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PART ONE.
They call the boy first. He is young, which is always upsetting, thirteen or so, and slight in his secondhand clothing. One of the Whittaker boys. He does not cry when he makes the climb to the stage, but in the distance you can hear the wailing of his father, like an animal howling. The oldest, Samira thinks. And the mother had died last year in childbirth. She and her mother had helped with the baby.
On the stage, Abbott leans over to say something to Robby, who is watching the ground as if it might swallow him up. Samira is so caught up in that, wondering what it was that Abbott was saying, wondering what you could say in this situation, when you were one of the winners, that she almost misses when they call her own name.
The girl next to her nudges her. “Samira,” she says.
“What?”
Samira looks up and sees that the camera is trained on her, and that’s when she knows.
How funny, is her first thought. She’d thought the odds were in her favor.
.
The odds, such as they are: Samira is nineteen years old. This is her last reaping. She is her mother’s only child, and they had worked hard to ensure that she didn’t have to take out tesserae. There were only seven slips with her name on them. In two months, she was meant to start her apprenticeship. She was going to be a healer.
That’s over with, she supposes.
In the Visiting Hall, her mother kneels in front of her and lays her head on Samira’s lap, whispering an old Hindi prayer against the fabric of her dress.
Samira touches the back of her head. “I’m sorry.” This is the only thing she can think to say.
After the horror of her father’s death, she had promised her mother she would never leave her, but the Capital does not care for this type of promise. Probably, it was stupid to make it. She will not be coming home again.
When Samira makes it to the train station, she is dry-eyed though. The boy—Dennis—had clearly been crying. His whole family has come to see him off. A row of rumpled boys. A red-eyed father.
Abbott and Robby are waiting for them. Abbott puts his hand to Samira’s elbow to help her up the step. “Up you get,” he says.
On the platform, her mother is still watching. Samira raises her hand as if to wave, but it hurts too much to move it, so there she is just standing there with her hand partially raised as the train pulls away.
.
There are two tributes from each of the twelve districts. One boy and one girl. One mentor for each tribute. This is the basic premise of the Hunger Games. In some districts, the victors compete to see who will mentor each year, but Twelve only has Abbott and Robby. Every year, therefore, they are forced out of the Victors’ Village, onto this train and to the Capitol to watch the next crop of tributes be slaughtered.
It isn’t a competition, really. It’s been twenty years since Abbott won, and Twelve hasn’t even had a tribute make it past the first day. Once, this had meant that Samira felt bad for them, watching all that horror, not being able to stop it. Just like the rest of them, but closer in to it.
She doesn’t know what she feels now.
On the train ride, they eat in silence. Robby is staring out the window, his expression grim, and Abbott is watching him. Dennis is eating, and Samira is attempting to.
She wants to say to them, “I’m not a killer,” because she thinks it's important for them to know, but it seems almost rude, because she knows that both of them are . You had to be in order to win the Games.
“Are we going to talk strategy?” she says instead.
Abbott turns his gaze from Robby to her. “We’ll train you separately. Robby will take Samira. I’ll work with Dennis.”
Samira is surprised by the stab of hurt that goes through her at this. But then, she’s not even sure Abbott remembers that night three years ago. Or why she’d thought that if he did, that would mean he’d want to be the one to train her.
Either way, she won’t be making it out of the arena alive. She is enough of a pragmatist to know this. Why does it matter which man marches her to her death?
Robby looks over at her, and they make eye contact.
“Any advice?” she asks him.
He shakes his head. “Nothing can prepare you for it,” he says. “But I’ll try my best.”
His best, Samira thinks, doesn’t seem to be very good. The only victor he’s produced has been Abbott, twenty years ago, his very first year as mentor. She knows better than to say this though. What would be the point?
.
Their Capitol representative is a woman named Gloria, who will only speak to Robby. She does this in hushed tones, as if the rest of them aren’t worth her notice. When she’s finished with him, he looks frazzled and irritated.
