating.

But the house...

Even just from the outside, it was picturesque and colorful, technically bigger than the houses in Victors' Village, but cozier-looking, too, like it wasn't so much empty space and loneliness (as in Mulan's house), nor cramped, uncomfortable crowding akin to tenement housing (as in Gil's). It was charming and isolated and surrounded by greenness.

"It's lovely, isn't it?" Fairy gushed breathlessly.

The cameras were all the way outside the fence, filming their backs (but mostly the house itself).

Harry looked flatly stunned, whereas Uma had a slight frown, her eyes scanning the building before her as if calculating how many homeless families could have fit inside.

"The press already have footage of the interior," Fairy continued, "so you can explore it unobserved." She flashed a smile as if this was the greatest treat, which Gil supposed it might have been. But every instance of decency just made this whole thing scarier. "Go on in when you're ready! Enjoy. We won't know what the plans are for tomorrow until after the broadcast, which is in four hours, but I do know that we have the whole day blocked out, so don't stay up too late."

For a second they just stood there, gaping. Harry squeezed Uma's shoulder, then reached over Uma to squeeze Gil's, as well. This was enough to break Uma from her daze: she led the way into the building.

The front door opened to a wide-open space: a carpeted foyer with teal walls (Uma's color), a fireplace, and a soft-looking sitting area.

"Our thanks to President Snow," Uma intoned, signaling that they were not speaking freely in here.

They explored every room, keeping close together all the while.

There was a music room- with a grand piano, a guitar, several books of empty sheet music, and a box of recording equipment -for Harry, who wrinkled his nose at the extravagance but still grudgingly ran awestruck fingers over the piano's shiny keys.

"That's for the acoustics," he explained, unprompted, to Gil and Uma while pointing at the weird fixtures on the wall. "Improves the sound quality."

Uma nodded as if this was deeply meaningful, and Gil felt that he was missing something.

They moved on to the laundry room, where an unpleasant surprise was waiting for them.

"He's giving us an Avox?" Gil blurted out, horrified.

The Avox in question, a sad-looking young blond woman, held up two fingers.

"Two Avoxes," Uma almost growled. "How generous."

"We know how to wash our own underthings," Harry assured the woman, who hastily began to shake her head in the negative and pat the laundry machine as if it were her lifeline.

"Alright," Uma conceded, with a gesture that Gil could tell was a sincere apology. "Alright. We'll see you around." As they turned to leave the room, she lightly tugged on her own ear, and Harry nodded.

Gil wished he understood how they spoke outside their words.

Next was the kitchen, where the second Avox waited, brown-skinned and apron-clad.

"Snow knows my 'hobby' is cooking," Uma said heatedly, and the Avox shrugged as if she couldn't agree more (which was surprisingly expressive, for an Avox; this one must not have been completely broken down yet).

"He must think you need some help," Harry supplied, halfhearted in his pretend response.

Again, Uma made the apology gesture at the Avox. Then she wandered the kitchen, turning the faucet on and off and testing the stove. Harry watched her closely, so Gil did as well, even though he still didn't get it.

"Good water pressure," was all she said.

They returned to the hallway, which was not entirely the same as they'd left it; now, a small gray cat with a brown collar was standing in the middle of it, staring up at them.

"There's your hobby, Gil," Harry noted. "Our brilliant leader has thought of everything."

Gil crouched down and allowed the cat to pad up to him and lick his outstretched hand with a tiny, rough tongue. Two front paws were placed on his wrist, as if the creature didn't want him to get back up. This thing...

"Gil?" Uma prompted, sounding slightly concerned.

Gil looked up at her. "It's so cute," he marveled.

Uma sighed exasperatedly, but she was smiling just a little bit. "Gil," she scolded. Right, they were keeping their guard up.

Harry gave him a hand to help him stand.

Gil stood...with the cat. He had already decided to name him Gray. It was even one of his brothers' names.

Uma exchanged a look with Harry and pointed at Gray's collar.

"What?" Gil asked.

Both Harry and Uma pressed a finger to their lips, and Uma pointed at the collar again.

Gil shrugged helplessly, and Harry digressed:

"Let's check out the other rooms, yeah?"

There was a study, not substantially different from the ones in Victors' Village: desk, shelves, paper and pens. Uma took a pen and pad with her on the way out, though none of them commented on it.

There was one bedroom, with one giant bed, which caused Gil to blush and Uma to roll her eyes as if unimpressed.

Harry tried to make a joke of it, holding his hands up in a frame shape as if evaluating the bed's potential. Uma smacked his arm, but he at least got a momentary smirk out of her as they moved on to the last room: a sitting room, with a table and some armchairs and a second fireplace and a window seat and a television.

Gray mewed to be set down, and Gil let him curl up on the window seat, in the sun.

"Gil, you're already enamored of that cat," Uma said.

"Gray," Gil corrected, stroking him between the ears. "And yes."

Harry sprawled into one of the armchairs. Uma sat in his lap and started writing on the paper from the study. Gil went to sit on the arm of the same chair when Harry beckoned him over.

Over Uma's shoulder, Gil read:

Wide entryway + carpeted floor --> they could sneak in that way if they ever want to ambush. Dark walls --> hard to see shadows. Good acoustics in music room; never have private discussions there. Probably listening devices in: the kitchen sink, the bedroom (somewhere), & the cat's collar. Cat might be a muttation; hard to tell. Don't say anything secret in front of the Avoxes; unsafe for them.

She tapped the pen to her lips a few times, as if thinking, then passed the pen and pad on to Harry, who added:

Two fireplaces and an open flame stove; easy to burn down house if they chose to. Also, they could enter through window.

Uma nodded sagely and gestured for Harry to hand the pen and pad on to Gil.

Gil accepted them as they were passed into his hands, but he didn't know what to write. It seemed the other two had been thinking this through quite a bit. Eventually, he jotted:

Is there anywhere we can talk?

Uma took the pen and leaned across him to write: Not sure. We'll just write for now. Probably burn the paper, too. Then she met his eyes, and he became aware of how closely they were all sitting. It was...

It was like he was falling into her eyes- brown as the earth and liquid as a healing broth -and being wrapped up in the fishing net masquerading as Harry's shirt, snug and immovable. He had been so afraid for them...

They were kissing now, him and Uma. From the way that she laughed into it, he guessed that he must have been the one to instigate the kiss. Harry sat up and nuzzled in close to both of them; he never could be left out of the affection.

When Uma pulled back, Gil almost leaned to follow her, but Harry's face blocked his, breaking Gil's trance, and Uma sat back as if exhausted. Had she slept? Surely Harry would have made sure...But then, had Harry slept?

"I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, guys," Uma said quietly.

"Snow's gotta melt sometime," Gil offered.

Instead of chorusing back the expected response, both Harry and Uma met his eyes in such a haunted way that Gil shivered.

Chapter Text

They spent most of the day in the sitting room with the television on (and their armchairs moved close together), waiting for Snow's broadcast. They left the room sparingly, but still Uma had somehow learned both of the Avox's names before the apron-clad one brought up their lunch.

"Thanks, Ti," she said to the woman while Harry, stone-faced as he always became around the Avoxes, helped with the tray of plates.

Uma had changed out of her fancy fish scale dress and into something more apt for sitting around the house: a pair of sweatpants (or the Capitol's shamelessly-luxurious approximation of sweatpants) and a plain shirt that she'd robbed from Gil's wardrobe because all of the shirts provided for her had either plunging necklines or high hems and were made from materials that put prettiness well before comfort, and all of Harry's, infuriatingly, were see-through. The pins and shells had been removed from her hair and littered the table, and around her, she had piled up several stacks of books from the study. She had been scanning the back of one with clear interest, but she now set it aside. "That smells amazing."

The woman ("Ti", apparently) gave a weary smile, as if to say 'No problem'.

"That it does," Harry agreed. He, too, had changed into one of Gil's shirts, as well as mussed his hair and removed his shoes and socks. "If they do turn out to be axing us, I'm honored that you'll have been the chef of my last meal."

Ti rolled her eyes at him indulgently. Definitely more personality than Gil had ever seen in an Avox; it was tragically admirable, how much of herself she seemed to have retained.

Gil himself was, for once, actually watching the TV, in one of the armchairs. Gray the cat had climbed up onto his lap about an hour ago and fallen asleep; absently, Gil stroked his cat's fur. He had, of course, taken Uma's warning about the danger of Gray potentially being a mutt seriously, but he couldn't shake the belief that he'd held his whole life that any animal could be a friend to you if you treated it well enough. A dangerous animal was one you didn't have time to win over, and one thing Snow seemed to have given him was time. Some of it, at least.

Still, he wished he didn't have a cat in his lap now that there was food. "Can one of you pass me some of everything?" he asked, quietly.

"Gil," Uma sighed. "Are you really whispering so you don't wake the cat?"

"He's sleeping," Gil said.

Ti approached and calmly lifted Gray into her arms and set him on the floor. The cat stirred but did not wake.

This was all the encouragement Gil needed to pile his plate high with food and dig in. Both Harry and Uma paused to gaze incredulously at the quantity, but they couldn't make any comment about it because they were too busy eating, themselves.

It was so good. It was so good. So good that Gil could have cried. So good that he wondered how he hadn't noticed before now how soulless Capitol food really was. (Because I was starving and had little frame of reference, he answered himself mentally.) This was food made by someone with a passion for cooking, not just a need to cook.

Harry moaned openly.

"I would die for this soup," Uma said, completely serious.

"I would kill for this soup," Harry said.

"Songs should be sung about this soup."

"I will write them."

Ti, who was distributing napkins to them, only smiled in a vaguely pained way. Or at least, Gil was pretty sure she did, but he only got a glance before he actually did tear up over how good the soup was; by the time he wiped the moisture from his eyes, Ti's back was to him.

"...And now, to finally cover what everyone's been buzzing about, we go live to Caesar Flickerman. Caesar, is the wait for President Snow's broadcast as excruciating for you as it is for us?"

"Hey, Caesar's on!" Gil announced, and Uma and Harry turned to the screen while Ti made her exit from the room and closed the door behind herself.

Caesar's hair was neon green today, and his suit a glimmering dark green. "Afternoon, folks!" he said heartily, ignoring the news person's lead-in, which was out of character for him; normally he at least pretended that other Capitol media personalities were worth acknowledging. "Let's just get right down to it, shall we?"

Behind him, the giant studio screen played footage of Gil, Uma, and Harry arriving at the Capitol earlier that day and getting off of their trains. Gil saw the digital Harry and Uma descend with their hands linked, and he saw himself wince and cover his face to block the light, and he saw them call his name in surprise, and he saw himself run to them and them to him. An unseen studio audience reacted with cheers and affectionate swoons, and Caesar's smile grew as he talked over them:

"Earlier today, Uma Triskelion, Harry Hook, and Gil Legume arrived at the Capitol. Their purpose here has been undisclosed, but there is speculation that it is somehow related to the president's raptly-awaited upcoming speech."

(In the background, the video was still running, and Gil was chagrined to note that any viewer could tell that they were whispering to each other as they hugged. Uma's face wasn't so visible, but his certainly was. Fortunately, Caesar's show was above speculative lip-reading; if he wanted to know what someone was saying, he brought them on for an interview.)

"So Caesar doesn't know either," Uma said calmly, sliding her now-empty bowl and plate out of the way so as to bring her book back to her lap. "Figured as much. Snow wouldn't let someone else take his thunder."

Caesar leaned conspiratorially closer to the audience and the cameras. "But here's what we do know..."

The footage behind him changed to a shot of them outside their new house, with their backs to the camera, followed by a reel of the house's interior.

"President Snow, in his generosity, provided an immaculate house for the three victors, for the stated purpose of conducting a sanctioned exploration of victor relations. Whether that exploration..."

But Caesar had to stop, because the audience was losing its collective mind.

"Well, Miss Fairy didn't tell us that part," Harry said.

"And Caesar's heavy on the Snow praise today," Uma observed. "Think they scripted him?"

"May have," Harry replied. "Can't say I care; he's always been a tool for-"

Uma shushed him as the studio audience's suggestive sounds yielded to more words from Caesar:

"I know, a lot of questions, and I'm sure we're all curious as to how far it goes. Fortunately, we've got Mr. Hook, Ms. Triskelion, and Mr. Legume scheduled for an interview tomorrow night."

"Huh." Uma frowned. "Caesar, tomorrow night."

"Fairy did say we had the day booked," Gil pointed out.

"Exactly," Uma answered. "With what? If Caesar Flickerman could only get a slot that late, then whatever we're doing for the rest of the day must be straight from Snow; Caesar's big enough to book us in the morning, otherwise."

"I didn't even know he did morning interviews," Gil said.

"He would, if the alternative is letting the smaller outlets get to us first," Uma said. "Victors are his."

"The president's broadcast will be in another hour," Caesar said. "In the meantime, enjoy this montage of the best moments of Uma, Harry, and Gil."

"Gil," Uma cautioned, and that was all the warning he got before Caesar vanished from the screen and was replaced with Games footage.

Harry exhaled. "Falling back on the classics, are they?"

"I'm sure these aren't random clips. These are the memories Snow wants to be fresh in everyone's mind when he makes his announcement." Uma shook her head disgustedly and turned a page in her book. Gil wasn't sure if she was truly indifferent or just couldn't look at the screen. He couldn't look away.

Gil watched as a blood-spattered, thirteen-year-old Uma limped through sand up to her knees, pursued hotly by two tributes. He rarely had to remember Uma's Games, but he did now: her arena had been a desert, with one deep pond as the only water source; her final opponents had been a huge brother and sister duo from District 2.

He remembered.

The two groups (Uma alone, the siblings together) had stayed away from each other for an entire day, which was no good for the Capitol audience. An announcement had warned them the following morning that they should get a last drink from the pond while they could; an obvious trick, but they were parched. The three of them had converged on the pond just in time to see it filled with oil. Undrinkable.

And then the siblings had made their choice; the Games had to end sooner rather than later. So the chase began.

"You won't get to survive together anyway!" young Uma called, breathless, over her shoulder, and Gil was surprised by how much higher her voice had been. It was a jarring change, even roughened by disuse and dehydration as it was in the video. "Not both of you!"

"So one of us dies, the other lives!" the brother called back, resolutely.

"I've been there," Uma said, stumbling more and more. She had led them in a giant circle such that they were doubling back on the pond now. She was running out of stamina and bleeding through a bandage on her leg. "It's not good."

"Allow us to put you out of your misery, then," the sister said, and her hand was almost closing around the back of Uma's shirt (Even Gil, who knew the outcome, felt short of breath.) when they arrived at the pond and Uma, without hesitation, dove in.

Gil pried his eyes away from the television to look at the real Uma, who was still looking down at her book. Her expression was hard, her shoulders tense. Harry also had his eyes on her, but he seemed to have deemed this not a time to bother her.

Two splashes, signifying the other tributes following Uma into the pond, made Gil look back at the screen again.

Three heads, oil-slicked, resurfaced: Uma already at the pond's other side (fast swimmer that she was), and the two other tributes treading towards her. Even with her being from District 4, it was obvious how this would go: Uma was too small, too injured, too alone.

Then, when the tributes were almost halfway to where she floated, Uma raised one of her hands.

In that hand was a match, ready to be stricken across one of the rocks above.

The siblings immediately stopped advancing. "Wait! Wait! Hey, don't be insane!"

The look on thirteen-year-old Uma's face reminded Gil why he had feared her for years. It wasn't an insane look, or a victorious look, or a sad look. It was absolutely nothing. Blank emptiness as she held up the thing that could kill them and herself. It could be attributed to blood loss, maybe, or to lethargy and shock, but even now Gil wasn't entirely sure. She held the match up matter-of-factly and eased it closer to the rock.

"I'm not giving you my life," she said flatly, in her high, young voice. "I'm not giving anyone my life."

And while the siblings were still trying to retreat from the pond, she struck the match and threw it.

And the pond went up in flames with all three of them in it.

The screams were enough to wake the cat; Gray made a pitiful sound and curled around Gil's ankle.

Breaking his silence, Harry was murmuring, "They had it coming, love; they'd have killed you just as easily. You were brilliant."

Uma was gripping her book tightly. She sat up straight and said, "The idiots should've swam under the fire; oil floats. They could've just swam under the fire."

"Maybe they only teach that in District 4," Gil suggested softly.

"Such a crappy way to die," Uma said.

"You had to save your own life," Harry said. "You couldn't very well take them both hand-on-hand."

"I know," she said. "I don't regret surviving. People are always killing each other in screwed up ways; I'm no different."

The footage cut to Uma's victory interview, in which her burns were completely gone and her dress was designed to mimic fire on the surface of a pond; deep blue with a ruffle of red-orange netting above the bosom. This was her first media appearance with added hair, because a lot of her real hair had been burned. She looked extremely alert, but not shaken or upset.

"So tell me," Caesar said, "what we're all dying to know: were you planning it?"

"Was I planning on burning Endymion and Eurydice to death in that pond?" Uma rephrased straightforwardly, making a point of using their names. "Yes."

"For how long?"

"Since they put the oil in."

Hard cut to her Victory Tour; no audible words, just images and fanfare.

"Bet they won't show my speech for District 2," Uma said.

"They barely showed it the day you made it," Harry replied.

Gil remembered that, too; Uma had told the tributes' family not to dare forgive her. She had urged them to be furious, had told them, in a voice that he remembered had been partway between angry and desperate, that if she weren't there, one of their children would be. The footage had cut, for District 10 at least, right after that, and then never aired again.

Now, the fanfare faded into Harry's pre-Game interview; sixteen-year-old Harry, wiry and cocky.

"Look at him; not nervous at all," Caesar hyped him up to the already-bewitched crowd. "You must have done interviews before."

"Alas, no, but I figure it doesn't matter what I say; no one understands my accent here anyway," Harry answered, and his accent did sound thicker in the old footage than it did now.

Caesar and the audience laughed. "I'm so sorry," Caesar chuckled, "but how's this: if you win-"

"When I win, Caesar," Harry corrected. "When."

"'When'?" Caesar repeated, sounding delighted and amused. "You seem so sure."

"'Course I'm sure. My sister ordered me to come home, and when Harriet Hook tells you to do something, it's rather in yer best interest to get it done. 'Sides, I got the world's greatest mentor."

"Still true," the real Harry interjected as his onscreen self blew a kiss at Uma in the audience, who smirked and rolled her eyes (unlike current Uma, who just smirked).

Hard cut to Harry's Games, the jungle, after his first kill. The lazy, self-assured grin was gone, replaced by a mad rictus as he lost himself to a fit of inappropriate giggles over his enemy's corpse. Gil could see, from the tension in some of his muscles and the rivulets streaming from his eyes, that he was trying to stop laughing, but seemingly he couldn't. He slapped the ground with one hand, tightly gripped a hanging vine for support with the other, and shook with laughter as his face turned blue.

The real Harry watched his younger self unravel with an air of dispassion.

Then another hard cut to the end of his Games, and he stood silent, hunched over, soaked in blood, and surrounded by bodies. The implication seemed to be that he had killed more tributes than he actually had; they had omitted the part where he covered himself with the blood deliberately to discourage attackers. It was a weird thing to leave out, as that had been such an effective move on Harry's part. (Then again, Gil wasn't sorry to miss that imagery; it had nauseated him when he first watched it, when young Harry had cupped his hands to catch up the blood of the dead and poured it onto his face and body.)

Young Harry swept intense glares at his surroundings as if waiting for something to jump out at him. Then someone did, and he skewered them straight through the heart, loosing another fount of blood that gloved his whole arm and sprayed his face even more, and that was the end of that; nothing terribly out of the ordinary, so they soon cut to the footage of him running to kiss Uma afterwards (a jarring emotional shift), with a few overlaying clips of their interviews together after that, with Harry's most popular music lilting through all of it, and they kept with that theme for a few minutes- the Capitol's favorite couple, adoring touches and brazen jokes and almost unearthly levels of possessiveness -, but too soon it was Gil's chariot ride, where he almost knocked his partner off the vehicle by accident, and...

"Do you want to bring the dishes downstairs, Gil?" Uma asked.

Gil seized the opportunity to not be in the room; he collected their used plates and bowls and flatware as quickly as he could and fled before he had to see that swamp again.

Avoidable pain was to be avoided.

In a state of slight dizziness, he brought the dishes into the kitchen, where Ti was cleaning up the pots and pans and whistling to herself. She straightened and went quiet when she heard Gil approaching.

"Uh, h-hey," Gil said, because he wanted to be like Uma and treat the Avoxes like regular people even though they seemed like tormented ghosts and that terrified him. He set his plate down awkwardly on the counter.

Ti took them into the sink, calmly, but she stared straight ahead at the wall as she submerged her hands in the soapy water, as if there was a daydream positioned right there that she didn't yet want to break from.

"Um..." This seemed like the time to leave, but Gil couldn't help thinking about a time when he had been a child (somewhere between ages seven and twelve, as that was the period of time in which his mother would sporadically relapse into inexplicably loving his father and would, as a result, occasionally be present around the house, sometimes doing chores but mostly doing Gaston) and the sweltering heat of the bed he'd shared with three of his brothers had led him to wander out into their night-darkened yard (if he could even still call it a "yard", now that he'd been inhabiting Victor's Village and seen the true meaning of the word) while his mother was still hanging up wet laundry. She had kept her back turned to him, even when he said her name (because everyone else called her by her first name, or less than her name; if he'd tried calling her "mama" or "mother", he would have been ridiculed from all corners of the house for sure). She'd kept her back turned to him the way Ti was now. In Gil's experience, when a person kept their back to you, it was because they were feeling vulnerable and didn't want to be hurt more. "Are you...okay?"

Ti turned to face him with a sharp look in her eyes, as if that wasn't a question he was supposed to ask.

"Sorry! Sorry," he hastily said, causing her gaze to soften. He had been stupid, though; they were being listened to all the time, and he didn't know what would happen to the Avoxes if it was known that they were being emotional. In fact, his apology probably made it worse. "I mean...I'm going to go back to the room. Lunch was good."

He caught the Avox woman's forced-looking responding smile as he turned his back and hurried from the room.

He bumped into the blond Avox on his way down the hall, and she gasped and then bowed her head, not so much deferentially as warily.

"Sorry," he exhaled again as he ducked into the television room. Uma and Harry's gazes were locked earnestly on the television. He hesitated near the doorway. "Is it...?"

"It's still on your Games," Uma said, by way of warning, with an odd note in her voice that Gil couldn't quite identify.

"Still?" he said. "It only stayed in the arena for a few minutes for you guys."

"Yeah," Uma agreed, still riveted on the screen with her eyes steadily narrowing as if she was quite close to putting her fist through the television.

"We think we understand why they chose the clips they did," Harry said, beckoning Gil to his seat. "Tell you in a bit." There was a tightness to his tone, too; something about the Capitol's clips of Gil in the arena seemed to really bother them both.

Gray the cat had made himself at home in Gil's chair, so Gil sat on the floor between Uma's chair and Harry's, which earned him a different hand on each shoulder, a primally comforting feeling that enabled him to ignore the sounds of action onscreen.

"Was Ella still in the laundry room?" Uma asked.

"Is that the other one's name?"

Uma hummed in the affirmative. "Tiana and Ella."

"How did you ask?"

"Three of my sisters were deaf; I found out that the sign language I learned to use for them translates well for Avoxes when I first got reaped."

"I...didn't know you had sisters." Three?

Uma's hand moved up from his shoulder to play with his hair, and Gil rested his head on her knee. "All of them died young, before my Games. Not something the Capitol felt the need to make known. Kind of an unmarketable bummer."

It was weird to think that there was so much of Uma's past, and Harry's too, that weren't known of; it usually seemed like the Capitol aired their entire lives out for everyone to see. But then, Gil was used to not knowing things, so the feeling wasn't unfamiliar.

"So, was Ella still in the laundry room?"

"Oh. No. She was coming out of our room last I saw her; she had our old clothes in a basket." Uma's hand felt really good in his hair. It was a sort of intrinsically relaxing sensation akin to sinking into a warm bath after a long day. That combined with the weight of Harry's hand on his shoulder, and Gil was drowning, happily.

"Hmm." Uma's thumb paced back and forth in a steady arc.

Then the anthem was playing, and Uma's hand stilled, and Harry's hand tightened, and Gil found himself wrapping his arms around one of Uma's calves and hiding his face behind her knee as if the image of President Snow on the TV screen would otherwise see him.

"Our fearless leader," Harry observed, in a tone as wispy-sweet as poison. His free hand started restlessly clicking at the pen that they had been using earlier.

"Thank you," Snow was saying, with the smile of a man who held their life and death between his jaws and quite enjoyed the taste, "and welcome to this very special broadcast."

"Very special and very mandatory," Uma said, with a false smile as though she were speaking to the man himself.

"As your president, I confess myself quite exhilarated over this singularly rare opportunity that has been placed before us. Many of you know that, a few months ago, some of our victors showed us the many ways that proven-strength can be rewarded."

Gil didn't understand what it meant, but Uma let out a sound like a pot that had been left boiling for too long, and her fist tightened so that she was accidentally pulling his hair a little. "What?" he asked, but Uma was too focused on the TV to register the question.

"Their decision to share with us the perks of their victor status- i.e., their undying love for each other -has led me to a decision of my own. We all so enjoy any chance to truly know our victors, especially since it seems we only hear from them infrequently." (The clicking of Harry's pen ramped up in speed.) "And so, henceforth and for the for the rest of their lives, Uma Triskelion, Harry Hook, and Gilbert Legume shall operate in my employ as facilitators to a new project which will enable our victors to continue to entertain us."

Uma flew to her feet, dropping the books that had been on her lap and actually yanking painfully on Gil's hair in the nanosecond before she remembered to let go. Gil stood up, too, less in anger over Snow's statement (because his mind was too boggled for anger) than for the purpose of making sure neither Uma nor Harry tried to abuse the TV; Uma's quick movements had made that seem likely, and while Harry was still in his seat, he was leering at the screen with the energy of an animal about to charge or pounce. (Gil knew that energy; he had seen enough dumb kids sneak into the bulls' enclosure on a dare.) Neither of them did, though.

"The project will be known as Sisyphus's Reward, for the triumphant myth about a man so strong he could push a boulder up a mountain for eternity, and its scope will not be limited to only victors who have become mentors. Any and all of our favorite victors may return to us, through the Reward. I will hold a direct meeting with Uma, Harry, and Gilbert tomorrow at noon, to congratulate them and to clarify the responsibilities of their position. Their status as mentors to their districts has been terminated. And I have personally seen to it that their morning hours tomorrow be left free, so that they can enjoy each other's company properly on this day of reunion." Snow's mouth curved into a good-natured smile, as if to let the viewers know that he was in on the joke.

"He's saying he wants to let us bang," Gil observed, having caught onto the subtext there at least.

"Correct," Uma acknowledged, with malice in her tone that Gil knew wasn't for him.

"Now, I'll let all of you return to your regularly-scheduled programming. I'm sure Caesar has more than a few thoughts."

"Harry," Uma said stiffly.

Harry grabbed the remote, and the TV fizzled off before Caesar Flickerman's stunned expression could fully fade back in. Instead, Gil saw their reflections in the dark screen. Harry looked like he was waiting for Uma's permission to trash the place or kill somebody, and Uma looked as if somehow the TV remote had made her thoughts fizzle out, too- she was still. Eerily still, and staring at nothing.

"So he's not killing us," Gil hazarded. "Any of us. At least not right now."

Uma's eyes blinked, then looked at him, still not quite in focus. Her eyes...it was like looking down into a steaming cup of dark brown tea, at Mulan's kitchen table. "No," she agreed flatly.

"And we don't have to be mentors anymore."

Uma shook her head hard, and then she was back in action, grabbing the pad of paper from the table and working the pen from Harry's grip before he could snap it in half. (As it stood, the pen was bent, but not beyond use.) "No," she agreed, more substance to her delivery, "but he's made a master move. So much smarter than killing us." She swept out of the room, leaving her books behind on the armchair and the floor.

Harry followed at her heels, and Gil behind him. As it turned out, they were heading to the bedroom. Uma seated herself cross-legged in the middle of the bed, scribbling furiously on the pad. Gil wondered if maybe she would break the pen.

"Don't let that thing in here," Harry said suddenly, pointing down towards the floor. "Not where we sleep."

Gil looked down and saw that Gray had slunk in. He scooped the soft beast up and murmured, "Not right now, little guy," before setting him down in the hallway and shutting the door.

He went to the bed, then. The energy in the room was weird; there was the anger, naturally, but besides that, Harry and Uma seemed perfectly casual sitting on a bed together, whereas Gil couldn't have been more self-conscious as the mattress dipped under his weight and he joined them. Maybe it was because Snow's joking words about their free morning had put thoughts in his head that he was entirely sure weren't in theirs (at least not right now). In fact it probably was for that exact reason. Which just solidified Snow's role as a person who routinely ruined things.

The notepad had been set down on the bed- available to anyone -and they formed a triangle around it.

Already on the page, and sloppy from haste, was what Uma had written: "I feel f[illegible] stupid. Of course he didn't kill us. Kill us, and we're the people who died for an inter-district relationship; that's the sort of martyrship rebellions are made of. So instead he stole our rebellion. He said our love for each other was our reward for being victors. He's making us work for him. Sell out other victors for him. He made us the Face of his operation. And he's adjusting our image already; he only aired the clips where we were playing his game. Either killing for him, or loving each other. Not the time I was allied with Hadie from 6; not all the times Harry glared at the camera; not the time Gil spared Fleet or cried over the corpse of his competition, and they used to play that last one all the time. But no, nothing revolutionary. And he said 'our' victors. 'Our', as in the Capitol. Like we don't belong to the districts anymore. He's cutting us off so that we're impossible to rally behind, uprooting us and putting us in his vase."

It brushed on a lot of what they had just seen, and the grimness of the words made Gil's stomach tighten. So, Snow was painting them as his puppets before the districts.

But Uma still had the pen. And she was tapping it against her knee pensively. Having vented on the paper, it seemed that a cool pragmatism had washed over her.

"But we're alive," she wrote more neatly. "We still have some control. He put us in a bad position, but we can still make him regret doing this. Even more once CJ ages out of the reaping."

Harry took the pen. "You know he'll make sure she gets reaped. He'll do it, and we won't be there to mentor her."

Gil's heart broke a little for Harry: the boy who had painted himself with blood, showered in it, to ward off those who would do him harm; the boy who, even now, seemed to wear the invisible blood-spatters of his enemies everywhere he went, and yet who still always seemed to have more enemies. Gil saw the same heartbrokenness in Uma's eyes, veiled though it was by steel and determination.

The pen went to her again, and Harry's eyes were shards of blue glass as he watched her write. "She has what we've told her before; we've both taken her aside about it at least once. And she'll have sponsors hurling themselves at her. But to keep her out of the arena entirely, we'll need power that we don't have yet. By setting us up like this, Snow has given us the ability to grab some power. And then we'll tear him to shreds for even thinking of hurting CJ."

Harry's shoulders relaxed slightly. He was looking at Uma like he fully believed that she could pull the Capitol apart as easily as a school child pulls petals off of a flower, and like he couldn't wait to watch her do it. Gil looked at Uma and remembered the girl who would rather set fire to a lake with herself in it than give away her life. She was always fighting so hard; he wondered how he could make it easier for her.

He couldn't help feeling like it was his job to heal what was hurt inside them.

When Mulan was hurting, she always threw herself into her hobbies, which was why Gil asked Uma, "So, your hobby is cooking, isn't it?"

Uma frowned slightly, perplexed by the change of subject and by his speaking aloud, but conceded, "Yes. I'm no Tiana, but I know how to make something edible that they can take pictures of, and that was the point."

"Plus, they always ask her to cook a lot of food, for the photo shoots," Harry added, seeming to relax completely, now, as he stretched out along the foot of the bed, "which means they send a lot of supplies, which means a lot of leftovers to take to our old neighborhoods."

"Oh." Gil considered this; Uma had chosen a hobby of convenience. The way she probably saw it, she was going out of her way for the Capitol as little as possible and minimizing how well they knew her: she cooked, since she would need to eat anyway, and they gathered footage and went on their way. "Then what do you really like doing?"

"I wanted to study law. Apparently it's not an interesting hobby, and it's also illegal."

"It's illegal to study law?" Gil repeated. "I didn't know that."

"That's because it's illegal to study law, mate," Harry snorted.

"Don't stress," Uma added, putting her hands on Gil's shoulders. "It's my job to stress."

"Why?"

"Because I've been a victor the longest."

"That's not fair; then you'll be the saddest out of all of us."

Rather than confirm or deny, Uma cracked a half-smile that seemed oddly more real than her full-teeth smiles. "Well, that's my job, too." Then suddenly, she sprang to her feet, one hand outstretched to each of them. "Now come on; let's see what ingredients we've got downstairs. With any luck, we can whip up a batch of booze cookies and then head to the music room."

The music room meant that they weren't talking about serious things anymore.

Harry cheered at the mention of booze cookies.

Uma watched their note paper burn on the stove while Harry riffled through the booze cabinet and Gil talked the cat down from the countertop. Tiana was hovering, because she was supposed to stay in the kitchen area, but she did not intervene in their antics aside from pointing Harry to the alcohol when asked.

"That's a lot of bottles," Gil observed, since the cat was off the counter now and he could see the spread that Harry was appraising.

"So many bottles," Harry agreed almost salaciously, draping an arm around Gil's shoulders. Uma liked seeing them stand together, liked how Harry sought out physical contact with Gil and Gil melted into Harry's touch. They made each other feel good- comforted each other, which comforted her.

She forced her gaze away to ensure that the note burnt entirely; no legible traces.

The stove's blue flames reminded Uma of Harry's eyes, but the heat they gave off made her feel like the fire was trying to reclaim her. It was probably a symptom of the Games screwing with her mind or something, but Uma always had the feeling that fire still resented being wielded by her, and resented even more that she had survived it. In the months immediately following her victory, this feeling had manifested itself in unhealthy habits: "appeasing the fire", was how she had seen it, "letting the fire have a taste", but really it was just burning herself. Small burns. She had broken from the habit sporadically (quicker, once Harry had moved in) and was out of it altogether now. But her relationship with fire still felt...loaded.

She turned off the stove, now that the paper had been reduced to crispy black flakes. Even if the Capitol had ways of reading off of burnt paper, which she wouldn't put past them, there was no way they could reassemble the page. Satisfied, Uma dug ingredients for the batter out of the refrigerator.

"There's wine," Gil offered.

"How potent?" Uma asked.

"Not bloody potent enough," Harry answered.

"We need that alcohol content. What else ya got?"

"There's schnapps." Gil held up an orange bottle. Butterscotch flavored, with a decent concentration; that had potential.

Uma dug a bag of chocolate chips out of the fridge and weighed it in her hand.

An hour later, Harry was aggressively serenading them in the music room, and Gil had chocolate on his fingers and that cat in his lap (which led to him hastening to suck the chocolate off his fingers, because the cat kept trying to lick at it and Gil explained that it was toxic to cats).

Uma drifted around the space, trying to wrap herself in the moment, but the thought of Snow's smug face, his manipulative words, kept her suspended. He hadn't just torpedoed their image, hadn't just isolated them from their people; this had been an attack on her personally. Any other punishment he could have handed her, she would have borne as the cost of rebellion, but making her one of his lackeys? His instrument of torment against other victors? And making it impossible to simply refuse, with CJ on the line?

A master move. A crushing blow.

But she'd had worse taken from her than her honor before.

How she was going to destroy him. She was going to absolutely disembowel him, but not before he watched his brilliant plan crumble.

"Uma?"

She returned to Earth.

Harry had been playing faster and louder, to get her attention, but it was Gil who had called to her, tentatively. It was hard to look directly at his concerned face, but she did anyway. He was like sunlight on the surface of the sea, a blinding and relaxing counterpoint to Harry's invigorating riptide.

Ugh, was she sappy? Did schnapps turn her sappy? She was never drinking this stuff again. Or eating it. Freaking butterscotch.

"I'm fine, Gil," she said. "Just thinking."

"You look like you're upsetting yourself," Gil accused.

"Drop it, Gil." And while he didn't press the issue verbally, the concerned look stayed on his face. Uma understood, fundamentally, why he should be worried; she had been the one to drag him into this, to offer him safety. If he thought that she was showing weakness instead of just rage, well of course that was worrying. He had taken a leap of faith.

