Archive of Our Own ^beta

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Sun Bak is the female volunteer for the year. She knows this, she’s been training. Her father has higher hopes on his son; he’s meant to volunteer for the boy, Sun will have her time next year, even if she’s meant to age out. Sun knows her brother won’t actually survive and win, he’ll be given as many sponsors as he has hairs on his head to make it through. She watches, he looks scared for a second, his eyes searching for hers as he walks to the stage, not a volunteer. She can feel her fathers eyes burning into her back, she can feel the anger burning in her chest and she swallows, taking all of it and pushing it into her fist, pushing herself forward fist raised in the air as she shouts.
“I volunteer.” The girl looks horrified, there was always a rule, never fight family. Sun knows her brother won’t have to worry about that, she’ll kill him before he even thinks it. She can already feel the story they’ll spin, a sweet sister looking to save her brother, the only person she looked up to. She’s almost sick with excitement at going into the arena, at proving them wrong.

Her brother set her up. She knows this; the alliances she’d made, the other girls, all took to murder too easily, like her. They chose weapons, extensions of themselves, stretching themselves too thin; Sun knows fighting with just her fists is too dangerous, too close, but she’s always used to being alone; she always has been, secretly, she fears she always will be. As she looks across to where her brother stands, having backstabbed the alliance he made, letting them choke on the poison one of his sponsors sent him, she grins. He turns and runs. She picks up a spear, the first weapon she’s held in violence in the games, she pins him with the shirt he wears. She watches his face, until it no longer resembles one, she steps back and waits, not bothering to clean her hands of blood. She gets through two sets of her meditation exercises before the cannon sounds. She knows the capitol will talk about her ruthlessness; she knows they will talk about her indifference. She knows this is safe. When she returns home, when she’s getting prepared for the victory tour, she makes sure to pack gifts, apologies to her allies' families, to those she couldn’t save.

Sun Bak is alone for a year. She doesn’t move anyone into her victor’s house, she doesn’t talk to the other victors or their families. She only speaks to her trainer, keeping him safe and protected, and her dog. She’s alone until she has to mentor, until the next games when she watches kids she just talked to trying to kill each other; they die within the first hours. When she has to watch, expecting another career to win the games. A boy from 6 whose smile hasn’t been dulled yet takes the crown. When he arrives, Sun realizes that she’s no longer alone, when he keeps himself by her side, when his kind nature settles like a balm over the wounds, over her fear of being used more, when he wants to learn from her she teaches him. She enjoys her time with him, and the next time they’re mentoring she doesn’t feel as hopeless, even if his tributes die after hers.

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The boy is sick. Capheus volunteers before anyone can say anything else, before they can even finish saying the boy's name. Capheus knows he’ll get medicine for him if he wins, his mother, everyone in the district will be better for it. He swallows smiling brightly at the girl who stands next to him, he nudged her hand leaning over to shrink his smile to one for just her, she is twelve.
“What a wonderful opportunity, to try all the capital food.” He assures her throughout every step of training, holds her when she only gets a three in the training session and she cries all that night. They gain sponsors, due to his warmth and willingness to help everyone during training that’s broadcast. He scores a 7 in the individual training scores, he knows that ripping the equipment from where it was bolted down should have scored him more, but he assumes they’re not expecting him to win, he wonders what the sponsors will think of him trying to avoid killing.

He stays with the girl, he’d promised not to leave her. She doesn’t slow him down, it's easy to carry her, the time spent building tracks for the trains, working on the cars and transport vehicles that were sent to the capitol has made him strong. He knows he’s weak where it counts; that he could never hurt anyone. He knows how to steal, to hide and conceal things on his person, from the times he’s stolen from work to help the van he’d found in the scrap heaps. Her arm gets cut, his get’s broken. Hers gets infected instantly, some sort of poison, he finds a branch to set his arm, watching as a parachute floats down to them. He swallows, keeping the bottle of morphling and needle tucking into his coat. He waits expecting medication for her arm. None comes. They outrun the careers, there’s only the two of them and two careers. Then there’s one career, Capheus watches, he can hear the thunk of the knife, not followed by a cannon, the blade is sticking from the girls leg and he wants to scream for her but he just grabs whatever is next to him and hurls it at the career. The cannon sounds, the girl cries. Capheus knows what has to happen next, he pulls the syringe, filling it. She looks at him, her arm almost twisted fully around, purple and puffed; he’s seen this when workers got their arms crushed in the machinery. He knows you don’t heal from that.