“Learned her lesson with me,” Abbott tells Samira, lightly sardonic. He says it in an easy way, as if they are equals, or friends, and it rattles her.
She looks away quickly.
At the compound, they give them a shower and a fresh set of clothes, the number twelve emblazoned on the back, more food, rich and fatty, a large holoscreen with old Game footage preloaded, and a window that overlooks the cityscape. This could be a screen, too, for how real it feels looking out it.
Samira is still standing there looking anyway when Robby comes up behind her.
He doesn’t speak, but she can see the silhouette of him in the glass, large and somber and silent. It’s humiliating in its own way how much comfort this simple act brings her, like a spear through her heart.
She wonders what the other tributes are doing with their other mentors in their other windows all looking down at the same godforsaken city, all awaiting the same fate.
She wonders what her mother is doing back home.
.
Samira determines early on that the worst part (in a long, long list of worst parts) is that she actually likes a lot of the other tributes. Most of them are younger than her, and all of them are scared. She’s good with children, always has been, and before she knows it, at training, she has a gaggle following her from station to station. She walks them through some of the basics of plant lore, what can be eaten and what will likely be poison, how to set an arm, how to wrap an ankle brace.
Robby quizzes her about alliances afterwards, and she doesn’t know what to say. “I don’t want to hurt any of them,” she tells him. “They’re…” She searches for an appropriate word, and only comes up with one. “Children.”
He gives her a look, which she thinks means, you’re also a child, and that irritates her. She hasn’t been a child, not really, since she watched her father bleed out on her kitchen table.
“Fine,” she snaps. “I want Whittaker. I’m not going to hurt him. And I want King and Langdon and McKay. Collins, too, if she’ll agree.”
Robby looks exhausted by this. But, “Okay,” he says.
“And Javadi.”
“That’s two under fourteen. Bad odds.”
“They’ll need protecting,” Samira insists.
“And you think you’re capable of protecting them?”
It’s clear he thinks the answer to that is no . It makes her want to scratch at him. She can picture the whole thing, bloody marks on his face, the surprised sound he’d make. Maybe she was wrong, maybe she is more of a killer than she’d thought. It’s not worth fighting Robby though, so she just storms off.
It isn’t even him that she’s angry with. He’s just the only one there.
.
Samira was sixteen when her father finally passed away. He had been ill for a long time before that, but he’d woken one morning coughing blood and within the hour he was dead. Internal bleeding. Perhaps there was some kind of cure for it in the Capitol, but they didn’t waste that kind of medicine on the districts.
All they’d been able to do for him was hold his hand as he went.
Six months after his passing, Samira was walking home from her job (tutoring up on the hill) when she heard a sound from the alleyway to her right. She slowed. A woman was slumped against the wall, holding tight to her stomach. It was winter and it was snowing outside. The woman was unfamiliar.
“Are you all right?” Samira asked, though she knew the answer to that was no.
She stepped into the alleyway. The woman was moaning, a wheezy, wounded kind of sound that hurt to listen to.
Samira had the thought, I’m about to watch someone else die in front of me.
She put her hands to the woman’s face, “What’s wrong?” she said. “What’s hurting?”
Footsteps, and Samira looked up, already thinking of what she’d say to the Peacekeeper to explain the situation, how she’d ask for help, but it wasn’t a Peacekeeper. It was Jack Abbott, who she had only ever seen from a distance. He was famous for making an alliance with the Careers in his Games by telling them he had medical training, and then slaughtering them all in their sleep. And also for sawing his own leg off and somehow living. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, and a hat on.
“She’s hurt,” Samira said.
He knelt down beside her, unbuttoned the women’s jacket, and began feeling at her abdomen. After only a moment, he looked over at Samira. “Do you have steady hands?”
Samira didn’t have to think about it. “Yes,” she said.
“There’s alcohol in my pack. Disinfect your hands. Take a sip, too.”
Samira did as instructed, wincing at the taste. It was moonshine from the Hob, sharp at the back of her throat.
“Her lungs are filled with fluid,” Abbot said. “We need to drain it, otherwise she won’t be able to get air.”