Gil was a survivor, in ways that, despite having won the Hunger Games, weren't immediately obvious. His trust was an all-or-nothing deal; once earned, it was fully given. Uma knew who she was; she was vicious. Truly vicious, much more so than Harry, because her cruelty was premeditated. And no one gave a truly vicious person their heart except for protection. Gil probably wasn't consciously aware of that aspect of it, but it was true.

Her worst self was out there for everyone to see; her worst acts could never be taken back. And somehow she had been granted two people to love, cursed to die their deaths as well as her own.

But she was a survivor, too.

Harry's song came to an end, the last chords diluting in the cookie-scented air and his fingers rising away from the keys carefully, like he was letting them sleep. He had said to her, once, "If I were reaped the same year as you, you would still be a victor, love." He had meant it in a sweet way, a lay-down-my-life way, but the idea haunted her.

"Are we, uh...?" Gil trailed off, looking embarrassed.

"Are we what?" Uma asked.

"Never mind. It was a stupid question."

"Well, you're in luck; I love stupid questions. Lay it on me." She exchanged a partly-amused look with Harry.

"Are we...I was going to ask if we're gonna...gonna use our, uh...'free morning'."

Ah, so that was why he was embarrassed.

"Probably not," Uma said honestly. "Not for That, at least; we have a meeting with dear, sweet, precious President Snow at noon, so we should be ready- have a list of questions for him and whatnot."

Gil nodded, still avoiding eye contact.

"Did you want to?" Uma asked, somewhat curious. Have you ever?

"Not if you don't want to," was Gil's quick reply, which, while not strictly an answer to the question she had asked, was a great response. "I mean..."

"It's okay if you wanted to," Uma said, unable to keep from smiling. "Or if you didn't."

"I did," Harry contributed.

"We know, Harry."

"Still do."

"We know, Harry."

This got a smile out of Gil.

Harry reached and grabbed another cookie from the cookie plate and took a huge bite from it. Ignoring her oath to herself to never have schnapps again, Uma took the rest of his cookie.

It wasn't a long term solution, but being intoxicated helped to strip away the reservations of her mind and access her most ridiculous goals on at least a cognitive level. She needed it, right now. Later on she would plan, and read, and pace, but right now she needed the disinhibitor to allow her to think, We are not going to sell out other victors. We will find loopholes, find ways to do our jobs without selling out other victors. We will use our new position, use "Sisyphus's Reward", to break open the Capitol at the fault lines, at the veins, and rain retribution on Snow, Snow's advisors, the Gamemakers... Despite obsessing about overthrowing those disgusting monsters, Uma didn't have any particular thoughts on what to do with them once they were no longer threats. Harry had more than a few, though; she would let him have his closure on them. And Gil could have as many cats as he wanted.

She knew that she could take down the Capitol, because she was vicious like they were vicious.

Snow knew it; that was why he kept trying to break her.

She was his fire: the tool he shouldn't have used, shouldn't have survived, couldn't control.

Uma spun to the music- a recording, this time -and laughed as Harry and Gil competed over how many cookies they could fit in their mouths. Gil won, and Uma laughed harder as Harry found himself stuck with five cookies stacked between his teeth and a jaw that didn't want to close. She laughed so hard, she staggered into Gil, who dutifully caught her even though she wasn't falling. His muscles were sturdy against her back.

Harry looked at both of them with glassy eyes. "Help?" he said through the cookies.

Uma was pleased to watch him struggle a little longer, but after a second, Gil suddenly leaned over, bit through the stack so that the half that had been sticking out of Harry's mouth landed in his, and withdrew with his mouth full and his face aflame.

Seeing these sorts of gestures from the outside was so surreal. Weirdos, she thought with good humor as she watched the boys chew their cookie halves, Harry's eyes never leaving Gil and Gil's eyes lingering around Harry's chest. He was still wearing Gil's shirt. Was Gil into that? Because she was wearing his shirt, too.

The thought made her feel sort of tingly.

Yeah, no more schnapps. That was enough disinhibition.

Now she had work to do.

When Gil opened his eyes the next morning, it was to the sound of a shower running. Harry's sleeping face was inches away, his pink lips slightly parted and his hair beautifully disheveled. It was unclear whether Uma had come to bed at all, but she was up now. Up and getting ready.

Gil blamed his past (drunk) self for Uma having been in the study alone last night; he had allowed her to send him to bed while she stayed up, because bed had sounded really, really good at the time, and she had assured him that she wanted him to rest, and Harry to rest, and she wanted to stay up. He should have stayed up with her. She was always taking things on herself and refusing to let him worry about it.

Which makes this a real Legume relationship, doesn't it? He could just hear his brothers laughing at how he had stumbled into a woman who wanted to handle everything, and he was begging her to let him share the load. The face his father would make.

Gil slid out of bed. If Uma was going to carry them in terms of planning, the least he could do was get breakfast made, then.

He must have been half-asleep; it wasn't until he was practically reaching for the kitchen door that he remembered Tiana and registered the sound of things already sizzling. Was he allowed to help? He didn't want to bother her or get her in trouble; he backed away from the kitchen.

Well, what now? He needed to make himself useful somehow.

Just as he was starting to head back to the bedroom, maybe pick out his clothes for the day or something (though it'd be easier to gage the dress code based on what Uma was wearing), there was a knock at the front door.

He crossed the teal entry room and again found himself hovering uncertainly next to a door. Uma was in the shower, and Harry was asleep. Was it okay to open the door by himself, here? Behind him, Ella emerged from a side room, looking as if she had been about to answer the door herself, before pausing when she noticed him already there. Right; answering the door was something "servants" did. Well, if a "servant" could do it, he probably could, right?

Without Uma or Harry...

The insistent pace of the knocking won out; he turned the doorknob and had barely pulled the door open when Miss Fairy was forcing herself in, babbling, "Finally! You only have four hours before you're expected to meet with President Snow. You're not dressed! Are you all awake, at least? The president's order that your morning be left free until you meet with him means I couldn't get a prep team over; you'll have to do it all on your o-"

Then she broke off, staring past Gil as if the wall behind him bore a mural of her decapitation, or hardcore nudity, or something like that. Gil looked behind himself, but he only saw Ella, swiftly returning to the side room from which she'd come.

Miss Fairy cleared her throat, then swallowed, then shook her head, all seemingly with the intention of brushing past the moment, but she didn't keep talking and still seemed rattled as she mutely proceeded through the front room, towards the hallway. It was weird to see someone with baby blue hair be this solemn.

"Never seen an Avox before?" Gil guessed, even though the idea of being a professional in the Capitol who had never seen an Avox seemed ludicrous even to him.

"I've seen plenty," was Fairy's quiet reply.

Okay.

"Are the others awake?" the woman asked again, this time clearly trying to sound as she had before.

"I'll go get them," Gil said. "You can, uh, get something to eat in the kitchen. There's an Avox in there, too, though."

"I'm sure there is."

Just as Miss Fairy was turning toward the kitchen door- of course she already knew where the kitchen was -, there was a shout from the direction of the bedroom. A Harry shout, definitely.

Gil left Fairy and broke into a run without a second thought, bursting into the room so suddenly that he startled Harry, who was sitting up and ostensibly awake but seemed to be halfway in a nightmare, his hands in a white-knuckled grip on the bedpost. Uma was out of the bathroom but clearly hadn't planned to be; she was only in a bra and boy shorts and Wow, Gil wished he didn't have to make that such a low priority. She was holding Harry's face between her hands and earnestly saying, "Hey! I'm here! I'm here."

Harry's eyes seemed to adjust to his surroundings- to the lack of threats and to each of them -and then he closed them and nodded. He looked slightly upset with himself.

"What happened? I just left a few minutes ago," Gil said, panicked by Harry's panic.

"I should've told you, this sometimes happens when he's in bed alone." Uma caressed Harry's face one last time before bringing her hands down. (He tilted his head slightly as if trying to follow her hand.) "He's just used to shar-" And now Uma was the one who broke off, staring past Gil, and her expression morphed into one of outrage. "Little privacy, Miss Fairy?" she demanded.

So the woman had followed Gil, then.

Fairy took a few uncomfortable steps back from the doorway. "What's wrong with him?" she asked, as if she couldn't help herself.

"Nothing," Uma ground out, taking long strides to shut the door while Harry managed to tighten his hands on the bedpost even more.

"I'm sorry I left," Gil breathed.

"Always blaming yourself for things," Harry mumbled, his eyes still closed.

"Harry, I can tell you're projecting nightmares on your eyelids; I can see the light from here." Uma's hand went out to Gil, and she pulled him closer. "Look at us, love."

Harry's eyelids parted, like opening a window to a pale blue sky. (Wait, that didn't make sense; windows are clear, so you could already see the sky. Gil wished he were better with words.) For a second he just looked at the two of them, the nightmares just out of reach. Then a corner of his mouth rose. "I hope you won't be seeing Snow in that, darling," he teased, making a show of appreciating Uma's state of undress. "I think we'd have to carve his eyes out, wouldn't we, Gilly?"

Uma chuckled, drawing back now that things were fine. "Don't get hanged on my account."

"Oh, I'm hung regardless," Harry said with a cheeky smile and a wink at Gil that was completely unfair because of course he started blushing.

Uma flicked him off, retrieved her clothes from the bathroom, and dressed in front of them. She had chosen another one of Gil's shirts (tan and loose-fitting, but barely past her navel; it was probably meant to be a half-shirt, on him) and a pair of shiny, teal pants that were form-fitting with a lot of zippers.

Gil liked the idea that she would just be borrowing his shirts regularly.

"Well, get dressed," she suggested, buckling her ankle-boots.

They did- all of them in Gil's shirts (although Harry layered one of his own shirts over his Gil shirt so that he retained the netted look without the transparency) and each other's jewelry. Harry applied his thick eyeliner, and Uma applied a lipstick that matched her pants, and Gil applied a bit of blush, because Uma said it would be helpful if he kept looking like an "innocent dove". He supposed the implied rest of the sentence was "...instead of the ruthless victor they're painting all of us as".

They ate a deeply uncomfortable breakfast with Fairy, who kept her eyes down on her plate as if worried that Ella would appear again if she looked up for even a second.

"So where are we meeting Snow?" Harry asked lazily.

"President Snow," Uma casually corrected, even though Fairy seemed too lost in thought to be appalled at their irreverence.

"You'll be meeting him in his house, of course," the woman said distantly. "His manor. I certainly hope he'll understand that your casual appearance can be blamed on your lack of a prep team."

"Here's hoping," Uma said, her eyes lingering on Miss Fairy as if wondering how best to fit her into their plans.

They rode a car to Snow's house. It was a giant mansion, but not a totally unfamiliar one; it was on TV often enough, and Gil had ridden here in his chariot just like every tribute.

"You're not leaving that in the car?" Fairy asked, sounding alarmed. She was looking at the pad of paper (where Uma had written her questions and notes) as if it were a child's embarrassing plaything.

"Are you suggesting I hold a meeting with the president without any notes?" Uma asked, which effectively torpedoed any arguments Fairy could make; the woman murmured something about making sure to have notecards bought for them later:

"Less ostentatious, at least."

Then they were at the huge Presidential Palace doors, which was as far as Fairy was authorized to go. They were led through confusing hallways by alternating guards until they reached the president's study, where the guard knocked for them.

For a while, there was no answer. Harry started to whistle, his hands in his pockets. Uma scowled at the door as they waited, probably imagining the sorts of horrible things Snow had done in here: speeches he had written, calls he had made. Maybe he had killed Mulan's children from this room. Now Gil was scowling at the door.

Then a voice called from within: "Enter."

The door opened.

Predictably, the room was enormous, opulent, and so full of books that Gil wished he could get away with stealing some for Uma. Snow was seated at a polished desk, and the moment he found himself in the man's line of sight, Gil wanted to cave in on himself. And Snow was as smartly dressed as usual, and he was calm, and he was collected, and he was ostensibly pleased to see them.

What he was not, was alone.

Also in the room, standing close, but not friendly-close, to his desk, with her hands holding her elbows to illustrate her discomfort but her posture straight and tall to illustrate her dignity, was a girl around their age with hair dyed dark blue and a remote expression in place. She outdressed them by far, if that was a thing that mattered; her outfit- a dress with sleeves but no shoulders, and with pants on under it for some reason -was utterly her own and suited her regal demeanor. Every stitch of clothing on her body was navy except for her fingerless gloves and glittery headband, which were both red. Gil had never met her, but he knew her. She had won the year before Harry.

"Welcome, you three," Snow said. "I'm sure I don't have to introduce Miss Evelyn Grimhilde."

"Evie," the girl introduced herself, fluidly extending a hand to shake.

Gil took it upon himself to shake it, since Harry wasn't going to and Uma was about to actually rip Snow's eyes out.

"I didn't know you were inviting other victors already, Mr. President," she said sharply.

"I wanted to make sure Sisyphus's Reward got off to a smooth start," Snow answered, almost innocently. His eyes landed on each of them in turn, and when the snake's smile was turned on him, Gil found it hard to breathe, but he kept eye contact and kept up his scowl because Mulan's children were dead and facing this fear was, like, the bare minimum of a first step to protecting Harry and Uma. He held the snake's gaze, and the snake's smile grew. "Won't you three sit down?"

They sat, because it wasn't a question, and the study door closed behind them.

Chapter Text

It was blatantly obvious why Snow had chosen Evie Grimhilde as their first victim.

It wasn't because they were friends or enemies or even personally acquainted; Harry had never seen the girl except through a screen, and while Uma had been a mentor the year Evie won her Games, to the best of his knowledge the two had never conversed. And Gil almost certainly had never had an opportunity to meet her.

No, Snow's choice wasn't personal in that way, but the intention was still transparent.

Evie was young, she was beautiful, she was openly leered-after; he didn't have to draw them a diagram. Not allowing her to be used by the Capitol's wealthiest lechers was going to be their first challenge, and no small one, and Snow had unfairly chosen to hand them this one first.

The barest glance at Evie herself made it clear that she, too, knew why she was here; her red lips were pressed together, her dark brown gaze cold as ice. If it came down to it, Harry knew that he would sell her out for Uma and Gil and CJ. He wasn't proud of the fact, and he wished he didn't know that about himself, but it was true. Fortunately, that wasn't on the table, because Uma was not him. Finding a third option was one of her greatest skills, an awe-inspiring byproduct of her tenacity and her cleverness.

"Sir," Uma said, her tone absolutely saccharine, "if I may ask, what exactly are you doing?" Just like in their last meeting, both she and Snow had their hands on the desk. Her pad of notes was sitting ignored in her lap. Harry took it, just to have something to do with his hands; as always, being this close to the tormentor of himself and his loved ones made it rather necessary to keep track of his hands at all times.

"Miss Triskelion, I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific," Snow said.

"This Sisyphus's Reward thing," Uma said.

"Weren't you the one who suggested that I 'recontextualize your relationship as something mandated'?" Snow pointed out.

"I said to punish me."

"You what?" Gil spluttered, but Harry shook his head grimly. Now wasn't the time to hash those sorts of things out; it honestly probably wasn't a good time for either of them to speak at all. Uma was the one who had planned for this.

(She and Snow had been dancing this dance for years, and Uma had pried tiny victories out of him long enough for this to be personal. Harry remembered watching his screen in awe when she lit the lake, watching, in somehow-greater awe, what managed to air of her speech to District 2. It had been nothing explicitly revolutionary- more a declaration of personal accountability than a rallying cry -but still nothing like what a victor was supposed to say; victory was supposed to be all posing and boasting and parties and wealth. But then she had given that speech, and a few sentences in the television had suddenly gone silent, the image fizzled with static (which Harry had kept staring at for more than a few seconds, as if hoping he might be able to see her through it). And then Ursula, Uma's mother, had promptly died under mysterious circumstances, and Snow'd had no reason to believe that that wouldn't devastate her, no reason to think that Uma's mother had been, if anything, doing his job for him. Harry remembered seeing Uma at Ursula's funeral, not smiling but worlds from mourning, smoldering with a determined energy that was just so magnetic, even then. Killing Ursula had been a misstep; instead of punishing her, Snow had lightened Uma's load, and she had invited the destitute children into her house as soon as her mother wasn't there to stop her. Harry remembered sending CJ to sleep over in Victor's Village every cold night, and having her return home with color in her cheeks and a well-filled stomach. Snow put a stop to that through the Peacekeepers' ban on any more Victor's Village sleepovers, and tesserae was mysteriously lacking for months after. Harry remembered it taking three or four tesserae to earn him what one had gotten them before. (No wonder he had eventually gotten reaped, himself.) And of course Uma had tried to cushion the blow with her cooking "hobby", which demanded that she receive large amounts of food that could later be distributed on the sly, but she couldn't feed an entire District by herself. Small victories, great consequences. Never quite a violation of law from her, and never quite a death sentence from him. But always a lesson. So Uma knew this game best.)

The president didn't seem to have even noticed Gil's interjection.

"Don't tell me you don't feel rather punished." Snow smiled. "Now, if your qualm is over the fact that I didn't martyr you, then, Uma, I wonder exactly how stupid you think I am."

Without breaking eye contact with Snow, Uma swiftly but casually laid a quelling hand on Harry, knowing his mind too well; for his part, Harry only gave a long exhale (albeit a quite audible one), even though it was utterly killing him to not give a colorful and frankly immature response.

Evie wandered to a window and started staring out of it, as if entirely too above this conversation to feign interest, which Harry thought a pretty uppity move from someone Uma was trying to fight for.

"What exactly is our job?" Uma asked, lowering her hand back to the desk and tilting her head slightly.

"As always, your job is entertainment," Snow said simply. "Although, there's a bit more to it, now. More accurately, your job is noise."

"Noise?" Gil repeated. He was sitting forward, leaning somewhat on the desk in order to look at Snow through a glass paperweight that was sitting near the desk's edge. There was a frown on his face, either from focusing on the distorted image or just from distaste for Snow in general. It was quite cute.

Again, the president ignored him. "You and I both know that victors are a singularly admired subset of the population- beloved of the Capitol and the districts alike."

"Funny kind of love," Uma said placidly.

"Enjoyed, then." Snow seemed to care little about the difference. "A victor to a Capitol citizen is a celebrity; to those in the districts, a victor is a subversion of fear, a beacon of hope. And that makes them singularly dangerous."

It should have pleased Harry to hear Snow admit the danger posed by victors, but instead it made him uncomfortable; you didn't want your opponent to know where the threats were coming from. Not when the opponent had as disproportionate a degree of power as Snow had.

Uma put on a smile, and it wasn't her fake-sweet smile or any version of her real smile, but what Harry would call her bare-minimum smile; a slight arc of the lips, backed by no particular emotion. She prompted, "You still haven't explained what our job is."

"Your job is to keep victors in public consumption. How you do it, I am overall leaving to your judgement- romance, festivities, cosmetic surgery, what have you -, but some of the Gamemakers will be closely overseeing the results; if at any time our celebrities begin to fall out of focus, then I will decide how you go about returning to the public consciousness, and I think we both know that you wouldn't like that."

"So you want us to stay in the news," Uma surmised, the 'What else is new?' implied. She was misunderstanding on purpose, though; it was clear that what Snow was proposing went farther than the expected norm for victors.

"More than that, my dear." (He was going to have to stop calling her that.) "It takes a lot to satisfy our rabid audience, to keep their attention. I want the victors' presence to be felt, in the Capitol. I want the victors' accessibility to be so understood that my citizens feel as though they could pluck any one of you from a tree, if they so chose. And yet, I also want the prestige and desirability to remain intact. In essence, I want victors to cease to be tantalizing commodities from Somewhere Else."

"No, you'd rather we be fancy playthings from nowhere."

"You'll receive one of the Gamemakers' raters- it's a device that will show you the extent to which you've managed to stay in the public eye. And I suggest you make it a priority to keep the public's sole, unblinking attention."

"To what end?"

Snow chuckled as if they were friends, and Harry almost gave himself a papercut, gripping the notepad so tightly. "What reason do you think I have to light so many stars? The public eye can be blinded just as well as any other."

"Overexposure." Uma sat back, crossing her arms. "Noise."

"Well, your little stunt with Mr. Legume" (Gil sat up, then, with a look on his face like a kicked puppy; Harry squeezed his knee comfortingly and glared at the president, who of course wasn't looking their way anyhow.) "espoused a sentiment of unity between the districts, and we certainly can't have that. The only way to diffuse the precedent you've chosen to set, short of persecuting you in a way that would be instantly unpopular, is to establish that victors are not part of the districts. Rather, after one wins the Hunger Games, one enters the pool of, as you so delicately put it, 'playthings'. Perhaps a less desirable outcome than being left alone to wallow in one's District with only occasional visits to the Capitol, but more desirable than losing the Games, so the hope remains. Isolating victors from District consumption whilst simultaneously inundating the District audience and the Capitol audience with victor-related content will remove victors' status as entities to rally behind. And rather than reflecting on your boldness in defying me, the victors and the Districts will inevitably be reflecting on how your selfishness ultimately worsened their lot."

Uma was sitting still, her expression close to blank with just the barest hint of polite interest, but Harry knew her well enough to detect the signs that she was seething.

"More on the specifics of your job," Snow continued, and for once his gaze flicked away from Uma, seemingly just to enjoy Harry's silent glower for a moment, "you will also be the ones receiving the calls soliciting the company of our more desired victors. It would be impossible for you to satisfy them all, but failing to satisfy any of them is something I would advise against. If you anger your audience, I will have to take action. And again, you don't want me to have to do that."

Uma nodded, still with that polite expression of vague interest.

"Also, you will be expected to report regularly to Adam Beast."

Harry's dam broke. "The Beast?!" he exclaimed, furious. Gil took Harry's hand in both of his own, which only barely took the edge off of the rage. Evie turned away from the window to fire a plaintive look in Harry's direction. And Uma...

...cleared her throat, still in her eerie calm. "We're big fans," she said smoothly. "We'd love nothing more than to work with your Head...Gamemaker." Only the brief pause between 'Head' and 'Gamemaker' indicated that she wanted to say something less complimentary. They had certainly called Beast their share of other names in the privacy of their home in 4; it was likely that an insult came more naturally to her than his title.

"That's so good to hear. Adam will be the one ensuring that you and your fellow victors are remaining at the optimal level of popularity. He will also give you suggestions for how to improve your results. As I'm sure you're aware, Adam has a great talent for entertainment."

"Quite so; he helped make us famous." The words came out as melodic and hollow as a struck bell. They- Uma and Snow -were being utterly cordial, and the air itself seemed to itch with tension, like lightning was about to strike.

Himself, Harry was positively shaking at the idea of any of them having to interact with the Head Gamemaker; there were times when The Beast was higher on his kill list than Snow was. The nightmares he'd caused for all of them...

"Is that all?" Evie asked loftily. She strode back over to the desk, her gait slow and graceful in an utterly deliberate way. But then, that was probably one of the things they taught in District 1. Striding and twirling and cutting throats and wearing jewels. They learned to be products, to be commodities, at a young age, there; it was almost something to be pitied, but it beat dying at a young age. The tributes from 1- trophies -and the tributes from 2- soldiers -were never the first to die. "Their car has come back, so I assume the meeting is over."

"Yes," Snow drawled, with a casual glance at the intricately-adorned, golden clock on his wall, because heaven forbid he have to tell time like a bloody human. "Their prep team will need time to work on them before their interview with Caesar. And I hope they know that their wardrobe was not chosen with the intention that they all wear Mr. Legume's shirts every day."

"Your audience will just think it's cute," Uma said, rising to her feet at the implication that their meeting was drawing to a close. (Harry was quick to follow suit; the sooner he ceased polluting his lungs with Snow's air, the better. Gil rose, as well, almost knocking the glass paperweight off of the desk but managing to catch it and right it at the last second.)

"Victors aren't cute."

"Is that why you messed with Gil's footage like that yesterday?" Now, just a bit of bite had worked its way into Uma's tone.

Snow chuckled. "They in no way altered the original footage."

"No, but you cut it together in a tricky way," Uma said. "Left stuff out to change the context. I'm sure your citizens noticed."

"Perhaps. Perhaps in the backs of their minds they stopped to think that the editing was strange." Snow sounded very much like he was indulging them for his own amusement, at this point. He pressed a button on the underside of his desk, and the study door opened behind them. "You should go, now. Miss Grimhilde will be staying in one of your spare rooms, although we'll be moving her in a little later, in the cover of night; her role here is going to be a fun surprise for the audience, and it wouldn't do to spoil it."

"So she won't be seeing Caesar with us?" Uma surmised, her eyes landing on Evie thoughtfully. (Evie met her gaze, and she was not hostile, but not remotely warm.)

"Oh no; that spotlight, you three get to enjoy on your own."

Uma turned away, briskly, from Snow's smile, and she led the way out of the study. They followed the guards through the mad, twisted hallways again, and Harry fought down the urge to tear, shatter, and stomp the wealthy decor. It turned his stomach, how a single room in this disgusting palace could feed an entire district, if pawned for half its worth.

But Uma was leading the way, so no matter his outrage, it wasn't too hard to keep moving. Instead of eyeing up every priceless trinket and letting his fury build, he focused on her. First he scanned for any sign that she was upset enough to require comfort; she was not. From the looks of it, she was simmering, which usually meant no physical contact of any kind. Which meant he could allow himself to just...watch. The way that she walked, as if she could feel that she was leading the way for multitudes, the tormented living and the unavenged dead, pulling them along after her but not impeded by their weight. Purposeful. For his part, Harry knew that when he followed her, it felt like every step he took was a step closer to impaling Snow's head on that stupid jewel-adorned coat rack. She inspired a confidence that dulled the hopeless anger that had festered in him since childhood.

Also, she was an utter vision from every angle, and walking behind her provided more aspects to appreciate than were always visible from the front.

Fairy Lady collected them at the door. "How was it?" she asked, her tight skirt forcing her to take hilariously-small steps so that she was practically running just to keep pace with them in their leisurely walk to the car. "He didn't say anything about your drab appearance, did he? And you were polite?"

"'Course we were polite; he's the president, Miss Fairy," Harry replied, quite innocently.

"You have been to the Capitol many times; I suppose you've learned something," Fairy mused. "You wouldn't believe the kinds of casual behavior I've seen, though. Some of the meetings I've been to- it would astound you. As if they just don't teach District children how to talk to important people."

"Do you normally go inside the mansion, then?" Gil asked, sounding legitimately curious. "Because, they didn't let you in this time."

Harry didn't even fight the grin that appeared on his face at Gil's completely unmalicious insult to the Capitol woman. (Gil was quite honest, and more observant than most people cared to notice or admit, and he did not restrain these virtues much for the sake of tact. It was beautiful, to Harry, how Gil often managed to redirect conversations in unexpected ways by catching on to some nuance of phrasing or implication.) In front of them, Uma ducked her head for a moment to smother a smile of her own.

"I," Fairy said, with immense composure, after an offended pause, "am not important."

"Sure you are, Miss Fairy; you're our coordinator," Uma said, standing back to let Harry open the car door for her and flashing Fairy an ostensibly-earnest smile.

Apparently, Fairy was easily flattered. "Thank you dear," she said, with a pleased look that did not go away even as they were all climbing into their seats and buckling in.

The car pulled away from the president's mansion, and the mansion was devoured up by the horizon like the chum it was, not nearly fast enough for Harry's liking.

Tiana had prepared lunch for them by the time they arrived at the house. It was rice (which reminded Gil, achingly, of Mulan; he had never even seen rice until he was first invited to dine at her house, as the Legume family was not known for their complexity of diet) and shrimp (some of which was hand-fed to Gray, and the cat slinked away satisfied), all smothered in an orangey sauce, and it was every bit as heavenly as yesterday's soup and today's breakfast. There was some sort of vegetable with it, too; some cylindrical, yellow thing that intimidated Gil with its unfamiliarity.

"She says it's called maize," Uma explained, since Fairy wasn't eating with them this time (She was out, all in a tizzy, demanding after the prep team who "were supposed to be here by now!") and she could be open about communicating with the Avoxes. "She said it's what this morning's grits were made of."

Gil picked up the maize. "Is this bone, in the middle?" Then common sense (and experience) had him answering himself, "No; no marrow. Must just be the core. Do I eat around it?"

Once he finally had an understanding of how the vegetable worked exactly, he ate all of it fairly quickly.

"It squirts," Uma observed, looking slightly off-put.

"Does the shrimp remind you of home?" Gil asked. It wasn't like he was going to find a better way to integrate into the conversation this question he'd been wanting to ask since sitting at the table. This was maybe his third time having shrimp, total, in his entire life, but Uma and Harry...well, they were from 4.

"It does," Uma said, mopping maize juice from her fingers. "Definitely for me, at least; I came up in a part of the District that specialized in shellfish and shallow water stuff. Harry's area was more about the deep-water catches."

"Deep water?" Gil repeated.

"Bigger fish. You know those pictures of fishing vessels they like to put up whenever they're talking about District 4?"

"Ugh, those boats. Dad used to wake us up before sunrise and make us go out sailing with him; they left so bloody early," Harry reminisced. "We hated it every time. It was crowded, we were the only kids there, the rope cut our hands, and CJ always went back to sleep in a pile of old nets as soon as we set off. The sunrises were stunning, though."

Gil wasn't sure how his heart could even handle the mental image of a young Harry standing on a fishing boat, holding his bleeding palms in front of him or to the side, watching a beautiful sunrise.

"I always used to want to ride the boats," Uma sighed.

Adding the image of a young Uma to the picture literally made him want to cry.

"Would that we'd known each other then; I'd have brought you along."

"Oh, Ursula Triskelion would have loved that." Uma chuckled.

(Gil was ecstatic to hear more about Uma's and Harry's lives in their District, and terrified that something would break the spell of nostalgia and they would stop talking. It wasn't that they never spoke of their past- they did -but their brief anecdotes and explanations never seemed to entirely sate his curiosity, and every time, Gil found himself noticing something new, like how Uma alternated between calling her mother "Mom" and "Ursula", and how Harry's stories all seemed to involve him getting hurt somehow.)

"Mom never exactly woke me up early, but she always got mad if I slept in. Which I didn't. I used to get in trouble for actually going to school," Uma said, with slight grim amusement at what had clearly once been painful. "Basically, all the other poor kids used to go out to the shallows during the day, went crabbing under the older docks and stuff. We couldn't keep the crabs, but when we turned them in we got a little money from the Dock Manager. But I wanted to be in school, because I hated not understanding things while the rich kids got smarter and smarter. Every now and then, I went to class instead of the docks. Pissed Mom off."

"She should've been proud of you," Gil found himself saying. He should know; becoming intelligent was not easy, and Uma was so smart.

But she shrugged almost diplomatically, scraping her plate clean with the side of her fork. "My sisters were dying. I could've probably gotten over myself long enough to earn them some medicine. Now, how about you?" She ingested her last forkful and pushed her plate away. "You got any stories?"

So they weren't dwelling on what she had just said, apparently. Now she wanted to hear from him.

A story.

So many stories. "I collected chickens' eggs. Before that I skinned cows, but I, uh...couldn't handle it. So they fired me. Everyone kinda made fun of me a lot for that, kind of all the time. But collecting the eggs was a lot better. Chickens are nice. Roosters really, really aren't."

"Don't tell me you've got something against cocks, mate," Harry quipped, patting Gil on the shoulder.

(Uma snorted at the well-timed comment, which clearly delighted Harry.)

"You've clearly never met a rooster." Gil was only half-joking, and the semi-earnestness seemed to only make it funnier to them. "Anyway, I had to climb around a lot to get to all the coops, so I actually did build a lot of muscle, even though Grif, Gabe and Gaston Jr said that egg collecting is women's work."

"'Even though'?" Uma echoed.

Gil winced, immediately backpedaling. "Sorry, was that wrong? Mulan says I'm still 'unlearning' a lot of the stuff they said."

"Unlearning's hard; I get it. That much I can help with."

Tiana leaned in to grab their plates and silverware.

"Thank you for the meal," Uma said, just as the front door could be heard opening, yielding to the sound of multiple bubbly voices, which Tiana seemingly took as her cue to hastily duck out of the kitchen the back way. (As a rule, the Avoxes seemed to avoid Capitol people.)

Harry sighed and mumbled a couple of unintelligible swears (He really had a way with words; even his swears could have been song lyrics.) as the voices grew closer and louder and then Fairy was entering the kitchen, followed by a colorful assortment of Capitol beauticians- roughly ten of them.

"Are you three still at the table?" she demanded, and Gil found himself looking down at the table as if it might have turned invisible, seeing as that was a pretty weird question to ask when she saw them sitting at the table. "Get up! You still need to be washed, waxed, dressed, made up, styled-"

"If we're getting dressed anyway, why do we have to get waxed?" Gil asked. He'd asked prep teams this question before, though, and it had never worked.

"We're not getting waxed," Uma said flatly. "Anyone who rips hair off me is getting hair ripped off them."

One of the stylist ladies swooned at the pronouncement, which was surely not the desired effect and resulted in Harry visibly zeroing in on the offender and shooting her a warning look. Weirdly, watching Harry's protective behavior come out when someone expressed interest in Uma (and seeing the slight smile that Uma wore when it did) caused a sort of pleasurable tingle in Gil's skin. Literally, a physical sensation.

"We don't have to wax, then," a heavy male stylist volunteered. "We have a cream that will make the hair come off painlessly."

"Wait, that was an option the whole time?" Gil demanded.

"Well, do whatever needs doing. Let's go to the room," Fairy said. "Everyone, to the room; we've got to get started."

They did get started.

Gil was surprised by how much more entertaining prep became when there were people going through it with him. He had, of course, discovered long ago that it was interesting to listen to the sorts of things prep teams talked about: parties and color palettes and "mortifying faux pas", whatever those were. But listening to Harry and Uma interact with the prep teams, with their casual if snarky replies, added a whole new dimension of enjoyment.

"Oh, somehow I forgot about the tattoo on your chest," a stylist tutted, taking in Harry's form as Gil's shirt was removed from it. "Thank goodness it doesn't clash with the color scheme."

"What's our color scheme?" Uma asked.

"Teal and black, mostly, with some accents of red as a fun callback to the Games."

"That is fun," Harry said airily.

"Just wait; you haven't even seen it yet. The soles of your shoes will be a striking crimson, and that's not all. Notice that the netting of your shirt- Yes, you can put that on now -is black, up here, but gradually turns redder until the bottom threads are deep scarlet. That's meant to evoke the way blood of your victims pooled around you by the end; it's more subtle than some of your past ensembles, but it will look stunning under the stage lights, mark my words."

"Mark them where?" Harry pulled his see-through shirt on, shook out his shoulders, and raised his chin. Gil could see the resolve setting in that, if he wasn't going to be allowed to cover up, Harry certainly wasn't going to hide. He was so beautiful; everything was so unfair.

"Darling, I would kill for lips like yours," the pudgy stylist who had introduced painless waxing drawled at Uma while painting a sheen of silver glitter over the fresh coat of teal on her lips.

"I think President Snow already has," a blond stylist (who was working at Harry's hair) with incredibly high energy quipped, startling even Uma into laughing.

"Charlotte!" Fairy spluttered, casting her gaze about as if terrified that Snow would emerge from the walls themselves.

"Oh, come on," the woman, apparently named Charlotte, whined, seeming naively unaware that she had said anything radical. "Just a bit of fun! The president's lips are huge; everyone knows he's had work done. I haven't spoken ill-"

"Well, that's enough of that," Fairy cut her off sharply. "And Tantor, I think she has enough glitter on her lips; get some in her hair."

"Does the coordinator usually work this closely with the prep team?" Gil asked, seeing as, in his experience, they did not.

"I'm keeping us on schedule," Fairy huffed. "Anyway, I started out in prep; I have quite a bit of expertise-"

"It's a shame they're changing your colors to match theirs," one of Gil's stylists griped. "The yellows and browns looked so pretty on you."

"Oh, I like a man dressed in dark colors," another disagreed, petting Gil's cheek for what he could only assume were non-cosmetic reasons, and Harry looked over so fast that Charlotte chided him to keep still, and Uma eyed the coquettish beautician unamusedly in the mirror, not looking away even after the woman's lingering hand was removed from Gil's face.