Capheus meets the winner from last year on the victory tour, she doesn’t smile, but he can see one corner of her lip is higher than the other, he watches it flatten back out after he says hello to her and he counts it as a victory. He searches for Sun Bak at the parties, and anything the victors are required to be at, he eventually gets the courage to ask her to help him train. She doesn’t ask for what, and he doesn’t say.
“There’s a limit on people you can bring to the Victor’s village.” He mentions and Sun nods.
“But nothing to say what can leave the village.” He laughs wiggling his eyebrows as she catches some sort of tool shoved in his sleeve, she hesitates for a moment before she does truly smile.

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Bug had helped her. Amanita had as well, but of course the surgeries and the alterations can only help so much, each one cost her at least a dozen names in the tessera, thankfully her family is better off than most, she doesn’t need her name more than the surgeries she needed.
She knows she’s more likely to be called this year, the surgery doubled the names, and then doubled the past ones she’d submitted as well. Half those names are hers, when her sister, only a few months from aging out, only a few months from getting married comes to her and tells her that she worked with Bug to get her name on Nomi’s slips for the year. Nomi prays to anyone listening that any of her slips will not be drawn.
Nomi knows her parents will blame her, they’ll use every chance they get to point out what happened to Teagan. So when her sister steps to the stage, Nomi does what she knows her parents would have wanted, she holds her hand up and quietly goes to her death.

She wonders if this is what the capitol expected when they’d left the land mines so close to the surface. she’d managed to find what she can use as a shovel, not that she even needs it; the careers don’t bother her, she’d gotten such a low score, she can hear the jokes about her digging her own grave. They don’t see what she comes back for. The game makers throw a feast; calling for a truce, that any tributes that kill during the meal will in turn have their family tortured and be themselves killed. There has never been a truce before, she wonders how much everyone thinks it’s a trap. Five peacekeepers appear when the feast table is being set up, to enforce the truce, they stand between the tributes, carefully keeping the table non-violent.
Nomi swallows, she doesn’t go with everyone to the feast. She stays hidden in a tree refusing to come down to her district partners pleases. She doesn’t trust the game makers, not since they sent an earthquake that buried her under rock for a full day before the landscape shifted enough for her to get out. She’s watching everyone, they’re enjoying themselves and it’s all proper capitol food, she can’t hear anything over her stomach and she’s about to climb from the tree when the peacekeeper’s bark a ten minute warning. She stays, unsure what will happen once the ten minutes have passed. She has the mines ready to blow when the peacekeepers leave.
She counts eight before the flood happens. She counts eight until the cannons go off, until besides the food, bodies float up. She waits, expecting to see someone drowning, someone thrashing or climbing to dry land. Instead the peacekeepers swim towards her, and the flash that denotes she’s won the games.

She feels like she doesn’t deserve it, hiding from everyone, hiding from herself. She never wanted any of this but she’s at least relieved her sister is safe now. She moves her sister, her new brother in law and her parents into the Victor’s village; she asks Amanita to move in with her and is met with a marriage proposal which she refuses to accept on the ground she was planning on proposing to Amanita when she’d gotten back from the Victory tour.
The story of the blundered proposal is what endears the other mentors to her, they’re all laughing warmly, and she’s waiting for Sun or Lito to turn it back on her, to call out her weakness, instead the confession spurs Lito onto his own about Hernando, and Nomi can’t help but smile when he nods to her later in the night she can see the man next to him turn, smiling just as warmly at her.