“Okay,” Samira said. “What do you need me to do?”
He held up a pocket knife. “You can cut,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”
His gaze had been steady. It had made Samira feel steady, too. And afterwards, when they were done, the woman breathing beneath them, blood on both of their hands, kind of giddy with it, Samira had thought that something about him made life feel simple, like once you knew the secret to it, anyone could be saved.
In the years following, in Samira’s worst moments, when the future felt too grim, or the grief too heavy, she’d think back to that night, the feel of him over her shoulder, his hands pulling open the woman’s chest, the way they’d without speaking both held their breath until she was breathing along with them.
Sometimes, she’d think, triumphant, sometimes, people did get to live.
Just not her, it would seem.
.
The night before interviews, Samira can’t sleep and she gets up out of bed, thinking she’ll go watch some old Games footage, which won’t be calming, but might be informative.
When she steps out, she finds Abbott in the main room. He’s on the couch, head tilted back. His prosthetic is off, and he looks smaller without it, though he’s pretty much the same size.
She hasn’t seen much of him since she’d come to the Capitol.
He hears her footfalls, and looks up, startled. “Mike?”
“Sorry,” she says. “I can go.”
He shakes his head. “No, come sit.” He gestures beside him. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“No.” She takes the seat beside him, tentative, and examines him further. He has a five o'clock shadow, and his hair is ruffled like he’d been pulling at it. “What are you doing with Dennis? When you’re training?”
He blinks, but doesn’t attempt to hide it. “Basic self-defence. Try to give him a fighting chance if someone comes for him.” He pauses. “What are you doing with Robby?”
“Argueing, mostly.”
Abbott’s eyebrows raise. “That’s new.”
Samira doesn’t know how to parse that. But she has three nights left before the arena, and she doesn’t care as much as she normally does. “Why didn’t you want to train me?” she says. “I thought—”
But what she thought is still too embarrassing to say out loud. It exists in sense memory only. The acrid smell of the woman’s insides, the feel of the snow in her hair, Abbott’s voice, like something from a dream.
“I try to take the younger tributes. When I can.” He says this gently. “It’s easier for me, than for Robby.”
Samira deflates, just slightly. “But not easy.”
Something in his gaze darkens. “No,” he admits. “Not easy.”
The sound of footsteps from down the hallway, and then a voice saying, “Jack?”
“In here, Mike,” Abbott says, still looking at Samira.
And then Robby in the doorway, rubbing at his eyes, obviously just having woken. He startles when he sees Samira sitting beside Abbott. “Ah,” he says.
For Robby’s Games, the Gamemakers had played up the arena. Harsh elements: freezing cold, blazing heat, venomous animals, limited food and water supply. It had been less about fighting and more just about surviving. By the end of it, he had only really killed one other tribute, a boy who had started cannibalizing his victims for food. All the others, he had simply watched die.
Still, he was a killer, too. The same as Abbott.
Perhaps Samira is meant to feel frightened in their company, but she feels sort of as if the fear has been burned out of her. Three days left, she thinks, and then the arena.
Robby rubs at the back of his head. “You’ll do fine,” he says. “In the interviews. You know how to talk to people. And you’re…”
But what he thinks she is, Robby doesn’t say. Like there aren’t words for it.
Abbott and Robby share a look, and then Abbott pats her leg. “Try and get some sleep, kid,” he says. “Big day tomorrow.”
These two men are going to watch me die, Samira thinks. She isn’t sure why it is that matters. Why it almost feels more important than the fact she’s the one headed for death. She’s known that she was doomed since her name was called. There isn’t a version of the future where she lives.
All three of them were just pantomiming actions until the moment she went. How macabre, she thinks, vaguely, and stands up and goes to bed.
.
In the interviews, Mel talks about her sister, how she’s learned over the years to take care of her, because she had to (mother dead, father drunk). Heather talks about the idea of friendship and forgiveness. Cassie talks about her infant son, which nobody knew she had, and everyone is upset by. Frank talks about the importance of trust, how you have to give it to get any back. Victoria tells everyone that her mother was a victor, and perhaps it's in her blood, though everyone knows that victors’ children are usually the first to die in the arena.