Consciously, Gil thought that he should probably try to diffuse the situation he could already see brewing from Uma's and Harry's reactions, but something in him liked the idea of them asserting that he was theirs too much to intervene. They were smart; they wouldn't get themselves into trouble.

"Clodia." Uma addressed the stylist by name (How was she so good at picking people's names out of overlapping conversations and then remembering them?). "I'm curious: What do you use to apply foundation?"

"A sponge," Clodia answered, straightforwardly, in her singsong Capitol accent.

"And what do you use to apply blush?" Uma asked, her eyes widening a little as if she truly was just feeding an innocent curiosity.

"A brush," the stylist replied, and Gil started to pity her, because she truly did not seem to realize that nothing good was coming, and to that much he could relate.

"Then why was your bare hand caressing our Gil's face? Was that a new technique?"

Clodia's hand, which had resumed sponge-dabbing away some blemish or another on Gil's forehead, stilled now. Then she let out that haughty Capitol laugh that, in Gil's experience, normally accompanied the words Oh, Gilbert, you're simply too much!. He had never heard someone laugh at Uma this way before: as though she were simple-minded or silly. It somehow managed to incense him as much as Snow's malicious chuckles had. Uma was not someone for the world to laugh at any more than Harry was someone for the world to stare at.

The sound of the laugh made Uma's eyebrows rise, and a smile spread on her face. It was a distinctly unfriendly smile, but still Gil was metaphorically kicked in the stomach by how beautiful she was. (Was this going to keep happening forever? Surely one day he would be used to them.)

Harry mimicked Clodia's laugh, in a higher register.

"Can we please stay on task?" Fairy said with a placating smile.

"We're establishing boundaries," Uma said. "It's what professional people do."

"And even unprofessional people like myself sometimes give one warning," Harry said lightly. "Exactly one. No more, no less."

"Anyone touches Gil, they better have a specific and justifiable reason. Understood?" The stylists nodded, some straightaway, others only after Uma had caught their eye expectantly. "Great."

Well, Gil felt very defended, and also kind of tingly again.

"You're all just as enamored in person as you are on TV," Charlotte giggled. "It's true love."

"As opposed to fake love?" Uma asked.

"Oh, I don't know," Charlotte sighed, stepping back from Harry to examine his now-roguishly-tousled hair. "Sometimes I think some of these victors just pretend things, for the audience."

"Charlotte, please stop being ridiculous," Fairy said.

Charlotte only shrugged, still circling Harry to gage the effect of the hairdo. "It's an interesting thought. I didn't have the idea first; a friend of mine used to say all kinds of interesting things, but she moved away. I think she's waitressing or something now." Reaching over, Charlotte flicked at a single lock of Harry's hair and then said, "You're done."

"Uma, Gil, do I look pretty?" Harry asked, giving them a spin.

"Oh, darling, you're divine," Uma said, imitating the Capitol accent to such a hilarious effect that most of the stylists were lost to chuckles. Gil caught Miss Fairy wearing a grudging smile before checking her watch for the zillionth time. Then he turned and saw that Harry was waiting for his verdict on the look.

Well, Gil's opinion about the outfit had been tainted, knowing that the stylists had based it on one of Harry's worst memories, but as far as beauty was concerned...well, it was Harry. And he did truly look stunning. Heinous though it was how they forcibly displayed his body, the clothes were perfectly calculated to accentuate some of his best physical features: the shape of the net shirt, the exact tightness and looseness of the pants. His eyeliner was thick and black, drawing attention to the contrast of his irises, and his hair looked as though he had just emerged victorious from a dramatic sword fight, with the lightest dusting of glitter to suggest that maybe the sword fight had happened underwater.

Gil took all of this in, but what came out of his mouth was, "Your butt looks awesome."

Which would have been kind of embarrassing if it weren't so blatantly true.

"It does," Uma confirmed.

Harry twisted around to see in the mirror, and he seemed pleased by his findings.

"I'd agree with them, but I think Uma would set me on fire," Tantor chuckled.

"You're correct; watch your back," Uma said.

"His back? How disappointing," one of Uma's other stylists drawled, flashing a smarmy smile in the rotund man's direction.

"Thin ice, Megara," Tantor said.

"Charlotte, if you're done with Mr. Hook, maybe you should help Tantor finish up Miss Triskelion's braids," Fairy said, and Charlotte obeyed.

There was so much hair piled up on the vanity in front of Uma. As usual, some of it was blue and some was black, but there were also some locks of red being woven in, sparingly, but just enough to be noticeable. A shimmery red that went orange and yellow and red again when the light hit it in different ways. It wasn't until half an hour later, when Uma's braids were finished and she was standing up and spinning for his and Harry's evaluation (Her butt also looked awesome, although instead of well-fitted pants, she was wearing an extremely high-cut, teal and black dress, with fishnet stockings and heeled shoes in which she was still shorter than both of them.), that Gil realized that the bits of shimmery red in her braids were meant to evoke fire like the red in Harry's outfit was meant to evoke blood.

"Speaking of divine," Harry was saying to her, his words earnest and adoring, "you look like the dazzling mirage people hallucinate when they're dying of thirst."

"So you're saying you're thirsty?"

"You know me so well."

"There's glitter in your eyelashes," Gil observed, because for some reason that stood out to him. They had been much less subtle with the glitter on Uma. If Harry looked like his hair was covered in water droplets, Uma looked like her skin and braids were dusted with live embers. Her eyeliner wasn't as thick as Harry's, but it was winged more sharply. "You're both so beautiful."

"Oh, I wouldn't say we're the only ones." Uma extended a hand to him to draw him close. Her hands were covered in fishnets, too; they assumed the role of fingerless gloves. Gil gladly allowed himself to be pulled to her side, and he stood at the mirror with them.

That was when Gil took a more conscientious look at his own finished attire.

As they'd said, there was none of the yellow-brown aesthetic he was used to, except for his hair, which they couldn't exactly dye out-of-the-blue (or, in this case, out-of-the-blondish-light-brown?) without inciting fan riots. His sleeveless shirt was black, and his pants (not as fitted as Harry's, which he could only take to mean that his legs weren't as good) were black, and his boots were black with teal laces. It looked pretty standard. He looked closer.

He did not have very much by way of glitter on him, but he did shine; there were bits of metal detailing all over him, as a recurring theme that neither of the others seemed to have: silver at the collar of his shirt, silver in a bangle around his wrist, silver down the sides of his pant legs, silver on his shoes keeping the laces in place...Silver. Metal.

He caught on all at once, and he saw from the way that Uma's expression dropped that she knew he had caught on.

The thing that had killed Gil's last opponent in the games hadn't been any weapon of his; it had been a large, metal trap already rigged in the marsh. A trap that he had known about from experience, earlier that week- had actively chosen not to warn her about. He had had time to warn her, time after he had taken in her path of movement and seen her misstep before she made it, but he had withheld the knowledge, and the trap had torn through her so swiftly, cutting her throat wrist legs feet and then- the footage that always got played in throwbacks, except apparently for yesterday -he had started crying. Beautifully tragic, how the victor who kept all those adorable pets had cried over his victim. What a sweet boy. A delectable intersection of sweet boy and killer. Not sweet enough or even stupid enough to do anything other than play the game like anyone else would. Cowardly, really; it was the dark flip-side of how his inaction had spared the boy from 4. His silence about the trap had earned him his survival, the death of his last obstacle. And with this outfit, they had taken away his tiny bit of deniability. They had turned him into the murder weapon.

"Remember to keep your chins up," Fairy said as she skittered along in their wake. "And Harry, try to enunciate; in half of your interviews, no one has any idea what you're saying."

"So we're on a first-name basis now. That's exciting," Harry said.

They were backstage of Caesar's show, now. The stylists had dispersed after doing some minor touch-ups (as apparently the brief car ride here had been enough to warrant touch-ups) and were now mingling and sampling hour d'oeuvres.

Gil noticed Uma looking over her shoulder to check on him, as she had been doing periodically since their prep had ended. He could feel the returned warmth in his cheeks signifying that he at least wasn't as pale anymore; sometime during the ride, he had recovered from his realization of what his costume stood for. He had recovered from the shock, at least; now he was saddled with nerves over having everyone else see it, and having to stand tall and be deliberate and victor-like about it, and having his first interview with Uma and Harry in general: letting their love be held under the strongest lenses in the country. It wasn't something they could talk about, in front of Fairy and the prep team; Uma couldn't very well console him, though he could tell that she wanted to from the way that she hadn't dropped his hand even now that there was sweat dampening her net-gloves.

He supposed he hadn't released hers either.

Huh. Perspective.

Harry, Gil could see from brief caught glances, was also sympathetic, but he did his part by deflecting any attempts at conversation so neither of them would have to talk to anyone else until they were ready.

"Caesar will be calling you up in about forty seconds," a stage hand informed them.

Uma squeezed Gil's hand, then turned to face him. "I'm gonna sit on your lap when we go up there. Alright?"

"Okay," Gil said, and it was a good thing she had made him say something, because his voice came out hoarse and weak. He cleared his throat. "Okay."

"They're gonna want us to kiss, but you don't owe them anything if you don't want to do it in front of them; Harry and I kiss plenty."

"It's fine. I can...I mean...I'm fine if they see."

"Don't be nervous; we won't let you drown," Uma said confidently. "You can coast if you need to; just don't clam up entirely. Try to anchor yourself in the moment."

Gil frowned. "Are...you doing that on purpose?"

"Doing what?" Uma asked with a straight face.

Gil was legitimately unsure as to whether or not she was serious, which was quite an effective distraction from everything else.

As was Harry draping an arm around his shoulder. "Ready?"

"Um...yes?" This was ridiculous; Gil had done interviews before. Theoretically, this should be his easiest one. This time, he had two other people with him. But the idea of being in love in front of people...Somehow, it was uniquely terrifying. Normally, he got through interviews by playing a part, becoming a person who was almost Gil Legume, but not quite. Gil Legume minus the nightmares and loneliness and guilt and all those other flavors the Capitol audience didn't want to taste. But with Harry and Uma, the idea of anything performative or false about his affection for them left an unpleasant taste in his mouth. What if he went too genuine, or too stilted? Love was never something he'd had to factor into his persona; what if he...

"Twenty seconds; start making your way toward the stage."

"We've got you," Uma said as she drew him in the direction of the lights and sounds. "You're ours, remember? We've got you."

Gil nodded, and kept nodding. It was fine. They were together, so it was fine. He'd made it through a meeting with Snow this morning, because Uma and Harry had been there. He'd made it through the end of last year's Hunger Games, because Uma and Harry had been there. They could do anything.

Harry's hand slipped into Gil's free one. They were linked.

Then Caesar's voice said their names loudly, and Gil felt himself moving forward and heard the earsplitting applause, but he barely noticed. What he noticed was the way Harry's pupils shrank to pin-heads when the stage lights fell over them, and the way Uma's shoulder blades drew closer together as she straightened her back and raised her chin, and the way Harry's net shirt really did look as blood-soaked as the stylists had assured it would, and the way that, when illuminated, the contrast between the black and the dark teal of Uma's dress suddenly became distinct enough to make out the radial design around her heart, as though she had been stabbed and ink or oil was issuing from the wound (another cruel allusion, probably), and the way the trademark grin climbed its way lazily onto Harry's face, and the way Uma's expression, on the screens, looked so proud, as if to say, These are my boys. They are amazing and not for you; they're for me.

Then she turned around, placed both hands on him, and sat him down on the interview couch. Her back was to the audience, which Gil knew was a performance no-no, and seeing the little wicked smile she wore during that brief moment before he sank to the plush sofa- the brief moment in which his shadow was across her face and she winked at him -rendered him breathless.

Then he was sitting, and Harry was sitting- to his right; closer to Caesar -and she turned back around with her back to him again and plopped onto his lap, earning a ramp-up in audience screams. Her arm hooked around the back of his neck for support, and his arms automatically went around her waist to make sure she didn't fall, and her legs swung up and landed across Harry's lap, and one of Harry's arms was behind Gil (holding at Gil's opposite hip), the other settling on the stretch of skin above Uma's knee, claiming the space that had been left exposed to unworthy eyes.

Caesar was playing up the adorableness for all it was worth, which gave Gil time to relax. The worst of the anxiety had lifted, and he found he was content to just feel the warmth of Harry and Uma, to fix his eyes on the side of Uma's face for a while, or Harry's jaw, or the place where Harry's hand met Uma's leg over her fishnet stockings. When he smiled, it wasn't for the cameras, although he was sure that the cameras saw.

"Wow," Caesar said as the applause finally faded to a manageable level. "Wow. Excellent! You three look excellent!"

"You look dapper, yourself, Caesar," Harry said.

"The wig really brings out your eyes," Uma agreed.

Gil managed to tear his eyes away from Harry and Uma; there was a difference between coasting and just being deadweight, and both of them had already spoken. Then a laugh fell out of him without his permission, because he now knew that Uma had been employing sarcasm; Caesar had on a bright red wig, and it could not have brought out his eyes less.

The audience, which had kept up a low chuckle after Uma's teasing comment, now erupted into laughter at Gil's surprised laugh. Uma turned her head slightly so that Gil could see her encouraging grin.

"I'm getting the sense you disagree," Caesar said with companionable amusement. "Well, we all make bold fashion choices from time to time." (The audience hooted reassurances at Caesar, who smiled as though consoled.)

"Gil was a little nervous, because he never wears black," Uma said, one of her hands going to interlock fingers with Gil's (which were still at her waist, making sure she didn't fall). "But we told him he looks like an armored knight. Don't you agree?" Again, the audience was quick and loud and generous with reassurances, and Gil had to blink a little faster to counter the stinging in his eyes at what Uma had just accomplished. She had taken the metal of his outfit, the hearkening to his kill-by-inaction in the Games, and she had framed it as armor. And she had made sure, as early on in the interview as she could, that everyone else would see it that way, too.

Gil wondered what forces had made it possible for him to be sitting here with someone who cared this much about protecting him.

He kissed her shoulder, softly, because he had to do something, and kissing her face felt both too audacious to properly convey how humbled he felt and too public, like the kiss would be stolen from them by the leering eyes of the nation as soon as they broke contact (not that the shoulder-kiss didn't still prompt immediate screams). Uma hummed, and Gil's eyes went to one of the screens to see that her eyes had fallen shut and her lips were curved contentedly. He also saw, on the screen, that Harry was looking at him, so he turned his head in time for Harry to plant a kiss on his neck. His tongue was warm, hot even, and rather than hum like Uma, Gil made a high-pitched noise that was drowned out by the roar of the masses.

Harry withdrew with an almost self-deprecating smirk and a casual shrug, and Gil could clearly read on his face a sentiment along the lines of, Well, I wasn't going to be left out, was I?. Gil was fairly certain his expression was clear in conveying that he was more than happy that Harry hadn't left himself out.

It took an entire minute for the crowd to return from the highs of their bizarre euphoria at watching people kiss each other.

Caesar, by that time, looked as though all of the audience's energy had been fed directly to him via electrical cable and he was barely keeping it under control. After a few more "wow"s and "excellent"s, he finally cleared his throat. "Now then! Let's cut right to the chase. The three of you surprised us last summer, when you kissed before boarding your trains. For months, everyone has been curious: How long has this been going on?"

"You want a timeline, Caesar?" Harry said.

"We've crossed paths a lot, after Gil won his Games," Uma said loftily. "The beginning of last year's Games was when we really came together, though."

"It came as a shock to a lot of us, myself included," Caesar said. "Uma and Harry, you two always seemed so exclusive."

"We're still exclusive," Uma said. "But Gil is included."

Would it be too soon to kiss her again? Probably.

"Then it's thanks to President Snow that you three can all truly explore your love." Something in Gil's stomach soured at Caesar's reminder. As Uma had said yesterday, this statement had probably been scripted. As Harry had said yesterday, Caesar had always been a tool for Snow's agenda. Still, Gil couldn't help kind of liking Caesar. His amicable interviewing demeanor had won lots of tributes sponsors. Gil had grown up watching Caesar, just like everybody else had; before he'd grown old enough to realize that nice and good weren't always the same thing, Gil had identified Caesar Flickerman as the only good part of the Hunger Games. It was unsettling, now, to see how he actively worked to forward Snow's narrative. "Speaking of..." Caesar leaned forward, his eyes glittering. "How did you three enjoy your morning?"

(The audience trilled at his suggestive question before falling abruptly and expectantly silent.)

Harry cackled, and Gil belatedly wondered if he was pretending to be drunk- or at least slightly buzzed. Gil was fairly certain that Harry hadn't ingested anything since lunch, but the mannerisms he had adopted since stepping onstage, the slightly heightened reactiveness and vaguely scattered focus, suggested otherwise. But then, this was how he often acted in interviews. Maybe he needed the degree of separation between the Harry Hook who was him and the Harry Hook who the entire room collectively lusted after.

"Caesar," Uma chided, "don't you go asking such personal questions, or I'm afraid I'll have to ask you your age."

Caesar's hand flew to his heart (Age and weight were two things that Capitol people had weird reactions to, Gil had learned.), and he exaggeratedly gasped, "You wouldn't!"

"You know she would," Harry boasted. "She could do worse than that, mate; she could guess your age."

"Oh dear, you win; I shan't ask again!"

The audience's laughter, this time, was somewhat subdued; they were either still hoping for an answer to the question or disappointed to realize they wouldn't receive one.

Caesar helped them out by changing the subject: "And now this...'Sisyphus's Reward' concept. Now, that intrigues me. Intrigues all of us." (Brief pause to hear the audience's murmur of assent.) "I understand you three spoke to President Snow about it earlier today?"

"That's right," Uma said.

"He's a splendid host," Harry drawled brightly.

"He has cool paperweights," Gil contributed, because it was occurring to him that he really wasn't helping much, conversation-wise.

While the audience was laughing, Harry clasped his shoulder. Gil spared one of the arms that was holding Uma to instead wrap around Harry. Gosh, his torso was so cold, in his non-shirt; Gil held him tighter.

"Well then, can you expound upon the new changes?" Caesar asked eagerly. "The official statement is that we will experience 'increased availability' of our victors. That sounds exciting."

"We can't give too much away yet, Caesar," Uma said, managing to turn her sharp tone into a playful sternness. "We'll just have to keep you in suspense."

"You're killing us," Caesar groaned. "At least tell us what it all means for you. Can we still expect Harry to write songs for us?"

"If you're good," Harry said simply, which almost started another round of screaming, but he then put his finger to his lips and the crowd obediently silenced all at once. Whoa.

"We keep our hobbies," Uma explained. "Gil even has a cat."

Gil perked up. "His name is Gray."

"Like your brother," Caesar observed.

"Yeah," Gil said, pleasantly surprised. "Wow, you remembered."

By the crowd's reaction, apparently he was being adorable. He wondered if that was at odds with Snow's "victors aren't cute" rule. Or was that actually a rule? He supposed everything Snow said was a rule, at least by intention. But did that mean that he was supposed to indulge Snow by somehow un-cute-ing himself (which he wasn't even confident was possible, because most of what other people considered cute was just him being overly enthusiastic or misreading situations), or defy Snow by continuing to be himself?

"So, Gil," Caesar said, seeming to have determined that Gil was ready to actually be interviewed now, "this must be quite a change for you especially. You have two new...What do you want to call them?"

"Uh, I just call them Harry and Uma?" Gil suggested, which led to more laughter. Yeah, the "cute" thing wasn't going away any time soon; he went through life in a constant state of confusion.

Harry giggled, burying his face in Gil's arm.

"I think he means, like, 'lovers', or 'partners', or whatever," Uma said.

"Oh." Gil blushed.

"...I like calling people by their names, though," she went on, possibly just to keep him from seeming foolish. "Instead of putting a person into a role, you wrap the role around the person." The audience sounded as though she had profoundly inspired them.

"'Wrap the role around the person'; I love that. I love it. Very well," Caesar chortled. "You're in a relationship with Harry and Uma, then. That must have been very exciting for you."

"It still is," Gil said, honestly wondering why Caesar had phrased it as though the novelty might have somehow worn off. "Are you kidding? They're..." (If he were smarter, he could have used some grand description like Harry had: some "You're the vision people see when they're dying of thirst"-level praise. As it stood, though...) "They're amazing. I feel so...lucky." And that was so true, despite being fairly simple, that he almost wished he hadn't said it in front of the entire country. He felt pulled-open, like his heart had been cut down the middle and the halves were being held apart for everyone to examine the inside. And what a silly thing to feel: lucky. After everything, and at a time like this, here he was saying to everyone that he felt lucky. And meaning it, too; he had never meant anything more than he meant this.

"We're all lucky," Harry said, breaking character just a little to be serious.

"That's why we're here," Uma added calmly. "Luck is supposed to be passed along."

Gil got chills, hearing her cryptic statement, but the audience ate it up.

"So what can we expect from you three in the near future?" Caesar asked.

In this moment, Gil knew that he and Harry were explicitly and visibly waiting for Uma to give an answer.

"Some surprises," Uma said, her expression guileless and unreadable all at once. "It's gonna be a big change for everyone, but you guys are gonna have fun." As the audience roared in anticipation, Gil heard her words as a person sitting at their television in District 10- in any of the Districts, really -and he caught the warning. Surprises. A big change. And the Capitol citizens were going to have fun. "Ultimately, though, you guys are gonna have to trust us. You trust us, right?"

The audience chorused out "YES!", with some more innovative answers mixed in (Gil was pretty sure a shrill voice in the front shouted something like "Uma, I want to have your babies!", the logistics of which he fundamentally didn't understand.). Uma rewarded them all with a downright regal smile. She absolutely owned them.

"I don't think they trust us darling," Harry teased, just to provoke the crowd to increase their volume to a level Gil would have previously thought impossible.

Uma smirked, then raised a hand, and the crowd quieted. Then she stood, removing her weight from Gil's thighs (but leaving her hand in his). "Alright," she said, two fingers pointing from the audience enraptured in front of her and then at her own eyes. "All eyes on me; let me see 'em."

Every camera turned to obey. Every audience member craned their neck in the hopes of receiving praise.

"We will do our part as victors and as entertainers," Uma said. "We need you to do your part as an audience and be here for the ride. Are you here for the ride?"

They returned to their affirmative shouts, and this time the smile with which Uma rewarded them was huge and toothy and bright.

She seemed to let their adulation wash over her for a few seconds before she graciously gave Caesar his show back, returning to the sofa and submitting to more questions, and despite the ever-present smile on Caesar's face, it was clear that he knew that Uma had just exerted power in a very real and significant way.

Fairy did not ride back to the house with them after the interview, but she did walk them to their car. "That was good," she assured them as soon as they were out of the backstage room where the stylists got them out of their makeup and gaudy clothes and glitter. "Very poised. Gilbert, your stage presence was a bit lackluster, but it contrasted with Harry and Uma nicely."

"Um...Good," Gil hazarded.

"We're glad you liked it, Miss Fairy," Uma said flatly.

"You made me laugh a few times," Fairy added. "It was really a very charismatic performance."

"Thank you," Harry gushed. "Your words of encouragement mean the world to us."

Fairy beamed. "I'm sure you'll be all anybody talks about for at least all of tomorrow."

"That is the hope, anyway." Uma knew her voice was deadening by the minute. She could barely keep her eyes open on the way to the car, especially once they were out in the night air.

As much as she hated the facades and the lies and the privilege that ran rampant here, Uma found that she thrived in the interviews, so much so that leaving them felt like returning to land after a long time swimming; suddenly, she was aware of her own weight again. If she had to guess, she would say that it was because interviews were such a mental exercise- always gaging the audience's reaction to every word or implication, as well as imagining what the same words would mean to their real audience, coding not too subtly but not too explicitly, performing but not getting caught up in the tide, not giving too much (It was horrifyingly easy to let them take too much.) -that at a point she detached from the corporeal plane.

But now she was back, with the echoes of the noise still in her ears and the ghost of the lights still in her eyes, and she was spent.

"Tomorrow will be a fairly busy day; you will be meeting with Adam Beast in the morning, but he'll be coming to you, and you won't need a prep team for that. Afterward, it's been arranged for..."

Uma forced herself to retain Fairy's words, seeing as they were rather important, but mostly she was hyperaware of the sway of Harry's gait and Gil's and the increasing proximity of the car that would be their escape.

She fell asleep with her head in Harry's lap as soon as they got in (with his hands sifting gently in her braids), and it felt like only seconds passed before she was being carried up the walkway to their house. She smacked the flat of her hand lightly against a muscular shoulder. "I can walk," she croaked out.

"You weren't saying that when we tried to wake you up twenty seconds ago," Harry teased from a few feet away.

"She's tired." Gil's voice vibrated against her, warm and sympathetic, as he set her down on her feet.

He must have been right; she must have been extremely tired, because she found herself feeling entirely inundated with emotion all of a sudden. Love for Harry and Gil, and horror over the situation they had all been put in, and fury that Snow couldn't let any bit of good pass unscathed, and fear...so much fear...Fear that they had done, were doing, would do, the wrong things, and that everyone would pay for it, or even if just Harry or Gil paid for it...so many mistakes she couldn't afford to make. And even fear of the choices she couldn't make: the reaping in a few months, the people left behind in 4 and 10. They were the ones in the most danger: the ones not protected by the attention and adoration of the cameras. Who here would mourn CJ or Harriet or any of Gil's brothers? Just the three of them.

"It's been such a long day," she whispered.

"Let's get you to bed," Harry said, having gone from teasing to soothing that fast, like only he could. "I'll bet you didn't sleep last night."

"I dozed a couple times."

"Uma," Gil groaned. "You've got to rest."

Sure. On a human level, sure. But their struggle was against Snow, and Snow had hundreds of people to work for him, to carry out his will. Snow could rest; Uma could not. Not always, at least. "There's only us," she said as Harry opened the door to the house. It was like Snow was working with a full set of chess pieces and they..."We're just three pawns."

"Gil's a knight, remember?" Harry said, ushering both of them into the house. "I'm sure you're a queen."

"Well then you'd better be a rook, because you sure ain't a bishop, love."

"'Rook' even rhymes with 'Hook'," Gil said cheerily.

Harry giggled as he closed the door behind them and followed them through the entryway.

It must have been some shared remnant of battle reflexes from the Games or something, because all three of them noticed Evie Grimhilde lurking in the shadowy corner before she saw fit to announce herself. The girl was still swathed in the same blue clothes- royal blue, instead of Uma's teal -as before, but it was impossible to tell more than that, shrouded in darkness as she was.

"Well hello," Uma said. "You didn't want to sit in a chair?"

Evie drew forward, and Uma was entirely positive that she was deliberately moving at an elegant pace and letting the dim light slowly wash over her for maximum effect. "None of this was supposed to happen," she said, her smoky voice quiet and cool with anger. "I did everything right: Get pretty; Get sponsors; Win. I've been designing Snow's suits for years."

"Did he tell you anything?" Uma asked, scanning for anything in Evie's posture or expression that would indicate if her anger was directed at them or Snow. District 1's were always either puddle-shallow or impossible to read; Evie was the latter.

"He told me to give you this," Evie said dryly, tossing an object at them.

Harry caught the object and held it so they could all examine it. It was just slightly bigger than his palm: a chunk of glass, with smooth, asymmetrical edges. It probably counted as art, for rich people.

"He said 'Since Gil liked it so much'." Evie rolled her eyes.

"Nice of him," Uma said, crossing her arms and making a mental note to bury the paperweight in the backyard at their earliest convenience.

Evie exhaled hard. "I'm not here to mince words, and I'm not here to say what we all know is happening. I'm tired of being coy. If I thought we were just going to say meaningless things, I'd have stayed in the guest room."

"Then by all means." Uma gestured with her hand. "We're listening."

Evie lifted her face to catch the light more directly (Every move a pose.), and out of a fold in her skirt, she eased a silver knife into view. One of the ones from the kitchen. She took long strides towards the three of them, and Gil reached protectively for Uma, and Harry moved to stand in front of her, but Uma had a hand for each and gestured both of them back, keeping calm eye contact with Evie.

The other girl halted a couple of feet away from them and pointed the knife at Uma, a very serious look in her eyes.

"I am already being used by the Capitol," Evie said clearly. "I will not be used by you as well. I am not a tool, or a pawn, or a doll. So whatever plots you three are hatching to take advantage of this new job- and don't say you aren't, because I'm not stupid -you'd better tell me about anything that involves me. No secrets, no fun surprises. I don't care who you think you're helping; you tell me." She drew herself up, somehow higher, and her expression somehow went even colder. "If you do not, and if I find out you haven't, I will kill two of you and leave one alive. That's a promise."

Harry growled. Gil made another attempt to reach for Uma protectively, which Uma absentmindedly rebuffed whilst regarding Evie.

No, Evie wasn't stupid, but she wasn't being very smart, announcing aloud in this definitely-bugged room that she demanded to be kept abreast of any schemes.

Uma respected Evie probably more than she respected any of the other District 1's; she was a Career through and through, even a Legacy (with her victor mom), and as rich as a person could be outside the Capitol, but Evie did not cheer over her kills or put down other victors. Evie did not treat the Games as her glory days; she had gone into the Games giggly and flirtatious and alluring and emerged from them sultry and darkly mysterious. She designed clothes and minded her own business. Not enviable, but better than the ones who pumped their fists in the air as they rewatched their old murder footage. That being said, Uma did not like Evie very much. She could pinpoint exactly the moment when she had started to dislike Evie; it had been during the Games, when Evie had abandoned the little girl from District 8 who she was allied with. It was understandable why; the Games had been nearing an end, and separating meant it probably wouldn't come down to just the two of them. Had she told the girl that she was ready to part ways before just leaving her alone in the middle of the night, Uma wouldn't have been disappointed with her, but instead the child had awoken to find herself alone in the wilderness, with only her canteen left behind. Confused and calling for Evie even though it was dangerous to make noise. And Uma knew it was a mixture of the fact that Uma respected Evie enough to feel disappointed in her and her own personal issues with sudden abandonment that colored her impression of Evie in the negative- as it wasn't like she of all people didn't know the Games made people do worse things than skipping out on a twelve year old -, and she knew that she would ignore the feeling for the sake of being fair, but the feeling was there regardless.

At any rate, she had no intention of treating Evie like a pawn, but telling her everything was another matter. That she would have to think on.

"Noted," was what Uma eventually said. "But either way, if you even try to hurt Harry or Gil-"

"I'm sure you'll set me on fire."

"Definitely don't interrupt me. What I'll do to you if you hurt them will not be predictable or on-brand. And that is a promise."

Evie smiled, swiftly stowing her knife back away. "So we understand each other. I'll see you in the morning."

Uma tilted her head as Evie retired from the room. "Sleep tight. Stay frosty, princess."

Evie disappeared into the hallway with the guest rooms and the Avoxes' rooms. (Uma wondered who had shown her to her room; it was hard to find that hallway without knowing it was there. They had missed it, on their first tour through the house, because the door had no knob and looked like wall panels.)

They stood there for a few seconds, once she was gone.

"So we're letting her keep the knife?" Harry broke the silence.

"May as well. It's that or some other thing," Uma said. "Knives aren't the only way to kill someone. May as well let her feel...comfortable."

"She didn't seem comfortable," Gil opined.

Uma was about to concede that he was right, but a yawn escaped her instead.

"To bed," Harry instructed, pointing his finger. "Off you go. Come on."

"Don't boss me around, rook," Uma snarked, whilst complying. It was possible that she somehow blacked out between the entryway and the bedroom, because she was descending on their huge, soft bed in what felt like less than a second. I can't be losing time like this, she thought as she drifted off. I've gotta pay better attention.

Gil watched Harry tuck the blankets lovingly around Uma, who was out like a light. She hadn't changed into pajamas; Gil suspected it was a good thing the stylists had changed them into more casual clothes immediately after the interview, because otherwise Uma probably would have fallen asleep in her makeup and dress. Harry had taken her shoes off but otherwise just tucked her in as she was.

"Are you going to bed, too?" Gil asked.

"Not just yet," Harry sighed. He ran a hand through his hair as he straightened up. "Think I'll have some tea. Would you care to join me, or will you be turning in?" He looked so tired. Even the shirt they'd changed him into was see-through; he was probably still cold.

"I love tea," Gil said, thinking of quiet afternoons with Mulan.

A slow smile grew on Harry's face, and he embraced him. He was cold. "I saw a checkerboard in the sitting room. Let's play checkers."

Gil decided that he wasn't going to bring up the meeting with the Beast tomorrow, or Evie Grimhilde, or even the interview. They had all been wrung out by today, and tomorrow was on the other side of right now. And right now they needed peace. And Uma needed sleep. And Harry needed warmth.

And Gil needed to learn how to play checkers.

Chapter Text

"King me," Harry said triumphantly, sitting back with his arms crossed behind his head.

Gil looked from Harry to the little piece he had advanced to Gil's side of the board and back again. "So is the game over?"

"No. Now you-...I'll show you." Harry leaned forward again and flipped a piece on top of the 'king' one; Gil just ended up staring at his eyelashes, and he was caught in the act just a second later when Harry suddenly looked up at him and flashed a slightly more tired version of his normal smug grin. Harry's whole energy was different, tonight; he was quieter, and less reacting than considering. He had changed into one of Gil's shirts again and a pair of comfy pajama pants; his feet were bare, and every now and then he swung them off of the floor and up on the seat with him. (Apparently he had a complicated relationship with sitting in chairs correctly.) There were shadows under his eyes; Gil recalled that he had woken screaming from a nightmare just this morning.

"I don't...normally see you drink tea," Gil probed gently. He remembered the first time he officially met Harry, when the latter was having two different flasks emptied on his face. Possibly the exact opposite of sipping tea calmly over a checker board.

Harry's smile flickered a little. "Well, it's that kind of night."

Gil nodded, allowing the subject to pass, and Harry talked him through the rest of the game. Of course, Harry won, although it was pretty obvious that he dragged it out for longer than he needed to; Gil suspected that Harry had him beat with one piece kinged, but he was up to four kings (and had helped Gil to get one) by the time the game ended. They played a second, quicker round, with less mercy being shown on Harry's part. It was a fun game still. Simple enough that he could play without being coached, and he didn't mind losing, especially to Harry.

Gray jumped up onto the table while they were putting away the board.

"Not up here, buddy," Gil chastened, pulling the cat down onto his lap instead and scratching indulgently between his ears while Harry stared as warily as though he thought Gray might be venomous and was ready to fling him off of Gil should the need arise. Well, it took time to build trust.

"Have you..." Harry paused, tilted his head, still with his eyes on Gray, but less focused now. "...spoken to The Beast before?"

"A couple times," Gil answered, and Harry's lips tightened as though he did not like the thought of Adam Beast talking to Gil. "Not for very long." The Beast liked to occasionally drop in on victor parties. He seemed to think he was friends with them, though even the victors from 1 and 2 didn't particularly like him. But Gil had found that keeping his head down kept The Beast from starting conversations, most of the time. And anyway, if it was victors from 10 he wanted, Mulan was so much more interesting. "How about you?"

Harry made a scornful noise. "There are terminal illnesses I hate less than I hate that dobber. He's crossed crowded rooms to chat at Uma and me. And he always says the same old bosh about how we haven't spoken in a while, how much Uma's win shocked him- loves bringing that up, like she did it just to surprise him -how it gave him chills, when I 'came undone' or 'unravelled' or whatever it was, in my Games- likes to throw the word 'madness' around; old man thinks he's some sort of artist -and I'll bet my teeth he brings his son tomorrow, or at least tries to; he always mentions how he wishes his son could have come along to see us, but you know the security at victor parties." Harry paused for a second to drink his tea. "Son's got to be a piece of work. It's like I always say, anyone who wants to meet 'Harry Hook' is either after bone or bloodshed, if you catch my meaning."

It actually took Gil a second to "catch his meaning". "You always say that?"

Harry giggled, allowing his head to fall wearily back and finally removing his gaze from the cat. "Maybe not always."

Gil mulled the statement itself over. He knew that Harry was probably joking, but he was also a little worried that Capitol consumption could have come to shape how Harry saw himself. Because that was more or less how they reduced him: exploitable beauty and enjoyable violence. "I'm not just after bone or bloodshed," Gil said.

