Canon Divergence: Chapter 11
listen i'm tired and very sick so like. it's war, that's the summary
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The headache throbs behind Lyme’s temples and presses in a tight band around her forehead. The various notes and blueprint sketches and battle plans swim before her eyes, but she forces herself to keep staring, cramming in every detail her brain is capable of absorbing. Whenever Coin’s people call the attack, that’s when they’ll make their move, and Lyme needs to be able to recall every detail, every parameter, every possible iteration of the plan she and the rebels went over now because there won’t be time before they head out.
It’s Rigel and the Scouts with the inside knowledge of Snow’s mansion, supplemented with the intel they gathered during the last extraction, and Rigel and Marius who drew up the plans but it’s Lyme who will, at least nominally, be leading the strike team against President Snow. Every rebel mission needs a figurehead to follow, and since Lyme is the reason they have most of the reinforcements from Two they do have - and since the soldiers from Thirteen have at least fought alongside her and know her worth - that makes her the obvious choice.
No pressure, of course. A few months ago Lyme was a civilian whose only relevant experience was killing a handful of teenagers and criminals almost thirty years ago; now, the rebellion’s obsession with recognizable leaders has propelled her to the forefront, but she’s no more qualified to lead the strike team than most of the soldiers she’s commanding, and far less than most. Most of Lyme’s military endeavours have involved throwing herself at the mountain in a futile mission with the secret aim of justifying an air-strike massacre.
Lyme pushes both hands into her hair, digging the heels of her palms against her eyes. She mentored Misha with only a year of training and little more than determination to see her through it, and Misha had won mostly on her own power. Likewise, Lyme reminds herself, her soldiers won’t be standing around waiting for her every order. They all know the plan, they might look to her for inspiration and to call the actual command, but they know what they’re supposed to do.
By this point there’s absolutely nothing new Lyme could possibly get out of studying the plans any longer, but if she stops giving her brain something to focus on it’s going to veer into how she should probably talk to Brutus, only this time she has no fucking clue what to say.
The first time Brutus lost a tribute, Lyme gave him three weeks of moping in his house, choking down the bare minimum of tasteless, Centre-worthy food, ignoring his living Victor and growing a depression beard before dragging him out to the basketball court for a game of one-on-one. He’d hated her for it the whole time, only ended up snapping out of it when he’d beaned her in the head with the ball and sent her skull-first into the concrete. But it had been enough to break the surface, get him breathing air instead of murky misery, and she’d sent him back home to Emory to take those first steps toward healing.
But this - this is different. Brutus isn’t moping, he’s not sitting in his room refusing to eat or talk to anyone, he’s not shutting anyone out or going through the motions of grief. He’s helping the Scouts plan for the inevitable attack, he’s doing last-minute supply runs and running recon and doing exactly the same thing Lyme is doing: keeping himself busy so there’s no time to think about it.
Petra, Lyme can’t help but notice, hasn’t cried since she arrived, and while she’s been pale and quiet and isolated herself from pretty much everyone except Devon and Emory - including Ronan, which Lyme will ask about after this is all over and can make time for simple pleasures like interpersonal dramas - she definitely hasn’t exploded or snapped or shown any kind of emotional upheaval that Lyme would have expected from their most volatile Victor.
Petra and Brutus are playing chicken, Lyme thinks. Normally Brutus would call her on it, hold her down and tell her she has to process this, let it all out and scream and cry and do whatever she needs to, but if he does Petra will throw it right back in his face and ask him why he hasn’t, if emotional catharsis is so great. Absolutely everything about this is terrible, but as far as the war goes, it’s maybe not the worst time to cope by being stoic workaholics.
At least Petra hasn’t come scream in her face about high treason, and as far as Lyme can tell she’s left Claudius alone too. It’s not like Lyme hasn’t had practice handling stony silence at this point.
“Hey.”
Lyme does not flinch, or jump, or freeze, because Career reflexes have taught her better than that, but she does let herself take one long breath, in and out, before responding. “Hey,” she says, still staring down at her desk instead of turning around to look at the person who appeared in her doorway, silent as a cat.