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He was going to make sure everyone knew who he was. He was going to be the best; the best scores, the best fighter, the best liar. Anything he needed to be, he would be. That was before he met Hernando. Before he had more than just his mother and family to think of. With Hernando came not only the love for him, but his first friend, Danille; she had big dreams like him but her on and off again boyfriend Joaquinn kept her too far down to achieve anything. They help her leave. They keep her safe, Lito’s time in the training centers, the reputation he earns keeps her safe. Dani’s name is called and Lito knows he has to stop Joaquin from getting in the arena with her, he knows he’d make her suffer. Joaquinn is already starting to stalk towards the stage. Lito mentally says goodbye to everyone, he’s sure Hernando won’t want him to come back after this, he knows his mother will cry, his mother will question his choice, she won’t understand, just like he fears she won’t understand Hernando and his love. He shoves Hernando away from him, trying to shield his boyfriend from how he’s about to save their Dani.

Lito sits with Dani, watching the river flow, he’d never seen so much of a forest before and for the moment they relax, letting themselves act childish. The sun is warm and the water is cool, they watch two of the tributes fighting, it’s almost like watching the training back home. Of course this ends when the winning tribute launches himself at them. Dani shoots him; Lito doesn’t ask where she got the gun; the only other tribute having used them died last night. Lito knows, he killed him.
It's them and the other tribute; they’ve been hiding, Dani and Lito trying to draw them out. Finally it’s a forest fire that forces them to the cornucopia. Dani’s perched on the edge of the cornucopia, Lito’s on his stomach watching as the last tribute scrambles toward the opening. Dani jumps down and the kid slashes forward, the knife gashing her arm, before Lito can hear the snap, and then a cannon boom. Dani’s hand grips the lip of the cornucopia, Lito hauls her up and they sit, waiting. It takes two days for the president to come on, to accept they’ll both be winners. He knows no one will forget him now.

Lito’s putting on a show, he always does but he makes sure to dial it up when he meets the other victors; Capheus is so warm to him it stuns Lito a little bit. Sun and Wolfgang seem incredibly happy to talk to Dani and Hernando. Nomi is the one to sit with him, to talk about what the games do, about what the president will want of him, of Dani. He listens and asks if he would be the only one working, if there was a way for him to spare Dani from it. Nomi doesn’t say no and it’s enough for Lito. It takes him only a few minutes to settle into their group; to relax and calm down the acting he’d been turning on. It's only then that he see’s Dani and Hernando relax fully, both of them content if he is.

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”Felix B-” Wolfgang can tell Stiener, his cousin who had moved to the capitol is enjoying this too much.
“I volunteer!!!” Wolfgang growls before anymore of Felix’s name can be spoken, he’s stepping through the crowd towards the path to the stairs, he’s just made it to the clearing before he’s tackled to the ground.
“I don’t accept it! I want to go!” Felix scrambles off him and tries to run up but Wolfgang hauls him backwards and tries to shove him into the crowd. Felix manages to slip past again but this time it’s not Wolfgang who’s stopped him.
“There Wolfgang, you want Felix to live, you win.” Steiner calls to him, the peacekeeper putting his gun back, and Wolfgang finally makes it on stage watching as the only family he has left is taken to a hospital somewhere in the district.

He gets sent updates with the sponsor’s gifts. He wants to thank them, so he makes sure to make the kills as entertaining as possible. He and Lila are playing a game; he wonders who her sponsor is, someone high up, but not as high up as his family. He frowns at that; he doesn't want his family’s help but he can’t disregard the parachutes as he’s not sure what is from who until he opens it.
He’s gotten away from Lila once again, they’ve been playing cat and mouse, killing tributes who get in the way. Wolfgang has turned it into more of a game, flirting with her anytime they’re near but never getting close to show any kind of affection. Apparently if all the gifts are anything to go by the Capitol are loving their games. Wolfgang watches the parachute float down; it’s not for him; too far away but close enough where he can now see where Lila is. The parachute that floats down to him is a welcome sight when he opens it. A pair of spark rocks, and a bottle of alcohol. He drinks half of the bottle, tossing the cap and tearing some of his shirt off to stuff inside to cork it. He grins at the bottle, swishing the liquid around so it starts to creep up the rag he’s used. He remembers as he throws it into Lila’s campsite that the first time he and Felix threw one the glass had bounced back and cut matching scars onto their hands. He rubs his thumb over it as he waits for the fire and screams to die down, for the cannon to sound and for him to be able to finally sleep knowing Felix is safe.