Harry's expression softened, although a bit of the laugh lingered on his face, like a last line of defense. He reached out and took one of Gil's hands between both of his own. His palms and fingers were rough, from working with rope, probably. "I know, Gilly," he said, with a transparent edge of mock-exasperation.

They brought their cups to the sink together, even though it was a one-person task. Harry washed them and handed them to Gil, who dried them and put them away. He stared into the dark of the cabinet, at the rows of cups and bowls. More dishes than three people needed; they had taken it for the typical Capitol opulence, at first, but now that he knew that they would have guests here, like Evie...

How many victors would be here at once?

How many people could Uma protect at once?

He wondered how much reading he would have to do to catch up with Uma's intelligence, to make himself the slightest bit of an asset to her. And what would he even read? How could her sort of savvy be learned? Inspiring crowds, to the point of what seemed like loyalty, who would otherwise have celebrated her death wasn't something she had likely learned from a book. It also wasn't something she seemed to need his help with. So what was?

"Do you think she'll ever let us help her?" Gil asked quietly. Of course he didn't have to explain who he was talking about, although maybe the question itself was a bit odd.

Harry seemed to turn the question over in his head a few times. "She..." He made a pensive clicking sound with his tongue. "She does, a bit. More than a bit, on a good day. She's still learning that she can share burdens." He gave Gil's shoulder a squeeze. "Like you're still learning that not taking away all of someone's suffering isn't the same as not loving them."

Gil smiled grudgingly. "And what are you learning?"

"Me? Learn?" Harry grinned. "Perish the thought." He pushed off the counter and almost tripped over Gray, but managed at the last second to hop over him.

"Maybe you can learn that you don't always have to laugh when you're sad," Gil suggested sheepishly.

Harry flicked a few drops of dishwater Gil's way without answering. "Let's turn in, yeah?"

They padded down the hallway, conscious of every creak. It would be nice to be in bed, after everything. It would be especially nice for all three of them to sleep together, for the first time in a while. (Or at least the first time he'd be falling asleep with both of them in a while.)

Suddenly, Harry stopped walking. "Huh," he mused quietly.

"What?" Gil asked, and Harry's hand landed absentmindedly on his shoulder.

"Just thinkin' about what Uma said in the interview. About how the job of the audience is to be along for the ride." Harry's eyes kept staring off at nothing, and twitching a little as something clearly came together in his brain. "You go on to bed," he finally said to Gil, his hand slipping down his arm and then off him entirely. "I've got an idea."

"What? Harry, you need rest, too," Gil protested at Harry's departing form.

"Can't rest. I've got an idea. Got to write it while it's fresh. You get to bed, though." Harry ducked into the music room and closed the door.

Gil sighed, but eventually relented and turned into the bedroom. He slipped into bed as weightlessly as he could, next to Uma, who had shaken some of the blankets off of herself but was still deeply asleep. It warmed him to see her so at ease, so comfortable, with no tension in her shoulders or furrow to her eyebrows. Able to relax, even for a little while. She was drooling a little on one of her pillows. Gil gently eased her mouth closed with his thumb under her chin, only for her hand to suddenly fly up and wrap tightly around his wrist, her eyes snapping open in a sharp, uncomprehending glare as she seemingly tried to force her still-only-half-awake self to see through the darkness.

"Sorry, sorry," Gil stammered. "You were drooling on the pillow, I was just closing-"

"Gil," she interrupted groggily, her grip loosening and her eyes easing shut again. "Your callouses are different from Harry's." And then, with a soft but relieved sigh, she went straight back to sleep.

Maybe not completely relaxed, then.

Gil retucked the blankets around her, feeling especially protective now. He settled beside her, listening to the ebb and flow of her breath.

From elsewhere in the house, he could faintly hear the strains of Harry's music- not whole melodies at a time, but isolated clusters of notes every now and then, quiet like whispered secrets. Or like a very fragmented lullaby.

The sensation of his shoulder being vigorously shaken was what woke Gil.

"Huh?" he groaned.

Uma was sitting up between him and the sleeping form of Harry, whom she was also shaking awake. She wasn't yet dressed for the day, but she was quite alert, her braids tied up in a bundle and out of the way.

"What is it?" Harry asked, barely intelligible as his face was half-squished by his pillow and he had opened his mouth the minimal amount required to allow sound out.

In answer, Uma held up their pad of paper. On the top page, she had written, 'You two need to learn how to talk to/understand the Avoxes'.

"Right now?" Harry complained. "It's sailor hours all over again."

"We only have so much time to ourselves," Uma said, shrugging off the shirt she'd slept in and putting on a fresh one, then flipping to the next page, on which she had already written, 'The sooner we start, the more you can learn'.

"How long have you been awake?" Gil asked.

"Just an hour or two. I waited til sunrise to wake you guys up." She flipped the page, and on it was a list of twenty words and phrases, for which she proceeded to teach them the gestures.

They learned 'Thank you' first, which was something they could say aloud under most circumstances, but they quickly segued into things like 'Help me' and 'It's not safe' and 'Be careful', with a few basic words like 'water' and 'fire' and 'food' peppered in. And 'snow'. Of course. Gil resolved to practice where possible; he had just been ruminating, last night, about how he didn't know how to help Uma, and now she was giving him a tool to potentially do so...somehow. He didn't know exactly how it might help, but he would learn it regardless.

It was half an hour later and they had just finished learning the sign for 'I can't help you' when Uma turned the page to reveal the message 'Don't do it in front of Evie'. They nodded, at that. Evie was not really an enemy, but she was not trusted either.

"How long til Beast gets here?" Harry asked, neatly changing the subject.

"A little over an hour, should be." Uma tore the used pages from their pad and crumpled them in her hand, rising as she did so. "I'm gonna go see how Tiana's coming along with breakfast." (...and burn the paper on the stove, Gil assumed.)

"I'll wash up," Harry said, climbing out of bed and stretching himself out.

"Did you finish the thing you were working on last night?" Gil asked.

"What thing?" Uma asked, stopping on the threshold.

"Just a song," Harry said, with a grin spreading on his face that belied the claim that it was "just" anything. "You'll hear it later."

"Is it already finished?"

"Patience, love," Harry sang, and with that he ambled into the bathroom and closed the door.

"I'm gonna kill him," Uma said fondly. Then she winked at Gil and left for the kitchen.

The shower turned on, in the bathroom. Gil lingered in the room for a moment longer before he stood and followed Uma. She, being a person who walked with purpose, had already cleared the hallway and was probably in the kitchen by now. Gil meandered a bit, glancing into the study and then the sitting room to see if he could casually gather what Uma had been up to before waking them up. There were displaced books in the study, but there had been displaced books already, and he hadn't exactly memorized which books Uma had moved and where, so there wasn't much to glean from that.

Ella was tidying another pile of books in the sitting room, ordering them into a neat stack on the table. She stilled somewhat warily when she saw Gil lingering in the doorway. Gil hesitated a moment before greeting her with a newly-learned nonverbal sign. Ella stared for a second longer before her expression softened and she returned the gesture. Encouraged, Gil signed to ask her how she was doing, only for her to respond with a gesture he didn't yet understand. Gil's lost expression must have done a good job communicating his confusion; Ella gave him a knowing smile, gestured at the pile of books, and then returned to the task of organizing them.

Likewise, Gil resumed walking.

The sounds of breakfast in progress emanated from the kitchen. As Gil crossed the front room, he noticed that Evie was there, sitting on the floor in the same corner she had been standing in last night before she threatened them (Perhaps she was claiming that corner as her own.) and wearing a blue dress with red flowers embroidered down the skirt and a red, asymmetrical shawl over the top (Gil wondered if she owned anything casual, and also how early she had to have woken up to be this camera-ready at this time of morning). She was stroking Gray the cat with a slight smile on her face. "You're pretty, aren't you?" she was saying quietly. "You're so soft, pretty little baby-cat. Yes, you are." Gray seemed to quite enjoy the attention for the first several seconds, then started swatting at her hands with his paws. This seemed to amuse Evie more; her smile widened, her white teeth stark against her red lips.

So she was nice to animals! That was a point in her favor, at least.

Gil decided to leave them there. Somehow, despite knowing for a fact that she had a knife and having heard her coldly state that she was willing to murder two of them, he felt fairly sure that it was safe to leave Gray with Evie. (He wasn't as sure that it was safe to leave Evie with Gray, who he supposed could still potentially be a mutt, but, again, she had threatened to murder them last night; it seemed she could take care of herself.)

In the kitchen, Uma was stirring a pot for Tiana, who was beside her scrambling so many eggs that Gil's mouth watered, while the crispy remains of their note paper was reducing on one of the stove's other eyes.

"Anything I can help with?" he asked, startling Tiana a little.

"We're almost done," Uma answered. "You can set the table and then make sure Harry's shower ends before noon."

Gil suddenly felt Gray brush against the backs of his ankles, and that was his only warning before Evie could be heard behind him, saying, "I heard Adam Beast will be here today."

Uma turned her back on the grits and crossed her arms, her chin raised a little as she eyed Evie. "You heard right. What about it?"

"I plan to be there when you talk to him," Evie said simply.

(Gil edged away to set the table.)

"Well, thanks for the head's up." Uma could feel the temper of her childhood trying to rear its head again, tempting her to shout at Evie to go do something besides just coolly staring at her, but she pushed it down. Evie was not the problem. Not inherently. The problem was too many stressors and not enough outlets, other than daydreams about introducing Snow to the nearest gallows. And there was no longer a home in District 4 to escape to, to pace and rant around; only this mansion, full of listening ears and reminders of the stakes. Uma could only see her anger increasing as she remained pent up for longer. That was bound to be a liability. "You gonna eat something?"

Evie sauntered up to the stove and peeked at the food being prepared. "What is that?"

"Grits, eggs, various kinds of fried pig." Uma suddenly remembered the types of foods she'd been served on her Victory Tour, in District 1 specifically: gelatins, fruit spreads on crackers, tiny cubes of ham speared on toothpicks along with tiny cubes of cheese, a hundred different types of salads. Like combining the odd stylism of Capitol food, with the scarcity of the other Districts' food, with something utterly, nonsensically unique to District 1. Certainly nothing hearty or particularly filling. She wasn't surprised, then, when Evie replied:

"I'll just see if there's an apple in the fridge." Then flitted off to do just that, as if an errant breeze had blown her away.

"More for us," Uma said to Tiana.

Tiana's lips curved up slightly, and she covertly signed, You mean more for you; if I eat with you victors, they'll cut more than just my tongue. She had a very no-nonsense way of signing, a straightforward and dignified way that forbade pity, but that didn't mean Uma couldn't feel furious with the Capitol on her behalf.

In all honesty, Uma knew very little about Tiana; all she had gathered, from conversation, was that she and Ella were some of the few Avoxes who came from the Capitol originally, and she couldn't help thinking that Snow had had some reason for making it this way, for assigning two Capitol Avoxes to their house instead of any of the much more common District ones. On a simplistic level, it was possible that he just thought that Avoxes who came from the Districts would be too easy for her to befriend, but she wasn't sure that was it. She wondered what Tiana's and Ella's "crimes" could have been, to have earned them this fate despite the comparative protection of being Capitol citizens.

"The table's set," Gil said, and Uma turned and saw that he was hesitating in the doorway, as if reluctant to leave the room. He glanced at Evie, who was taking her time selecting an apple from the fridge, and then back at Uma. "Do...you still want me to go get Harry?"

Uma caught on; Gil was worried about leaving her with Evie. Because of Evie's words last night. Well, that was sweet of him. Uma thought about addressing the issue out loud but quickly decided against it. "Yeah, go ahead," was all she said to Gil, conveying with her expression that she would be fine.

Gil glanced at Evie once more, then relented and left the room. The cat followed him out, which Uma found worrying. If the cat was just a cat, then the fact that it followed Gil around was sweet; if not, then there was a non-zero chance that it was awaiting a kill order. That was another thing to hate about Snow; he had made sure that she was either the crazy person scared that a cat would eat one of her loved ones, or the crazy person living with a mutt and not doing anything about it. He was intricate about his cruelty, surgical, so that every move he made promised either pain or fear of pain.

"Will you get out of the fridge?" Uma demanded, as Evie was still selecting an apple. "They're not that different!"

"I have standards as to what I'm willing to put in my body," Evie said calmly.

"That's because you've never starved."

Evie didn't respond for a moment, and Uma assumed that she was offended, until, in a noticeably more sober tone of voice, she said, "Touche." She emerged from the fridge with a crisp-looking apple and took a solemn bite out of it.

Ugh. She was so different from most of the rich people Uma knew. Snow really was surrounding her with the saddest of the privileged.

"So," Evie said, her tone suddenly light, and she walked nearer to Uma and leaned casually against the cabinets, barely an arm's length away. "Do you plan on antagonizing Beast like you antagonized Snow?"

"I've never antagonized Snow," Uma said with a straight face.

"There wasn't a moment during your conversation yesterday that I didn't know for a fact that you wanted to cut him open."

She really was entirely too comfortable just saying things. Had no one ever told her that people who said things got killed or mutilated? Tiana was certainly moving every food item off of the heat so that she could safely abandon them without burning anything, and she left the room abruptly. And she wasn't even the one talking.

"Oh really?" Uma said, pushing her pot of grits back onto one of the unlit stove eyes and making defiant eye contact with Evie. "That's funny; I thought you weren't paying much attention to our meeting."

"I always pay attention," Evie said.

Uma tilted her head, then smiled mirthlessly. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You should." Evie took another bite out of her apple while Uma managed not to grind her teeth over the unnecessarily condescending reply. Apparently Evie liked having the last word.

The shower turned off upstairs.

"I'll ease your concerns," Uma said, just a bit louder and as formally as though she were appearing before a court or council. "I have no ill will towards our brilliant President or our beloved Head Gamemaker."

Evie at first rolled her eyes at what they both knew to be a lie, but then she gave the surroundings a suspicious look, as though it was only now occurring to her that they might be being listened to. At freaking last.

What a charmed life they must have had in District 1. Uma supposed they were less likely to have actionable complaints about their lot, and if most of them weren't angry enough to say anything revolutionary, then they would have no reason to pass on warnings. Even Evie's victor mom likely hadn't seen fit to sit her down and tell her that talking about killing the president while in a house he himself provided wasn't a great way to remain alive. Oh, sure, Snow wouldn't really kill them over these types of private comments, not when they were so useful alive, but if he needed a public reason to execute them for their real offenses, these would be the audio clips he suddenly procured.

Uma grabbed a plate from one of the cabinets and started dishing herself some food. "You sure you only want an apple?"

"I apportion my meals throughout the day in a very specific way," Evie explained. "But thanks for asking."

"A 'very specific way'?"

"To keep to a very specific shape; I've been learning how to keep shape since I was seven years old."

"That's sad. All the kids who come up starving, and you come up starving yourself."

"I didn't starve myself," Evie said briskly. "I managed my diet fastidiously. The more healthful version of what they do here in the Capitol; here, they don't know how to deny themselves pleasures, so they...Well, you know what they do. You've seen, at parties I'm sure."

"I've seen," Uma confirmed, closing the lid on the grit pot.

"Horrible for their teeth," Evie said scathingly. "And they don't do it because of any disorder or anything like that; I've known people with disorders, in District 1. Compulsions. But no, here they just do it so they can taste everything." Evie scoffed. "That is why I learned restraint at a young age."

Uma went to the table with her plate and was pouring herself some milk when Harry and Gil entered the kitchen. "Breakfast is ready," she told them, ignoring the distrustful look Harry was shooting in Evie's direction.

Gil made a beeline for the food on the stove. "So many eggs," he marveled.

"Tiana made a lot today, since you inhaled it all yesterday," Uma said with a teasing look.

"Protein," Evie said, nodding sagely.

"What does that mean?" Harry asked, immediately suspicious.

"...Protein?" she enunciated the word, as though unable to believe that it was unfamiliar to him.

"Aye. That. What does it mean?"

Evie stared at him blankly. "Do you not have science, in District 4?"

"I know we didn't," Gil said, taking Evie's comment at face value (in stark contrast to Harry, who had taken the question only as an insult; it was, as always, a good thing Gil was here). He brought his plate to the table and sat beside Uma. "In 10, school was pretty much all about trade stuff and Panem history."

Evie shook her head, her expression still disbelieving, but dropped the subject.

Rather than take his seat, Harry ate standing up, seemingly just because Evie was standing up and he didn't want her to be able to get the jump on them.

"So," Evie broke the newborn silence, her gaze coolly meeting Harry's, "will it be every night that you keep me up with your piano playing, or was this a special occasion?"

"I didn't think he was playing that much," Gil mused, again taking the question at face value. "Just every now and then."

"I'm not used to people making noise when I'm trying to sleep."

"Well, you used to live alone, right?"

Evie sent Gil a suspicious look, as though trying to figure out if he was planning on making fun of her, but of course he only looked curious. "I did," she confirmed. "And even before I got my own house, Mother wasn't much of a...music person." Seemingly subconsciously, her hand went to smooth at her own hair, even though not a strand was out of place. Uma recognized the tone with which she mentioned her mother; she was sure that she herself used a similar one.

"Well, maybe now you can get into it," Gil suggested.

Evie flashed him a polite smile but appeared unconvinced. "Maybe so."

Uma nearly jumped out of her skin when something furry brushed against her ankle under the table; she let out a quiet yelp and reflexively kicked out, only to hear a plaintive meow in response. She growled, leaned sideways to peer under the table, and ordered, "Move, cat!"

Gray sauntered out from under the table, not even having the decency to obey her quickly. Gil scooped him into his lap and fed him some bacon.

"Do you always feed him that stuff?" Evie asked.

"We don't always do anything; we got him two days ago," Uma said.

"Cats aren't supposed to have that much salt," Evie went on. "You should be more careful about what you feed him."

"Are y'gonna have some correction to make about everything?" Harry asked her.

Evie smiled. "I only correct people when they're incorrect. Maybe you should be right about more things."

Harry didn't react to the insult; only kept up his watchful stance, his head slightly lowered to eat from his plate.

"So what would you feed him?" Uma asked, since discussing the cat's diet seemed like a harmless enough topic, and one that Evie was inexplicably interested in. "Milk?"

"If you want to upset his stomach." Evie took two steps closer to Gil so that she could scratch Gray between the ears. Likewise, Harry drifted defensively closer, and at this point Uma was tired of the tension:

"Will you two sit down?" she demanded. "We're all going to be living here for a while; can we not be at each others throats at breakfast on the first day?"

"I'll sit down when she does," Harry said.

"Standing is good for digestion," Evie said.

"Digestion," Harry repeated scornfully.

"I'm serious." Uma looked at each of them in turn. Evie had on what was clearly her best poker face, and Harry looked grudgingly receptive. "Beast will be here soon- speaking of, Gil, go get dressed." (Gil abandoned his empty plate and left to do as she said.) "This isn't the three of us and then Evie by herself; we're all in this thing together."

"That doesn't mean we have to be friends," Evie said primly. "I told you where we stand last night."

"Yeah, it was some bull then and it's some bull now," Uma told her, and felt satisfied when Evie's expression flashed with anger; at least the ice was broken. "I get it; you don't want to be a pawn. We will not be wielding your fate lightly. But you threatened to kill us."

"Just two of you," Evie said, her tone calm, although the way that she shifted her footing a bit and briefly averted her gaze might have betrayed some remorse. Possibly. Honestly, probably not.

"You were expecting to be at odds," Uma said. "You were expecting to have to fight us." Uma paused to register some sympathy for Evie, who had left her Games in the same state Uma had left hers: alone. No victor lovers to remove her from the market, no close relationships at all (that Uma knew of). And guilt, probably, over the ones whose deaths had earned her this life that she hated. Uma had left the aloneness behind when Harry came along, had escaped (though not unscathed) at least some of the traumatizing realities of victor life, but for Evie, none of it had changed. There would have been no novelty to the wealth; she had come up in Victors' Village, among it. (Far from a reason to pity her, but worth noting all the same.) She hadn't thrown herself into the concept of rebelling (and that was probably a good thing, given her complete lack of discretion). No, she hadn't had those kinds of outlets, those releases. "Maybe your Games never ended," Uma said, "but you're not in the arena anymore. You don't have to wait out or cut through all the other tributes. You can have allies." Uma ended the sentence there, but the implication was clear: You can have allies, and they don't have to die.

Evie shut her eyes, seeming to take half a second to grieve. Then she turned away to throw out her apple core, and when she was facing Uma again, she was wearing a bright, if somewhat hollow, smile. "I would love to be allies," she said, sitting down across the table from Uma and reaching out to place her hand lightly over Uma's. There was a slight hesitation to the movement that made Uma think she did not willingly touch people often; this was a meaningful gesture to her. Evie tilted her head, her sapphire hair draped over one shoulder and her crimson lips pulling together in a way that was unmistakably apologetic. "But my threat still stands."

Adam Beast arrived like he did everything: loudly.

As soon as Ella let him in the door, he was spreading his arms (so widely that Ella had to duck out of his way) and greeting them, in his booming voice, "Here are my victors! Congratulations on your promotion!" He shook each hand (Harry wiped his hand on his pants as soon as Beast was done.), saying "Always a pleasure" and "Even more beautiful I remembered!" and things like that.

"Mr. Beast," Evie greeted, her smile positively sugary. "I see you're wearing the suit I made you."

"No one makes me look as good as you do," Beast proclaimed.

As he always did when Beast was around, Gil found himself trying to look for a single blemish or scar left on the man from his extensive surgeries. Beast's whole initial claim to fame, apart from becoming Head Gamemaker at such a young age, had been the fact that he'd undergone cosmetic surgery to cover himself in long brown fur, as a gimmick to match his name. That had been his whole thing; the fur, the intelligence, the lingering adolescent moodiness that had caused everyone to kind of hate him. Then he'd started dating Belle, and as a gesture of love he had removed the fur (leaving no mark; that was the freakiest part to Gil, that he still couldn't spot a single scar) and, after they were married, adopted a more jovial personality. He no longer went around claiming that everyone was jealous of him for being so successful; no, as a mark of gross overcompensation, now he thought that everybody loved him.

This had all happened before Gil's time, as Beast's son (who, just like Harry had predicted, had come as well) was roughly their age.

"This is Benjamin," Beast introduced his son while clapping him on the back (and the boy sent his father a look as though he would have liked to introduce himself, but didn't think it worth making a fuss). "He's always had a fascination with victors."

"Like father, like son?" Uma noted, earning a laugh from Beast.

"Nice to meet you, Benjamin," Evie greeted, extending a hand to him, and Gil was surprised by the almost flirtatious disposition she was assuming.

"Hi." For his part, Benjamin only appeared slightly flustered. He cleared his throat. "My name is Ben," the boy said politely, apparently deciding to just do the introduction over. He had a pleasant face, and a strangely humble smile, and brown hair that looked very normal, for the Capitol. "It's an honor to meet you four."

"Of course, I talk about you enough, he probably feels he already has," Beast chuckled. "Shall we sit?" He helped himself to their couch.

Ben had the decency to wince at his father's display of entitlement. "May I?" he asked Uma, correctly identifying her as the one to whom requests should be addressed.

"Go ahead," she answered.

Ben went to sit down next to his father. Evie, who had already pulled an armchair into her chosen corner of the room before the visitors had arrived, went to sit in her armchair. Harry, Gil, and Uma seated themselves in their second couch, facing Beast and son, Uma in the middle. Gil's hand found hers instinctively, and they interlocked their fingers together.

"This house must be a dream come true for you victors, mustn't it?" Beast said.

Uma smiled with all of her teeth, then prompted, "President Snow said you had something for us?"

"Oh!" Beast rifled through his pocket for a second and took out a flat, glass object. He held it up for all of them to get a look (Yeah, seemingly just a rectangle of glass...), then he swiped his thumb vertically up the surface, and suddenly the glass was covered in shapes and numbers made of light. "This is a rater. It responds to my fingerprint signature, and yours. The three of you, not Evelyn; she's not authorized to use it."

Evie's expression remained completely still. "Understood," she said simply. If snowflakes falling to the ground for the first time, all quiet and frozen, could be a voice, they would be her voice.

Beast pointed at a zigzagging line at the top of the glass screen. "This graphic gives you the broad strokes; how much buzz you've generated, relative to previous days. If you need a quick image to consult to see whether you've gone up or down, this is what you look at. Below that, we have other metrics and variables: how much of your fame manifests in merchandising, for example, or what percentage of the day's media coverage you've managed to monopolize. If you open this tab here at the bottom, you can peruse your requests. Most of the requests will be, well..." (Beast smiled, trailing off suggestively.) "You're all attractive; it's to be expected. Priority requests will be on this side- that'll be requests from political figures, celebrities, big names, you know -and requests from the general public on this side. It's important to keep the balance there, because priority requests will make more noise if you ignore them, but requests from the general public can determine whether you lose your fanbase. If you lose your base," (He pointed at the top graphic again.) "this line plummets, and no one wants that."

Gil blinked a few times, feeling vaguely dizzy as the Beast continued to run them through the workings of the rater, and as much as he wanted to understand (the better to be of use), he found himself looking, instead, at Ben, whose eyebrows were drawing closer and closer together the longer his father spoke.

"All of that make sense?" Beast asked, handing the rater over to Uma, who immediately started pressing icons and pulling up different tabs of information.

Uma didn't answer for a second, her lips twisted in concentration as she made brisk, though clumsy and clearly unfamiliar, work of the navigation.

"I thought victors were supposed to live in peace after their Games," Ben said, his frown still in place and his voice questioning but not lacking in confidence. "Isn't that the rule?"

The Beast chuckled. "They are living in peace, son. They're hardly getting reaped again, are they?"

"But this job," Ben pressed.

"It's a reward," Beast said patiently. "Did you even watch the president's speech?"

"I watched it," Ben said, a mutinous undertone to his voice that caused Uma's eyes to leave the screen for the first time.

"I know it may not seem like much to us, but for a District-born citizen, this house is the height of luxury."

"That's..." Ben frowned even more deeply.

The Beast, in an uncharacteristic display of awareness, seemed to realize that the train of thought his son was occupying was not a safe one; he brushed over the whole matter, turning to them and saying, "Benjamin has always been entirely too empathetic. The Games gave him nightmares every year until he was sixteen. His mother says it's sweet."

"It is sweet," Evie spoke up.

Uma tilted her head, still eyeing Ben.

"Any nightmares about my Games?" Harry asked, a crooked smile hanging lazily in place.

"The mutt falcons from your year got me," Ben answered, unabashedly. "The eyes, the beaks. You didn't see them..."

"Oh, I saw the footage later, same as everyone," Harry said, with a wave of his hand. "They were well vicious." He cut a quick but pointed glance at Beast, who they all knew was responsible for every danger that entered the arena other than the tributes.

"No nightmares about Harry himself?" Beast asked, oblivious to Harry's glance. "That I would have understood."

"No," Ben mused. "He always seemed more scared than scary to me. He was just a kid, like me."

"So you only fear birds?" Uma finally spoke, and there was a light mocking edge to her flat tone, but no contempt.

"Not just birds," Ben said lightly, taking the ribbing in stride.

"What were your nightmares about my year?"

Ben was utterly candid: "I had a recurring dream where I was cornered in the lake of oil like you were, with enemies swimming towards me. My only choice was to do what you did, but I wasn't brave enough. I couldn't strike the match, even though I knew it was the only way to survive. So the enemies just kept swimming closer and closer until I woke up."

Silence followed his words for only a moment.

"Sounds scary," Uma said, decidedly pitiless.

"I can only imagine."

Gil couldn't help it; he liked Ben. The boy seemed nice, despite his father. He was indignant on their behalf and sympathetic to Harry and Uma, and there was sincerity in his eyes. The sort of sincerity that could possibly get him killed, or mutilated. But then, his dad was Head Gamemaker; Snow wouldn't hurt him.

Yes he would. The moment the inclination struck. This nice guy was not safe.

"Careful, Ben," Beast said heartily. "Hit it off too well, and they just might scoop you up and make you the fourth lover."

"Dad," Ben groaned, dropping his head into his hands.

"Let's get back on track," Beast suggested, grinning still. "Now, President Snow, the precious prescient man who launched all of our careers, obviously had his finger right on the pulse by inviting Evie here ahead of time. When her presence here is made public- and don't worry; Ben and I are sworn to secrecy for now -your requests, both priority and general, are going to blow up. That's good for popularity, but it'll be hard to satisfy that kind of demand. You'll want to make plans to muffle the backlash for the ones you have to disappoint. And as it's Miss Evie we're talking about, I'm sure they'll be quite disappointed."

(Gil felt nauseated by the fact that Beast clearly thought that he was making a lighthearted joke, and dealing Evie some great compliment.)

"They won't be the first," Evie said.

"Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day. At any rate, I've brought a list of victors you should also consider bringing in, so that the full burden of entertainment does not fall on Evie." The Beast produced a folded sheet of paper from inside his blazer and handed it to Uma, who handed it, surprisingly, to Gil.

Gil unfolded the page and skimmed through the names while Uma continued to figure out the rater. His heart sank when he saw Mulan's name; he wondered, dejectedly, how long they would be able to keep her from being dragged into this. "Mulan can't come," he said, without thinking.

"Of course not," Uma said smoothly. "She can't leave her horse behind, and we don't have stables."

Gil let out a relieved breath. "Right."

"Regardless, people like her," Beast said. "The horse is a tertiary concern, if that. She's not too old, she's stayed in shape; that probably won't be true forever. Strike while the iron's hot. Or in her case, I guess...strike while the iron is upward of lukewarm? My point is, she made the list for a reason. She's worth considering."

"It's a long enough list that it shouldn't come to that," Uma said. "The audience would be sad to find out they had to send Mulan's horse to the chop-house; everyone loves that horse." She handed the rater over to Harry, then took the list from Gil.

"I suppose," Beast conceded. "In the scheme of things, I think I would most highly suggest bringing in Jay."

"From District 2?" Gil said.

"He's young, attractive, and charming," Beast said simply. "Most of the more recent victors, obviously excluding the ones in this room, aren't much to look at, aesthetically speaking. Jay's a handsome one, though. Between the five of you, that would be all of the physically attractive victors of the past ten, maybe even fifteen years."

"Isn't that a pretty shallow way of looking at it?" Ben asked.

"Yes," his father answered, then returned his attention to the topic at hand. "Hunger Games season is your off-season, seeing as that would be entirely too much for you to compete with. The Games will be the only thing on anyone's mind. You'll get to relax, enjoy the festivities."

"Lucky us," Harry said quietly.

"That means you only need to sustain the buzz for a few months. Do you three have a plan for how you will introduce Evie's role in the program?"

"When we do, she'll be the first to know," Uma said.

"You have my number. Be sure to keep me in the loop; this is an important job for all of us." There was actually some gravity to Beast's tone, as if the words "important job" might mean the same thing for him that they did for them. But there was still that sort of frivolous disposition with which Beast said everything that made Gil doubt that such a thing could be true, or at least that Beast could be aware of his own vulnerability.

"Actually, I'm not sure we do have your number," Uma mused.

"Oh." Beast blinked, as though surprised. "I could write it down, then."

"We always write things down, and the pieces of paper get lost all over the place, especially with Gil's cat wandering around." Uma snapped her fingers, as though she had just had an idea. "This is a little silly, but do you think you could carve your number on the desk in our study? It's so important; we wouldn't want to lose it."

"Oh, sure," Beast said, fully won over by the premise that Gil had instantly found ridiculous.

"Harry, why don't you show Mr. Beast to our study?" Uma suggested, and then, turning to Beast again, explained, "It's not as big as a study in a real mansion; we wouldn't all fit."

"Of course," Beast said sympathetically, and he followed a decidedly casual-seeming Harry (Was he used to going along with ruses? Was this common for them?) out of the room.

For a second, no one spoke as they took in the absence of Harry and Beast. As they waited to find out exactly what Uma meant by this ploy.

"So Ben," Uma said, and maybe Gil was getting good at reading her, because he was pretty sure just from the look in her eyes that she was mapping out where she wanted this conversation to go. "Write much?"

"...A little," Ben answered, still pleasant and polite but clearly not as oblivious to the contrived nature of Uma's request as his father had been.

Uma smirked. "The callous on the side of your finger says 'a lot'; that's from holding a pen."

Ben smiled, seeming to put aside his wariness in favor of being impressed. "You got that from a handshake?"

"I've been told I'm perceptive," Uma said, then pushed on: "Are you one of those write-all-the-time people? Harry gets like that, with his music. Do you have a notebook, or do you just write on your hand or arm whenever you think of something?"

Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out a small journal, in answer.

"And you didn't even ask for my autograph," Uma chided jokingly. "May I see?"

Ben had only to extend the journal marginally closer before Uma was pulling it from his hand and opening it. She perused it for a while, flipping to pages at random and reading through, and she seemed to come to a decision. Nodding slightly to herself, Uma flipped to a blank page and scrawled out something, using a pen that she apparently kept on her person.

Gil leaned over and read the words she was writing:

Avoxes used to speak their minds. Burn this page.

The bluntness, the dark and concise truth in the warning, followed by the essential instruction, seemed to hit him in the throat. And it was a warning, and not much more. Nothing that should be truly dangerous; she was not inciting him to rebel, but rather the opposite, and she seemed to have written in as close an imitation of Ben's handwriting as she could (or at least not her own handwriting). And Gil didn't doubt Uma, and he was sure that her judgement was probably a hundred times better than his, and Gil did not want Ben to talk his way into trouble either, but there was a disconnect between what his mind believed in and what his body took to be a danger. Despite all the reasons this shouldn't be a problem, the fear was there.

On the following page, Uma merely signed her name, in exaggerated cursive that was nevertheless unmistakably her own hand. "There," she said simply. "An autograph to prove we met." She shut the journal and handed it back to Ben. "Or just to look at, if you want to feel good about your own handwriting."

There was curiosity in Ben's eyes, suggesting that he understood that there would be a message inside the book when he opened it later, but he merely nodded. "Thanks."

Uma shrugged. "Don't mention it."

Gil swallowed painfully. Really don't.

Mercifully, the meeting with the Beast did not last forever; eventually, he and his unbelievably, almost unpalatably good-natured son left in their car, and the house was lightened in their absence.

(Sure, the Beast's son was less obnoxious than Harry had been expecting, but that was almost worse; the boy didn't even have the human decency to let Harry just hate him on principle. The gall of him.)

Harry, certainly, was eager to get Uma and Gil alone so that he could reveal to them what he had been working on last night, but there was still more to do today. Much more. There were interviews, with lesser personalities than Caesar, and they went rather un-memorably, to Harry anyway. Uma was predictably incredible, Gil was accidentally adorable, and Harry was just slutty enough that Snow wouldn't threaten anybody.

Or that was the hope at least, but then when was Snow fair about anything?

The audiences were smaller, and more excitable, which meant they were less worth giving their all to; their banter alone was enough to blow the roof off the place.

They also had photo shoots, stupidly enough. They were driven to various scholarly buildings and posed around desks, as though hard at work; they were instructed to walk down a few streets (Apparently pictures of them passing familiar shops and corners would give people the delusion that they were present and accessible.) which had been blocked off from public access (to keep them from being rushed by their "fans"- the irony was not lost on Harry).

"Why am I staring at a traffic light?" Gil asked, causing one of the photographers to groan that he had ruined the shot.

"So that you know when to cross," someone answered.

"But the street is empty," Gil protested, clearly confused.

"Just look at the traffic light, please."

"It says we can cross now," Harry put in, just to annoy them. "It's been saying we can cross for about half a minute now."

"Please keep still."

Another few streets over, when they were told to stare excitedly through a bakery's front window, Uma had to speak up, as well:

"Do you guys think we don't have bread in the Districts? We have bread in the Districts. Cake, too; just can't afford it."

"It's symbolic," a cameraperson answered. "You're getting to know the Capitol, up close and personal."

"Won't it seem fake that we're pointing at bread like we've never seen it before?"

"Trust us, dear; we're professionals."

"You don't call her 'dear'," Harry said irately, while at the same time Uma dryly said, "Just 'Uma' is fine."

They got a staged picnic, during which they were told to pretend to laugh and pretend to talk and pretend to cloud gaze and pretend to doze off, and they were not allowed to actually eat any of the food because it was "pretty, but actually very toxic".