“You left me,” Artemisia says in a conversational tone that’s as casual and safe as a knife flipped between the fingers. “Do you have any idea how shitty that made me feel?”
Lyme swallows. “No.” She takes a risk, swings around in her chair to look at her, but Artemisia has her guarded face on, and not even Lyme can crack it today, not yet. She twists her hands in her lap, catches herself reaching for her sleeve in the old nervous gesture, wanting to pull the fabric down over her wrist. Artemisia’s gaze flickers, a pointed one-two glance that misses nothing.
“You promised me two things when I won,” Artemisia continues. Her voice remains bland but it’s a lie, like taking the first step out onto cloudy ice. She holds up one hand, index finger extended, marking tallies in the air. “You said you wouldn’t hit me - good job on that, by the way, credit where credit’s due - but do you remember the other one?” She sucks in a breath, and there’s the first real crack in the nonchalant armour, because it shakes on the inhale, though she catches herself on the way out. “You said you’d never leave.”
Lyme digs her fingers into her knees. “I know.”
“Sorry, no, you said you’d never leave me, ever,” Artemisia says, her words twisting on a hidden pain. “And I know you meant it when you said it, but that just means at some point you stopped. At some point down the line you stopped living out that promise and started thinking about when you’d leave me behind. What I can’t decide is whether it’s worse if you made a conscious choice to break your word or if it never even occurred to you.”
Exhausted is the wrong word. It’s a quiet, bone-deep weariness that fills Lyme now, not so much a feeling as an absence. “I’m sorry,” she says. The two most useless words in all of a person’s vocabulary, but not saying them is worse.
“I know.” Artemisia’s mouth thins, twitches in a ghost of a smile, but then it fades. She leans her balance sideways, thumps against the door frame with her arms crossed. Her fingers twitch like she’s searching for the knife she would have had to leave behind. “It’s not just you leaving when you said you wouldn’t, I was eighteen years old and now I’m eighteen years out and people break promises, welcome to reality. But what gets me is that all those years of Claudius being glued to your side, being the perfect, well-behaved mentor’s-dream Victor to my absolute shit-show nightmare, I was never jealous of him. Not once. It never even crossed my mind, because you were always so good about making sure I knew you loved me too.” She shakes her head, eyes going far away. “Until you went back for him and not me, I would’ve sworn up and down you never had a favourite.”
It wasn’t about picking favourites, Lyme wants to tell her. The words bubble up inside her in a desperate fountain, and she has to dig her fingers into her wrist to stop herself. It’s just that she and Claudius had taken the treason plunge years ago, and the absolute terror of that shared secret had been enough to nearly paralyze her. She didn’t choose Claudius because she liked him better, only because he had made the same ugly, impossible choice she had. When the time came to run there had been no questions, no extra decisions to make, only the final step in a journey they’d started long ago.
Together, without Misha. Who - while not a rebel - was certainly no loyalist. She would have followed, Lyme realized with a sick gnawing in her gut. Not for the rebellion, not for any cause, but for her mentor. If only Lyme had asked.
“It gets better.” Artemisia tips her head back to stare at the ceiling, and Lyme breathes very carefully at the telltale shimmer at the corners of her eyes. “I’m still hurt, and angry, and you know how I deal with it, I hurt the person who hurt me until it stops hurting me so much. And what I want to do is keep hurting you, except every time I do it doesn’t make it any better, I just feel more and more like shit. And the worst part is -”
She swipes a hand across her eyes, a furious, jerky gesture that digs a hook into Lyme’s chest and twists. “The worst part is Odin’s dead, and all I can think is what if it was you, what if Odin came back alive and it was you who died on your stupid mission. What if you died and I was still pissed off at you, only then I got mad because I’m still angry, I shouldn’t have have to stop just because one of us might get killed in this stupid battle and have regrets forever -”
Lyme has spent enough time of her own caught in spirals to recognize one, though hers tend to be internal rather than the torrent of words that made up Artemisia’s particular brand of external processing. Half a second of indecision, then she pushes herself up, crosses the room and pulls Artemisia into her arms.