He doesn’t care about what the president wants him to do; he doesn’t care about all the people who giggle and beg and slide him money to do horrible things to them; to pretend that they’re a rival in the games while they writhe under him. He doesn’t care for the other victors, finding their styles of mentoring too soft. However he does look out for them, almost obsessively, so many volunteers, so many people who are too soft does not bode well for them. He’s always watching keeping Nomi and Riley out of Steiners’ hands; keeping Will and Capheus from his own job in the Capitol; he knows he doesn’t really need to do the same for Sun; she plays her part in underground fighting matches, people who want to go against one of the victors pay excessively for the privilege of her to beat them. He has Felix move into the house with him, it’s massive, too big for the both of them never mind the rest of their families if they had them.

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It’s a special event, this hunger games they say there are rule changes. The twenty-fifth hunger games are truly a special occasion. Everyone knows this cannot benefit the tributes. Will is sick when he hears they’ve lowered the age, from six to eighteen, to make sure no one forgets how kind, how giving the capitol is.
Sara Patrell is fighting, trying to twist from the peacekeepers grip, Will can see her mother, looking horrified trying to tell her it will be okay. Everyone is looking to the ground.
“Sarah, I’ll go with you.” Will knows everyone thinks he means to the stage, the peacekeepers know him, one of their own’s kids, they let him. He keeps Sarah’s hand in his own, helping her up the stairs and almost swinging her playfully back and forth to get her to the main stage, trying to assure her it'll be okay. Will has always been too kind. When he doesn’t move from beside Sarah after they’ve made a fuss about starting to call for the male tribute. An effort to try to force him off the stage without physical closeness; one gets annoyed, shoving him, he turns shielding Sarah and hits the visor so hard it shatters.
“I said, I volunteer.”

Sarah makes it to the final three. Will refuses to let her suffer, he’d tried his best to keep her fed and safe. He’d gotten stabbed because of it and now she was risking her life trying to find food for him. She makes it back, a rabbit from one of the snares the other tributes had set before they were killed. The career is behind her. Will’s shaking, he knows it might be futile but he grips the spear at his side and raises it, he can see the blood dripping from the careers mouth and doesn’t understand why he can hear two cannons. A sword, lodged through Sarah, just missing him, the rabbit’s dropped, her body at a strange angle, she had run in front of him. Will removes the sword wrapping her in the blanket her mother had sent. The same as when he volunteered he doesn’t leave her side, the peacekeepers are careful, trying to circle him to jab him with some sedative. They manage to eventually and Will wakes up alone, the blanket folded on his chest.

He’s tense when meeting the other Victors, he didn’t like the idea of mentoring and he watches and evaluates the rest of the Victors. He’s dreading this year's game, beyond having to mentor, he’d heard the game this year was looking like it was going to have an incredibly high entertainment value. The tributes from district twelve are rumored to be married, something the capitol was eating up, a wife volunteering to try to save her husband, the ultimate sacrifice, a reminder how trapped the victors were. Will knows he shouldn’t but he’s already rooting for the female district twelve tribute, he knows his two tributes will make it halfway, he starts to drum up sponsors for them, trying to pick things that if Riley stumbled upon she could use as well.