As the picnic shoot continued to drag torturously on (because the camera people insisted that they absolutely needed shots with the sun setting behind them), Harry murmured, "I'm gonna do it, love."

"Do what?" Uma asked, her tone dead bored.

Harry picked up the fake food. "I'm gonna eat the sandwich."

Uma stared for only a tick longer, then smirked, snatching the poisonous stuff away, and Gil laughed both at the joke and at her reaction to it, and a camera flashed, and Harry swore to himself that one day any camera brought into his presence would be shattered underfoot.

And then his mood was lightened somewhat by Gil calling out, "Can we be done now? Harry's getting cold," despite Harry not having vocalized his discomfort at all.

"Oh! A campfire!" one of the photographers exclaimed, and all the other photographers lauded the brilliant idea while Harry, Uma, and Gil groaned audibly.

By the time they arrived back at the house, it was dark outside, and Evie was sitting in her armchair in the corner, flipping serenely through a book and eating another hecking apple. She had gone through three just when they were there.

"You're home," she observed neutrally. "Did you make up your minds while you were gone?"

"About what?" Harry asked, weary to find that they were barely through the door and already being interrogated.

"About me," Evie said, her eyes sharp. "Obviously."

"Not yet," Uma said.

"Did you decide what other victor you'll be bringing in?"

"Not yet."

Evie didn't ask anything else, but her gaze on them was cold and accusatory as they gathered into the various couches. Honestly, it wasn't as though they'd opted to fill their day with meaningless fluff that would inevitably be in the way of them doing their actual job.

"What do you guys think?" Uma asked, from her sprawl on one couch with the back of one hand draped across her brow. She removed the list of names from her pocket and unfolded it with her free hand. Of course she was just going to launch right into it; Harry held in a gargantuan groan. "Jay seems resilient, but Beast's right; he's handsome."

"Everyone on Beast's list looks good, though," Gil pointed out. "My brother, Grant, used to be a huge fan of Jay, so I've seen a few of his interviews. He seems like a funny guy."

Gil wasn't wrong; Jay and Caesar had had studio audiences hooting and tearing up with laughter on more than one occasion.

"And he's a survivor," Uma mused. Harry knew, from that tone, that she had a whole pile of other reasons and ideas, all lined up in her head.

"I'm guessing you're sold on him?" he surmised.

"He doesn't have anyone to take care of, that we know about at least. He's not addicted to anything. He doesn't seem to mind visiting the Capitol. He's got a brain on him."

"In him," Evie corrected unnecessarily.

"If we have to get another victor, it's better to get a scrappy survivor than some juggernaut or berserker like most of the victors 2 spits out."

"And..." Gil trailed off, seeming to rethink his words before they were even out.

"What is it?" Uma asked.

"I don't know if it's wrong to say or not."

"Say it, then."

"Our second victor...should be a guy," he said, uncertainly. "If our first two are both women, people like my brothers will start to assume they're all going to be women."

Uma considered for a second, then nodded. "That's true."

Gil appeared relieved to not have made a misstep.

"So we're doing what the Beast wants us to do?" Harry groaned.

"That's our job, isn't it?" Uma said, in an innocent but clipped tone to remind him that they were not in a position to speak openly about their disdain for Beast.

"And what about me?" Evie asked, and though he couldn't be sure, Harry thought he saw her fingernails sinking into the apple, in her tension, carving crescents into the red skin.

"I'm thinking," Uma told her.

"Think out loud."

"We don't want to force you to do anything." Uma removed her hand from her face and sat up. "We don't want them to force you to do anything. We have to figure out how to give them what they want instead of what they ask for. And you're our first victor; you set the tone. If we fall short now, we squander the audience's trust, and that will make it harder for us to have any leeway to decide in the future."

There was no doubt in Harry's mind, now; Evie's fingertips were denting that apple. "Would a fashion show tide them over?"

"I thought about that, but a fashion show isn't new; Snow promised them a new level of availability. After they were told that, a fashion show is a let down. Interviews are a let down."

"Well, it sounds like we're ruling out all of my actual skills," Evie said. "Does that just leave my pretty face?"

Uma gasped suddenly, and her eyes went distant. "No," she said, and Harry sat up, now, because that look meant that she had had a thought. "No, it doesn't."

"What is it?" Harry asked.

"I'm thinking."

Evie left her armchair to instead sit on Uma's couch. "Think out loud," she suggested again.

Uma held up a hand. "The idea isn't done yet. Give me a second."

They all watched her stand up and pace the floor. Gil met Harry's eyes questioningly, and Harry shrugged.

"Will you please say something?" Evie demanded.

"You already said something," Uma said, sounding almost dazed. "This morning."

"She said a bloody lot this morning," Harry snarked. "What's your point?"

"I'm thinking."

Evie sprang to her feet and grabbed Uma firmly by the arms, stopping her pacing, and Harry stood up, too, not because he believed that Evie was an imminent danger, but just because it didn't feel right for him to be sitting down when someone grabbed Uma, even casually.

"We are thinking," Evie said firmly. "Say your thoughts out loud!"

Uma's lips arced into a slight smile. "'Horrible for their teeth'." She said the vague piece-of-a-sentence as though it was significant, some statement that had been made earlier, but Harry was thoroughly not in on it.

Evie seemed to remember, after a second, but not understand. "Yes," she said slowly. "So?"

"So, you correct people when they're incorrect."

That statement, Harry did remember, but he still didn't yet see the connection.

"I don't get it," Gil chimed in.

Evie evidently did not quite get it, either, but she seemed closer to getting it than they were, because she was beginning to look intrigued. "Okay?"

Uma turned from her, effectively welcoming Harry and Gil into the conversation. "A fashion show would be too impersonal. People want direct interaction, to feel like they have been personally acknowledged, and she can give them that on her own terms. They don't only want to consume her; some of them want to be her."

"True enough," Harry conceded, becoming steadily frustrated by his own confusion. Uma caught his eye for a second with a comprehending look that caused him to relax just a little bit. Of course, when they were at their house in District 4, she could just spit things out, say what the idea was without prefacing with the explanation or justification, but here she had to present her plan to not only Evie, but in an oblique sort of way, to Snow as well. If he was listening.

"What if Evie was able to get these...health tips...out of her system on a public stage? People in the Capitol could brag about following the Evie Grimhilde diet; the extra special ones could say that Evie herself drafted a personalized meal plan for them." (Evie was nodding more and more as Uma spoke, a brightness in her eyes that they had not seen there before.) "We could even bring in your fashion skills; you could make people over. Saturate them that way."

"Do you mean satiate?" Evie asked.

"I do not."

"Okay. Okay..."

Harry felt doubtful that Snow would allow something so tame, but Evie appeared thoroughly onboard:

"Call Beast," she said with alacrity.

Uma hesitated, her eyes doing that telltale thing where they appeared to read the air in front of her.

"What?" Evie asked.

Uma met Harry's gaze again and said, as though she could read his mind, "It isn't enough. It won't be enough. We need more."

"So bring Jay in, then," Evie said impatiently. Now that she had been given hope, it seemed that her lofty demeanor was put away. Her hands were balled into excited fists in front of her; her lips were pinched, her eyes widened, and her eyebrows angled in such a way that it seemed she was managing to frown without wrinkling any part of her face.

"We can't just bring him in without some kind of plan; now is the time to get ahead of these things."

Evie's nostrils flared for a second, but she did not argue. She merely turned on her heels and sat primly back down in her armchair. "I guess I'll just wait."

"Maybe we could have Jay tell jokes," Gil suggested. "Like, onstage or something. Since he's good at it."

"We're back to 'impersonal'," Uma said.

"I don't see why we can't just ask him here first and then figure out what sort of spectacle works for him when he arrives," Harry said.

"Because if we're only coming up with ideas in real time, any setback will put us behind," Uma said. "We have a bit of breathing room now, because the program's only beginning and we still have the buzz surrounding Snow's announcement and last night's interview to keep us safe for a little while. Now is the time to plan our approach, as far in advance as we can."

The room was silent for over a minute as everyone apparently retreated to their thoughts. In the quiet, Harry found his mind returning to the statement that had bothered him- and wasn't "bothered" a light word -hours ago: the Beast's offhand announcement that the Games would be their off-season. Of course it made sense. Of course the ones in charge wouldn't want their "noise" distracting from this year's new horror, but...

But the voice of dread still spoke to Harry, saying Snow wants you to see. He wants you to watch, because it'll be CJ. His heart beat too fast, and his fingers followed the rhythm, thumping against his knee, following the keys of a piano that wasn't there.

"I wrote a new song," he said hoarsely, breaking the silence.

Uma sat up; at some point she had returned to her sprawl with her hand over her face. Gil, too, turned to Harry, his expression unabashedly anticipatory.

"So?" Evie asked, and her coolly derisive tone was actually a little funny.

"Can we hear it?" Uma asked, ignoring Evie.

"Come have a listen," Harry said, grinning.

"I'm going to my room," Evie huffed, and did just that. Probably for the better; Harry felt that his song was probably more of an inner-circle affair.

They proceeded to the music room. Harry sat down on the piano bench once he'd ensured the door was closed behind them.

"It doesn't have lyrics yet; just a melody," he said, while handing them the completed lyric sheet; best to keep Snow on his toes.

He played the notes for just the words instead of the accompaniment, but the whole song played in his mind:

Good fortune ebbs and flows
Like the breath of the tide
Let it come, let it go
Back to the sea

Lady Moon reels the bounty
From the flooded to the dry
Til no bucket nor bowl
Comes up empty

We toss seeds into the ocean
That they wash into a garden
Far away, far away
If need be

Let crest the wave of fortune
We’re along for the ride
The turning, churning ocean
We ride with the tide
As recedes the wave of fortune
We’re along for the ride
The living, giving ocean
We ride with the tide

The small wading child can see
He can’t influence the waves
So in young wisdom he
Never tries it

While the ship with every man
Quite as feeble as the child
Ventures out and dares the sea
To capsize it

They know even the ocean
In its volatile motion
Is worth only what does
Comprise it

Let crest the wave of fortune
We’re along for the ride
The turning, churning ocean
We ride with the tide
As recedes the wave of fortune
We’re along for the ride
The living, giving ocean
We ride with the tide
We ride.

He played the last note and then lifted his finger slowly off of it, turning to face Uma and Gil, who were still looking down at the lyric sheet. He felt slightly apprehensive. As far as construction was concerned, he had certainly written better songs. He had deliberately made this one just floofy enough to become popular in the Capitol, while retaining enough substance to actually mean something to people who were really listening. But maybe it had sounded better in his head last night, when the concept was new and the inspiration was raw and he was tired enough to let anything pass. In truth, he was probably most excited about the line "We ride with the tide", simple though it was. To him, it sounded like allegiance, commiseration, maybe unity if he was being a sap about it. He could imagine those words being used in any way, whispered or shouted.

Gil was the first to look up, his face flushed with awe that caused a smile to shape Harry's lips.

"It's beautiful," Gil said earnestly.

Uma's eyes were still glued to the page. "It's brilliant," she said, and Harry's smile widened. "You're brilliant." She seemed to read through all of the lyrics over again.

"It's not properly finished," Harry said, scratching at the back of his neck. Uma was always a well of feedback; when she was silent for any length of time, he knew that he would be receiving a great fountain of it, and the anticipation was killing him. He hoped his metaphors had come across clearly enough. Well enough executed. Was it too blatant? Unfocused? He had only written it out in one night; there were improvements that could be made. Maybe the rhythm was off in some places, or the rhymes forced. But then, she had seen enough of his rough drafts to be used to that. "I may add or leave out some bits..."

"I trust your process," Uma assured him, and now her eyes did leave the page. They met his, full of enthusiasm and intrigue and pride. "This is brilliant. We should sit on this for a while; only release it when it's the right time. The right...context."

Harry could feel himself puffing up; he couldn't help it. If the song was worth saving for the right time, then that meant she loved it. Still fishing for more detailed compliments (as he always did), Harry asked, "So you liked it?"

Uma smirked knowingly. She glanced around the room to remind them that she couldn't speak aloud, then rose and said, "I'll get a pen and pad." And then she stroked his hair, and he went positively liquid against her.

District 2 did not much value sneaking around.

It was a very direct culture. Everyone who wasn’t an on-duty Peacekeeper was still following orders of some kind, and that didn’t leave room for cunning or for finding one’s own roundabout way of doing things. And when you were a kid, it was all about the Games. Everything was. Food was for muscle, all types of play were really weapons training or stamina training, and school provided both and instilled discipline.

They intimidated, and fought, and vied for power all out in the open. So Jay’s penchant for mischief had not been appreciated, in his youth.

He had been a disastrous child, as his school reports had delicately put it. He had squirmed whenever they’d tried to cut his hair (and that was only after hiding from them failed), he had spoken out of turn, he had been a notorious breaker of rules.

They had chalked it up to genetics, most of them; his father was infamous for having been cast out of some high-ranking office within the District. A disgrace.

And so, as a child, Jay had been the rascal, the labrat with which other children experimented with defying authority; they had dared him to commit various offenses, just to see what would happen. Usually it had been just stealing, or pulling the fire alarm; petty stuff, with utterly disproportionate punishments.

One person had dared him to steal the principal’s necktie while he was wearing it, and he had, only to be summoned back to the office in a thundering voice soon after (…but for those forty-nine seconds, boy, he had been on top of the world).

Then one year, his name had been called for the reaping, and there had been murmurs but no shouts. No one had volunteered- not for the glory, not to save him, not for anything. There weren’t always volunteers, but Jay couldn't help thinking that the reason no one had volunteered that year was the same reason that no one had confessed to daring him to steal the principal’s tie: They wanted to see what kind of trouble Jay could get himself into this time, with these raised stakes.

When he won the Games, well, that was just Jay. In and out of trouble with a mischievous smile. Wisecracking on a national stage, now, where it was appreciated instead of punished. No one in 2 could say anything to him, now, about keeping his hair short or being an upstanding citizen; he had brought honor to the District already. Even his father only got a few dirty looks in public; no sneers or rude words, however much the old viper clearly deserved them.

So when, say, Jay slipped into an alleyway between shops, climbed a fire escape, and people-watched from a rooftop, no one yelled at him to get down from there or called him a delinquent. He was Jay. He had done his part already.

Which was why he was surprised when he heard someone calling his name.

"Jay?! Jay!"

He leaned over the roof's side and saw...Taran. The annoying guy who never shut up about how one day he would become a Peacekeeper. He and Jay had been grouped together in school a lot, because Taran was also a troublemaker (although his troublemaking came from caring too much instead of not enough), so Jay had grudgingly become his protection from bullies. Nowadays, Taran just sort of...showed up sometimes.

"What do you want?" Jay replied.

"I was just at your house-"

"Eating my food."

"Practicing in your yard." Taran crossed his arms indignantly. "My point is, there are some Peacekeepers waiting for you there."

"Thanks for warning me," Jay said, with a cheeky grin. "Guess I'm crashing here for tonight."

"No, they're serious, Jay."

"They're always serious."

"They say they have some message for you."

"What message?"

"I don't know; go ask them."

"Nah. If they're local, they know where to find me."

"Do you have to be impossible all of the time?"

"You're the one shouting in public. Come up the fire escape, you hoodlum."

"I'm going to tell them where you are." And he left.

Taran was the worst. He was 'Sir, yes, sir' meets 'I want to be a hero!'. The only reason he hadn't ever volunteered at a reaping was because he knew that being a victor would interfere with his ultimate ambition. With his headstrong attitude, he would probably never be a Peacekeeper, but he would also never give anyone peace if he was forced to be anything else.

Eventually, the Peacekeepers (four of them) did come, and they called him down. Jay followed them back to his house. He had been getting bored anyway, and trying to make casual conversation with the stodgy uniformed men and women on the walk home was at least entertaining. Something wasn't quite right, though. These Peacekeepers weren't local; he could tell from the way they navigated. And they stiffened almost imperceptibly whenever they passed by Peacekeepers who Jay recognized. Maybe they were new to the job, but he doubted it. Something was up.

When they entered the house, there were four more Peacekeepers waiting there. Also wrong; squads of Peacekeepers always came in groups of two, four, five, or intervals of ten. Eight, never.

"Where are the other two?" he asked, crossing his arms.

The Peacekeepers all exchanged a look.

"In the study, with your message," one replied.

Jay looked around himself warily, then shrugged and sauntered toward the house's study. Worse case scenario: ambush. But he was quick on his feet, so he would probably be fine. Or he'd fight them. Or he'd die, but he doubted that. Really, at this point, the only course of action worth anything to him was progressing through whatever sort of encounter this became. He opened the study door and entered the room.

Where he saw a familiar face sitting at his (extremely unused) desk with her feet up. "You kept us waiting," she drawled.

Jay was only barely surprised; he nodded as everything began to make sense. The wrong Peacekeeper behavior, the wrong squad size- still wrong, since she was the only one waiting in this room. "Well, Taran said you were Peacekeepers."

"That was the idea. That's why they stole the uniforms; so we could get around without any suspicion."

"Hope you have a helmet," he quipped, because uniform or not, a purple-haired Peacekeeper wouldn't have exactly gone unnoticed, whereas the rest of her people actually looked like they subscribed to some kind of discipline, at least in the follicular department.

"Yeah. And if my mom finds out I came here, she'll be very pissed, so let's cut to the chase." She sat forward, now with her feet on the floor and her elbows on the desk. The desk lamp made her skin look moonishly pale, but then Jay was fairly certain she hadn't seen much of the sun in her formative years. "Our sources tell us you might be the second one dragged into Snow's 'Sisyphus Reward' thing. Who the first is, we don't know yet, but-"

Jay cackled. "Has Lover Boy been blurting out national secrets again?"

She rolled her eyes. "Don't call him that. And we got to talking when I caught him accidentally setting his trash can on fire."

"Whoa, careful; he's starting to sound like your type. So, you came all the way to District 2 just to warn me that Snow might make Uma Triskelion pimp me out?"

"The journey wasn't that far; don't flatter yourself. Just keep your eyes and ears open, if they do send for you. And if you learn anything while you're in that house, we'd like you to share it with us. Uma has proven to be full of surprises."

Jay didn't comment on her almost smug expression, even though it told him a lot. "You do know I don't actually work for you guys?"

"You basically do." She waved a dismissive hand.

"Really? And your mom knows about me?"

As expected, she shut down, and Jay only slightly regretted asking. He had never met her mother; he had never met most of her people. He only knew her because they both had a habit of sneaking off to well-concealed places during Capitol parties. They had similar senses of humor, and he had gathered some things about her that he wasn't supposed to know, so they had ended up becoming close friends. Or at least closer than Taran. Close enough that he didn't rat her out and she didn't kill him for knowing about her.

"You have your mission." She stood, dusting herself off with a haughty little smirk and putting her helmet on. "See you around."

"Don't get caught," he said, which was about as much genuine affection as he knew how to express with words.

Chapter Text

The Beast and Ben were over a lot, in the days that followed.

Beast seemed intrigued by the novelty of the idea to make Evie a role model instead of...what they normally did with victors, and outright thrilled by their having taken his advice about making Jay their next "acquisition". (Uma's nostrils flared just about every time he used that word.) He had no better idea than they did of how, exactly, to implement Jay, but he seemed entirely less invested in figuring it out. "I'm sure his audience will think of something," he would say, with a suggestive smile, and Uma would promptly snap, "Thinking of something is our job, sir. Not theirs." Beast just laughed it off and called her a go-getter, but the fact that they were less productive when Uma was aggravated with him seemed to sink in at some level, because after the second day (by which the plan for the program itself was already being set into motion, and they were left with the minutiae of the PR aspect), he started sending only Ben to check up on their progress.

Despite not having his father's expertise in the field, Ben was better to have around. A lot better, actually, excepting the way his (as Evie put it) "unusual tenderness" sometimes threw all of them off their rhythm. It wasn't just the fact that he seemed entranced by one of them at any given time. His eyes were just...so soft. Not, Gil had been informed by Harry, in the way that Gil's eyes were soft. Where the kindness in Gil's eyes came with some measure of resigned awareness (not how Harry had put it, but essentially the gist) of the situation they were in, Ben always seemed surprised by every horror.

While he heeded the warning Uma had given him upon their first meeting and wasn't so vocal about the systemic things he disapproved of anymore, he did pick up on their tactical maneuvering and body language enough to once note, "So...we don't want Jay to...be anyone's lover?"

"If Jay wants to, that's up to him," Uma had answered, which apparently conveyed the truth well enough to Ben, who sat in horrified silence for several minutes after, as apparently the implication that victors might not always be willing participants in such things overwhelmed him.

Then he shared their urgency, which was also good; now he knew what was at stake, what they were avoiding. The fact that he worked most closely with Evie helped, as she was the one most presently at risk.

"We have to frame things perfectly," he realized aloud one day, when they were all gathered in the upstairs lounge. He was sitting on the floor next to the table, occasionally writing down ideas and notes. "We have to make them want to be her more than they want to..." He trailed off uncomfortably.

"Devour me alive, yes," Evie finished, a bit impatiently, as she rose from the window seat. She took the sheet of paper onto which he had been jotting notes, scanned it once with a critical eye, scribbled something into one of the margins, and returned it. "Emphasizing my most obvious physical attributes risks inspiring more greed than envy, so I can't just strut onto Caesar's stage in my finest gown and say, 'Wait, don't get your hopes up.'"

Ben looked a bit sick, but he nodded in agreement.

"We'll have to be more oblique about it," Uma mused. She was sitting in an armchair sideways, while Harry was sitting in one upside down, holding the rater close to his reddened face (the blood was rushing to his head; he would have to right himself soon enough) and watching their ratings gradually decline as time went on.

Gil raised his hand (from where he lay on the floor, with the cat on his chest). "Don't know what 'oblique' means."

"Indirect. Evie's right, making them see how much they want to be her will also make them focus on how much they want her. We need a proxy. Someone who can appear noticeably better than they once were, so the crowd can want for the change instead of the person making the change happen."

"There aren't ugly celebrities," Evie said frankly. "Anyone unattractive enough to undergo that kind of improvement won't be well-enough-known for the audience to care, and anyone beautiful enough for the audience to know won't be easy to improve on in the immediate. Unless we use one of the less-attractive victors, but then we're bringing in someone who isn't in demand and placing them in demand."

Gil sat up suddenly (causing Gray to yowl in irritation). "Do me."

Uma and Harry stared. Evie waved a dismissive hand: "You're attractive, Gil."

"But my style isn't," Gil pointed out. He seemed fairly sure of himself, though his voice, by nature, always sounded as though he was hoping for someone to back him up. "All the stylists were sad that they had to put me in black; the new colors are weird on me. Not ugly, but weird. Maybe you can make them work. I'm already not on the menu, I think, so it'll be fine if I look better." He turned to Uma and Harry to see if they agreed. Uma seemed deep in thought, and Harry righted himself in his chair.

"And we could have Caesar bring up how much better you look," Ben said slowly, "and then segue into how you had help..."

"We can play that up, too," Uma spoke suddenly, her eyes distant. "We can really drag it out before we say her name, tell them we have a new houseguest they might have heard of, let them get excited...We can lightly joke about how she's always annoying us with suggestions; that humanizes her, and shows that she's got big ideas."

"And it's true," Harry said, to which Evie flashed him an unapologetic smile.

"Leave out her pronouns for as long as you can, though," Ben added. "Contributes to the tension and uncertainty."

"Saying that I annoy you might make my help seem undesirable," Evie pointed out. "You should say that you envy my cosmetic know-how and dietary regimen."

"That is a good angle, though I feel like you have an ulterior motive in suggesting it."

"What can I say, it'd be nice to hear."

The conversation moved faster, then. Gil had difficulty controlling his proud grin at having contributed a halfway-decent idea.

They wrapped up their plans for Evie's introduction in a tentatively-optimistic little bow after another thirty minutes and went on to continue deliberating how Jay would best be brought in. Ben seemed determined to keep with the theme of victors as instructors.

"He could teach martial arts," he suggested. "Or...how to build strength. Or agility."

"Are those skills that Capitol citizens value more than they value sex?" Evie asked, pretty much rhetorically.

"No," Ben admitted.

"That's what we're working towards. Not just any old cute gimmick. Our plan for me might work, because we know that our audience is obsessed with their appearance and through that we can get them to eventually care about their physical health, but hoping that they'll suddenly become obsessed with martial arts and climbing things is too much of a gamble." Evie had a very quick and clear way of explaining things; it was why Uma mostly left the task of bringing Ben up to speed on what was required of them to her.

"You're right."

"Of course I am. If we don't come up with anything else, I could be in love with Jay, but...I'd rather not."

"We're not gonna make anyone pretend to be in love, if it can be avoided," Uma said.

"Ben can be in love with Evie," Harry suggested. "He won't have to pretend."

Ben blushed and let out a nervous laugh. "I don't think I'm famous enough to make a wave worth mentioning."

"And it would set the precedent of victors courting non-victors, which we're also trying to avoid," Evie said, though her manner had softened a bit. "No offense, Ben; you seem like a great guy."

"None taken. And thank you."

"Anyway, we're talking about what to do with Jay."

"I'm starting to think Harry's right and we should wait til Jay gets here and then ask him if he has any skills or secrets that might help with this type of project," Uma stated. "Ben, did your dad update you on when Jay's transportation permissions will be done?"

"He said it should be just a couple of days."

"We should wait to bring him in until after Evie's stuff has started. How about we make his arrival public, but play coy about whether he's involved with Cisyphus's Reward or not. Let them speculate; that should fill some time while keeping our ratings up. All those news personalities who aren't Caesar will jump at the opportunity to be relevant, so they'll comb through all our interviews and things, looking for clues. Eventually we'll let slip that he's with us but tell them they'll never guess what he'll be doing, and that buys us more time while they freak out and speculate. Best case scenario, one of their theories is actually decent and we use it."

"If you give them a shout-out for having guessed right, that will encourage more theorizing in the future," Ben added, scribbling excitedly at his page. "Which means buying more time."

Harry and Gil exchanged amused looks at the increasing pace of the suggestions and responses, and they let this part of the conversation be taken over by Uma and Evie and Ben.

Evie's introduction went utterly as planned. Their declining ratings began to climb at the beginning of the interview and skyrocketed when Evie was called onstage, with a loud, energetic musical cue and a brighter smile than had been seen on her publicly since before her Games. She playfully smacked at Harry's foot, and he sat up (where before he had been sprawled across Gil's and Uma's laps) to make room for her on the interviewing couch.

When the cheers quieted to a manageable level, Caesar teased, "Oh, my! Evie, are you another lover? Have you made their triangle a square?"

"I'm afraid not, Caesar," Evie chirruped. "As lovely as my friends here are, Harry hogs the bathroom, Uma refuses to let me win at checkers, and I'm allergic to Gil's cat."

(Later that evening, once the interview was over, Gil protested, "You're not allergic to Gray," to which Evie replied that she enjoyed telling small, inconsequential lies to the audience, just to feel like she was managing to withhold something from them. And also that she couldn't think of anything else that might be wrong with Gil.)

"Those are the only reasons?" Caesar chuckled.

"You haven't played checkers with Uma," Evie answered, her tone playfully dark.

(Later, Uma praised the comment, saying that it might make "playing checkers with the victor of your choice" a valid crowd-pleasing option, down the line.)

The explanation of Evie's new program was taken well, though the following twenty-four hours of media coverage more focused on the possibility that Evie was lying about not being a fourth lover; more than one TV personality wondered aloud how Evie knew that Harry hogged the bathroom, and a few managed to produce photos of Evie holding cats. All four occupants of the house (when one didn't include Tiana and Ella, who didn't weigh in on the matter) found it funny, though Uma suggested that Evie keep the unscripted lies to a minimum and Evie replied, quite lukewarmly, that she'd think about it.

Their ratings continued to climb into the following week, and they kept stalling on bringing in Jay, so that they could continue to ride this new wave as long as they could. By the time the hype from the announcement started to decrease, the preparations for Evie's program were finished and there was new hype as the sign-up list was posted and filled within an hour.

"Granted, we didn't give it a lot of slots to begin with," Ben said over breakfast. (He was over so often, now, that he tended to take every meal with them except dinner; he was as polite to Tiana as Uma was, though he seemed surprised at the idea of knowing an Avox's name.) "But the exclusivity fuels the demand; everyone wants the prestige."

The day Fairy came to escort Evie to her first few clients, Uma, Harry, Gil, and Ben all gathered around her and wished her good luck, in their own ways: Gil and Ben both hugged her, Gil with an encouraging smile and Ben with a painfully earnest "I know you'll do great"; Uma read from a checklist to make sure that she had everything she needed, including the color-coded notes Evie had taken on her clients' profiles; and Harry flatly advised, "Don't be yourself."

Evie smiled, despite her nerves. "I wouldn't dream of it."

When Fairy returned Evie home that evening (after Ben had already left for his own home), she was practically dancing with every step, her smile wide and sparkling.

"It went well?" Uma gathered, setting aside her readings.

"Very well," she replied.

And it must have, because their ratings remained high for another full two weeks. Evie went to work every day, Harry kept tweaking his song, Uma read up on Capitol law and kept track of the rater, and Gil stayed abreast of what was being said about them on the news. There weren't many surprises; they became comfortable. They weren't wondering where they were when they woke up anymore, and Harry and Uma became more lax about letting Gray into the bedroom, and Gil and Harry continued to learn how to speak to the Avoxes with their hands, and Uma and Harry discovered that they each had a favorite of Gil's shirts to wear around the house, and Gil discovered that Harry loved to be kissed on the neck and the chest and Uma loved to be kissed on the thigh and the stomach.

On the last night of their two weeks of comparative coasting, Gil found himself in bed alone. A casual search found Harry asleep at his piano; Gil carried him to bed, and Harry whispered in his ear, "Thank yae, Gillyflower." His accent was more pronounced when he was tired. Gil tucked him in and sought out Uma.

She, too, was easy to find; she was curled up on the window seat of their upstairs lounge, dressed in Gil's shirt and her own undershorts. She was barefoot, and her braids were undone, and there was a teacup abandoned on the floor near the seat, and her breath misted the glass near her face. He couldn't see whether she was asleep, but he suspected not. He quietly sat opposite her at the window and watched the stars with her. They were still as beautiful here as they were at home.

Eventually, she turned her head to face Gil, and she spoke: "I was just thinking that we should probably send for Jay in two days."

"Really?" Gil supposed it was time. Their ratings were starting to dip just a little, and Jay was their ace in the hole. "Okay."

Uma nodded. "If we play it right, and keep the revelations far apart, him showing up should keep our ratings high until..." She trailed off, and she turned to look at the stars again. She was silent for several seconds. "That's what I was thinking."

Gil's mind easily filled in the blank. They knew what the temporary end to their work year was. And what it might mean to them. "CJ?"

Uma nodded.

Gil had never even met CJ, but the thought of anything happening to her brought a prickly feeling to his eyes. Not just because she was Harry's sister, but because she was a child. They were all children, year after year, and it wasn't getting any better, and he was part of that system and for a moment he couldn't breathe, but then he saw that Uma's eyes were looking into his again.

"I'm just hoping that Snow has one good bone in his body," she said, with a dry smile that faded as soon as it appeared. "I really don't want Harry to go through that." She paused, and then the words escaped, quiet but all too important: "It'll be somebody else, if it isn't her."

Wasn't that the whole tragedy of the thing, that hoping for Harry's relief, for CJ's salvation, was hoping for some stranger's death.

Gil saw that Uma was sinking her fingernails into her palm. He reached over and gently opened her hand, preventing the crescent-shaped marks she'd left in her own skin from getting any deeper. "Let's go to bed."

She shook her head once, abruptly. "I can't go to bed until I know what to hope for."

He nodded and continued to sit with her. Now, he looked at her instead of the stars. She always looked amazing in his shirts, but at the moment, she also looked so small and sad. As time wore on, he only became more and more aware of how human she was. How the strength that she demanded of herself had limits. She had burned when she was thirteen and hadn't stopped burning since. No, that was too poetic a way to put it: More like, she had burned when she was thirteen and she was still putting out fires on her person daily. Still trying to swim under the oil and hoping she had it in her to outlast her problems before she drowned.

They were staring into each others eyes. Suddenly, she climbed onto his lap, facing him, kneeling on the cushioned seat with one leg on either side of him and her backside sitting on his knees. He drew her closer by reflex, wrapped his arms around her as though physically holding her would be enough to protect her from the possible results of the reaping and the reality of the Games and the wrath of Snow.

"They didn't deserve to die," she said into his chest. "And we don't deserve this."

He tensed a little. She was being revolutionary because she was upset, but she wasn't drunk or anything (unless she had chosen to drink alcohol out of a teacup for some reason); her judgement wasn't impaired really, so Gil couldn't try and stop her, even though it worried him when she said these things out loud. They lapsed into another brief silence. Gil saw her falling deeper and deeper into the grimmest chasms of her own mind, and he began to wonder what might have brought this on. CJ's potential to be reaped was a looming fear, but it had seemed as though they were becoming hopeful that their success at keeping their ratings high might disincline Snow to use her in that way. What had broken her from those hopes so completely and suddenly?

Then Uma let out a bitter laugh. "You deserve better than me, you know, Gil." Despite her (patently absurd) statement, she tightened her arms around him possessively, as though worried that the universe would reclaim him now that she'd made it aware of its mistake.

Gil was startled by her words and her listless tone, and, not for the first time, he wished that he was like Harry, and able to craft elaborate declarations of love for her, but all it occurred to him to say was an astonished, "But there's no such thing."

Her breath hitched, and her voice came out raspy as she said, "I was greedy. I've always been greedy. I could never be satisfied. I wanted you, so I drew you in and I figured that, as long as I could protect you, it was okay to want you. So I showed everyone that you were ours, thinking it would protect you, and it put a target on your back and started all of this and...I dragged you into this. It's my fault. If CJ gets reaped over this, it's my fault."

"Uma," he said, his tone positively rife with disbelief, "it's Snow's f-"

Immediately, she sat up and clapped a hand over his mouth, her expression stern and clearly conveying, 'I say treasonous things, not you'. She removed her hand just as quickly, and Gil sighed and started over:

"I wanted...to be with you. And Harry. I felt guilty at first, because I thought that I was like all those Capitol people who wanted to steal what you have with each other, but..."

"You're not like them."

"I know that now. And I know that you're not less than I deserve. You're, like, as far from less-than-I-deserve as you can get. You have to know that you're amazing. Don't you know that?" He had to ask, because ostensibly, she did know that. Wasn't that why she so easily took on the role of leader? Because she knew her strengths, and she knew that they benefited from her direction?

She leaned into his chest again. "Gil, I burned kids to death," she said, tightening her arms again around him, and she sniffed as though...was she crying? "I set them on fire, and I lived. Because I'm a destroyer, and that's what destroyers do."

A red flag waved in Gil's mind. Something was wrong. Besides everything, something was wrong, because Uma was not normally one to despair or to doubt herself this much. Carefully, so as to avoid jostling her too much or making her worry that he was leaving her, Gil leaned over and picked up Uma's teacup from the floor. It was empty, but for a few drops around the corners. He took a sip and recognized it as the same tea that he and Harry had been drinking, the night that Evie had joined the household.

The night that they had had that somber conversation.

They hadn't drunk as much as it seemed Uma had, judging by the ring-shaped stain near the rim of the cup. And there was no way of really knowing that the slight edge of melancholy to their otherwise pleasant games of checkers had been chemically induced, rather than induced by the circumstances. Still, it didn't seem out-of-character for Snow to spike their relaxation beverages with something that would cause despair, and it explained the suddenness of Uma's decline in mood after such a successful few weeks, so he nudged Uma and mused, "Maybe we shouldn't drink the tea anymore."

She gazed critically at the cup in his hand, comprehension hovering behind the misery in her expression, then nodded her assent. And reburied her head in his chest. Foisting the blame for her feelings off on potentially-drugged tea instead of her actual self-worth at least seemed to improve her state of mind, as her murmurings came to be about how crappy she felt rather than what a destroyer she was. He kept stroking her hair (It seemed so intimate, to see it short and unbraided. To be allowed to comb his fingers soothingly at her roots, instead of pawing presumptuously at the ends of her braids, like strangers at Capitol functions tended to.), and she seemed close to falling asleep when suddenly Harry was shouting, in the other room.