She stiffens, then collapses, boneless and exhausted and grateful, the sudden weight causing Lyme to lock her knees or risk dropping her. Lyme edges backwards, careful not to trip, until she finds her chair, where she tugs Artemisia into her lap like they aren't both grown women only two years apart.
“I fucking hate this,” Artemisia says into her shoulder. She curls her legs, heels digging into Lyme’s thigh. “I’m still angry. I want to keep being angry because it feels like I earned it, and nothing else makes sense right now. But I’m so tired and I want my mentor back, and it hurts.”
Lyme rests her cheek against the side of Artemisia’s head and wraps her arms around her, holding her steady even in their awkward position. “I don’t know if I deserve to say you have your mentor back,” she says, carefully. “Because you’re right, mentors make one very important promise, and I broke it. I’ll have to earn that back, and before a battle when there’s no hope of keeping it is not the time to try to make it again. But - I’m here, girl, and I there is nothing I regret more than not taking you with me.”
“Even though I would’ve made a shitty rebel,” Artemisia says, with a trace of her old irreverence. “From the sounds of it, thirty seconds of me in a room with that woman and she would’ve had me executed.”
“She would have fucking tried,” Lyme snarls, and Artemisia laughs and headbutts her.
“You’re right though,” Artemisia says after a while. “‘Mentor’ hurts too much, but I’m glad you’re back. Once this is all over, if we’re not dead, we’ll have to go home and beat the shit out of each other until it’s fixed. You know, like civilized people.”
“Damn straight,” Lyme says, and pulls her in tighter.
And then - a commotion, a sudden cacophony of shouts and footfalls, and a runner pokes his head into the door. “We got the go-ahead,” he says without even blinking, as though it’s completely normal to look in on the commanding Victor and see her cuddling at her desk. “Beetee just sent word. Coin’s sending everyone in against the Capitol now. Orders are to scramble and get everyone in position.”
Artemisia slides off Lyme’s lap, posture alert and ready, hands at her sides. She and Devon and Emory are part of the ground squads, making their way through the city and mingling with Coin’s forces to draw out the Capitol defences and give the strike team - Lyme’s team - as much time to get to the mansion as they can. They’ll be heading into the city separately and won’t see each other until it’s all over.
“Understood,” Lyme says, and the runner disappears to pass the message on. She turns to Artemisia, a rock in her throat, but they’ve been through this, Lyme and her squad need to move fast, get as far as they can before the entire city arms itself at word of Thirteen incoming.
“Go get ‘em, boss,” Artemisia says, two furrows between her eyebrows.
Lyme kisses her forehead once, quick and desperate, then tears herself away and runs toward the hangar bay.
No time for goodbyes, and it’s bad luck anyway. Mentors and tributes don’t say goodbye on the rooftop by the hovercrafts, they say ‘good luck’ or ‘see you soon’ or ‘I’ll be waiting’. One of Nero’s girls, a wild, brilliant girl with wicked eyes, grinned at him and said I’ll try to steal you a souvenir. Another one said I’ll cut out their hearts for you - or maybe that was the same girl, two sides of the same promise. It all runs together now.
Point being, mushy goodbyes and tearful final confessions are for people who know they’re not coming back, and every Two knows that the best way to invite something to happen is to speak it into power. And so they don’t; Lyme stops by for a second on her way out but they don’t speak, Nero just holds her face in his hands and presses their foreheads together before stepping back. Her eyes blaze hard, shadowed by hollows, and he’s never been prouder.
“Can’t believe you get Snow all to yourself, you cheater!” Enobaria calls after her.
Lyme glances back over her shoulder, turns around to jog backwards in place. “Too slow,” she tosses back, but then she grins a little. “Don’t worry, I’ll save you some.”
“You’d better,” Enobaria huffs, but then she’s gone, and his youngest grumbles and shoves her hands into her armpits.
