Work Text:
"No more. Three's enough for me."
Lucy Gray's head whipped around towards him. "What do you mean, 'three'? I know about two, Coriolanus. You killed Bobbin and Mayfair, that's what you told me. Who's the third?"
A million lies passed through Coriolanus' mind, and his mouth opened, ready to spit whichever one out that sounded the best. 'My old self. My mother. My father. My little sister. Someone during the war. A soldier who entered my house.' His jaw clicked shut, and he stared at her, frozen, as another thought passed through his mind, a recollection of something the young woman in front of him had said. 'Trust is more important than anything to me, even love.'
That's what Lucy Gray had said, and, all the sudden, he didn't want to lie. Not anymore. He spent every single day of his life in the Capitol lying, each, fucking second of it. He lied, or he stayed silent, and people died in his wake. His mouth dried. People died in his wake all the damn time, and he was going to be damned if she was one of them, too. Lucy Gray was still staring at him, he realized, waiting for a response. She had stepped closer to him, searching his eyes for an answer. And he told the truth.
"It... It wasn't by my hand. But, that jabberjay, the one they played at Sejanus' hanging? I was the one who recorded it. I sent it off to the Capitol, because I was certain his plan would get him killed, and then me killed for knowing him, and then you killed for knowing me." His breath came out shorter and shorter until it was coming out in gasps. "I sent my best friend to the gallows, when he came out here for me. He came out here just so I wouldn't be alone. He stopped me from committing suicide in my bunk, and I as good as killed him. He was going to - he could've changed the world if he had just stayed in the Capitol-" and then Lucy Gray's lips were on his, cutting off his words, and he was stunned for a second until he responded eagerly, deepening it.
They kissed until they were out of breath, and only then did they pull back, their foreheads resting against each other, both of them breathing heavily now. "You don't hate me?" Coriolanus whispered, befuddled, his head spinning.
"Hate you?" Lucy Gray let out a quiet laugh, which cracked in the middle, sounding more like a sob. "Hate you? No. What could my hate ever do to you, Coriolanus Snow? Your voice doesn't lie; you're torturing yourself over it already, but you told me the truth anyway. You trusted me. Let me trust you."
They stood like that, silently, as the rain started to fall around them, letting the words seep between them and into the life surrounding them, before the white-haired teen finally came to his conclusion. "I can't come with you," he whispered. Lucy Gray opened her eyes again, peering at him silently, urging him to continue. "The Capitol - if you leave, they'll let you leave. Once you become a Victor, they'd rather have you gone. But if I leave - I'll be a deserter, and that's if they don't find out about - about what I did. They'll come after me, and then they'll find you." His throat closed up again. "I'm selfish. I'm so, so selfish, Lucy Gray Baird. I leave bodies behind me when I walk. I can't let you be one of those corpses."
"I understand," she whispered, and then leaned forward and kissed him again. This one was different. Shorter; sweeter. More intimate. "You go back, Coriolanus Snow. You go back to those barracks, and then you make your way back to that Capitol, and you don't let this - any of this - happen again. You don't let that war happen again, Coriolanus, you hear me?"
He nodded, biting his lip to keep himself from speaking.
"I'm going to head up north," the girl continued. "Northeast, maybe. Maybe to where District 13 was, before they destroyed it. I don't really remember too much of it, since I was only 4 when it-" she stopped. They both knew what had happened to it. "I reckon I can find my way back, though. And when you make it big, you let me know, okay? I'll be listening, Snow. Wait for me. Wait for me, and I'll wait for you, Coriolanus. You hear me?"
"I hear you," he whispered, because it was the only thing he could do. And, because it felt right, he added, "I promise."
Lucy Gray glowed, a true smile, not just a half-smirk, spread across her face. "I promise, too." Without seeming to hesitate, she unwound the black scarf that hung around her neck, and placed it gently into Coriolanus' hands. "I'll be back for that," she whispered, "so hold onto it for me, 'kay?" She kissed him again, and he kissed her back eagerly, letting the raindrops cascade around them as he closed his eyes.
When they came apart again, the musician was looking at him with something fervent in her eyes. "Before we go... Would you like to see the cabin one last time?"
Not trusting his words, Coriolanus simply nodded and let Lucy Gray lead him down the path, their hands intertwined.
Coriolanus kept the scarf on a mantle in his new home in the Capitol. Every now and then, he took it down to smell it and think of its owner, and then he replaced it on its pedestal of honor.
There was no way to stop the games, he realized, and he wasn't quite sure he wanted to, still. Lucy Gray had been a terrified girl, yes, when she was in the arena, but Panem had united around her when she had won. Each Victor pulled the country closer together, but it did so against the Capitol. He had realized as much in 12. He refused to see a repeat of the Dark Days.