Both of them sprang to their feet instantly, and Uma, with her slighter form and her head start from having been on top of him, was the faster of the two in reaching their bedroom, where the door stood open and Harry was sitting up in bed, his eyes wild and his muscles tense.

Before either of them could ask if it was another nightmare, Harry was already pointing accusatorially at the floor, where Gray stood looking quite indignant with his back arched. "I woke up, and th-th-tha' thing was licking my face..." Harry's tone of alarm began to trail off as he heard his own words and clearly began to question why he had been so startled. There was a full second of silence, as he processed things.

"Gil, remember to keep the bedroom door closed," Uma instructed, her voice giving no indication that she had just cried herself nearly to sleep in Gil's arms.

"Right, sorry," Gil said, scooping Gray up from the floor. The cat mewed pitifully, not physically hurt but wanting for attention after being startled by Harry. "Did you throw him off the bed?"

"No, I pushed him," Harry said, with a mildly uncertain undertone as he still seemed to be piecing together the events of his waking.

Gil set the cat down in the hallway and closed the door.

"Hey," Harry was saying, his voice going soft and high as he probably noticed the dampness beneath Uma's eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Snow put depression in the tea," she replied flatly, climbing into bed. "Don't drink it."

Two days later, they put in their request to finally send for Jay. He arrived at the Capitol the following morning, to the requested media fanfare, and as predicted, their ratings shot upward as the news outlets speculated as to whether his visit was any indication of what was to come next, for Cisyphus's Reward.

His arrival at their house was a secret, so it would have been reasonable to expect him to no longer be wearing his on-camera persona of the slightly intimidating trickster when he walked through the front door. Still, such expectations were proven false.

Jay wasn't particularly loud, but he had a boyish grin and swaggering gait that spoke volumes. He was kind of like Harry, except he gave no impression (real or put on) of violent impulses or brokenness. In fact, he seemed fundamentally unbothered by everything, which made them all a bit suspicious (well, except for Ben, who was never suspicious of anyone), because there were no well-adjusted victors. The only victors who had this much lightness to their step were the ones who had shed their own senses of compassion long ago, and Jay had never seemed the type.

Uma moved to greet him first, when he entered, but he was way ahead of her:

"Don't tell me I'm the fifth lover," he joked cheekily. "Isn't the master bed at capacity yet? Hi, Evie. Uma. Harry. Gil. Who's this guy?"

Ben took a small step forward. "I'm Ben; Ben Beast."

The laugh faded from Jay's face for a moment, and his eyes looked Ben over- the first hint of something else, through the mask of apathetic mirth. Then he smiled again, thumped Ben on the chest with his fist, and said, "I see the resemblance. How is Adam?"

"He's...fine." Ben laid a perplexed hand on his chest, where Jay had thumped him.

"Ben's here to help us with brainstorming ideas for PR stunts," Uma said, her head tilted as she eyed Jay appraisingly. "Hopefully, you'll be helping with that, too."

"Maybe." Jay shrugged as though he doubted it. "But it seems like I should leave it to the experts. Where's my room?"

"Down that hallway, after Evie's."

They watched him turn down the normally-concealed corridor and disappear through a doorway.

"Well, that was painless," Evie said.

"He doesn't trust us," Uma said. "Or me, at least."

"But he said he's leaving the decisions up to us," Gil said.

"Yeah...I think that's more because he doesn't want to cooperate than because he trusts us with his wellbeing."

"What is it with you and trust?" Evie sighed, slipping an arm through Ben's and turning to address him instead of waiting for an answer from Uma. "Come to the study with me so I can read through my client profiles and brag about what a great job I'm doing."

"Yes, ma'am," Ben said, blushing but also seemingly unable to suppress a fond smile.

The two of them departed.

"I think trust is important," Gil opined, and Uma smiled, and they got back to work.

Later on that night, Evie knocked on Jay's door and offered him a brisk, cohesive breakdown of the available facilities of the house, including a warning about the tea that might or might not contain depression, a crash course on the two Avoxes' names and specialties, and sweeping editorials on the other victors, the food, the living space, and the cat. Jay listened in silence, nodding periodically and smiling in earnest amusement, but he said very little, and soon enough Evie left for her own room.

Jay approached moving-in rather differently than Evie had; instead of establishing himself as a watchful entity, as she had done, he started off seemingly avoiding everyone. He did not come to meals with them, though he would slip in and out of the kitchen to grab food once they were finished. He took no interest in their brainstorming conversations with Ben; when Uma tried to engage him, informing him of when his first interview with Caesar would be and what they were hoping he would say, he would always answer in some concise way ("Cool," or "Makes sense.") and then leave the room.

It didn't last forever, though.

Eventually, cabin fever started to bring him out of his shell; he was used to climbing on rooftops in District 2, idly roaming the streets, not keeping a low profile inside one house with seven to eight people in it.

After four days, Jay had breakfast with the rest of them for the first time. They were having it in the lounge, the better to simultaneously talk strategies with Ben. Such conversations had become less urgent now that they were doing so well, to the point that Harry was barely engaged this morning (instead lying half-asleep in his armchair, from having stayed up so late composing). They would refresh the same ideas a bit, then Evie would filibuster them with talk of her project and her clients, or Ben would inform them of who was throwing a party, where and why, and whether it was likely to interfere with their ratings. They had already had a small scare before, when a birthday gala for some wealthy dignitary had grown so notorious that it had driven Evie's project out of the public eye for a full three hours.

When Jay walked in, Ben was suggesting that one or two of the victors should make an appearance at a party that would be taking place soon, so that the potential publicity of the party itself would fuel theirs instead of blocking them out.

"Whose party?" Jay asked, striding nonchalantly to sit next to Evie on the window seat, with a plate of eggs and bacon.

Ben took a moment to react to Jay's appearance, then politely asked, "Have you heard of Aurora Rose and Philip Dream?"

"Rich people, married, weird names." Jay nodded.

"Their daughter's having a birthday party. Not sure if she'll actually show up to it; it's really mostly for her parents' friends. But there will be a lot of famous people there."

"Uma or Harry should go," Evie said. "Or both of them and Gil. They've been so busy lately, people are starting to worry they won't go to parties anymore. More than one client has asked me about it."

Uma hummed noncommittally. "I was thinking you and Jay. Since you're already openly involved with the CR, and they're not sure if Jay is yet, people will get excited if they see you talking to him. Feed the speculation just a little."

"But that would mean Jay has to actually talk to someone," Evie said, flashing Jay a sweet and pointed look.

"Aw, did you feel snubbed?" he teased.

She batted his question away and continued talking to Uma. "Anyway, by that logic, any of us could go with Jay."

Uma napkinned her face and set her emptied plate down on the table. "Any partner preferences, Jay?"

He shrugged. "I don't care."

"Who could have seen that coming," Evie said sarcastically.

"It looked to me like he was most comfortable with you," Uma said. "That's why I suggested you, Evie. Did you not want to go?"

Evie wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Parties are noisy."

"I wouldn't mind going with him," Gil put in. "Not if Jay doesn't mind."

Harry sat up just to say, "I'm not going with him. I've seen enough oil paintings of us shagging to not want to inspire more. No offense," he added with a coquettish smile in Jay's direction.

"Who was on top?" Jay asked.

"Either, neither, or both. I've seen it all, mate."

Ben frowned. "How...?"

"Well, it'll be Gil and Jay then," Uma said, sounding not quite fond of the idea. She ruffled Gil's hair. "That's in two days."

"There's another high-profile party set for a few days before the reaping," Ben added. "That'll be after we confirm that Jay is a part of the program. I think we send someone to that one, too, and that can be our last hurrah before we reach the finish line, for this year at least."

Harry sagged in his seat again at the mention of their "finish line" and said nothing more.

Gil Legume was almost exactly the way he seemed in interviews, and Jay would be lying if he said he wasn't the least bit intrigued. Sure, he acted the way he did in interviews in real life, but for him, that was due to a lack of trust for the people he interacted with on a daily basis. For Gil, it seemed like he just didn't know how to be any other way. It was...kind of endearing.

Jay suspected Uma had known what she was doing, sending them to the party together.

That's a first. Ha.

The night of, all of the house's occupants (Avoxes notwithstanding) gathered to wish him and Gil luck, which was apparently just something they did, here. (Seriously, they were always gathering in one place, holding group conversations, eating together. Huge culture shock, honestly.) Both Uma and Harry kissed Gil and flashed Jay brief warning looks, not hostile but clearly conveying that they would become hostile if anything untoward happened to Gil. Uma said that she'd be waiting up for them.

"You sure?" Jay asked. "I might be late; I have some oil paintings to commission."

Harry giggled.

They arrived at the party in separate cars; arriving in the same vehicle would be more of a tip-off that Jay was involved in the CR than they were ready to give right now. (The group had apparently decided to really drag out the one surprise, which seemed inspiringly lazy, to Jay, especially since it seemed to be working. Of course, it would only last as long as Ben Beast didn't fall in love with the next random person he spoke to and blurt out everything; he was surprised that Uma, at the very least, was managing to ignore the risk that guy's wide open heart posed. Sure, she didn't know about Mal, but that was no excuse; it was obvious just looking at Ben that his earnestness was a liability.)

Once they were there, though, they gravitated toward each other. Not just because it was part of the plan for them to be seen together at least once, but because it was a Capitol party, and they were the only victors there.

That is, Jay didn't mind it much, but Gil seemed to think it made them at least situational friends.

"Want to eat something?" Gil asked, nodding his head towards one of the many buffet tables but not making a move to approach it, as though really waiting for Jay's answer.

"I could eat," Jay said, and Gil broke into a grin.

That was kind of endearing, too.

They grabbed some food on the comically small plates, and they stood together, eating in silence. Gil swayed to the music, his gaze unfocused as he seemed lost in thought. It was rare that victors could show up at a Capitol party and not be tackled by fans; this moment's peace could probably be attributed to the fact that the birthday girl's parents (and Ben was right that the birthday girl herself was entirely absent) were making soppy speeches from a balcony right now, and all the kiss-ups wanted to be seen front and center in the listening crowd.

On a whim, Jay grabbed a few of the tiny spoons off the table and slipped them into one of his trouser pockets.

"What are those for?" Gil asked.

Jay shrugged. It was rarely worth explaining to people that he took stuff just to take it, not really to have it.

"Do you...really like spoons? We have a lot of them, at the house."

Jay chortled. "I don't need spoons."

Gil frowned, considering his answer. "Why'd you take them, then?"

"It's recreational."

"What does that mean?"

"I dunno."

"Oh."

They lapsed back into comfortable silence, and this time it wasn't broken by either of them, but rather by a group of...Jay decided to generously call them "admirers".

"Are you a part of Cisyphus's Reward, now?" a Capitol woman, seemingly in her forties though it was near-impossible to tell here (Snow was, like, a million, right?), asked Jay, while her flock of friends tittered over and did their best to close in and encircle the two victors.

"Wouldn't you like to know," Jay said, winking suavely and then slipping between two people at the last possible second, to escape. Gil tried to follow, but ended up bumping into a woman with surgically-implanted cat whiskers, apologizing nervously, and being half-coerced, half-physically-pushed, back into the circle.

Not skilled at getting out of these situations, clearly.

Jay allowed himself a quiet laugh at Gil's expense and roamed the party by himself for a minute, easily slipping in and out of conversations, periodically glancing at the more obvious exits, nooks, and hiding places to see if Mal was lurking anywhere. This didn't seem like quite her scene; the people here weren't important enough. Just some rich people with nominal titles and little real life power.

Good food, though.

And loud- Evie was right about that.

The noise was comforting to Jay, though. It was silence he hated. In silence, everyone knew what everyone else was doing at all times. There was anonymity in noise, like an auditory shadow to hide in.

Eventually, he glanced in the direction of where he'd left Gil and found that the blonde was still ringed by a growing, and at the same time tightening, circle of fans. It would have been amusing, were it not so clear that he was becoming increasingly distressed by all the attention. Gil tensed noticeably when one woman went and fondled his arm, and Jay supposed, then, that he should probably, maybe, possibly think of rescuing him.

Or Harry and Uma would kill him.

He wove through the crowd until he made his way to Gil's side.

"Jay!" Gil greeted, brightening immediately. Yeah, Uma kept this guy around for more than his muscle; that was becoming obvious.

Jay addressed the surrounding Capitol citizens. "Careful, ladies and gents. I wouldn't want Uma or Harry getting wind of any funny business."

There were laughs as the gropers receded; even as sheltered as they were (or perhaps because of it), these people knew that no victors would be permitted to harm them, but they were willing to indulge the notion, for the sake of their love for the idea of how protective Harry and Uma were of Gil.

Gil, meanwhile, proved to be disproportionately grateful for Jay's intervention, as he thanked him more than once; it was a little embarrassing.

The rest of the party passed without incident, and they left in separate cars again.

Jay arrived back after Gil, so when he entered the house, only a bit tired (it had been dark for hours, but it was no later than he normally arrived home, back in 2), Gil was already up in bed, and Uma was sitting on a sofa in the front room, in the dark, drinking a cup of tea.

"What are you still doing up?" Jay asked.

"I said that I'd wait up, didn't I?" The way she said it, it was as though she completely missed the point of his question.

"Gil's already home, isn't he?"

"Yeah, and now you are. You think Gil's my only concern?"

He narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what strategic purpose this served. Waiting up for him was an outreach thing, more than likely. Sure, it worked; they were alone in a room talking together. But what was her real objective? She clearly was doing backflips to gain his allegiance, but what did she want with something like that? He wasn't in a position to improve any part of her lot. Was it a recruiting thing? She wanted more victors following her in her unsubtle crusade against Snow? Well then, she ought to have been smart enough to choose someone more impressionable or someone more passionate. Mulan would have been a great choice, her being Gil's fellow mentor and a person with no shortage of fire in her.

Why bring him here, and why try to be his friend?

He decided that continuing to ignore Uma's enigmatic motives would only get more difficult, so he sat down with her.

"Alright. What is it? You gonna proposition me or something?"

She shot him a disgruntled look. "Can I get that question again, minus the stupid part?"

"Why am I here? Why me and Evie? And why try to keep us involved in the politics of running this thing? Why ask us any questions at all, when you can just give orders? What are you trying to do, and is there a way you could do it without all these empty gestures?"

"Snow chose Evie to be first. You can guess why." (He could guess why, and he was surprised to find that the implication bothered him a little, now that he had come to see Evie as something of an ally here.) "We chose you to be next, because you're strong, you're smart, you're likable, and you're not cruel."

He could think of a few responses to that, but he withheld from making them. By those metrics, yes, Uma had made a wise calculation in choosing him, but why were those the metrics? Why on earth did she want smart people involved, when listless puppets would be easier to deal with? Things did make more sense, now that he knew that Evie hadn't been her first choice, but moving forward from Evie, she had chosen Jay?

"We involve you because it would be wrong and stupid not to," Uma continued. "Evie has a lot of good ideas; you probably would, too, if you let yourself into the conversation." She took a long sip from the teacup, and a memory of a warning bounced around in Jay's head.

"Didn't Evie tell me something about the tea here?"

Uma nodded, swallowing her mouthful before confirming, "It might be spiked."

Now it had to be purposeful, the fact that she gave him so little explanation or context for her actions. "Then why are you drinking it?" Could it be possible that Uma Triskelion really just did things for no reason? That would almost be a letdown, though it would certainly free up the time he had started to spend trying to figure out her deal.

"Experimenting," she answered easily enough. "If it works on me again, then we can assume that it really is spiked with something. If not..."

"...Then the tea is safe? And that's important to you somehow?"

Uma shrugged unabashedly. "Tea relaxes Harry. Don't want to remove it as an option unless we have to."

So it was about one of her guys. Fine, that made sense. Doing things motivated by loved ones' wellbeing made sense. Jay couldn't relate, but he could understand.

"And...do you feel any different?" When she didn't answer, he quickly tacked on, "Not gonna start crying on me, are you?" He was joking, but also he was serious. Hopefully, Uma hadn't decided that the way to earn his trust (a thing he gave to no one, full stop, anyway) was to drink away all her walls and defenses.

But no; she gave him a wry smirk and merely answered, "Nah."

Whew.

Under normal circumstances, this would be the point at which he'd duck out, but he had a feeling that there was something else that he meant to say, so he sat awhile to figure out what it was. Uma didn't break the silence, except for the periodic sound of her sipping more tea.

Freaking Uma Triskelion. When he, along with the rest of District 2, had listened to the speech Uma gave on her Victory Tour, his first thought had been, Idiot. Way to get yourself killed. Sure, she had only spoken ill of her own actions in the Games, not of the Games or the Capitol as a whole, but breaking Snow's mold was still what idiots did. Snow killed people from the Capitol just for holding offices that he'd rather have someone else hold, and she thought that he wouldn't off some District 4 peasant who went around yelling about the injustice of in-Game kills on live television? Later, though, Jay had grasped the truth; she had wanted to die. She had wanted to go out setting Snow's world on fire, and Snow hadn't allowed that, hadn't just given her death when she'd up and asked for it, and now both she and Snow lived in a constant string of self-inflicted punishments, trying to cause each other as much pain as they could. Either of them could end their own suffering by just acting in basic self-preservation instead of grand symbolic gestures, but neither would budge. This Cisyphus's Reward thing was practically a monument to that.

"You know," Jay finally said, wondering now if it would even be worth pointing out, "the job Snow gave you isn't actually hard."

Her gaze hardened. "Excuse me?"

"You're going at it all noble instead of just doing the easy, common sense solutions. It's what you always do, and Snow knows it. He gave you an easy job and trusted you to make it hard for yourself, and that's exactly what you're doing."

"Oh, so you think I should-"

"I don't really deal in 'should'." Jay flashed his charming smile.

Uma's demeanor relaxed somewhat, apparently not moved to argue with amorality. She drained the last of her tea. "I do. And that's not gonna change any time soon."

Jay was pretty sure that he had been clear enough about his apathy that he wouldn't have to shrug to let her know he didn't really care. "Feel any different?" he asked again, gesturing at the teacup.

She rose to go to bed, answering over her shoulder, "Don't drink the tea."

"Now, Jay, I think the citizens of the Capitol are a little curious about something," Caesar said, prompting the audience to laugh at the understatement.

"Oh, are they?" Jay played along good-naturedly. "What might that be?"

"I still think it was hilariously lazy of us to stretch it out this long," Jay- the actual Jay, as opposed to the one they were all watching on the television screen -sat sprawled across the armchair that was normally used by Uma, holding a handful of scrambled eggs close to his mouth. The guy's protein intake was close to putting Gil to shame.

"We milked every drop out of that mystery," Evie agreed, in a more self-satisfied tone. She, as per usual, had opted for the window seat, and she was stroking Gray contentedly. It was one of her free days, though it was close enough to the reaping that her clients were already lamenting that they would soon have no more sessions with her for a while, and a few had tried to haggle for her to come in anyway.

As if.

"Now we just have to make sure we don't trip over the finish line," Ben said. He was the only one standing up. He was also pacing, which Evie wanted to find annoying, but it was...charming, to see someone experiencing nerves on their behalf. Not that the Beast family would be completely off the hook for failure, anyway. "We're so close to our off-season; as long as some of you guys show up to Seneca's gala and, I don't know, one of you has a new hairstyle, we should stick the landing fine."

"Should it be me and Jay again?" Gil asked. He and Harry were both on the floor, so that Uma could have Harry's armchair. Harry's head was in Gil's lap, and he was playing with a thread at the hem of Gil's pants (in what was, at least lately, a rare instance of him keeping still).

It seemed to Evie that Harry was seeking out company more and more, these days; he spent more time with Uma or Gil, helping them with their daily tasks, than in the music room. He was more restless than usual, always moving or talking. Evie recognized the signs of someone afraid of their own thoughts, and she made a point not to wonder what was bothering him. Whatever it was would probably upset her, too, if she knew; despite her best efforts, she had developed a fondness for these people she lived with (and even, more surprisingly, Ben), and she knew that allowing that feeling to escalate to worry or commiseration on others' behalf was the last thing she needed.

"Mix it up," Evie said. "Uma and Jay this time, I think."

"Why do I still have to go?" Jay asked, with his mouth full. (Evie sent him a look of distaste.) "They know I'm a part of it, now; why not Uma and Harry?"

"That's not a new dynamic. Anyway, those two are much less responsible when they're alone together."

"Excuse you," Uma said mildly.

"And I guess parties are still too noisy for you?" Gil gathered.

"You guess correctly," said Evie with a smile. Gray hopped down from the window seat to go wheedle for some of Gil's attention. Evie decided not to feel insulted by the cat's betrayal.

"I'll be there, too," Ben mentioned casually. "Seneca's one of my dad's coworkers."

"A Gamemaker party," Harry said with disgust. (He sat up, as if he couldn't help himself, and began pacing the room like Ben.) "I'll definitely not be going."

"Just make sure you don't act like you're at our house every day," Uma reminded Ben.

"Of course not," he agreed. "The audience will start asking for invitations."

"They already are," Evie put in. "They've tried bribing me, they've tried following the car. I've had some grown adults cry and beg for me to let them visit here."

"They've tried following the car?" Ben said, stopping his pacing to frown at her in concern. "I didn't know that; were you scared?"

"Hardly," Evie said, though she could feel a blush rising to her cheeks at his genuine care. "You forget, we've all been through a lot worse than that."

"Just because you've been through worse doesn't mean you can't be scared," Ben pointed out.

She smiled. She wasn't sure if she knew how to form a genuine facial expression anymore, not after so long putting so much thought into every muscle, but she hoped that Ben understood that there was real gratitude in this smile that didn't exist in most of the other smiles in her library. "You're sweet, Benjamin. I think we can drop the subject, though."

"Please do," Harry drawled, in that high, childish voice he often used when he wanted to annoy someone.

"Shut up, Harry."

"Uma, Evie told me to shut up."

"Evie, don't tell Harry to shut up. Harry, stop starting it." In Evie's experience, normally Uma's words would have been accompanied by an amused smile for one or both of them, but not today. As their season drew to a close, she had been acquiring, not Harry's restlessness, but a certain blunt seriousness. Where Harry's focus seemed to flit from thing to thing to avoid immersing in anything for too long, Uma seemed to fixate on whatever issue was presented to her for long enough to pick it thoroughly apart, apparently at the expense of giving any of her emotional presence to the ongoing banter. "So, Jay, you up for another party?"

"Sure. I don't care," Jay said, shrugging to emphasize his own apathy.

Evie made a sound that would have been akin to a snort, were she not so well-comported. "How inspiring."

"I'll tell you what," Jay said, ignoring her comment. "If you really want to shock the audience, you'll show up wearing freaking yellow or something. Or orange. Just something way out of your color scheme."

"Interesting thought, but we're gonna pocket that for next season," Uma said.

"Are you sure?" Evie asked, her interest thoroughly piqued by the idea. "I've always thought that just teal was a bit of a waste; you'd look great in purple."

"I'm sure."

Harry flopped onto his back across Uma's lap, in the armchair, and she ran her hand over his chest almost absentmindedly. Apparently of their own accord, Evie's eyes flicked to Ben, to see how he would react to the display, and indeed he looked characteristically flustered. Warm fondness blossomed in Evie's chest, and she pushed it down, annoyed. Really, a Gamemaker's son, of all things. What ever next?

Unlike Gil, Uma rode in the same car as Jay to get to the gala, since the cat was out of the bag now and it would be weird if they didn't arrive together. They didn't talk once during the entire journey, and as soon as they arrived, Jay slipped off to wander the party by himself.

Uma didn't mind. While she didn't find Jay's company unpleasant, she doubted that it would improve these next few hours very much. She got herself a drink, entertained a few boring conversations with people who really wanted to convince her that they were important (It's Snow's regime, dear; you barely sharpen his pencils.), and pretty much ran in "victor persona" autopilot until Ben found her, shook her hand, and cheerfully greeted, "Uma Triskelion! I'm Benjamin Beast, son of Adam Beast."

The redundant introduction managed to make her smile. "Oh, yeah, I think I've heard of you," she said wryly. "How are you liking the party?"

"It's..." He glanced around, then lowered his voice. "Well, it's definitely not the worst party I've ever been to."

"But still ghastly, I'm sure," Uma said, in her best melodramatic Capitol accent.

Ben chuckled.

His presence ultimately emboldened the other Capitolites to introduce themselves to Uma, but she didn't mind that so much...until Ben suddenly fixed his eyes on some person in the distance crowd, called out "Hey! Mal!" and then practically ran after whomever it was, beckoning excitedly for Uma to follow him.

Oh, good grief. So Benny Boy took after his father in this regard. Uma followed him.

"Hey, Mal!"

A thin girl around their age with stark-pale skin, a heart-shaped face, and hair that was dyed plum-purple turned to acknowledge him. A slightly annoyed look had flashed through her eyes, as though Ben approached her often enough to have become bothersome, but she put on a wide, clearly-forced smile. "Ben," she greeted in a fake bright tone.

"We always seem to run into each other at these," Ben observed, as though he hadn’t just traversed the entire room to speak to her.

"One might even say I 'come here often'," Mal quipped.

Ben, as always, took teasing in stride and even seemed endeared by it. "Lucky me, then."

This actually earned him a softening in Mal’s smile. "Lucky."

Uma was mildly puzzled. That was not an accent, pallor, or body shape one typically came by in the Capitol, at least in her experience. This girl looked like she was from the Districts (but with Capitol hair) and talked like she was from no place Uma had ever heard of. Not of great importance, but Uma liked to know things, by nature. "Where are you from?" she asked straightforwardly.

"Oh!" Ben exclaimed, remembering himself. "Uma, this is Mal; she frequents these parties. She lives near the Capitol’s western border."

Uma made eye contact with Mal, who had her arms crossed and an innocent look on her face. Absolutely no one looked that innocent who wasn’t trying to look innocent. Uma felt safe in assuming that Mal was deliberately affecting an enigmatic air, wanting to be questioned about herself. Wanting to string people along with intrigue and ambiguity. No doubt it made impressions on people who went to parties like these. Good for her.

"Uma and I were just mingling; Jay should be around here somewhere, I'm sure," Ben rambled while Mal kept eyeing Uma, and part of Uma was internally saying, Honey, she is not paying attention. What were you thinking, throwing a victor in front of a Capitol girl and trying to chat about anything else?

Sure enough, as soon as Ben stopped speaking:

"Uma Triskelion," Mal greeted, stretching out the name somewhat haughtily (but then, this was the Capitol). "You’re quite the little celebrity, where I’m from."

This brought Uma’s suspicion back; she was a celebrity everywhere. What was that supposed to mean?

"…not so much with my mom, though," Mal added, "since I was setting things on fire for months after I saw your Games."

"How trendy," Uma said.

"Well, I've had a weird love for fire since I was about six; I guess that was a me thing. You just happened to feed my rebel streak." Ha. Hope Snow doesn’t take that out of context. But in seriousness, the longer Mal spoke, the less she sounded like the flowery, somewhat formal verbosity of the Capitol. Maybe she was what passed for poor in this place, although that wouldn’t explain why she was at a party like this.

"I can’t imagine what my mom would do if I started setting fires," Ben interjected.

"Probably take away your pile of gold or something," Mal said with a tight (annoyed again) smirk. So apparently people from the Capitol also made jokes about how rich other people in the Capitol were. That also gave some credence to the Capitol Poor theory.

Ben laughed, but Mal’s attention was off him as soon as it had come, her gaze returning to Uma with a sharpness as though she was barely holding back from verbally prompting Uma to laugh at her joke.

Right, she was supposed to not anger her audience. Uma put on a bright smile. "Yeah, the Beast family is very passionate about child safety."

Mal laughed, although her mind was visibly racing for something to say, as though she had planned this encounter out thoroughly and now found herself forgetting her lines. That wasn't so suspicious; lots of people found they didn't know what to say to celebrities.

Uma glanced over at Ben and subtly elbowed him when she discovered that he was smiling vacantly at Mal. Dude, she’s pretty, but she’s not interested.

"And to think," Mal finally mused, in a bright tone, "you did it all when you were…thirteen."

So they were talking about the Games again. Great.

"Like the thirteen Districts," Mal added, for some reason.

"If you count the one that got blown to a grease stain," Uma agreed, frowning perplexedly because it was rare for District 13 to come up in conversation, especially in the Capitol, and Mal had voluntarily brought it up out of nowhere.

"I do count it," Mal said adamantly.

"I only count the ones that get reaped from," Uma said. She wasn't sure why she said it, but something about Mal's tone, the pompous way she spoke and tried to claim Uma's fascination, rubbed her the wrong way. "But that’s probably a 'me thing'."

Mal’s tight smile returned, her eyes wide. Uma was given the impression that she had imagined this conversation going differently. Maybe it would have, had they met sometime farther away from the reaping, when Uma's patience would have been higher for pointless references to destroyed districts and callous mentions of how cool fire was.

As it stood, though, Uma patted Ben on the back. He was clearly failing to keep his crush’s attention, but continuing to bother her was unlikely to help matters. "Nice meeting you."

"Nice meeting you," Mal parroted flatly, her arms crossed again.

But before they could make an escape, another voice was saying, "Uma! Mal! I didn’t know you two knew each other."

Uma turned her head and found that Jay had sidled up to them and was now wrapping an arm around Mal’s shoulder. Mal looked annoyed, but less like Jay was an overly-persistent suitor than as though her obnoxious brother had crashed the party.

"Jay," Ben greeted pleasantly, managing not to sound like he saw him on nearly a daily basis.

"Who invited you?" Mal asked, a grudgingly companionable smile appearing as she regarded the rascally victor.

"How do you two know each other?" Ben asked, gesturing from Jay to Mal. Uma was curious, too. How and why did this completely random, probably poor Capitol girl seem to have personal ties with so many people?

"You're not the only one I run into at parties." Mal shook Jay off of her shoulder. "He's a nuisance; I don't know how you live with him."

She didn't look at Uma when she spoke, though she must have been addressing her with her last statement.

A Gamemaker's son and a victor. Those were people Mal had happened to run into at parties. So, did her parents have some sort of connection with the Games? Was she some coordinator's daughter or something? Even then, this was pretty elite access she was getting; Miss Fairy wasn't invited here. A particularly low-ranking Gamemaker's daughter?

Uma caught herself giving a crap. That's enough of that. "I'm gonna try some hor d'oeurves," she announced wearily. "It's been real."

"Unfortunately," Mal grumbled, almost inaudibly, once Uma's back was turned.

The reaping came too soon, despite their every effort to slow down time.

Harry kept busier than ever, doing every chore and having more and more elaborate conversations with the Avoxes using his newly learned signing skills and generally sticking to Uma and Gil like glue. Uma and Gil, meanwhile, gave up all pretense of getting any work done; the last burst of media coverage from Seneca Crane's gala had carried them cleanly over the finish line, and now it was Games season.

It was time.

They had done their job perfectly, and now it was time to see if Snow cared enough to reward that kind of thing.

Evie and Jay didn't care to watch the reaping with them; they didn't know anyone, personally, who was of reaping age, and anyway they had likely read the unpleasant tension of the three lovers and gathered that they didn't want any part of whatever emotional displays might come of the broadcast.

So, it was just Gil and Uma and Harry who gathered in the upstairs lounge to watch. Uma and Gil each held one of Harry's hands as the pre-reaping stuff went dully by. Gil could feel his heartbeat in his throat.

They had done their job.

They had done it really well.

Snow wasn't stupid; he wanted them to keep doing their job.

The reaping footage began to roll.

Uma was already making distressed noises when a burly set of tributes were reaped from 1 and 2, and Gil almost found himself asking if she knew all of them personally, somehow, before his mind corrected him: No. She was reacting because they were large, and until proven otherwise, they were CJ's competition.

A thin, freckled boy with curly hair and an anxious disposition got reaped from District 3, and Gil felt ashamed of himself when his immediate thought was, Not a threat. Small for his age (eighteen-ish, maybe), lacking in confidence. He wouldn't be the one to kill CJ.

If CJ was reaped at all, which she wouldn't be.

Because even if Snow didn't have one good bone in his body, he wasn't stupid.

On to 4.

No one breathed.

The woman who read the names for District 4 unfolded the paper so slowly, as though she had been told to wring every ounce of suspense out of it that she could. Harry's grip on Uma and Gil tightened as the little slip slowly crinkled open.

The woman read the name silently to herself, and chirped, "Oh my." Gil's heartbeat stuttered for a moment, and then the name rang out: "Calista Jane Hook."

It was silent for a full second. Then Harry drew in a quick breath, a late gasp, as if he had been paralyzed in the moment of hearing the news and could only now react to it. But his body, even his expression, remained still. His gaze was riveted on the screen as a scowling girl with honey-colored hair in two untidy braids stomped up to the stage, her jaw set mutinously. CJ Hook had Harry's nose, his mouth, but different hair and eyes and both a thinner and softer build. Her shoes were unlaced. She was making a show of her own defiant lack of fear, but in the clear resolution of the television, Gil could see that she was sinking her fingernails into her own skin the way Uma sometimes did. Uma's gaze was more frightened and tumultuous and soft than Gil had ever seen it.

Harry took in another breath.

"Well," he finally said, sounding winded but flatter than Gil had assumed he would, "either the old man will have some company soon, or we will." Then he giggled in the same way he had giggled during his Games, as though he couldn’t control it, as though his body didn’t know what else to do.

Calista Jane Hook did not cry.

She did not cry hearing her name, or going up onstage.

She did not cry standing next to the great big lad who was reaped alongside her.

She did not cry when Harriet came and cried and went, or when she sat on the train and listened to her ancient mentor ramble on.

She did not cry when she stared out the window and wished that Harry and Uma would be allowed to mentor her like they had mentored all those strangers.

She did not cry because she was not going to die. She was too stubborn to die, and too angry to die. And if angry had been enough for Harry, and stubborn had been enough for Uma, then both of them together would be enough for her.

"You're gonna be a target, you know, because you're already famous..."

Like she didn't know that already.

CJ stalked to the provided bedroom, climbed into bed with her clothes and shoes still on (out of pure disrespect), and dreamed of untangling nets with Harriet and Harry. She cried in her sleep.

Chapter Text

For reasons unexplained, the television in the upstairs lounge was now thoroughly destroyed, so they had to use the one in the downstairs entryway.

Evie didn't ask questions. She could tell from the main trio's new demeanors that knowing would make her care.

And then where would she be?

Uma called Snow as soon as the results of the reaping had properly sunk in, and she asked him to let them visit CJ.

He said that they could only visit if there were cameras present to capture the moment.

At that point, Uma hung up and regrouped with Gil and Harry.

Harry was glassy-eyed and trembling noticeably. (Gil's arm was around his shoulders.) "I don't care if they see," he said tersely.

"But if we make a spectacle singling her out, then the other tributes are more likely to target her," Uma said. Like she was his mentor again. "They'll..." She swallowed, but kept going. "They'll want her out early, so the sponsors will have to spend their money on someone else."

Harry set his jaw, and his head jerked down and then up in what was technically a nod but more resembled a hinge malfunction in some kind of machine.

"We could visit all of the tributes," Gil suggested.

"I can't..." Harry's voice was too tight to finish his sentence, but they understood why it would be impossible for him to keep up a victor persona with the twenty-three people who might be killing his sister soon.

"It's up to you," Uma said, pressing her forehead to Harry's in commiseration and letting him sink his weight against her.

The great big lad who had been reaped alongside her was named Kay, and he did not want to be CJ's friend.

She didn't want to be his friend either, but it would have been nice to have someone on her side, against the batty old mentor (Rudy) and clueless Capitol people, instead of just a hulking opponent to shoot her wary glances and vie for Rudy's attention when all the old man wanted to do was tell CJ how doomed she was.

Kay could have Rudy; CJ ignored him, anyway. She had years of stories and tidbits from people she actually respected, and she didn't doubt they would be of more use than all of Rudy's (obvious) observations about her nonthreatening body shape and her alienating fame.

Rudy could say what he wanted. She wasn't going to die a tribute.

The end of the train ride led almost immediately to her being introduced to her stylist team, who had to be new to the job, as CJ refused to believe that real professionals would have been so quick and constant in asking her about her brother and Uma and what they were like and whether they would make an appearance before the Games. This alone would have built up CJ's resentment, but given the fact that they were asking these questions while also ripping every hair off her body (save the ones on her head), it was fair to say that she rather despised them by the end of the session.