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Riley is seventeen. Magnus is almost eighteen. She’d heard her father and him, when they thought she was asleep, talking about once they aged out he’d wanted to get married. He’d been so kind to both of them, helping them out like Sven did with food and money when they needed. Riley was pleased to hear her father laughing, shaking his head jokingly claiming he would have offered his own hand if it meant Magnus staying with Riley. She doesn’t comment about how sick she’d been feeling, it was just nerves for the reaping, after this Magnus would be safe, she would be as well once he married her; still she goes to Yrsa, the closest to a mother she’s had in years and tries not to cry as Yrsa softly explains that’s what she’ll be soon. Riley doesn't know what to tell Magnus so she doesn’t; telling her father to avoid the secret eating her up. She’s assuring him she’ll tell Magnus after the reaping, a celebration of safety and family.
Riley killed her mother, and drove everyone she cares for away, her first friend killed in a mining accident. She thinks maybe this is fitting punishment, Magnus’ name getting called. His eyes are searching for hers in the crowd, she doesn’t let him search, she will not let him go alone, as she scans the crowd from her position next to him on the stage, she see’s Yrsa, hands clenched in fists, the only sign of her anger, of her disappointment. She makes a promise to her father in the station to survive, to her eventual child she apologies, unsure if she can keep that promise at all.

It’s snowing, it hasn’t stopped snowing for what feels like weeks, and the clock they see at night tells her it’s been almost ten days of snow. She wonders what the point of the blizzard is, it’s too dark and snowy for anyone to see, too much of a risk to hurt anyone. There’s only her and Magnus, and three others, she hears a cannon and recounts, she wonders if it's one of the careers, she hates how she hopes for it.
Magnus pulls his coat off wrapping it around her.
“No, you’ll get-”
“Not just you I’m keeping warm anymore.” The blizzard starts to let up and for a moment Riley thinks that maybe she’s not really bad luck. It’s gone as the snow clears. It's obvious the two careers had found them, she can see them grinning and standing, inching forward, Magnus has the axe he’d taken and he stalks forward.
Riley’s not surprised to feel some sort of stone whizzing by her, meant to knock her unconscious. She’s too invested in Magnus’ movements; she can’t tear her eyes away as he launches forward to attack one of the careers. She’s not aware she’s standing, she’s not aware she’s moving forward, able to sense something is wrong. She doesn’t feel the knife in her arm, she feels Magnus wrenching the career away. She can feel the warmth from the blood, the cold as Magnus and the others vanish from her vision, everything going white; she hopes Magnus makes it as she hears a cannon fire.

They push the angle she’s innocent; that she killed no one during her entire games; she got lucky. Riley can’t help but hate the lies, there’s nothing lucky about getting stabbed and passing out, Magnus falling with the careers into a chasm created by the blizzard and avalanche that had driven the careers towards them. She killed her daughter, she thinks, the child she never got to take care of; she couldn’t protect her. The previous years winners watch her with interest; no one had managed to avoid hurting someone let alone killing nobody during the games. Sun and Caphues watch her; but she seems to be the main focus of Will Gorski; the winner from the year before, he talks to her like she wants to be talked to, someone who was in the games; someone who lost almost everything, she sits with Will at the parties, anytime the victors are together she’s with him.
It’s not long before rumors swirl and Will assures her it’s better; he mentions what Wolfgang has to do, how the president likes the victors to be the capitol’s entertainment and keep those citizens that can pay for it company. Being together keeps them away from that, neither of them mention they’re not pretending to be falling in love.

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She’s not foolish enough to risk her life. She knows taking so much tessera is dangerous, but if having the extra grain, the filler for her fathers cooking, to help everything stretch as far as it can through their community, well she’ll allow herself the thought she can be dangerous. When Rajan, the mayor’s son starts courting her, he comments how kind, how soft and weak she is. She leaves him alone on the date they were halfway through. He wins her back by saying how he saw her as something so wonderful in the hell they were trapped in. She only falls for half of his words. His name is called, someone volunteers for him, bribed by his father or threatened by Rajan’s friends; he’s only a year younger than Rajan, the volunteer, but he looks sick, underfed. All Kala can hear is Rajan’s commentary about how weak, how safe she is. She glares at him as she walks up to the stage. They called a girl who had just turned 13, her birthday was two days ago. Kala recognises her, one of the parentless ones that comes by when her father calls for dinner. Kala swallows the insults, the anger; she knows she is dangerous and as sick as she is with worry, there’s a glimmer of darkness, a glimmer to prove herself.