The first thing he did when he became an Apprentice Gamemaker was write up proposals. In the Capitol, to most of the people there, he was still Coriolanus Snow, the Academy's top prospect who had not only somehow turned a raggedy girl from the poorest district in Panem into a winner of the Hunger Games, but, in their minds, had created an icon of success, and that belief was empowering in a place like the Capitol. His proposals, even if they didn't go directly to Gaul, were given heavy consideration if not immediately approved.
His first one had been the creation of the Victors' Villages, one in every district, and the cash prizes for winning, both for the Mentor and the Tribute, as well as food parcels to the winning district. He justified the proposal to Gaul by indicating that it would separate Victors from the regular civilians, preventing them from gathering too greatly around symbols of hope, and that it would provide a direct incentive for Mentors to train their Tributes as well as possible. It was approved immediately, except for the provision indicating that the proposal would be applied retroactively, even though, generously, he stated he would refuse to accept a prize for his part in Mentoring Lucy Gray. A small loss, in a mountain of victories, but it felt miserable nonetheless. He resolved to keep trying.
He had gone to each district to oversee the construction himself. As he did, he explored each community, feeling his hatred, the sick, twisted knot that had been stuck inside his chest ever since he had been told his father had been murdered, slowly untangle. It wasn't a quick process. Not by any means. He spent a month in each district, coming back to the Capitol only in preparation for the 11th Hunger Games.
His hair had fully grown out again by the time the Games started, but he strode into the Gamemaker room on the day of in the same outfit he had used when the Tributes had gotten off the train the year prior, with just one change: instead of a rose, he wore the top of a katniss plant, one he had harvested himself while he had overlooked construction in District Twelve (He had tried the roots - they weren't his favorite, but he ate them until he couldn't fit anything else inside his stomach anyway and felt wonderfully, miserably full, thinking absent-mindedly if that was how Lucy Gray had felt as a child when she had eaten the plant.)
The second year, he had immediately been promoted to a full Gamemaker following the fact that three separate Tributes had ended up volunteering for the games, one from District 1, one from District 2, and one from District 8, even though none of them had ended up winning (the girl from District 4 had, winning while only killing a single person, which had ended up being a mercy kill of the runner-up who was slowly dying of various wounds. Coriolanus wondered if the cashmere sheets in her new house helped abate her nightmares. He hoped so.), the viewership rates from all three districts had skyrocketed, and some of the wealthier District citizens had even ended up donating rather than just Capitol citizens.
He submitted new proposals. Ones including proper transport for Tributes, which meant there was a functioning hovertrain accessible in all districts, even if it was rather expensive for civilians. (That one had been accepted, but had taken nearly half a year to build, and was barely available in time for the Victory Tour for the 12th Games.) Additionally, he proposed giving Tributes more time between the Reaping and the Games, as well as a proper facility to stay in and meet with their Mentors in, which naturally also required food and cleaning so that they didn't starve or look terrible for their interviews.
Gaul had definitely squinted at him when he had proposed that one, and had looked only half-impressed when he had explained the reasoning behind it (to give people more of a chance to bond with the Tributes, increasing viewership), but it had worked yet again, and viewership during the 12th Hunger Games was the highest it had ever been, and 5 different Tributes had volunteered this time, which was attributed to Mags Flanagan's Victory Tour (a proposal that had not come from him, and he deeply regretted its existence). He wondered if Pine Esarius, District 7's Tribute and one of the volunteer Tributes, had also contemplated suicide on that hovertrain. Probably not.
In spite of Gaul's seemingly-steady disillusionment with his beliefs, Coriolanus became a Senior Gamemaker for the 15th Hunger Games, and it was here that he truly shined. He moved the Hunger Games to a larger arena, one which was more than an empty floor with weapons in the center. There were four distinct sections in the arena - the center, where the Tributes started and the cornucopia sat, which was an open, grassy area. Then, to the southeast, there was a mountainous area, which included a running stream with filtered water, straight from the Capitol itself. To the west was a small forest, which also had some berry bushes that had been genetically engineered to grow faster and be sweeter, providing bursts of energy but also slowing down competitors if they consumed too many. And then, to the north and the northeast were various buildings in varying states of decay, which contained things that could be used for medical treatment, such as bandages, and also things like electronics.
This meant that, for the first time, the Hunger Games were actually expected to go on for multiple days, and viewership managed to keep up, the natural lowering of excitement over time being countered by the rising excitement of getting closer and closer to a Victor. As if to accentuate his growing influence, Dean Highbottom's morphling addiction finally got the best of the small man, meaning that Coriolanus now had no more ardent opposers in the Academy. He hadn't had a hand in the man's death, but he was far from upset about it, even if the Dean had admittedly risen in his mental rankings after his admission that he hated the games as well.