It took a war for his girls to get along, but Nero isn’t going to question it, and he refuses to feel guilty for the happy glow that sits in the centre of his chest.
He and Enobaria are fighting, of course they are. Nero doesn’t want to fight, he’s hated the Hunger Games and the Capitol and the whole sick, twisted system since he was a kid, carried the truth about its twisted underbelly since the first cougar with her sweet, sickly smily dug her manicured fingers into his shoulder, but he’s - tired. What Nero wants is to gather up his girls into his arms and carry them away somewhere safe, somewhere without guns and bombs and streets that apparently explode or flood with tar or the hundreds of Arena traps the Capitol saw fit to seed the streets with.
But Lyme has gone to take out the president, and Enobaria has been itching to draw blood ever since these rebels cleared her from medical, and Nero isn’t going to sit in some safehouse while Enobaria lets loose on the city on her own. So here he is, outfitted in hasty protective gear with a standard-issue rifle and very basic training, waiting for his grid assignment while the others gather.
He lets himself think, wistfully, of the safehouses where Petra and the older, loyalist, injured or less able-bodied Victors will be spending their time, but there’s no point in that, not when Enobaria has managed to pull a pair of knives out of thin air and is already practicing her strikes.
“Where did you get those?” Nero asks mildly, already composing a mental apology to whoever is in charge of inventory.
“Don’t worry, I asked nicely,” Enobaria says, not looking at him. Nero turns his stare on her, and she glances briefly at him, eyes sliding away, then scoffs and turns back, hands planted on her hips with the blades sticking out askew. “I did! Nobody’s bleeding, no broken bones, no soft tissue injuries, and nobody wet themselves. Devon would be proud.”
Nero cracks a grin in spite of himself. “Well I know I’m proud, baby girl,” he says, and Enobaria flashes him a smile. It’s - still strange, seeing the false teeth, straight and white without a hint of fangs or gold. Makes her look younger, even past thirty, if only because his last memory of her with teeth like that is from before the Arena. “Save the rest for the streets.”
“Oh don’t worry.” Enobaria’s voice goes dark, like the bubble of fresh blood from a long, straight cut through soft flesh. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Partway through the last-minute reminders of their assignments, as a rebel soldier hands out small handhelds with cloned maps of the various traps around the city centre, Nero registers a presence beside him. He glances sideways, once, then again, startled at the sight of Callista next to him, dressed in fatigues with her long, black hair braided tightly to her scalp.
“Calli?” Nero blinks at her, looks past to see Hera standing at her other side, jaw clenched. “I thought - you said you and Hera were taking a safehouse.”
Callista doesn’t turn to look at him. She stares straight ahead, arms crossed, one finger tapping against the swell of her bicep muscle, visible even through the baggy uniform fabric. “Here’s the thing, darling,” she says, deceptively casual. “I have lived my life miraculously free of guilt and second-guessing. It’s a marvellous existence, quite cleansing, I do recommend it. Except that for the past few weeks I’ve been entirely unable to continue. Food tastes terrible, sleep is elusive, and while I’d very much like to blame it on substandard accommodations -” She blows out a breath. “President Snow deserves to burn, and his Capitol with it. For everything they’ve done to you, for the Ones, for Creed, for all our children. And yes, for every other person out in the districts suffering whom I’ve never given two shits about and whose problems I don’t have a fucking clue. So, yes. I think I have to be there to help bring him down.”
Nero gapes at her, but Callista only turns to him and smiles. It is not a nice smile; this is Callista the Butcher, who sliced open a boy in the Arena in the midst of the throes of passion. Nero sucks in a breath, discomforted to feel an odd shiver of the old attraction he thought he’d abandoned thirty years ago when Callista patted his cheek and said oh no dear you’re much too like a puppy.
“And then I’m going to find that rebel president and make myself a new stole out of her intestines,” Callista says pleasantly. “Murder us, I thank you! As soon as we’re done using her soldiers I’m going to tear her to pieces and feed them to my cats.”
“That’s the spirit,” Nero says, wishing he could cover Enobaria’s ears.