Her district partner dies after they step off the platforms, the knife he was stabbed with now sits in her pack. She doesn’t care about who she’s killing, and if she thinks too long on that it makes her feel sick, so she doesn’t. Instead focusing on the chemicals her father had sent her, the natural plants she can find, things to make poison, things to create a gas to flood the cornucopia. No one had ever killed all the careers in one move before.
The other tributes keep moving around too much for her to use any kind of gas, but she notes they’ve been sticking close to the caverns, she knows how dangerous rockslides can be.
Kala’s games lasted five days, three of those days were her gathering supplies.

She expects the other victors to be wary of her; they are, but only due to the fact that Wolfgang, the most bloodthirsty of the group they’ve formed, is the one to greet her. He doesn’t talk about her murders, instead murmuring how sad he is to see someone so kind, wounded by the capitol, she furrows her brows, shaking her head. He explains when his victory tour happened, her father had made the food, she’d been there as well, sneaking food back to feed the others who couldn’t go to the feast. He muses, leaning too close to her, that maybe the games didn’t change her, they just gave her the right outlet.

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When Capheus volunteers after Sun Bak does, it’s not a trend; it’s some fool hearted boy trying to help someone that’ll be dead anyways, and a one off of the best fighter’s he’d seen from the academy’s. They stick close together once the boy wins and he doesn’t think anything of it, the boy had barely killed so personally, choosing to throw rocks or other objects. He writes it off as hero worship. Sun agrees to fight for him, when he comes to her after she wins; for the capitol’s entertainment, for everything the games stood for but a little less discussed. Capheus doesn’t; Milton’s idea for him as a replacement for his refusal to fight. It is to talk to anyone who wants to listen, to remind them how wonderful their lives are simply by grinning and the way he speaks draws in so much money he has to shut it down, a list two years long already formed in a day.

He’s not surprised Nomi volunteers, her want to save her sister is too much and he can’t wait to see what she’ll do before she dies; if he asks the gamemakers to put in a little more tech than normal, none of them bat an eye. When she watches him, her fingers twisting and braiding wires in ways he knows are meant to subvert all the technology he has watching her and the victors village. He watches her a little more personally after that, checking in on her district is not hard, no one is surprised when the president comes to check the game planning areas, or the mock arenas they’ve set up underground to test some of the more advanced technology they want to use for natural disasters. He knows it is best not to ask anything of her.

Lito is a performer, it’s a wonder he hadn’t volunteered before, when it’s just him and Danielle, Milton understands why. They’re sitting, refusing to hurt each other on the one place the capitol can’t touch, destroying the cornucopia would mean damage to the area.
Lito watches him too closely and Milton wonders what’s going on his head, he and Danielle had never been as close as the Capitol liked to fawn over, they’re very clearly not together but then he catches them laughing, then pressed against each other at a party another man between them and Milton understands. If Hernando ends up getting mugged in a back alley well it’s just bad luck and Lito’s refusal to stay in the Capitol, a warning to both of the Victors that they need to be more careful with what they care about.

He’s never been prouder of the Berner’s, Wolfgang is vicious and attractive and perfect as a victor. Milton doesn’t say anything when Wolfgang comes to him; when Wolfgang threatens him, hissing about being the only Victor to spend the night with the capitol citizens. Lito comes to him later and while he wants to inform Wolfgang of Lito’s betrayal; he doesn’t. Wolfgang is content to strangle, to pretend to harm the women and men that desperately want to be touched by a Victor. They always leave with bruises, Wolfgang always leaves with too much money. Milton had seen him slipping it around the various districts when he went on a victory tour or on trips with some of the more eccentric capitol citizens, who wanted to pretend to be from poorer districts.
Wolfgang returns and Milton can feel the zap of panic, the faint terror when a knife is slid between his suit jacket.
“Kala stays out of your city.”