Samira watches them speak, and tries to think about what she should say. What did it matter if they were good people? Sisters, mothers, allies? They weren’t Careers. None of them were prepared to kill, to fight to the bloody end. And that’s what people here had come to see; it was the only thing they wanted from them.
Abbott and Robby are beside her, watching the tributes come and go. Neither of them opines. Dennis speaks about his farm back home, how he’s good with animals and thinks that might be helpful in the arena. Samira thinks it’s a little farfetched.
Their stylist had dressed both Dennis and Samira plainly, as if to say, look here, these are simple folks . Blue cotton dress, hair down in glossy ringlets, only a shimmer of makeup. This is how she’d have looked if she’d stayed back home, Samira thinks, on some different, less terrible day. Her wedding, maybe.
The thought depresses her. She’d almost prefer to be unrecognizable.
Still, when they call her name, she rises to her feet. She smiles. When they ask her to talk about herself, she speaks about medicine. How she was meant to be a healer, had studied it in school and was meant to go on to an apprenticeship if she hadn’t come here.
“How do you think that will help you?” the host asks her.
“Well,” Samira says, still smiling. “The most important thing in the arena is not dying.”
.
The night before, Samira can’t sleep again. Dennis is sitting up and staring at the wall, and Samira has looked at the ceiling for too long. She gets up, frustrated. “Do you want something?” she asks him.
“Besides the obvious stuff?”
This makes her laugh, which surprises them both. “Yeah, besides all that.”
“No.”
She nods, and goes up to the rooftop. She wants to see the sky one last time.
Robby and Abbott are both up there. They’re sitting on the very edge at the far end, their heads bowed together. Somehow Samira isn’t surprised. They hear the sound of the door, and both turn, in sync, as if she had called their names.
“You should be trying to sleep,” Robby says when she reaches them. “Don’t know when your next chance will be.”
Samira folds her arms over her chest. Her shirt is thin and the wind is heavy up here. She walks over to peer forward. They’re a long way up and it’s disconcerting. She wonders if it would be better just to jump now.
“There’s a forecefield,” Abbott says. “It would toss you right back.”
Robby makes a choked sort of sound.
“I don’t want to die,” Samira says.
There is a heavy silence after this statement.
After a moment though, Abbott starts talking. He points at different buildings, and tells Samira what’s in them. It’s clear after only a handful of examples that he’s making them all up, though she’s not entirely sure about the wig shop.
“Jack,” Robby says, exasperated. “Stop talking. You’re making it worse.”
“I don’t mind,” Samira says. She leans back to look up, away from the buildings towards the muddy spread of sky. Neither of them is touching her, but she can feel their presence like a blanket around her. “Tell me how you knew what to do for that woman,” she says. It’s the only thing she really wants to know. Before she goes.
Silence for a beat. Then Abbott says, “I read it in a book.”
Samira lets out a startled laugh. “Really?”
She doesn’t open her eyes, but she can feel him nodding.
“That’s awesome. I want to read it. When I get back.”
Samira keeps her eyes closed. If she’s crying, both of them do her the courtesy of not mentioning it.
“Sure,” Abbott says, at last. His voice sounds as if it's very far away. “I’ll loan it to you.”
.
In the morning, Robby takes her down to the holding area. It’s deep beneath the arena in a place it looks like no one is meant to see. As the District Twelve girl, they are the furthest down and they walk a long way. When they get there, they wait, Robby leaning against the wall, Samira examining every inch of the room that isn’t the tube that will take her up to the arena.
They can both hear the sound of the commentary above them, and it blurs out the possibility of other conversation.
For a moment, Samira wishes for Abbott’s steadiness. With Robby beside her, she feels jittery, like he might tell her she’s doing it wrong, though she’s done nothing yet but braid her hair and hope for the best.