“Count your kills, darling,” Callista says lightly, touching his shoulder in a brief brush of fingers. The contact takes on a strange significance in Nero’s head; he has the odd thought, that tomorrow, next week, next year he’ll still feel the ghost of her touch on his arm. He chases it away. “We’ll all be comparing notes later.”
“Battlefield, not playground,” her mentor reminds her, and she threads her arm through Callista’s and leads her toward the front.
They don’t talk as they make their way through the city. No jokes, no banter, not even audio checks over their earpieces. The point scout at the front relays signals back via gestures and signals, and each person sends them back down the team in rapid succession in a matter of seconds. Quick, professional, and silent.
Claudius still can’t believe they’re really doing this. All the other missions, the recons, the supply runs, the extractions, everything he did with Selene and Dash and their team that led up to this, it all had a layer of separation. Get in, get out, keep a small footprint. It hadn’t really felt like rebel activity, not really. Even sneaking into the mansion to spy on Petra, they’d never actually gone anywhere near President Snow.
This is really it. Years ago, young and angry and terrified, head stuffed full of questions and realizations he didn’t really understand, Claudius had never really thought he’d get here. His thoughts of rebellion had never gotten much further than packing his bags and leaving with Lyme when they couldn’t take pretending anymore, but here they are, fighting their way through the city on the way to his Games-damned front door.
It’s as close to the Arena as Claudius has ever gotten.
They can’t risk gunfire, not here, which means that every kill they make is hand to hand. Claudius has a pair of daggers as well as his rifle, and Lyme borrowed one of Nero’s machetes while Brutus managed to scrounge up a spare sword. The others make do with clubs, knives and other non-ballistics weapons, but it’s a messy business. There’s a reason the strike team is almost entirely ex-Careers from Two and it’s not because they don’t trust the rebels from other districts. This might be war, but if the mission parameters involve fast, silent kills without the aid of guns, it only makes sense to send people who’ve done this before.
The first time Claudius sinks his daggers into an enemy it’s a strange, unwelcome flood of memory and sensation. The kick of adrenaline, the rush of the kill - he shoves it back, refuses to ride the wave, to let it carry him. He grounds himself (take a breath, identify your surroundings, pick a point and focus on it), shakes the blood from his daggers and moves on.
They clear the area and keep going. Claudius catches Lyme looking at him, the ghost of concern flickering from her face, and he would be amused or annoyed or offended that she’s checking up on him except that he’d just been doing the exact same thing to Selene, giving her a quick once-over to make sure her head’s still in the game. But no, Selene looks pale but present, and she notices him staring and gives him the same I’m fine Mom look he shot Lyme.
Almost there. This flashback-inducing killing can’t be good for any of them, really, but either there will be time to sit down and untangle the psychological mess they’re creating for themselves once they capture Snow or none of this will matter. The Arena has a wonderful way of burning away every extra, unimportant detail, distilling each action, each decision down to its essence. Claudius holds his daggers in an easy grip and follows Lyme deeper into the streets.
The streets stretch out ahead, eerie and empty, the various signs and billboards and outdoor fountains and holographic art displays shut down for the duration of the war. Adessa curls her lip as she pass them, empty shells that mark the Capitol’s extravagance, monuments to the colossal waste of power it could no longer afford to keep up following the destruction of the primary hydroelectric plant.
Far away from this quiet, ridiculously opulent residential quarters, the main battle rages, but Adessa pays it no attention. She has her own quarry to stalk today, and her blades have already tasted blood today.
It sings in her veins, the old song, filling her like perfume, like the heady scent of lilacs on a warm spring night, like hot blood spilled on a sultry evening when the air sticks close and the sweat lingers. Adessa feels every beat of her heart like a pulse of fire in her chest, and she draws her briefcase close and strokes one finger over the silver clasp.