It’s the 25th games; a special event so he decides to play gamemaker. He assures everyone this decision has nothing to do with the district 10 boy who punched out a peacekeeper, or the six year old female volunteer who reminds him of his daughter too much.
He watches Will too closely, he keeps the natural disasters away from him for too long, they’re playing cat and mouse, if he bribes a few people to sponsor the boy no one finds out.
He doesn’t say anything about paying for Sara’s funeral as well, just a random sponsor of Will’s is all.
He’s waited too long to bring up what Will owes the capitol. He waited too long and now Will is a mentor and only focused on keeping his tributes alive, but Milton catches the way he watches, the way he stares at Riley the female district 12 tribute. If there’s a costume mix up and Riley’s stylist brings her interview dress to Wills room to spite him, well it’s not really anyone's fault.

Milton uses Magnus to lure Riley to him. It’s easy, all the tributes get full medical work ups when they’re brought to the capitol; when they’re undergoing the refresh from their prep team; someone from twelve has no knowledge of the medical advancements they’re using on her. He pretends to visit all the tributes, he watches her at the piano, not actually playing, hiding under it like a child.
“Would you do something for me dear.” She eyes him warily and he laughs a little.
“Please put on a good show. Magnus offered this as your token.” He offers a box forward and Riley’s breath stutters as she crawls from under the piano. fingers brushing over the ring, it’s a warm toned metal, there’s some sort of bone inlaid into it and a small shimmering stone nestled in that, a swirling pattern carved into the bone pieces.
“Put on a good show, make sure to wear this, it's your token.” He grins and it makes unease bloom in Riley’s chest but she slides the ring over her finger, she knows this is not from her district, but not enough to question Magnus. Milton grins, it’s easy enough to keep an eye on her, whenever she glares too intently he just drums his fingers over his stomach and watches how she pales. Milton delights in the way she freezes and pales remembering the threat he had given her, the warning of a parachute with a simple medical report folded into it for Magnus to discover her death would not just be her own.
She doesn’t see until after the area, until her victory tour, when she watches the playback of everything. She doesn’t realize until she meets Will, until he can’t stop staring at the ring she’s still wearing.
“That’s made in my district. They’re for weddings, for families to pass down generations. The president gave it to you, he must have had something planned.” He leaves off how men will carve it for their wives, how he knows what each symbol means because his mother had explained at bedtime to him.
“We weren’t meant to survive.” She responds.
“None of us are, we’re volunteers, they don’t make it from where we live.” She offers it to him but he folds it back in her hand and from where he’s watching Milton can see that the way Riley looks embarrassed but almost immediately slides the ring back on, pink on her and Will’s cheeks.

He knows there’s something wrong with Kala, there’s always something wrong with his victors, with the ones who volunteer. Still when he sees her walking with Wolfgang, when she lets herself relax next to him, her eyes still scanning around the room, looking for threats. Milton’s not surprised when her eyes settle on him, he can tell the way her mind is working, the way it catalogues him as a top threat.
This is when he’s wrong. He is not a threat to Kala, as much as he is not a threat to the rest of the volunteer cluster as he calls them in his mind.
He makes a wrong move, he invites them to a party, to a celebration. They all accept, they have no choice of course.

He greets each of them by district. Lito and Daniela are as warm to him as anyone in district one but he notes the way Daniela grips his hand hissing how she’ll never forget his face as he explains he’ll always have eyes on her.

Wolfgang brings Felix, this is the first time Milton meets him and it unnerves him how aware the boy is, how he keeps himself between Wolfgang and everyone that’s not the volunteer cluster. He wants to threaten Wolfgang but Wolfgang makes it hard, the only things he loves are his brother, Felix, who he knows he can’t touch, and Kala the other victor who watches him just as darkly as Wolfgang does.

Sun’s knuckles are bruised, it seems they always are no matter what her stylist’s do. Her trainer is with her and Milton thanks the man for his wonderful skill set, for how many victor’s he’s produced. Sun keeps him back from so many of the capitol citizens who want him to train them, he knows they won’t give him anything.

Nomi brings Amanita, Milton enjoys both of their entertainment value. He knows if he focuses too much on the both of them, he’ll see what they’re really doing, stripping the capitols technology, trying to find some way to cheat the system. If he lets a few extra shipments make it to the outer districts to settle Nomi and Amanita’s needs to help he brushes it off as an error in packaging.