“I didn’t sleep,” she tells him, goading.
“Samira,” Robby says, then clears his throat, as if gearing up for something. Probably, she thinks, another lecture.
Before he can though, there’s a blaring sound. “Tributes to their positions. Thirty seconds.”
Samira looks at Robby. He takes her by the hand and guides her into the tube, holding her by both wrists. There’s power in his grip. Fifteen. Fourteen.
She stares at his face, the last thing she sees before she’s lifted up into the arena. Streaks of grey in his beard, shoulders hunched down so he can be at her level, his eyes, gone frantic at the corners.
Ten.
He says her name, urgent, almost harsh, like she really needs to listen.
“What?” she says. “Robby, what?”
Five.
“I think you can win.”
Three.
“What?”
One.
The tube is closing around her, starting to rise, and his voice is cut off, but Samira stares at his mouth as he says it again. The very, very last thing she sees. Words, forming:
I think you can win.
PART TWO.
There are twenty-four houses in the Victors’ Village. Four streets, six houses per street. Only two though, are occupied. The one that Samira and her mother live in, and the one that Robby and Abbot do.
Technically speaking, Abbott has his own house. It’s between the two occupied ones. But she’s never seen him there, and the lights are always off.
Her mother, to Samira’s surprise, hates the house. It’s big and drafty and cold. Colorless. Samira hates the house, too, but she hates everything these days.
The first week she’s back, Samira collects Abbott’s books on medicine from him and reads them cover to cover. She takes notes. When she’s through them all, she plays back through the footage of her Games. She watches it over and over again until it’s crystal clear to her everything she should have done differently.
She makes notes on this, as well, then burns them in the fireplace and starts again.
Her mother doesn’t approve of this behavior. Distantly, Samira can even understand why, but she can’t stop herself from doing it.
After a month of this, Robby comes over and yells at her. She lets him yell, and then lets him storm out, and doesn’t say anything in response, because she doesn’t have anything to say.
“The only thing that could have gone differently,” he tells her, “is that you could have died! You couldn’t have saved them, because that’s how the Games fucking work! It was you or them! And it was you! You didn’t die!”
I know, I know, I know, she wants to scream.
She doesn’t do that either. She thinks maybe he’d be glad if she did.
But she can’t make herself stop watching the footage, even though by now, there isn’t a second of it she doesn’t know by heart.
This next time, she thinks, this next time, I’ll do it right.
.
A week after her confrontation with Robby, Abbott shows up at her doorstep. “Let’s walk,” he says.
It’s fall and the trees are all orange and yellow as if they’re ablaze. Samira puts on her shoes and follows after him.
“I wish I lost my leg,” she tells him when they’ve gone aways.
He laughs. “No, you don’t.”
She looks over, askance.
“It hurt.”
She bet it did.
By the end of the Games, Samira’d had burn marks all up the front half of her body, her stomach, her chest, the tops of her arms, patches of flayed skin where her shirt had stuck to it and she’d had to rip the fabric off. When she’d woken afterwards, safe and alive back in the Capitol, the doctors had wiped away all evidence of it. Fresh skin.
The scar on her face, too, was gone. The tip of her pinkie nail, perfectly smooth, no sign of anything missing. Beautiful medicine.
“They couldn’t regrow your foot?” she asks.
“They offered me a fancier prosthetic,” he says. “But I prefer this one. Sometimes…”
He goes silent, but she thinks she knows what he means. It’s the same thing she’d been trying to say.
Better to see the evidence of the wound.
.
Abbott is easier for her than Robby is. Samira suspects Robby knows it, too, because he stays away from her. It’s funny, she thinks, because in the Games she’d used to pray to Robby, like he was a god, like if she could just make the right bargain with him, find the right words, she’d find herself back in front of him again, safe and sound.
Even now, she can remember the exact feeling of those prayers. And it’s worse, because watching the footage back, she knows explicitly in a way she didn’t when she was doing it that he could hear her. They play the clips of it, and then a shot of his face in the mentor’s viewing section, still and somber and completely unreadable. Did it mean she’d won the bargain? Samira wonders. Because she’s still alive?