The house she seeks sits at the end of the cul-de-sac, overwhelming and ornate to the point of obscenity. Four stories, three pools, marble columns, holographic glass walls and a backyard mutt menagerie: the mansion of Lina Davenport, premier muttation designer, first-tier supporter of Coriolanus Snow, and Nero’s number-one sponsor and self-styled “true love”. A true love who had sunk her claws into Nero’s shoulder on his Tour and used her influence to make Adessa’s perfect, obedient Victor into the closest thing District 2 had to a sex slave.
All of Nero’s other “lovers”, all odious, love-struck, ludicrously wealthy women twice his age who’d preyed on him as soon as he was placed on the market, now lay dead in their homes, dismembered or dissected or any number of personalized horrors. Adessa had saved the best for last.
She’d been half afraid the old instincts would have rusted after so many years. It’s been decades since Adessa’s Arena, and unlike some of her more undisciplined colleagues, Adessa never took another life since stepping onto the hovercraft the day the trumpets played. But as it turns out, no matter how out of practice she feared she might have been, with the first slide of steel into skin, it all came rushing back.
She makes short work of Lina’s outer security, using the codes she’d borrowed from Nero’s files in the Victor Affairs office months ago. No minimalism here, Lina’s house is as tacky and nausea-inducing inside as it is out: a disgusting, cacophonous display of wealth that ignores every rule of taste and class because Lina, like most of the Capitol, believes in overt shows of power and prosperity.
Adessa finds Lina downstairs, hiding in a panic room. This is a surprise, and breaking in affords Adessa with a pleasant mental challenge that actually distracts her from the low, rolling thoughts of murder as she matches wits with the state of the art system. If she hadn’t been training for this for the past few years, ordering in various door locks and alarm systems and teaching herself how to master them in an elaborate fantasy sequence designed to maintain her sanity and burn off her rage, her revenge might well have stopped here.
But at last the door swings open, and Adessa sweeps through. Lina cowers in her richly decorated saferoom, clinging to her ridiculous custom designer mutt-hound and gasping for air behind several layers of cosmetic surgery. “Hello, Lina,” Adessa says. She doesn’t bother with speeches, only sets the briefcase on a low table and clicks it open in short, precise movements, allowing Lina to get a good look at the rows and rows of sharp, shining daggers nestled inside - and the blood-stained cleaning cloth tucked along with them.
To her credit, Lina doesn’t scream, or shout, or try to run. She stares at Adessa with hatred burning in her eyes even as the fear locks her in place, as Adessa traces her fingers along her daggers and selects a few choice candidates. “You were always jealous,” Lina spits out. “You never could accept what Nero and I have! You always wanted him to yourself! You could never admit that he loved me. That we had something special! You’re going to try to make me admit it isn’t true, that he never loved me, but I won’t. I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll always know the truth!”
Adessa pauses, tilting her head to one side. She did indeed take that tack with a few of Nero’s sillier, more fatuous abusers, the ones who weren’t cruel so much as they were foolish and romantic. She’d enjoyed the moment of realization in their eyes, right before she slit their throats, the crushing defeat and horror as it sank in that Nero had not been a joyful, willing participant in their adventures. But no, Adessa thinks, watching Lina cuddle the chimeric monstrosity to her chest, she made her mark by supporting Coriolanus Snow in his rise to power, by rooting out his enemies and helping destroy their reputations, and her fortune by supplying first Gamemakers and then ordinary citizens with her unnatural creations.
No, Lina’s delusion was of a different sort. She had convinced herself that she and Nero were one of a kind, but not because she thought it innocent and pure - but because she believed Nero to be like her.
“May it bring you comfort,” Adessa says simply, and steps forward.
The only compliment Adessa will ever pay Lina Davenport is that it takes her much longer to die than Adessa would have given her credit for.
When it’s over, Adessa cleans her knives on one of Lina’s plush throws, packs everything away, and slips back out into the street, ignoring the distressed whining of the mutt-creature as the door closes behind her. It will have plenty to eat once it gets over itself, and pampered luxury creation or no, baser instincts are never far away.
Oh, how she missed this.