Capheus is always smiling, even if Milton reminds him his mother is sick he still grins and nods, thanking the Capitol for giving her medicine that she needs. Milton will never get over how warm Capheus always is, how he forgets that this boy had crushed people under stones and speared them with metal rods. That this boy now knows Sun’s fighting skills, he knows just enough, speaks with a warm voice that pulls anyone who listens into his ideals. Milton knows this is more dangerous than what the others can do. He keeps Capheus well fed with his propaganda but as the party wears on he can tell the boy believes it less and less.

Kala keeps touching her hair, she’s nervous and Milton greets her keeping his arm hovering over her shoulders trying to assure her that she’s safe here. He wonders what has her so nervous, the person she’s brought with her he vaguely recognises, the Mayor of eight’s son, a good choice for any Victor, but he can see Kala stays tense until Wolfgang walks up. Until he and Rajan are talking, until Wolfgang makes some gesture and Rajan laughs and Milton recognises its a similar moment to when he saw Hernando with Danielle and Lito. He notices how Wolfgang’s fingers trace Rajan’s shoulder and he decides that this is very different to the district one group. He understands as Kala moves towards the two, Rajan is off limits, protected by both Kala and Wolfgang. He briefly entertains the thought of threatening Rajan as he threatened Hernando but decides that the glares that he can feel burning from the two Victors is not worth the cover-up.

He and Will might as well be facing off, the boy plants himself in front of Milton and he can swear Will is snarling. He watches him, enjoying the anger that rolls off him, the viciousness that reminds Milton he won the games, he tried to spare the girl. He finds this calming when his daughter interrupts their stand off and Will looks even more murderous than before. His daughter leaves and Will makes a point to grip his hand, pulling him into a half hug as one would a friend. Milton knows what this is. He can hear it in the whispers Will gives him.
“You touch any of them and I’ll tell everyone.” Will’s smile is soft, it’s knowing and Milton can’t help but snarl back, determined to keep the upper hand.
“If you speak to my wife and daughter, I’ll tell miss Blue where her ring came from.”
“What makes you think she doesn’t know already?” Milton jerks backwards at this and Will’s smile is genuinely warm.

Riley looks pale, her hair is white, the streak of blue is like a lighthouse calling Will towards her. Still he hovers out of the reach as Milton makes sure to pull her attention.
She glares at him and he tries not to laugh, a Victor who has not killed is not really a victor. It’s why he never pushed her to stay in the capitol, it’s why when she asked for drugs he made sure what she got was always clean. When she asked to travel to other districts, he made sure to ban her from ten. She found her way to it anyways, to settle next to Will and talk about the games, how alone she was. Milton corners her near the piano, he speaks to her as he would his daughter, as he would the newly created Avox’s, the ones that are still in pain. He’s not sure how he feels when finds out just what Will knows, that Will learned of Luna, and not that he knows but the rest of the cluster do, the rest of the cluster know that Riley was threatened. Riley does not speak of her to anyone besides the cluster, she shivers when she does, no matter how many of Will’s jackets she wears she is always cold when she speaks of the ice and the games.
Milton wonders just how easy it would be to take her, to stuff her in some lab in the underground labyrinths, which Mutt’s would be best to terrify her with. As he watches her wander the party, watches as she ends up separated from the cluster he settles on the jabberjays, tuned to a child that never took breath to scream, a man who’s coat she keeps under her bed, and a man who’s ring she doesn’t know she wears.

He watches the rest of the cluster, they’re already looking for her and he’s content to sit watching his wife and daughter dancing, he turns when he can sense the avox with his wine. Instead it’s Will Gorski gritting his teeth as he leans forward, pouring him a glass.
“Mr. Gorski to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I believe you’ve taken something of mine, I would like it back.”
“Oh have I?” He holds his hands up laughing slightly, Will’s face doesn’t change, but he turns, watching Kala dancing with his wife and Wolfgang dancing with his daughter.
“I would suggest, Milton, that you think about exactly what you’ve done. We will come for you.” Will grins pulling the glass he just poured and sipping from it before setting it down back in front of him.