Now, he won’t even look at her.
Still. Abbott likes to talk. He starts with the medicine, walks her though some of the cases from his books. It’s old stuff, from back before the war, and she’s sure it’s all different now, up in the Capitol, but she likes listening to him run through it. His brain is practical, it walks through what all the steps are, and he makes her do it with him in a way that’s calming.
If this were to happen, what would you do, he’d start. And then?
He walks with her, too, though she knows it causes his joint to ache, because he knows she hates sitting at home.
And as she gets to know him more, he talks about other things. Stories from his childhood. Friendships with some of the other victors. He tells a story about Robby cooking blue stew that makes her laugh for the first time since the arena, and then she has to sit down with her head between her knees as she weeps.
When they reach the end of the walk, Abbott will linger by his and Robby’s door as if he wants to invite her in but knows that she’ll say no. And Samira will think, every time, I’m still not ready, and she’ll walk back to her house instead, looking at the light on in the window of their house, feeling an all-encompassing yearning that she has nowhere to put down
She’s not sure she’ll ever be ready. She feels broken in a way that’s impossible to fix.
She’s not even sure she wants to try.
.
It’s almost a surprise to her when the reaping comes around again. It’s been a year, she thinks. How horrible.
The day is sunny and the square is full, but for the first time, Samira is on the stage beside Abbott and Robby and Gloria instead of on the ground with the rest of the district. She doesn’t want to, really, but she finds herself scanning the face of every child one by one, trying to determine which one it will be.
And then up they come. A smudgy looking fifteen year old girl with a bowl cut and a petulant expression. And a very skinny twelve year old boy with glasses. Samira stares at them all the way until they are carted off to the Visiting Hall to say their farewells.
As the only female victor, Samira is obligated to go to the Capital for the girl, but she’s very sure that Abbott will be the one joining her, especially because the boy is so young, so she’s somewhat taken aback when she arrives at the train station and finds Robby waiting for her.
She stops and looks at him.
“It’s going to suck,” he tells her.
“Then why did you come?”
He gives a shrugging motion, as if to say, I’m still your mentor.
She sort of hates him for that. He was a shit fucking mentor.
She also maybe kind of loves him for it.
.
The kids have no skills and no chances. Samira doesn’t like thinking of it that way, but she’s watched twenty-four people die now. She wants to say to Robby, I don’t want to have to watch these kids die, but they’re pointless words, and it would only hurt the both of them.
She just sits with them mainly. Holds the girl when she weeps, talks to them both about home. She doesn’t know if it's helping, but she looks up and finds Robby watching her from the doorway late one night, when the both of them have already drifted off with their heads in her lap, something unreadable in his eyes. She disentangles herself and goes to join him.
They mix alcohol and coffee and take it to the rooftop.
“Did you ever think about having kids?” he asks her.
She’s twenty years old and feels ancient. “No,” she says. “You?”
He laughs a little, and hangs his head. “No.”
“Maybe in a different world.” This, gently.
“Yeah, I’m not so sure.”
Samira sighs. She wishes Abbott were here with a sudden vengeance. She feels like he would know what to say to fill the silence.
She wonders if Robby is thinking that, too. He’s never done any of this without him, not in twenty years. And Samira feels like a poor replacement part.
“I don’t want to have to watch these kids die,” she says, at last.
Robby exhales. “Yeah, me neither.”
.
They die early, at least. The boy at the Cornucopia and the girl in the early evening after the Career Pack has formed. Robby had warned her that they like to show mentor shots during the death sequences, so Samira makes sure to keep her expression perfectly neutral. Afterwards, she goes to the bathroom and splashes water on her face.
Robby is still watching, expressionless, in the booth when she returns. She sits back down beside him and tries to pretend nothing is wrong.
That night, when they go back to their rooms, however, once he thinks she’s sleeping, she hears him weeping.
She sits in her own bed, fighting her own tears, and wonders what Abbott would do. Probably go to him.