The 23-year-old Senior Gamemaker took advantage, however, of the power vacuum. He mentioned to Strabo, Sejanus' father, the role that he had "discovered" Gaul had played in Sejanus' death with her jabberjays. Within the week, Dr. Volumnia Gaul had been found dead in her home, supposedly having died naturally in her sleep, according to doctors at the Plinth-Ravinstill National Medical Center.
Coriolanus Snow was elected the second ever Head Gamemaker ahead of the 16th Annual Hunger Games, and it was there that he made sweeping reforms, ones which were funded both by Strabo and the President of Panem, both of whom were pleased with his success and general aptitude. The latter had even mentioned "a promising political career in the future" to Coriolanus. Tributes were given medical treatment before and after the Games, preventing situations like Jessup Diggs' rabies during the 10th Hunger Games. He also raised the Reaping age range from from 12-18 to 16-21, doing so in a way that had those who were 19, 20, or 21 have decreased odds of being selected for the first three years of the new bylaw.
Not that the bylaw mattered particularly much, considering that there were generally upwards of a half-dozen volunteer Tributes each year, which then increased to upwards of eight once Coriolanus instituted a new rule dictating a mercy save: if a Tribute was on the brink of death or could no longer fight, the citizens of Panem could donate to move to mercifully remove them as a loser from the Games, with the President holding a ceremonial pardon that could be used if public opinion so swayed.
When asked why he did so in an interview with Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, pale blue eyes stared directly at the camera as Coriolanus spoke slowly, intentionally. "... A friend once told me that they believed that humans were born innately good, and that we spend our lives trying not to become bad. Some of the people in that arena turn into monsters, but it's up to us, as citizens of Panem, to retain civility. It also places power back in the hands of the people, Lucky, and it gives them a voice."
He opted not to mention that he was trying to lower the death count as much as he possibly could.
One final thing that he had implemented once he was the Head Gamemaker was finally passing the addendum to his first proposal - prizes and houses applied retroactively to the winners of the first ten Hunger Games. Three of the Tributes were already dead before this had passed, whilst another two's locations were unknown, one of them being Lucy Gray. There were still rumors circling that Mayor Lipp had killed her, which Coriolanus had looked into himself, finding them to be untrue. Only two of the remaining five accepted either offer, most of them already incredibly secure thanks to their success in their respective Games.
It was also around this time that Coriolanus ordered a lockbox to be fashioned, one specifically out of tessarae. In it, he locked both his father's compass and his mother's compact, and he placed them on a new mantle on the wall, close to, but beneath, the mantle holding the black scarf.
The house in District 12 went unfilled through the 16th Games, the 17th Games, the 18th Games, and the 19th Games. Coriolanus brought out the black scarf more and more nowadays, even though it had long-since lost its scent. It reminded him of her nonetheless.
For the 20th Games, he introduced a new rule, stating that two members of a district could win together if they both were the last survivors and both wished to end the Games there, with the awareness that they would only receive half a prize and a smaller house each. This new rule was instantly made incredibly popular in the districts, with people singing praises in his name. There were already chants and well-wishes for his political career once he stepped down from Head Gamemaker, which he received readily and with a confident smile.
For the next four years, he worked on making the Games more and more humane, and, by the 24th Hunger Games, volunteers were still numerous and a Reaping was more of a cause for celebration than of dismay in most districts (District 6 still had yet to produce a Victor, much to the dismay of the district's citizens and especially those Reaped), and it was then that Coriolanus announced that the 24th Hunger Games were going to be his final one, and that he was making a bid for the Presidency.
It was the largest landslide of an election that had been seen since the end of the Dark Days. He received additional news, however, on the same day that he became aware that he had won the Presidency, that the extra house in District 12's Victors' Village had finally become occupied.
"How do I look, Tigris?" He asked, looking away from the mirror where he was inspecting himself, having finished affixing the top stem of a katniss plant to his hair and a mockingjay pin to his chest, towards his cousin, still holding the letter he had received.
The woman smiled at him. "Like freshly-fallen snow, Coryo."
Coriolanus carried the black scarf with him on the hovertrain to District 12, and walked through the district slowly. It had transformed greatly since the last time he had been there, a full thirteen years prior. He knocked on the door of the newly-occupied Victors' Village home, and the door opened quickly, its occupant having clearly expected him. Without a word, Coriolanus held a hand out, and allowed himself to be led inside.