Then she had to sit alone in a room, naked, hair hanging free about her shoulders, to wait for her stylist.

She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled at the wall, as she waited.

Her stylist would be a man, and Kay's would be a woman. Why things were arranged that way, she had only bitter guesses. All she knew for sure was that, if he told her to uncross her arms, she would kick him in his pants, and Snow could just execute her for all she cared.

Better to be executed than to die a tribute.

The door opened, and she stiffened as a broad man swept in with far more energy than she'd expected. "Calista Jane," he greeted her, with a sad smile. "Miss Hook. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but I'm sure we'd both rather you weren't here."

She didn't respond to this, as it could very well be bait. She looked the man over and curtly observed, "You're blue."

He was; his skin was dyed the color of a robin's egg, while his hair and goatee were a natural-looking shade of dark brown. It probably said something about her mental state, but CJ's mind instantly likened his blueness to that of tributes who had drowned, or been choked out by hand. Terrible way to go.

Thankfully, she would never drown. That, certainly, would never happen.

And she would not die a tribute.

"I'm Genie," he introduced himself, offering his hand to shake, possibly by reflex.

She didn't shake it. Of course not; she wasn't moving her arms for anything.

Genie retracted his hand shortly and said, "Now, here's my pitch for the chariot ride: How do you feel about this?" And then he pulled a small notebook out of a large pants pocket, flipped it open, and showed her the design sketched onto it.

Shockingly, it wasn't fishnet-covered nudity, or a revealing swimsuit.

It was a dress with a pattern almost exactly like fish scales, technically gray but also shimmering vibrantly with every color. The dress went almost down to the knees, and under it was a button-up short-sleeved shirt in a flat, non-shimmering grayish-blue. There were fish-scale knee socks, simple buckle shoes, and a big, red hair bow with an even bigger fish hook through it.

I see. I'm a caught fish.

Well, it wasn't the worst fish costume she'd seen riding those chariots in years past.

"It looks like school clothes, but with fish scales," she said. "Except for this part," she tacked on, pointing at the hair bow with the hook (as much as she could, without uncrossing her arms).

"That's what I was going for," Genie answered, with a pleased smile.

CJ wondered why he would bother with such a tactic. Sympathy did not move people to sponsor nearly as much as displays of strength did. Maybe he thought...Oh, hopefully he wasn't that stupid... "Seeming childish won't make the others ignore me," she said. She wasn't like Uma; she couldn't just be small and anonymous and let people overlook her and underestimate her. She was a Legacy; there would be incentive to kill her early on, whether she was weak or not.

They would fail, of course. Because she would not die a tribute.

But still.

"It's not for the other tributes," Genie said. "It's for the audience. You'll have a lot of people already interested in you, because you're Harry's little sister, but we can take it farther; we can make you Panem's little sister. I plan to redo the two braids you had for the reaping; they contribute to the whole look. And we'll keep the makeup to a minimum, outlining your features but not trying to pretend you might be older than you are. You're young, and they should see that." He was sounding like he might actually have grown impassioned, for a second there, before he caught himself and softened again. "Anyway, what do you think?"

CJ twisted her lips sourly, but she didn't say no right away. She didn't love Genie's design, but the girlishness wasn't her quarrel with it; she was willing to try to emotionally manipulate these rich monsters if he thought it was possible, and anyway this looked more comfortable than most costumes she could have ended up wearing. No, there was something else. It was too easy, too soft. The girlishness she liked, but the outfit in its entirety was...incomplete.

"Make the hair bow black instead of red," she said, as flatly as an order. "Keep the hook. And I want red gloves."

"Red gloves?" Genie repeated, not skeptically, but probing for an explanation.

"I want it to look like there's blood on my hands," she elaborated. Untangling nets as the sun rose. No one would get it except Harriet and Harry, and maybe Uma. Everyone else would just see it for the striking visual it was: a school girl with blood on her hands. Maybe they'd call it a brilliant callback to Harry's Games strategy. In fact... "Some on my face, too," she added.

She was young, and it was so unfair that she was here, but she wasn't just a caught fish.

When it came down to it, she would kill to save herself. She would hate it, and have nightmares from it for years (just like Harry did), but she would kill to save her own life.

She would not die a tribute.

"Hmm," Genie said. "I think I might be in the presence of a keen artistic mind."

Harry's and Uma's grief and fear were channeled very quickly into anger, and Gil did not know how to help. All he could do was follow after them as they raged through the house, and remind them to eat food and drink water.

Uma shouted at Fairy ruthlessly when the Capitol woman visited with an insensitive smile and a list of different television personalities who wanted an interview with Harry in the wake of the "exciting news". Uma shouted, and Harry ducked out of the room, and Fairy withered against the wall and cried as if her little sister had been chosen for the Games, and Gil led Uma away, once she was done (They walked past Ella the Avox, who had been watching silently, with crossed arms and a disappointed gaze leveled on Fairy.), to the kitchen (Evie, with an apple in hand, fled the scene as soon as she saw them.), got her a drink to soothe her throat, got her to take deep breaths, let her cry on him for the fifteen seconds she allowed herself to fall apart, and then helped her to tidy up her face so she could go back out and make nice with Fairy. (She was still in the front room, still frozen in shock, still covered in her own tears, though Ella had gone.)

Because they still needed Fairy, even if she couldn't do them the decency of seeing CJ as a human child whose life was in danger.

Cutting ties with people who hurt them was not a luxury they had.

On the chariot, CJ eyed Kay in the corner of her eyes while they waited for the ceremony to begin. He was dressed in tight, scale-patterned trousers, an open, scale-patterned vest, and no shirt. It seemed his stylist wasn't pulling punches on exposure the way Genie was; CJ wondered if she was the same woman who had styled Harry. Nestled in Kay's orange hair was a kind of crown, made from fishing hooks and fishing line.

CJ made a mental note to bring up that she hadn't been aware that crowns were an option, when next she spoke to Genie.

"You do look like your brother," Kay mumbled to her, in the silence.

"I kill like him, too," she replied, coolly. She would never admit that she felt nervous, but there was certainly Something bubbling inside her, aggravating her rage at the unfairness that she even had to do this. She had liked Genie's design, because it looked like everyday-wear, but now she felt underdressed, lacking in armor. Just a girl.

It was the point, but suddenly she hated it.

Just Girls died here, and she would not die a tribute.

Kay snorted, loudly enough that the boy from 3 jumped and half-turned around, as if looking for danger. Kay held up one of his hands and pronounced, "You're smaller than my pinkie."

"Lots of things are smaller than your pinkie," CJ said.

The music started for the ceremony. The chariot for 1 rolled out of the tunnel; the tributes were sparkling with jewels and body glitter, so much so that it was hard to actually make out their features. That meant that they weren't conventionally attractive and their stylists would do anything to hide it. They were big, though. Big, sparkly Careers, ready to kill her as soon as the first countdown ended. She would have to outrun them, or outswim, or hide. After a few musical beats, the chariot for 2 followed them out. They were dressed (horrendously) like sexy Peacekeepers. CJ wanted to gag.

"Is he gonna show up?" When CJ didn't answer, Kay elaborated, "Your brother."

"What, you think I've had a chat with him?" CJ snapped. "Why should I know what he'll do?"

"It would be a good show, if he did, right?"

The chariot for 3 emerged. They wore form-fitting bodysuits covered in lights and computer chips and the like. CJ couldn't claim to identify most of it; not a lot of computers, where she was from.

"Alright, we're up," Kay said, and it was a pointless observation, but he wasn't wrong.

The chariot advanced, and between one second and the next, they were out of the tunnel, doused in light and the roar of the audience, which had gotten bored of the tributes from 3 but now lavished the brawny fish king and Harry Hook's sister in attention and excitement.

CJ suddenly realized that she hadn't planned for how she'd conduct herself. She had assumed that she would stand up straight and strong, but where was she supposed to look, and for how long, and what was she supposed to do with her hands?

Anything was better than looking nervous, though. She put on the defiant look she'd had at the reaping, maintained it for a full second, but then a rose bounced off the side of her head and she shot an annoyed look in the direction of whoever had thrown it. Sure, lots of people threw roses at the chariots they liked, but there was a difference between throwing roses and pelting her with them!

Shooting her indignant look back towards the person who had thrown the rose caused her to suddenly remember that there was no back to this chariot, a fact which gave her vertigo for a second, but she managed to face forward again, stand up straight again, look like someone who would not die a tribute.

But Kay was making such a showman of himself, and taking up so much space as he showed off his muscles and worked the crowd, almost whacking CJ with his manly arm movements, that CJ had to scowl, and she acted on instinct- jabbing her pointiest finger into Kay's side (he recoiled like it was a dagger, which blew a funny little hole in his tough guy act) and said, "Will you move over? You're hogging all the room."

Kay sheepishly scooted over.

There were untouched snacks on the table, and Tiana was laying out another tray for them as the chariot for 4 rolled out of the tunnel. Gil felt some of Harry's muscles unclench when she saw how her stylist had dressed her; so she had a good one, that was good.

Her dress was modest but distinctive; the "blood" on her face and hands, ingenious. Because without the "blood", the outfit was cute. There was no doubt that young Capitol girls would be demanding ones just like it, and wearing their hair in pigtails just like her. But with the "blood", there was the impression that some tragedy had taken place. Or was taking place.

CJ herself looked momentarily shocked as the crowd cheered for her, but then she visibly steeled herself. Her eyes weren't the color of Harry's, but the way she glared was exactly like Harry's chariot ride, so long ago. The only difference was that, where Harry had chosen a camera and glared into it the whole time, CJ glared around her, as if the whole spectacle was equally distasteful.

"Now, would you look at that," Caesar was saying. "No question whose sister this is. Claudius, look, the audience loves her, don't they?"

Claudius Templesmith, evidently not as impressed, drawled out, "Her district partner seems to be the bigger star, though, wouldn't you-"

"Oh!" Caesar exclaimed, chuckling delightedly, for a rose had just hit CJ in the head, and rather than ignore it or just look startled for a second, like most tributes did, she had turned at the waist as if looking for an apology from whoever had hit her.

Harry let out a tense giggle. "She's being herself," he observed.

For a moment, CJ wobbled as if losing her balance, before she returned to facing forward.

Gil watched as CJ poked at the boy who was showboating beside her and seemingly harangued him to give her some room. A sad smile came to his face; he had never had a little sister (officially, that is; who knew what his dad got up to), but he had enough brothers to identify with CJ's glare and her pout and her confrontational energy.

"She sure is," Uma said fondly, and Gil wished that he'd spoken with CJ even once.

Harry giggled some more. "The little terror."

The table was so full that is made CJ dizzy.

Her sleepiness and the way the steam rose from the food and the fact that the rooms here looked like noplace she'd ever been had her all disoriented, and her eyes kept wandering to the silent servants who haunted the corners of the rooms like ghosts.

Rudy was finally giving Kay the attention he'd so craved, as apparently the boy had proven himself with his performance out there, and apparently Rudy didn't like that CJ acted "so mundane; no sense of pageantry!". (Such Capitol talk, from a District man.) That was fine; when Genie had been helping CJ down from the chariot, he'd beamed and said, "Excellent job! Everyone is talking about you."

She would assume that he was telling the truth, because he was her stylist and he'd hardly benefit from lying to her.

And if everyone was talking about her, then that was a good start.

It meant maybe she wouldn't die a tribute.

Maybe.

Her head sank to the table, and she stared at what was left of her dinner. She'd barely put a dent in it; she'd been so sure that she would eat everything.

"If you're that tired, go to bed," Rudy said. Very helpful.

"I don't know where that is," CJ said. She let her eyes close; she didn't want to walk anywhere, however comfortable the bed would be.

Next thing she knew, Rudy was shaking her awake and one of the Avoxes was leading her to the room that would be her own. The servant girl turned down the bed for her and showed her where her pajamas were. CJ blinked sleepily at the girl, suddenly realizing (now that she was up close) how young she was. Harry's and Uma's age, with shoulder-length, straight, black hair. How could they make someone an Avox so young?

Before she left, the Avox girl hesitated in the doorway, flashing CJ a sympathetic look before she moved on.

CJ got into her pajamas still thinking about that look.

She slipped herself between the cool sheets of the bed thinking about herself pitying the Avox and the Avox pitying her.

As her body relaxed into the soft mattress, her mind relinquished its tight, controlling grip on her own thoughts.

I might die a tribute.

Her heart raced. Her stomach dropped. But this time, she didn't cry.

"They reaped his little sister for the Games," Jay said, as flatly as he knew how. He didn't want to sound callous or invested; just factual. "Harry's."

Evie winced immediately. "Why would you tell me that?" she sighed.

Jay shrugged, leaning back against the wall of her room. He knew that the way she meant the question was different from the way he'd answer it, so he didn't answer at all. Evie was refreshingly clear-headed, and he was growing dangerously fond of her as their stay here progressed, but he didn't think much of the way she went about avoiding emotional entanglements by avoiding the information that might cause them. Tamping down on too much sentiment was good, but not at the cost of knowing what was going on.

"Does she look like she can win?" Evie asked, quietly and after a long pause.

"Uma didn't look like she could win," Jay pointed out, but his lack of an answer was an answer. "She has spirit; that's something."

"It can be everything. Or nothing."

Jay sat next to her on the bed, then sprawled back to stare at the ceiling. "Just thought you should know why this house is going to be gloomy and miserable for a while."

Evie crossed her arms over her chest and gripped the ends of her hair with both hands. Not pulling, just gripping. "Poor kids."

The Training Center was her first direct exposure to all the other tributes, and theirs to her. There were hostile glances and wary glances and curious glances.

It was the morning, now, so her mental armor was back in place: She would not die a tribute.

Which meant that they would. All of them. She felt like vomiting, watching them all clique off and laugh together, or shuffle around alone and afraid, or struggle with the various weapons and tools. If she wanted to live, then she wanted them to die. She was going to puke. She had eaten so much breakfast- protein, protein, protein, to make up for how little she'd eaten yesterday. And now she might just throw it all up, watching the Careers joke together and the wee girl from District 12 struggle to tie some knots. She almost moved to show the girl the right way, but what would be the point? Better to try out some snares or-

"Calista Jane!" a voice suddenly called out.

CJ whipped around. The girls from 1 and 2 were beckoning her over with welcoming smiles. She crossed her arms and warily approached. "Yeah?"

"I'm Maddy," the girl from 2 said, putting out her hand to shake. She had very pale hair and a very wide mouth. CJ shook her hand. "This is Ginny."

Ginny, from 1, smiled and wiggled her fingers at CJ. She actually looked good; CJ couldn't imagine why her stylist had decided to plaster her face with glitter, for the chariot ride. She had curly, black hair and a prominent nose and dark eyes. "We're Legacies, too," Ginny confided. "But no one really remembers our moms, because their Games were boring."

"Speak for yourself," Maddy said. "My mom chopped a guy to pieces."

"We were wondering if you want an alliance with us."

CJ frowned. The boys from 1 and 2 certainly hadn't given her the impression that they were interested in joining forces. She pointed at them (They were throwing spears at a target, across the room.) with her thumb. "Do they know you're asking me?"

"Oh, we're not teaming up with the boys," Maddy said with distaste. "They have no subtlety, and they keep challenging other big guys, like the one from...well, your District."

"They'd just get us killed," Ginny agreed.

Anyone would get you killed. That's how it works.

"We both have weapons training; you have whatever skills you have, and you'll get us parachutes, since you're the most famous person here," Maddy concluded. "How about it?"

CJ wanted to agree. She liked the idea of an all-girls alliance, and she agreed that the big Career boys were obnoxious, and she wanted to be protected by someone who was trained to use weapons, but...Looking at Ginny and Maddy, they were both bigger than her, and they seemed to already have become friends. When the time came for the alliance to break up, she wouldn't stand a chance against them. "I'll have to think about it," she said.

"Alright. You have til the Games start. But if you score below an eight, with the Gamekeepers, we'll rescind the offer."

"I didn't realize sevens don't get parachutes," CJ snarked as she walked away from them.

No, she didn't want them as allies. They were taking all of this too well; how untrustworthy was that?

She practiced with the snares and ropes and sat through a seminar on how to find clean water. She tried out the climbing wall, though she preferred to climb nets. For two minutes, she tried throwing knives, but she didn't have a natural knack for it, and it wasn't like she was going to become an expert in the time she had, so she abandoned the idea.

She learned to make a fire with matches, then tried to make one without matches. Evidently it was impossible, so she was at the mercy of the Cornucopia.

Someone cleared their throat beside her: the boy from 3. "I'll show you how to do this if you show me the fastest way to make a net," he said. He was soft-spoken, but he had a purposeful sound to him. Curly hair, freckles, brown, steady eyes. The fastest way to make a net? That sounded like he already had a plan.

"Show me, then," CJ said.

He showed her. It took ten minutes for her to master it, but soon enough she was able to coax a flame out of the bare wood with some regularity. He was a good teacher.

He blew out her most recent fire. "I'm Carlos," he said. He didn't try to shake her hand.

She eyed him with interest. "I'm CJ." But he already knew that. "Alright, let's get to the ropes."

Uma was, again, on the phone with Snow.

Again, haggling for them to meet with CJ without Snow making a production out of it. Harry could manage to be in the room, but he couldn't manage to talk to Snow himself. It seemed he couldn't do anything lately.

Gray the cat climbed onto his lap.

He stroked the cat's head.

Aside from being a good teacher, Carlos proved to be a quick study; he took to knots like a fish to water.

"What are you going to do with a net?" CJ asked him.

He shrugged, but it clear that it was a modesty shrug. "Use it to climb, use it to trap food...use it to trap Careers."

CJ giggled, and Carlos looked slightly gratified by her approval.

They went through the other training areas together, helping each other to learn more quickly. As it turned out, they were, both of them, particularly dexterous; the difference was that CJ's hands were trained for tying rope, unknotting fishing line, untangling nets, and Carlos's were trained for handling microchips, disassembling and reassembling the anatomy of a computer or other machine, and "soldering", whatever that was. Carlos had the quick precision, the lateral movements, the foresight of how energy would travel from here to there, and CJ had the spatial reasoning, the circular movements, the understanding of how things held each other in place. They were just different enough, and just similar enough, to make learning from each other easy.

Eyes followed them, as they circumnavigated the room together. Maddy and Ginny had evidently gone to join the boys from their District, after all; the four of them were staring at CJ and Carlos with expressions that concerned CJ to varying degrees. Ginny looked entirely neutral, Maddy amused, but the boys...they looked fearsome.

The pieces fell into place, as they always did, regardless of whether or not Uma liked where they fell.

Snow would not relent to letting Harry have a private moment with his sister; it was either a surprise appearance onstage during her interview with Caesar, or nothing. Harry insisted that he was willing to see her publicly, so long as he could see her. Speak to her, before...

And Uma couldn't deny him that, no matter if she thought it was a bad idea.

She wasn't allowed to see CJ, cameras or no cameras.

"My dear," Snow had said, enjoying himself an unbearable amount, "it's much more cinematic if he goes alone. Surely you know that."

"Let me make a separate trip, then," Uma had suggested. "After, or before."

"No, I think that would quite disrupt the lesson you're meant to be learning."

The lesson.

Uma's nails sank into her hands as she buried her face in the towel on the back of the bathroom door. She allowed herself fifteen seconds to fall to pieces before she had to move forward. She bit down hard on the fabric of the towel to keep from screaming. Fifteen, fourteen...

The lesson was helplessness, of course. The lesson was that, at Snow's word, she could be denied the right to make things even a little better for anyone, denied the right to advise CJ, talk to her, even just give her a hug and let her feel like things were going to be alright for a second. The lesson was that, no matter how miserable she'd been as a mentor, he could make her more miserable by taking the job away from her. He could always make things worse, and she could never, by her own power, make things better.

Two, one. She raised her head. There were preparations to be made.

"I think CJ wants to ally with the boy from 3."

CJ glared at Kay. She had almost made it through a whole meal without hearing from Rudy once, but now the old bugger's attention was on her.

"He's too scrawny," Rudy said, as if it were an open-and-shut case. "Not him."

"It's my choice," CJ said, now glaring at both of them, "and I didn't say I wanted him, anyway."

"She spent all of her training time with him," Kay butted in again.

"If you want an ally so bad, I can ask around..."

"I don't," CJ said firmly. And it had been true, before this conversation, but now she was considering allying with Carlos just out of spite. It was true that he had a slight frame, which meant that, if he ever turned on her, she had at least a chance of overpowering him. And he obviously had a plan, as well; a plan that involved nets, which CJ was sure she could help with.

But.

Did she really want to be there when Carlos died? In the best case, she wouldn't have to kill him herself; it'd be somebody else doing it. Because she wouldn't die a tribute, which meant that he...he would.

No, maybe she still wouldn't ally with him. If she could manage to get out of this thing without seeing any deaths, then she would.

But.

What better chance was there for her to survive? She remembered something Uma had once said to her, when she was younger: 'An alliance means you split every risk between you, so everyone only gets a piece of the risk instead of the whole thing.'

CJ wrestled with herself on the matter until she went to sleep that night, ultimately coming to the decision that she wouldn't seek out an alliance with Carlos, but that she would agree if he offered.

When she (and Kay) arrived at the Training Center the next day, it took her a minute to spot Carlos, because he was surrounded by the Careers; even once the process of elimination told her that he had to be somewhere in that clump of people, she didn't see him until the four Careers walked away (the boys going one way and the girls going another), leaving him pale-faced and startled-looking, as if they had just told him the time and place of his own death. (Which, strictly speaking, wasn't impossible.) When CJ began to approach him, he streaked off to the other side of the room, to occupy himself at the paint station.

Hm.

CJ stomped up to Maddy and Ginny, where they were trying out the archery set. "What did you say to him?" she demanded.

"To who?" Maddy asked.

"You know who. What was that about?"

"We just told him not to bother you while you consider our offer. If anything, you should be thanking us."

"Screw your offer; I'm not allying with you."

"Then you'll probably be the first one we go for, when the bloodbath starts," Ginny said. She sounded apologetic, but what did that matter? "If we don't get to benefit from your sponsors, it's better if you went out early."

"Died early, you mean," CJ corrected venomously. "May as well say it."

"Don't get high and mighty with her; you want us dead, too," Maddy pointed out.

CJ couldn't say that she was wrong.

She couldn't make herself talk to Carlos again, either.

Maddy was right; there was really no point in making friends here.

She trudged through every station with a sour feeling in her stomach, hyperaware of all the other tributes and strangely guilty about how none of them might even be here, if she had just killed Snow with a ballpoint pen when he was in their study.

Gil lost his fifth consecutive game of checkers, and Harry barely reacted to the match's end; he just promptly started setting up the pieces again, right into their starting positions, then made the first move of their sixth round.

"Thank you for doing this with me," he said tensely.

"Of course; anything you need," Gil said, moving his piece.

There was color in Harry's cheeks again. The perplexed look that had lingered in his eyes every moment since CJ's name had been called (a look as if it stunned him, on some level, that life could continue moving, now that his sister was to be a tribute in the Games) was gradually fading. Now, his eyes seemed to crackle with a different emotion every second. Desperation, rage, humor, grief...

Sometime during their eighth game, Uma came in, looking exhausted. She had Harry's full attention as soon as she entered. "It's all arranged," she said dully. "The prep team will meet you there." And she wrapped her arms around him from behind. Harry took both of her hands and kissed each palm. She rested her cheek on the top of his head.

Impressing the Gamemakers seemed like an unfair expectation, to CJ.

It would mean no more training in the Training Center, which was good, because she was tired of the weird social setting, where they acted like friends or classmates even though they would be killing each other soon. And it was the last thing she would have to do before the interview, which was not as good, because she was running out of time and her throat closed up whenever she thought of it.

But as an event, independent of being the end of her training time or the beginning of her interview preparation, it was a loathsome thing.

Having to show off her skills for the people who had chosen to make their living tormenting children for fun, it was loathsome.

But she had to do it. For the sponsors, if nothing else. No matter whose sister she was, her prospects slimmed considerably if she couldn't scrape together at least a six or a seven.

"Aim for an eight," Rudy told her, over and over again. "Someone as slight as you getting more than an eight is just asking for trouble. You're already a target because..."

"...'because of your brother'," CJ drawled along with him, and the words tasted sour because they were unfair, too. Phrasing it like it was Harry's fault, when all he had dared do was survive. Well, survive and be as disgustingly in love as anyone could stomach. Thinking about Harry and Uma suddenly reduced her to giggles, as she stared down into her breakfast plate. Those two. With their eyes and hands always drifting to each other, and their strange inside jokes. And the way they both still had some fight burning in them, after everything. In a way, they were products of the Capitol's cruelty, but such unintended ones. Like a mockingjay's song. Or like...

Harry would be alright, CJ suddenly thought. With Uma, and with that Gil lad, he'd be okay if...she died a tribute. Stop thinking it.

And Harriet could bear it, too. She was so tough, and she moved past things so well. And she had about a dozen people vying for her attention; some lad or lass from the docks or the bakery would jump at the chance to dry her tears, if she even lowered herself to cry at all.

CJ giggled again, helplessly, but Rudy had no patience for her inattention; he cleared his throat.

"What is your plan for impressing the Gamemakers?"

"I'll be showing them my spear work," Kay interjected, bless the poor thing. "I'm more used to a trident, but I've been teaching myself..."

"That's good," Rudy said. "I have full confidence in you. CJ?"

She scowled. She'd practiced with a lot of things, accumulated many skills, and mastered none. But she did have her prior knowledge. "Tie a noose or something, I guess."

"No one wins with rope work."

"Like you're the expert," she grumbled under her breath. Harriet always hated it when she grumbled. She wished she were having a row with Harriet right now.

"I won my Games, which is more than you've done," Rudy said back, and he was not Harriet, and he was not close enough, but he was something.

She banged the end of her fork into the table. "Rudy, you barely even saw the other tributes, your year; you waited out the competition; I saw the footage."

"Yes, which means I knew how to keep myself safe and keep myself fed. It's not as flashy as taking a blood shower, but it did the job."

They glared at each other in silence until Kay sighed and left the table.

Then, barely an hour later, she was sitting in the waiting area while the lad from 1 was in with the Gamemakers. Fidgeting, because Rudy had gone and shaken her up, and maybe she had no idea what she was doing and she would score either too low or too high, and he was honestly right; what would it do if she scored a ten, or even a nine, as unintimidating as she was? Much too ostentatious. She would be chum before sharks.

The sound of Ginny and Maddy laughing with each other shook her from her brooding. They were chuckling so hard, rocking in place and weakly swatting at each other, and it made CJ smile despite herself, albeit bitterly. At least someone was having fun. How they could manage it, she would never know; they knew that they couldn't both survive. And yet every time she searched for signs that they were faking their camaraderie, she only turned up more shared glances, more whispered jokes, more time spent linked at the elbow. They had really become friends, somehow. Her eyes found Carlos, of their own accord; he was sitting with his head bowed and his elbows on his knees. Thinking deeply, probably.

They called for Ginny, and for the lad from 2, and for Maddy, and for Carlos, and it felt like it was going too fast, and CJ was becoming short-winded, and they called for Kay, and it was too cold in here but she refused to shiver or rub her arms or show discomfort. She kept still.

They called for her.

She stomped in with her arms crossed. Didn't say anything. Didn't look at the Gamemakers. Just went to the ropes and tied every knot she'd ever heard of. Tried not to imagine that she was practicing with Harry or Harriet, because she refused to cry in front of them. Untied all the knots just as easily. Got a near-perfect score on their little poison identifying game. Climbed a few of the climbing things. And to end it off, she started a fire without using matches, just like Carlos had taught her. She thought a few of the Gamemakers might have applauded, at some point, but her mind was too far away to be sure.

"Calista Jane!" someone called out while she was leaving the room.

She turned toward the Gamemakers, her face feeling hot.

"Could you put out the fire, before you go?" the same voice asked. It belonged to the Head Gamemaker, Beast. The one who had been fluffy for a time and then gotten his skin back good as new. The one Harry had all those funny stories about.

"What?" she called back, as if she couldn't hear him.

"Put out the fire," he told her again.

She smiled at him, in the vague way one smiles at someone when they haven't quite heard them but falsely believe they have, and she curtsied politely. "Thank you!" And she left.

They gave her an eleven.

"Is that okay?" Harry asked Uma, with desperation in his voice, as the eleven was still gliding across the screen.

He was asking her as his mentor, but she couldn't separate herself enough to be blunt, because it was CJ. "That depends," was what she said. True, she had made every effort to make herself invisible, inconsequential, going into her Games, but that wasn't an option for CJ, and there was no use pretending it was. So, why not let her have an eleven? It might give the Careers reason enough to recruit her into their alliance.

But it was CJ. The girl who had, more than once, knocked on Uma's door begging her to help her tidy herself up because she'd been in a fight and didn't want Harriet to know. And that was when she wasn't going through the worst ordeal in her young life. Chances were, she had made some enemies there, and a high rating with the Gamemakers would give them even more reason to...

"It's good for the sponsors," she said. "And it's a good sign that the Gamemakers are staking their scoring credibility on her; if they thought she would go out during the first day, they wouldn't dare score her so highly, or the score would start to mean nothing. They expect her to make them look good."

Her words managed to relax Harry; he nodded, and she supposed that she had just taken the same risk, in a way. Staked the credibility of every comforting word she gave him in the future on the ones she was giving him now.

"Maybe we can call Adam," Gil suggested, "or Ben, and one of them can tell us what's happening."

"I just keep thinking that Snow might have told them to give her a high score, just so they'll target her," Harry said. A weak smile crossed his face. "She would make such a fuss, if she heard me say that. She'd act so offended."

"She would," Uma agreed. "She'd probably smack you, and say she can score an eleven without Snow's help." She passed Gil one of the snacks Tiana had set out for them, to keep him from feeling left out. The words 'You'll get it once you meet her' kept weighing at her tongue, but she could never say them.

Maybe that was the jaded mentor in her.

Genie's second design for CJ was just as girlish as the first. This dress kept the iridescent scale coloring from the first one, this time with a halter top and fluffy skirt, with sandals laced all the way up to her knees.

"Kay had a crown, for the chariot ride," CJ said. "Do I get a crown this time?"

"Will a circlet do?" Genie asked.

And it would. The little, blunt fishing hooks composing the thing would surely be tangled in her hair, and the way they dangled against her forehead was a bit annoying, but she liked to look regal.

"Your saltiness, in the chariot ride, went over well with people," Genie told her. "I don't think we should push it this time, though."

"You want me to play nice for them?"

"I want you to play nice for you." Genie smirked. "You never have to be dishonest. Just be sure that you're in control of your temper, and Caesar should do the rest."

True. CJ had seen enough interviews to know that Caesar had a gift for making boring people likable. And she had talked to enough people in her District to know that he had a gift for making people forget that he was using this talent to generate more enthusiasm for the Games. CJ resolved, then and there, that she would not forget who Caesar's boss was.

Or Genie's, for that matter.

"Fine," she said.

The crowd for the interviews was noisy, as was the music for Caesar's grand introduction. CJ couldn't imagine how Harry or Uma sat through these things all the time; it was all so obnoxious. So, right up Harry's alley, she thought wryly, and wished that she could have teased him in person.

More than the noise, though, the sheer volume of the room was daunting. This was surely the biggest room CJ had ever been in, and still they had managed to fill it with people who were all eager to watch them die. The understanding of just what they were cheering for and the looming fact that the Games would be next, just a morning away, made the atmosphere positively oppressive.

She sat in her seat among the other tributes, extremely conscious of the fact that the cameras could broadcast her reactions to anything, even if she wasn't onstage yet. She decided this may as well work in her favor; if she made entertaining faces when the other tributes spoke, the footage would probably cut to her more often. A nice surreptitious way to gain sponsors, and as no one would let her forget, sponsors were her primary advantage. Especially now, with that ridiculous eleven.

(Bloody Beast. What sort of game was he playing?)

Ginny was the first interview of the night. This time, her stylist hadn't lacquered her face with glitter, so there was a fair amount of whistling from the audience as they took her in, all decked out in her sparkling, low-plunging gown with her hair pinned back so her lovely face was properly on display. Maybe that had been a tactic; downplaying her beauty early on so that it would surprise them later, once she was in her best finery. Did that sort of thing work around here?

"Virginia Gothel!" Caesar cheered. "She's lovely, isn't she folks?"

"Thank you, Caesar," she said, with a modest smile. "You can call me Ginny, you know."

The conversation went as expected; CJ supposed they might have earned Ginny a few undecided sponsors, but she doubted that any sponsor who had chosen to support a different tribute was going to change their mind now. Caesar was nice enough to bring up her mother's uneventful Games victory, and to ask, "Do you plan to emulate her strategy?", as if anyone even remembered what the woman's strategy had been.

Ginny responded, "Oh, yeah; the part where she, uh, won." Her delivery of the joke was stilted, but she still earned a laugh.

The boy from 1 was next. Caesar called his name, but CJ soon forgot it. He was boring as a brick, and clearly didn't know how to engage with Caesar's banter. Maddy, after him, outshone him easily. She had a ringing laugh and a downright incandescent level of confidence. Definitely some sponsors gained, there. Comparatively, the lad from her District was the human embodiment of a shadow. He was steady and dark, and he outright said, "I'd like to kill the boy from 4, definitely."

Kay glowered at him from his seat, crossing his arms in acceptance of the challenge. CJ, who hadn't been able to help laughing out of sheer astonishment for the other boy's words, patted Kay's arm consolingly and whispered, "He knows you'll best him; that's why he's boasting." Earning a grudging smile from him.

She tried not to think about whether she did it genuinely, or for the cameras.

The girl from 3 came and went. In Carlos's interview, he was fidgety and nervous and didn't look at Caesar or the audience once, as he answered all the questions.

And then.

"From District 4...We loved her as Harry's adorable little sister..." (The crowd was already applauding. Caesar chuckled as he had to wait for them to settle down, and CJ fought against the sudden urge to vomit.) "...but now, she is being called Panem's little sister." Had Genie actually gotten that nickname to stick? How many conversations had he had to slip that into to get people saying it? "Please welcome, Calista Jane Hook!"

She went into the light, and it was blinding.

She openly shielded her eyes as she made her way to her seat onstage. It was comfortable, but too big for her. Of course, it had to accommodate the likes of Kay.

"Calista Jane," Caesar cheered again. "Calista Jane. Or should I call you CJ?"

"My friends call me CJ," she answered.

Caesar made a show of throwing a hand over his heart, with an exaggeratedly startled smile. "Oh, that was not precisely a yes, was it?" he laughed. "She's clever, isn't she, folks? 'My friends call me CJ'. Not exactly permitting it, are you?"

She giggled, and she hated how easily it came as she conceded, "You can call me CJ, Caesar."

"Oh, good!" He pretended to wipe sweat from his brow. "CJ Hook. You are really making a name for yourself, aren't you? Isn't she, folks?" A roar of assent. "Positively making a name for yourself, and the Games haven't even started yet! Does that amaze you, or is it just no big deal? A day in the life?"

"Oh, I...can't take all the credit." Her face felt hot. Was she actually blushing? As much as she hated every single bit of this, why did the mere placement of her in the spotlight change her behavior so drastically? This was a new kind of fear, a kind she had never experienced before, and it was making her go along with things like this wasn't a well-decorated atrocity. "I've had a lot of help. Of course, I've had Harry and Uma advising me through the years, and my stylist has been...really good about taking my suggestions into account."

"Wait, wait, wait. Do you mean to tell me that some of the designs were your idea?"

"Just parts of them. I thought of this." She pointed at the circlet on her head. "And the fake blood, for the chariot ride."

"Brilliant. Simply brilliant. At your age? Outstanding! She certainly has a future in design, if she wins this year. You can apprentice for Evie!"

"When I win," she said flatly.

Caesar's smile took on a different quality. Not quite soft, but as close to it as his stage persona allowed. "Well, that's exactly what your brother said before his Games," he told her. "And speaking of your brother, President Snow tells me we have a little surprise for you."

And then another spotlight pointed at the side of the stage, and her older brother walked out, to a swelling musical cue and a roomful of deafening screams.

Harry.