Samira doesn’t know how to though.
She wonders if he weeped like this when Dennis died. Like she did in the arena, with his blood on her hands. But she already knows the answer.
She’d known it then. Maybe that’s why she’d prayed to him.
.
Abbott is waiting for them at the train station. The time apart has clearly been hard on him. There are deep circles beneath his eyes, and when Samira and Robby get off the train, he hugs them both, hard, an arm around each of them so they’re all smushed together.
“Hey, hey,” Robby says. But he doesn’t attempt to push him off, and neither does Samira, and for a moment, they all breathe in sync.
It feels nice, Samira thinks, her eyes drifting closed.
She mourns it when they’re forced to let go.
.
Two days later, Robby shows up at her door. “Doing rounds,” he says.
Samira has no clue what doing rounds means, but obligingly she puts on her shoes and follows after him.
Doing rounds, it turns out, means going to the families of their fallen tributes’ houses. This is such a stunningly emotional task that at the front door of the first one (the girl, Teresa ), Samira pauses, completely thunderstruck that he hadn’t prepared her for it.
Robby puts his hand on her shoulder blade. It’s a kind of brusque motion, like he’s unsure how to gentle it.
And well, whatever. Samira steels herself and knocks on the door.
Robby is mainly quiet through the whole thing. The mother is angry, the father is silent. It doesn’t take long to determine that Robby has brought a portion of his yearly winnings with him. This for whatever reason does not endear him any more to them than if he hadn’t done so. Maybe Samira understands a bit. They need someone to be angry at. Robby is just offering himself up for it.
There is a fair amount of yelling and then when the yelling subsides, weeping, which Robby takes with an admirable grace. At the end, they simply duck out and leave the money behind.
It’s raining, and Samira tilts her head up to it, lets it wash over her face.
“Does it help?” she asks him.
“It helps.”
“Okay,” she says, and they go to the next one. The boy, she thinks. Christopher .
She doesn’t want to forget their names.
.
Abbott tells her later that Robby goes to the houses of all of the tributes every month. “All of them?” Samira asks, aghast.
Abbott nods. “Everyone that he has mentored.”
Twenty-one years and only two victors made forty families. Forty tons of grief.
“The Capitol must hate that.”
Abbott smiles. “Let them hate something for a change.”
Well, Samira doesn’t mind that thought. And so she takes to going with him, when she can stomach it, which ends up being most days. It’s a reprieve from watching an endless torrent of the same deaths over and over again.
Robby doesn’t say anything about her coming, whether it helps or hurts, but he doesn’t stop her either. Which Samira takes as a win.
And Samira could use the win.
.
The next year Abbott goes with her to the Capitol instead of Robby. “We’ll give him a break,” he says to her. “Lord knows the man deserves it.”
The tributes are much the same. The boy is older. He’d left school early to work in the mines, and he’s strong, but Samira is not sure it matters much. The girl is timid and clings to the boy’s hand throughout all their training sessions. They’ll be allies, which is better than the previous year when they’d told her and Robby early on that they’d wanted to go it alone. But it might also be worse.
“Are we helping them?” Samira asks Abbott.
It’s the two of them on the roof this time.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I like to think so. Doing what we can. But…I don’t know.”
She rests her head on his shoulder. She can feel the turn of his neck, and then light pressure. His lips against her hair.
Samira smiles at that. It’s weird that in a moment like this she can feel grateful, but she does. She hadn't thought she'd ever smile again.
.
Both tributes make it past the Cornucopia this time; but they die anyway, later that night. At least, Samira thinks, it’s quick. She’s learning small mercies. Abbott insists that they leave after the Capitol has their reaction shots, and Samira doesn’t argue with him.
They stand in the elevator, watching the floors tick upwards, Samira holding onto the back of his shirt, like she’s a child.
“I don’t think I’m going to cry.” She feels sort of amazed at the fact.
He shrugs. “Either way.”
In the kitchen, he makes coffee and they sip it staring at each other across the long sleek island.
“It’s stupid,” Samira admits after some time has passed. “Because I’m glad he’s not, but I also sort of wish Robby were here with us.”
Abbott shakes his head, laughing. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
He comes around the other side of the island so they are right up next to each other, close enough that their shoes are brushing. She raises her head so she can look at him. “What?” she says.
“I’m glad you didn’t die.” He says it a bit like it’s a joke, and a bit like it isn’t.
As confessions go, Samira thinks it’s all right. “I’m glad you’re not dead, too.” Even when she’d thought there wasn’t anything left to like she’d still liked him. Probably that means something.
There’s an intensity to his expression, dark eyes, mouth held very still. “You should tell Robby.”
Samira blinks, surprised. “Which part?”
He smiles. “All of it.”
.
When Samira gets home, her mother has packed her bags. She’s getting married again, to a merchant who lives in their old neighborhood. Samira is vaguely taken aback. She hadn’t even known they were dating.
“You are my child,” her mother tells her, pressing their foreheads together. “You are welcome wherever I am.” She releases her. “But this is not a home, beta. I cannot stay here.”
Samira can’t find it in herself to disagree. When she thinks of home, she thinks of a time when her father was still alive, the three of them in their one room apartment above the candy shop. The rhythm of them all together. Six years gone.
When she thinks of going with her mother though, she can’t imagine that either.
“I’ll be all right,” she tells her. “I promise.”
Her mother hums, and tells her she’ll be by every day. Samira knows she will.
When she’s gone, Samira starts across the road and heads down two houses. She stares up at the grand manse, the symbol of their victory, and then heads towards the back where she knows the kitchen is located. She raps on the back door.
Robby answers. He has a towel over one shoulder.
“You’ve shaved,” she tells him as if he doesn’t know.
It makes him look younger and older all at once. The face behind the beard is weary, too. Familiar and foreign in equal measures.
He looks very confused at this greeting, which is fair. It isn’t what she’s come here to say.
Samira takes a deep breath. “I didn’t want anyone to die in the arena. You know that.”
“Samira.” His tone is low, almost a warning. “We don’t have to—”
But Samira pushes through. “And I thought I wasn’t going to win, because I didn’t want anyone to die. But I did win. Because more than the amount that I didn’t want people to die, I wanted to live. And maybe that’s unforgivable, I’m never going to know. But I’m trying really hard to be glad that I’m still alive. And it’s easier when it’s someone else, I know. Because I’m glad that Jack’s alive. And I’m glad you’re alive. And it’s okay if you are, too. And even if you aren’t…” She shrugs, sort of helplessly. “I still will be. Glad.”
It’s harder to say to Robby than it had been to Abbott, but then so is everything. She thinks maybe that’s just part of it, the three of them.
For his part, Robby looks like she bludgeoned him. She doesn’t mind the look on him. “Do you like soup?” he says, at last. “Because I’m making soup.”
Samira tells him that she does. “And it’s okay to cry in front of me,” she adds. “If you want.”
He nods. “I’m grateful,” he starts, but then doesn’t seem to have anything else at hand. Instead he just rubs his eyes on his sleeve, and shoves the door further open.
It’s answer enough. She can work with gratitude.
And Samira isn’t sure what the future will bring, if they will spend another twenty years marching children to their death, holding their hands as they go and sitting on rooftops together afterwards, the three of them, and not jumping off them, but when she thinks about home, what it takes to make one not just be brick and mortar, about the concept of taking care of one another because you’ve learned how to, about friendship and forgiveness and trust and how you have to give to get anything back, she’s reminded of all the thing she’s lost, yes, but also maybe a little about the things she’s gained. That she could keep gaining. If she wanted.
Robby turns from her. She sees the line of his neck, and thinks about pressing upwards onto her toes and putting her mouth there right where fabric meets skin. She’s going to, she realizes. If not now, then very soon. She’s almost positive he’ll let her.
“Jack!” he calls further into the house “Samira’s here.”
And Samira steps inside, and closes the door behind her.