He was dressed in one of those stupid see-through net shirts they always insisted on putting him in, and it was just about the clearest sign that they had really only allowed him here for the audience, not for her, but she didn't care; she got up and ran at him. What had already been raucous applause grew somehow more earth-shattering. CJ leaped at her brother, and he caught her, and she was weightless for a little while.

Caesar kept trying to prompt them to get back to the center of the stage, where a seat had been added for Harry, but it was a while before they actually made their way over. CJ was shaking like a leaf when she sat back down. She closed her hands into fists, taking comfort in the fact that Harry had done this a million times.

"So!" Caesar said, as the histrionics died down. "Let me just say, it is lovely having you both here."

One of us doesn't have a choice.

"Lovely to be here, Caesar," Harry said. His voice was hoarse, and despite the makeup (or perhaps because there was so much of it), CJ got the impression that he hadn't been sleeping well. His fingernails were digging into the arm of his chair.

CJ wished he would rage and fight, throw the chair, curse out the audience for watching this sadistic garbage. She wished he could do all of that and live.

"Your little sister might just follow in your footsteps," Caesar continued. "You must be very proud."

Harry let out a breathy little laugh and didn't answer for a second too long. It dawned on CJ that this was too hard for him. He'd done interviews with Caesar a million times, but he couldn't do this one. His mask was slipping.

So she did what a sister does: she took the piss. "I think he's rooting for Kay, actually."

The crowd's laugh was great and disproportionately long, but Harry's was a short, harsh chip of a thing. A laugh pulled from him, more than anything. There was a chance he would not hold it together.

Fortunately, Caesar knew his trade well. "I'm sure he's not!" he chuckled out. "Though, since he is here, maybe...he can convince you to tell us a little bit about that eleven you scored." A graceful way of moving the focus back to CJ, and it even brought Harry out of his shell a bit, as he appeared curious, as well.

CJ made a show of sighing and rolling her eyes. "Must I reveal my secrets?"

The crowd implored that she do so.

CJ turned toward her brother again, and his victor facade was finally here. The lazy smile she saw mostly on TV. It almost tripped her up, seeing him not be himself, seeing him be Harry Hook the Victor when she needed her big brother who borrowed Harriet's eyeliner without permission and made tea on stormy nights, but he casually dropped his hand over hers. They were in this together. Pretending together, like when they and Harriet had kept secrets from their father. She joked, "You never told me they were so impatient!"

"Well, I didn't expect you to have to know," he jested back. At least, in his tone it was a jest. In his words, it was a vulnerable truth.

"Harry, you must be curious, yourself, about the eleven," Caesar said, evidently noting that Harry was ready to play along, now.

"I was certain she bribed the Gamemakers," Harry said, and she elbowed him.

"Hey! I have lots of survival skills," she asserted.

"Well, let's hear it!" Caesar suggested. "How did you earn such an impressive score?"

"I'm sure it's against the rules for me to tell you. And I'd like to stay on Adam's good side, just now, thank you very much!"

The camera, no doubt, cut to Adam Beast in the audience. Meanwhile Caesar was laughing along with the crowd, saying, "Oh, how cheeky! I love it!"

CJ wondered if she should have said "Mr. Beast" or "Mr. Head Gamemaker" or something of the sort, but she decided she preferred to call him by his first name. Anyway, it was a victory that one of Uma's nicknames for the man hadn't slipped out. That would have been something.

"At any rate, that mysterious eleven certainly makes your prospects for victory look pretty good, doesn't it?" (The audience agreed.) "Which I know everyone is glad to hear, since this Hook isn't quite so likely to get scooped up by her mentor."

A rumble of amusement from the audience. CJ only figured out what Caesar was implying when Harry turned an astonished glare on him. "I think she's a bit young for that," he said, barely keeping a personable tone.

Oh.

CJ noticed, as the man was trying to play things off with his charming smile, Caesar happened to angle his cue cards in Harry's and CJ's direction, almost as if to say, 'Sorry; it was in the script'. Snow was bloody disgusting.

"He's like this at home, too," CJ covered for Harry. "All the boys my age are terrified of him."

"The older ones, too," Harry said. "As well they should be."

CJ pointed at Harry, facing the audience with an expression like 'You see what I put up with?'. "This is what it's like, growing up with old 'blood shower' over here." And she managed not to wince, because they didn't joke about Harry's time in the arena, at home. It wasn't a funny thing to joke about. Harry gave her hand a quick, light squeeze, understanding why she'd done it.

"This has been truly special, but we are nearly out of time," Caesar said, and Harry's eyes went wide, and CJ's stomach flipped over. "Is there any final thing the two of you would like to say to each other or to us?"

CJ looked at her brother, and her heart was launching an assault on her ribs, and her throat hurt. "I love yeh, you dumb codfish."

He smirked, but his eyes were positively wet. His makeup would be running in under ten seconds. "Anyone who hurts you better not win." (It was a clear threat to all the other tributes, and CJ doubted he was allowed to make it, but his words helped her to fortify herself.) "And...make sure you're thinking about what you'll do after. Because I know you'll make it."

The crowd was a mess, which was the biggest outrage of them all, because CJ couldn't fall apart, so why should they?

Caesar dismissed both of them, but Harry didn't move, so CJ did. She slipped her hand out from under his, and she kept the tears in, as she went offstage and her hand adjusted to the lack of his weight and his warmth. They had said goodbye. They hadn't said everything they'd wanted to, and Snow had rubbed his greasy fingerprints all over it, but they'd at least done that. She'd had her goodbye with Harriet and with Harry. Not with Uma; she wished that she'd thought to say something to her and even Gil, watching at home. But she's only had so much time, and now it was Kay's turn.

No other interview that night even came close to stealing the spotlight back, and the audience sounded almost lethargic by the time the boy from twelve left the stage.

CJ liked to think she'd earned some sponsors.

Of course, Uma and Gil were waiting up for him when he got home. Of course they were. He fell into their arms and blubbered away, never able to fully articulate the weight that had been lifted, getting to see his sister, or the dread that had descended, knowing what was next.

When he ran out of tears, and they ran out of tears, he just lay there, breathing. He was holding them so tightly. He didn't let go.

When CJ returned to her bedroom, the same young Avox girl was there, turning down her bed, as had been there the first night. CJ, too tired for words, changed into her pajamas right then and there.

Make sure you're thinking about what you'll do after, Harry had said. Maybe to a Capitol audience, it meant to think about what hobby or trade she'd take up, like Caesar's little comment about apprenticing for Evie. But CJ understood it for what it was.

After all, Harry had been lucky enough to have Uma as a mentor, but Caesar's little scripted hint was right; she would be on the market if she lived, and she didn't know how invested Snow was in seeing to it that she suffered. But she couldn't just find someone else to publicly be in love with, like Harry had...could she? Who would she even...?

"Hey."

CJ nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned, and the only other person in the room was the Avox girl. But surely...

"Take this into the arena with you," the girl who she'd thought was an Avox said, and she pressed an object into CJ's hand. "Let it be your token, okay?"

CJ only stared. Her brain felt as if it had short-circuited. She'd just said goodbye to her brother, and she was one night's sleep away from the start of the Hunger Games, and an Avox was speaking to her. Out loud.

"Sorry I can't explain much," the girl continued, moving toward the door. "Just get some sleep. And...District 13 is rooting for you."

And then she departed, without another word, into the hallway, leaving CJ standing there stunned with something small and weighty in her palm.

Chapter Text

Uma had possessed no intention of sleeping, the night before the Games, but somehow she still woke from a nightmare, the morning of.

It was an old nightmare. She thought she'd stopped having it a while ago, but she supposed it made sense that the danger CJ was in would bring it back. Not a nightmare of the arena, but of the time between her victory and Harry's.

She would have preferred a nightmare of the arena, if only because the straightforward anxiety of what CJ would have to face there would be easier to confront, would make it easier to get up and face the day, than the deeper anxiety that was telling her, Even if she lives, she'll live to be an unattached victor. How will you protect her? Who will you have to stop protecting, in order to shield her?

Jay?

Evie?

You can't cheat the arithmetic of acceptable losses forever. He gave you this position so that your hands will be the ones doing the unforgivable thing. That's what happens if CJ wins.

The fear of this kept her staring at the ceiling for several minutes before she could push herself to sit up. She was in bed with her boys. They'd managed to get Harry to sleep. Well, more accurately, Harry's energy had plummeted so dramatically, after he'd returned from the interview, that it had taken Gil literally carrying him to bed to keep him from electing to sleep on the stairs. Uma understood the impulse; he wanted to be uncomfortable. Witnessing everything from the seat of luxury was part of the torment.

She crawled out of bed, glad that neither of them woke. Harry was clinging to Gil, in his sleep. Uma had only gotten in bed to make sure he didn't get back up- didn't wander or do something stupid. But she'd fallen asleep on the job.

The cat was waiting right outside the bedroom door. She eyed it with some resentment. Stupid thing had nothing to worry about. Still might be a mutt spy. Cute face looking in no way threatened by her hostile energy.

She walked past it and headed downstairs. Their remaining TV- this was where they'd be watching the Games. Just a few hours now. It was always terrible, every year, but this...Her heart was beating so hard, it felt like she was waiting to rise into the arena herself.

A hand touched her elbow from behind, and she jumped, relaxing when she saw that it was only Ella.

Ella, making that kind, understanding, commiserating face that Uma rarely saw in people her late mother's age...

Apparently, that was her limit.

Uma felt herself about to cry, and she started to retreat, only to back right into Tiana, and then shortly, she was wrapped in warm arms, weeping silently into Tiana's apron. Her second time crying in just a few days. And she couldn't blame the spiked tea for either one. She was such a mess. Ella's hand was rubbing her back; she was pretty much enveloped between the two Avoxes. The smell of fresh food and clean laundry seemed to form an ableit-flimsy buffer from the fear of what was soon to come.

Tiana's hand gently stroked the back of Uma's head, and she wrapped her arms all the more tightly around the poor woman. It wasn't even her own sister who was dying, and she was behaving like a baby.

Had she, on some level, let herself forget that the game was designed to be unfair? Had she started to perceive the dynamic between herself and Snow as anything close to a competition, or a battle? No, she was a farm animal hiding from the butcher, pretending at mutual respect to save her pride. If she had truly understood things as they were, she would have killed him back when she had nothing to lose.

A butcher wouldn't have to take hostages. She opened her eyes, staring through her tears at the furniture visible over Tiana's shoulder. Snow was taking care to hurt them, which meant they weren't insignificant. They were problematic, and they were valuable, and that was why...that was why he was doing this.

His power to hurt them exceeded theirs to hurt him, but...they still had the power to hurt him. She would find a way. No matter what happened next, she would find a way to make Snow pay for every torturous minute.

Please make it, CJ. Please. Uma straightened up. There was a painful lump in her throat. She shrugged her shoulders in a way that made Ella's hand slip from her back, and she flatly said, "Thanks." Unable to look at either of them, she wiped her face and retreated to the kitchen.

Evie and Jay were there. The two of them were heaping food onto a big tray like they wouldn't see the kitchen again for days. They both froze when she entered, making the faces of caught deer.

She supposed those two had been making themselves scarce around here. Looked like they were planning on waiting the Games out in their secluded section of the house without crossing paths with the rest of them at all, now. Uma couldn't blame them.

"Morning," she said, pretending she hadn't visibly just finished crying.

"Morning," they replied in unison. Then Jay dumped half a tin of cookies onto the tray, and both of them made their escape.

(One tray, too. They were sharing their resources. The two of them must be getting closer. That was nice for them.)

Uma eyed up what remained of the spread Tiana had evidently spent quite a while preparing. If anything would make it past the lump in her throat, it would be Tiana's cooking. She fixed herself a plate and ate standing up.

A thought was running through her head. An offer from Snow, which he'd made over the phone last night, while Harry was still away for his interview.

If Harry agreed to give his live reactions to the Hunger Games on camera, in Heavensbee Hall, then a portion of the revenue from that broadcast would be counted as sponsor money for CJ.

She of course hadn't accepted or declined the offer on Harry's behalf, and she also hadn't had a chance to tell him; he'd collapsed so soon after returning, there hadn't been time. There was time now. If she woke him, she could tell him of Snow's offer, and let him make the (cruelly-crafted) choice. There was time to call Snow, accept, and have a car ferry him to Heavensbee Hall. It was Harry's decision to make, and certainly his to know about. But...

Uma stared past the edge of her finished plate, struggling to convince herself to move, to go upstairs and rouse Harry from the comparative safety of sleep.

Besides what emotional ordeal accepting the offer would put Harry through, there was no telling what he would say and do in that state. With tensions and emotions so high, he might well misbehave in a way that warranted real criminal retribution, instead of more of this sick dance. Especially since Snow had stipulated that no one was to accompany him- because she'd asked:

"Can Gil and I at least go with him?"

"No, that I simply won't allow," he'd answered, in that smug little sugary voice. "The audience is not interested in watching the three of you console each other; they want to watch one of you suffer."

"The audience," she'd echoed. The audience would like either one just fine; it was Snow who wanted to push them in the direction of sadistic glee.

And she was stalling. She was stalling, because she didn't want to wake Harry, and she didn't want to tell him. She didn't want him to watch his sister's Games alone, and she didn't want him to feel the guilt of not doing all that he could for her, and...she was being selfish.

Uma dropped her plate into the sink and started for the stairs. Faster. Dragging your feet until there's no time to accept the offer would be the same as not telling him.

It wasn't just sadistic glee that Snow was after. It wasn't just a chance to see Harry say something inflammatory and uninhibited. She knew that. She tried not to give her attention to the thought, but she knew Snow's game, and this aspect of his play was impossible to ignore: Harry was going to be watching the Games. He was going to be rooting for his sister. He was going to be rooting against her competitors. It was going to be televised. Any notions of inter-District unity created by their relationship with Gil would be undermined each time he sighed in relief when some other District's kid died. Oh, it wouldn't turn an audience against him; it would just reinforce what was always true. The Games were for the Districts to war with the Districts. Us against us, while they watch.

She tried not to give her attention to the thought, because if it was about that, then she was a revolutionary before she was a friend and lover, and that...

That was unacceptable.

What "revolution" had done half as much as Harry and Gil had done for her?

She reached the bedroom door.

She almost raised her fist to knock. Jeez. What is wrong with me? She opened the door.

Harry was still clinging to Gil, but she could tell immediately that both of them were awake. She hesitated in the doorway, feeling like she herself was the cruel cold of reality, to be kept away from them at all costs.

"Harry?" she said.

He turned over to look at her, wordlessly extending a hand for her to come closer.

She couldn't make herself walk to the bed. Snow had made her the instrument of cruelty, and cruelty would stay by the wall.

And it was a trap! This whole thing was a trap, and it was unfair, and-

She cleared her throat. "Snow called while you were out, yesterday."

"Come here," Harry said. His voice...It was almost like the voice he'd used the few times, early in their cohabitation back in 4, when he'd caught her by the stove late at night with fresh burns. Why was he worried about her?

Oh. She wiped the last traces of the tears from her face, squaring her shoulders a little. "He made us an offer."

"Uma." Harry beckoned her insistently over.

"You need to hear this."

"I need yeh here, first."

She let him reel her in, incapable of denying him and herself at the same time. She climbed back into bed at his other side. Gil's brown puppy dog eyes watched her from over Harry's shoulder. "So, Snow made us an offer," she started again. "It's not a good offer. It would earn CJ more sponsor money, but..." Her voice wavered, despite her best efforts. The last thing she wanted was to be another problem on Harry's plate.

But he didn't look burdened. His hand caressed her face, and he asked, "Do you think we should take the offer?"

Her throat felt tighter than ever. "No." It wasn't worth it. Last night's interview had certainly earned CJ the moon and sky in sponsorships; any problem that money could solve, she would have solutions raining into her lap. Uma was sure of it. She was sure.

"Then we won't take it," Harry said.

She should have felt relieved. Instead, it made her more restless. "That's it?"

"You're my mentor, love. If you say it's a bad deal, I believe yeh."

That was good. It was good that he knew not to ask what the offer was, lest he be tormented by what-ifs later. But now, if CJ died...

"How long til it starts?" Harry asked.

"About two and a half hours. Tiana's got a whole banquet for us downstairs. You should eat something."

In answer, he pulled the duvet over all three of them, burrowing in as if for a long nap.

Gil dropped a shy kiss onto the side of Harry's neck but got up out of the bed. "I'll go and bring us back some food."

Harry curled himself around Uma, as though he was freezing in the absence of Gil. "Two hours," he breathed into her neck.

She slid her hand into his tousled brown locks, gripping his hair. Pulling it a little, to keep him grounded in the moment.

"Two more hours to pretend it's not real."

She took a deep breath, drawing resolve from the resignation in his voice. She'd broken down earlier; that was her indulgence. Now, she couldn't afford to be a problem. They had too many problems already. Another deep breath.

You can do it, CJ. Toughest kid I know. Plenty of sponsors. You can win...You can...

But for Harry's sake, Uma had to be prepared for the worst.

The sound of the anthem and the hosts' vapid speculations were how it started every year, but never did it assault the ears more.

Uma was sitting on the sofa, taking deep breaths and keeping her head straight. Harry was pacing. Repeatedly, he'd tried to sit down or sprawl out, but it always went back to pacing. And Gil was on the sofa with Uma, glancing helplessly between her and Harry.

"If she makes it out of the first bloodbath, we're drinking," Harry said. "If she doesn't..."

"...we're drinking?" Gil guessed.

Harry smiled and clapped his shoulder. "Attaboy, Gilly."

"I'm staying sober for this one," Uma said. And after a beat, she looked back at Harry and added, "You should, too."

His mouth quirked ruefully, hearing what she wasn't saying.

He couldn't watch CJ's games with his wits impaired. There was no telling which parts of it Snow would refuse to air again, and if he woke up tomorrow hungover and realized he'd been hammered for CJ's last moments, he wouldn't forgive himself.

"Aye, I know that," he said. And maybe that was true. Maybe he had just been saying the easy thing instead of facing the truth of the situation.

Uma let her attention fall to Gil, who was visibly jittery. "You okay?" she asked.

He glanced back at Harry, then whispered to her, "I'm really sorry."

Oh, Gil. Uma shook her head. "Nothing any of us did caused this. This one was out of our hands, got it?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "I guess I know. I just..."

She took his hand. "We can't afford to be our own tormentors right now, okay? We don't survive that."

The broadcast interceded on them: "20...19...18...17..."

Harry sucked in a breath and let it out in the form of a distressed laugh, returning to the couch with his eyes on the screen.

The footage showed a close-up of the Cornucopia, first. As usual, a bounty of weapons spilled from the mouth of it, promising any enterprising teenager the power over life and death. From there, the camera zoomed out to show off this year's arena, and the ring of tributes standing on their pedestals.

The area immediately surrounding the Cornucopia was a jagged, rocky plain. The ones who risked the bloodbath to go for weapons and supplies had an added disadvantage; it would be easy to trip if they went fast, easy to get killed if they took the time to watch their step.

CJ knew better than to go for a weapon. Uma was certain of that much. Especially with her size, especially with her fame, CJ would know to run her narrow behind in the opposite direction.

As the camera continued to pull back, they saw exactly what "the opposite direction" looked like.

A steep, rocky climb down into a vast forest. Meaning anyone who didn't start climbing down right away risked being attacked from above, and anyone who tried to access the Cornucopia later would risk being attacked from below.

Did CJ have allies?

How well could she climb?

It wasn't a skill they acquired naturally, in District 4, but their schools did provide a bit of physical education and Games training. Uma hadn't been at liberty to attend school often, but CJ had definitely gone semi-regularly for a while. Maybe she'd learned to climb, there. Still, the District 7 kids would have a serious leg up.

It looked like about twenty feet down, but it was hard to tell.

Okay, so...CJ needed to run toward the edge of the plateau immediately, and start climbing down while everyone else fought. She needed to not trip on the way to the edge. She needed to climb all the way down before anyone got their hands on a bow and arrow or got it in their heads to start dropping rocks. She needed to get to the bottom uninjured and find drinkable water. She needed to hide.

"...12...11...10..."

If she twisted her ankle running across those rocks, it was all over.

Uma remembered running through sand as soon as her Games started. As rough as a desert arena was to survive, the sand had at least been easy for her to navigate. They were used to sand, in District 4.

Harry was as tense as a piano string.

"...9...8...7..."

The camera was panning across all the tributes.

Their clothing this year looked to be jumpsuits and woven belts. (Jumpsuits were always nerve-wracking, in the arena, when it came time to piss. It was much better when they got shirts and pants.) Both were pale blue- a shade which would stand out to other tributes, both on the plateau and in the forest, though it might stand a chance of blending in with the sky if one was being viewed from below while climbing up or down the rocks. The material didn't look like it would provide much insulation from cold. The tributes weren't shivering yet, with mild breezes stirring their hair just a little, but when night fell, it might prove problematic. If they weren't sweating now, they would probably be shivering later. The big zipper down the front of the jumpsuit allowed the tributes to customize how much skin they were going to show. Uma felt a swell of pity, at just how many of them had opted for an exceptionally deep V, no doubt in the interest of attracting sponsors.

CJ's jumpsuit was zipped up all the way to her neck.

The camera pan slowed down and stopped once CJ was onscreen, making no secret of who the fan favorite was. Or who Snow wanted everyone's eyes on.

Her frizzy, yellowy hair was pulled back into a ponytail, with two braids encircling her hairline to ensure the frontmost strands stayed out of her face. Her fists were balled at her sides, and she was wearing that stubbornly impassive face she acquired when she was weathering a scolding. One of her pockets was swollen with something small and round. Had she brought a token from home? Uma couldn't think of what it might be. Something of Harriet's, maybe?

"...5...4...3..."

Gil took a deep breath, and Harry took a deep breath, and Uma took a deep breath. It was like a wave had passed through all of them.

"...1."

The Games began.

CJ turned heel and started immediately for the edge of the plateau, paying the Cornucopia not a backward glance, and Uma's tight heart filled with pride. In answer to the challenge presented by the rough terrain, and possibly as an attempt to become a smaller target, CJ crouched low as she went. (She seemed to be exactly one thought away from scuttling off on all fours.)

If she were an anonymous tribute, the kind no one would have reason to pay attention to, like Uma had been at thirteen, she probably would have gotten away without incident.

But she was Calista Jane Hook.

She was tying up too many sponsors to leave in play.

And so, rather than run first for the weapons, as had been the default state of Career tributes since probably the earliest years of the Games, the boy from 2 ran for CJ first.

And District 2 was used to rocky mountains.

The large boy caught her halfway to the edge, lifted her over his head, and threw her.

Uma tensed as if preparing for a hard impact herself, and Harry's breath hitched.

The throw wasn't strong enough to launch her fully off the side, but she probably would have rolled off upon landing, had her body not crashed into another tribute's in midair, knocking the girl from 9 to the ground. In fact, breaking her fall with the girl from 9, who was bleeding terribly when CJ got up.

CJ herself hadn't landed too badly. Her shoulder had taken the worst of it, and it didn't look dislocated. Other than that, a scratch on the cheek that was bleeding more than it needed to.

The luck she'd had in her landing was quickly undone when CJ looked down at the girl from 9, who had started spasming beneath her (seemingly a spinal injury, which spelled out certain death for the poor girl), and froze.

She froze.

This was a really, really bad time to freeze.

Those who had gone for weapons right away were getting their hands on them now.

An arrow sailed past CJ's head, missing by a mile- too far to rouse CJ from her stunned state.

"Get out of there," Gil said helplessly.

Then a small throwing blade sailed past her upper arm, slicing open her sleeve and skin as it went. That one did the trick; CJ went back to scuttling away, reaching the edge of the plateau and swinging her legs over the side. Another arrow sailed past her head, this time a lot closer.

CJ began to climb down.

Her shoulder was definitely troubling her, but her leg strength was doing the work.

Harry let out the breath he'd drawn in a good thirty seconds ago. Uma squeezed his hand, then released it so he could fidget as needed.

The sponsors won't have liked that close call. They like unfazed tributes. You can't afford to freeze up again.

They weren't out of the woods yet- or, in the woods, in this case. If she didn't reach the bottom before the girl from 1, with her new bow, reached the edge, she was as good as dead.

As if taking a hand-crank to the tension in the room, the camera cut away from CJ's frantic climb, to a shot of Gothel's daughter galloping close, an arrow nocked. Mim's daughter was giving her cover from behind, and in the top left corner of the frame, CJ's district partner was grappling with the boy from 1.

Back to CJ, climbing down.

Back to Gothel, nearing the edge, reaching the edge, peering over the edge with her bowstring drawn.

And CJ was no longer there.

Cut to CJ limping through the forest, concealed by the generous canopy.

They all let out a heavy breath of relief. Harry's became a laugh, toward the end.

"She climbs fast," Gil said.

The footage cut back to the bloodbath on the plateau for a while- a tacit promise that CJ was in no immediate danger. The sight of it polluted Uma's relief, hitting her with that ever-present grim reality that as long as it wasn't CJ, it was someone else. Always.

"She made it out," Harry said. He looked to Uma hopefully, as if he couldn't fully celebrate until he knew that she felt the same.

"That's one of the hardest parts behind her," Uma said, nodding. "Now, she needs to find safe drinking water. Hopefully this isn't the kind of arena with a poisoned lake or something." She didn't think it would be. Snow wanted to shatter inter-District unity; practically everything he'd done lately had been with that in mind. He wanted the tributes killing each other, not dying to mean tricks on the Gamemakers' part. If there was any trick to be pulled, with regards to the drinking water, it would probably be something to do with scarcity, not toxicity. Like in Uma's Games: making water less and less available, to drive the tributes closer together.

Cut back to CJ, still breathlessly hurrying through the woods.

The disembodied voice of Claudius Templesmith observed, "Now, it looks like Calista Jane is limping. Do we have...?"

A black-and-white slow-motion close-up of a foot placing its weight on a rock at the wrong angle, then cut back to CJ in the woods.

"Ah, I see: One bad step, on the climb down. Let's hope she doesn't let that stop her! While she's hobbling off, let's take another look at the action."

Again, the footage cut to the other tributes for a while.

"Hobbling off," Harry echoed.

"Claudius ain't on our side," Uma said. "But we knew that from the chariot ride."

"I think he thinks legacies get unfair advantages," Gil said.

"Wonder what he thinks about the odds of three different legacies in one Games," Harry said, in a voice of false sugar.

"Maybe he thinks the reapings are random."

"No way," Uma replied. "No one that deep in the industry could possibly still think it's random."

"Then how can he be annoyed at legacies, if he knows they were pulled in unfairly?"

"Because they're not people to him: they're stories. The story of a legacy tribute winning out, over the unknowns, is boring to him." Uma winced, at the sight of a machete sinking into the skull of a boy who couldn't have been older than fourteen. "It's not just him. The audience only likes a legacy if they care a lot about the victor they're associated with. Well, 'care', you know."

"Care," Harry echoed, as well. His hand absently balled up the fabric at the front of his shirt, as if his mind was on the netted shirt from last night.

Tiana came by with another tray of biscuits, to fill what little space was left on the table.

Uma signed to her, "Please rest yourself. We have plenty of food."

Tiana offered back a sad smile and signed, "Then keep your mouths full, so you don't say anything you shouldn't."

She was right. They had gotten careless, casually talking about how the reapings clearly weren't random.

Uma took up a biscuit, split it open with her thumb, and smeared a sweet, orange jam inside it. She made Harry eat. "Gil, pass me the shrimp."

Gil passed the large plate of shrimp- taking some for himself as he did so.

Uma ate and calmed her nerves.

Onscreen, those who hadn't already climbed down from the Cornucopia's rocky platform were doing so, now.

The cannons started firing for those who had been killed a minute ago. Ten cannons. All of the Careers were still alive.

Gothel's girl was down to four arrows already; she would most likely be able to collect some of the ones she'd shot over the side of the plateau, but most were probably just lost now.

Someone had cut the throat of the girl from 9. They might have meant it as a mercy...and with that, her tiny chance of surviving by just sticking it out as a non-threat for long enough was snuffed out. Mercy, and especially mercy-killing, in the Games, was always complicated. You couldn't know whether you were saving someone from hours or days of pain, or stealing away a future just as viable as anyone else's. And if you wanted to be the survivor anyway, then why not convince yourself you were doing the former when really, of course, always, you were doing the latter?

Uma wished any of her kills had offered her a pretense of altruism.

She wished Eurydice and Endymion hadn't died screaming in pain.

She drank some juice. Non-alcoholic. Had to stay sharp.

Ten dead in the bloodbath. That was about average.

CJ had a hurt shoulder and a hurt ankle. Nothing that entirely prevented her from moving, but enough to noticeably impact her speed. Uma had yet to see anything in the woods that resembled a cave or hidey hole for one to settle in; thus far, all CJ could do was keep going.

"When she finds a spot, the old man can send her a parachute," Harry said. "It won't matter she skipped the Cornucopia."

"She might have to climb a tree," Uma said.

"Maybe not," Gil said. "I think both the kids from 7 are still alive. Maybe she should leave the trees to them."

"Maybe. But she has to stop eventually, and a tree's better than the ground."

"If there are caves, they'll be back by the rocks, yeah?" Harry said.

"Most likely."

As if the Gamemakers could hear their discussion, they were treated to a drone shot of the entire arena. Apparently, the woods went on for about two miles in every direction. Past the edge of the woods was about half a mile of rocky terrain, before one reached the force field. There was a pond out there, in the open where there were no trees to interrupt the path of attackers or projectiles. The pond connected to a stream which clearly ran through the woods, but the exact path of it was hidden by the treetops.

The cameras stayed on the Careers for a while, cutting between the boys from 1 and 2, who had recently allied with the boy from 7, and the girls from 1 and 2, who had a fast-friend energy that was sure to make their time in the arena especially tragic. Uma tried to remember whether Gothel and Mim had ever seemed especially close, at victor gatherings, but she couldn't remember seeing them alone together. As far as she was aware, they'd only interacted in groups.

The camera was back on CJ. She was trying to climb a tree, but her shoulder and ankle were making it hard, and by the time she got a few branches high, the next one broke under her hand, and she fell back to the ground, hurting her ankle more but at least managing not to make noise about it. Other than a whispered swear. She gave up on the tree and kept walking.

"Uh-oh. Not an excellent start," Claudius said.

Uma was glad Harry was not with him at this moment. Claudius Templesmith's live would be flashing before his eyes right about now.

"Are Evie and Jay not coming out?" Gil asked.

"I saw them stocking up on enough food to make it through the winter, so I'd say not," Uma said. "One of us should check up on them later."

"I can do that."

She offered back a smile.

For her part, CJ found a sloped stretch of earth that she could crouch beneath and be concealed in the underbrush. It wasn't the ideal long-term spot, but in terms of getting her off her injured ankle and letting her catch her breath, it was probably the third-best they could hope for, after a cave or tree.

CJ swiped the sweat from her brow and tenderly removed her shoe, so as to get a better look at her ankle. It seemed like it might have been discolored, but it was hard to tell in the shadows, and Uma was no doctor, anyway.

CJ unzipped her jumpsuit by about two inches and carefully removed her bra from inside without actually undressing. She used it to wrap her ankle.

"Pretty resourceful," Claudius admitted.

The footage cut to the girl from 7, who had shimmied up a tree and built herself a nice nest, there. Like CJ, she seemed not to have grabbed anything from the Cornucopia, but her spot was secure. The boy from 3 had apparently made it out with a backpack of supplies, and he was getting close to the stream.

Harry left the room and returned with his guitar. His fingers plucked at the strings quietly, as if riding the ebb and flow of the room's suspense. Uma let her body rest against his, buckling in for what could either be a long ride...or a short one.

When Gil knocked on Jay's door, Evie was the one who opened it.

It didn't seem like he was interrupting anything romantic; Evie looked like she was sketching dresses in her design notebook, and Jay was throwing a little ball around and catching it.

"Is she dead?" Jay asked, as soon as Gil walked in.

Gil blinked. "CJ? No, she's not...She's still alive. Made it through the bloodbath."

They didn't say 'Good.' They looked back at him with faces that had seen arenas of their own.

"Does she stand a chance?" Jay asked next.

"Everyone stands some kind of chance, right?"

"Not really."

"Did Uma send you to talk to us?" Evie asked.

"Kind of? She said someone should check in on you, and I volunteered."

"Well, that's a good sign. What about Harry? Is he...fortified?"

"I don't think I know what that means."

"She means, is he keeping himself together?" Jay said.

"Yeah. I mean, he's upset, but he's talking strategy like always. He was playing his guitar, earlier."

Evie and Jay exchanged a look, and shortly Evie took a breath and said, "We need to know that our safety will still be held in consideration if she wins."

"What do you mean? Why would CJ winning change anything?"

"Just promise us."

"I promise. I mean, we already kind of promised, didn't we?"

Evie looked him in the eyes for a few seconds, and then she acquired a sad smile. "You don't have to come back here, okay? We're giving you three your privacy for the Games. Whatever hugging or crying you need to do to be okay about what's going to happen. Just...remember your promise to keep us in mind after, whatever happens. My threat still stands."

"Yeah. I figured it probably did."

"If you do come back, bring us some jam," Jay said. "We forgot the orange kind."

"Uma likes the orange kind, too."

"Well, what do you know." (Jay's usual easy smile made this room feel like a different planet than the one Harry and Uma were on.) "We must be soulmates!"

Not much happened for the rest of the day, at least on CJ's end. The boys from 1, 2, and 7 killed two more tributes, but no one seemed close to finding CJ. The forest didn't yet show any signs of malicious wildlife or other unhappy surprises.

They would have spent the night on the downstairs couch, but sometime after the list of dead tributes lit up the sky, just as they were starting to nod off, Ella came and tapped Uma's shoulder.

"You shouldn't fall asleep to it," the Avox signed. "Go sleep in your bed. Don't let it into your dreams."

"We need to know if something happens," Uma said groggily.

"I'll stay up and watch. You three go to bed."

With only a bit more urging, they complied.

They woke the next morning to rapping on their bedroom door.

Harry sprang out of bed first, following Ella down the stairs to the TV while Uma and Gil scampered after.

Onscreen, CJ was caught in a net, suspended off the ground, too tightly even to flail around. It looked like she'd found her way to the stream and triggered a trap set by the boy from 3.

"Was anyone following you?" the boy asked, focused more on the woods around them than on CJ. "Did anyone see you come down here?"

"No," CJ answered. "Let me down."

The boy hesitated. A look crossed his face- the look of someone who knew that mercy was always complicated, in the Games. But he shortly said, "It would be messed up if I didn't spare you. You're the one who taught me these knots."

He let her down and then focused on resetting his trap.

CJ backed away but didn't run off. "Are you...claiming the river, then?"

"Trying to. This part, at least."

"Seen any fish?"

"Small, quick ones. Nothing catchable."

"And you're the expert on what's catchable, are ya? District 3?"

He looked up at her.

"Move aside," she huffed, taking over where he'd left off, with the ropes.

"Was I doing something wrong?"

"Not wrong; just slow. Here." She worked fast. Hands that had untangled nets at dawn with her siblings.

The boy watched.

Carlos. That was his name, Uma recalled.

"Allies, then?" he said.

"Allies. And when the time comes to split up, try not to kill me, yeah?"

"If I have a choice. And same to you."

"'Course." CJ pulled at the rope one last time, then stood up.

Carlos bent to better conceal the trap in the grass.

"Well, s'pose I'll have a look at those fish," CJ said.

"A promising development to start the morning off," Claudius said. "For those just joining us, we've just seen an alliance form between Calista Jane Hook from District 4 and Carlos de Vil from District 3. It certainly seems like they have a lot to offer each other. Let's see how long it lasts."

"That's good," Uma said, under her breath.

Harry grasped at the reassurance immediately. "It's good?"

"I think so." She didn't want to get his hopes up, but... "He has a plan, she has skills and sponsors to help. He has no reason to turn against her early on, and now she has water. So...this should be a good thing."

Harry nodded.

Breakfast was already awaiting them on the living room table. As they sat down to resume watching for the day, Harry looped his arms around Uma's waist and swept her into his lap. She rested her head against his while his nose tickled her neck, and shortly Gil's arms were around them both.

The cat hopped up onto Uma's lap, and she didn't bother to make it get off.