The gun is a poor substitute for her machetes, of course, crude and inelegant and distant, but the kickback shudders through Callista’s arm and it’s almost like the old days, swinging her weapons and slicing them through her opponents with nothing but sheer musculature and inertia to drive them through the mass of bone and muscle tissue. Now the bullets do the work but it’s Callista who aims them, Callista’s body that absorbs the aftershock, and the adrenaline still hits and the danger still thrills and she finds herself laughing all over again.
Hera will be worried about her, of course. Hera made her promise, years and years and years ago in the pouring rain, when Callista returned from an alleyway soaking wet, her clothes soaked with blood, half a dozen kittens stuffed under her shirt, that she could keep the cats but only if she never killed a human being ever again. Callista had weighed the value of the trade and her mentor’s concern, and over the years she’d skirted as close to the line as medical intervention made it possible, but she’d never broken her vow until today.
Another soldier falls, and another, and another. She’s not untouchable - Callista at eighteen thought so, buoyed by years of trainers filling her with confidence so she wouldn’t peer too hard at the numbers, calculate her actual survival odds, but she is middle-aged now, and not so sanguine - but she is unleashed, and that is a fearsome thing.
She counts her kills, just like she promised Nero, and funnily enough, that’s where it all unravels.
It doesn’t take long for Callista to outstrip every kill she made in training, not much longer for her to pass her Arena total. Soon she even flies past the number of her previous kills combined. It should be a source of pride, a measure of bragging rights, except -
A bullet flies past her head, buries itself in the building behind her and sends shrapnel scattering. Callista ducks, Hera beside her. Hera closes her eyes for a moment, breathing heavily, and she’s sixty-two years old but she came with Callista because no one is allowed to fight alone and she wasn’t about to let her Victor run into danger without her.
Callista takes a moment to catch her own breath, chagrined to admit she needs it. She’s doubled her lifetime kill count in less than a day, and she should be proud except it rings hollow. In the moments when she pauses, to breathe or reload or dash to the next area of fighting, it all floods back: she’s not fighting the people, she’s fighting the cause. These are not opponents, trained to kill her in glorious, bloody, one-on-one combat. They are not criminals sent to kill her for their freedom. They’re soldiers, trained for war, armed with guns and orders and here to do their jobs.
Killing doesn’t have the same savour to it when the casualties number hundreds, thousands, and no one sees anyone’s face. Callista tries to shake off the thought but can’t, and finally she ducks around the corner to fire off a shot.
The soldier drops, a crumple of fatigues on the street. Callista takes a glancing hit to the arm, a stray bullet that doesn’t enter her skin, and she’s glad for it. It’s not a dangerous injury, and the bite of pain sharpens her. She tears off a strip of sleeve, binds the wound, and moves on.
But it’s too late. The battle glow has faded, replaced by the hard, grim slog of the third week in the Arena, and Callista curses herself - curses Hera, curses Nero, for their obvious terrible effects on her - for letting herself overthink it. Her first and only chance for unlimited murder in over thirty years, and she ruins it with moralizing?
Still, she has a job to do, and Callista is nothing if not devoted to her duty. They fight, sometimes alone, sometimes alongside rebel soldiers - sometimes theirs, sometimes District 13’s, which makes Callista grit her teeth and wish she could shoot them all, but no, big picture, never turn on one’s allies before it’s strategic to do so - and hopefully they keep the attention and the focus off the mansion.
Through it all Hera keeps an eye on the map of the city traps, avoiding the triggers that would bring down the Arena-like machinations around their heads. Some of the notes are fairly benign or able to overcome provided there’s enough warning or space to fight (lizard mutts, fire, spikes), but some (tar flood, magma, tidal wave) are impossible to escape or defeat.
They keep it up far longer for two women in their fifties and sixties would ever be expected, but at last Hera takes a hit to the knee and collapses to the ground in an explosion of cursing. “I’ll be fine,” she spits through gritted teeth. “But I think I’m through. Let’s leave the rest of the fighting to the young bloods and find ourselves somewhere quiet to sit until it’s over.”
As there are no sponsors to charm for a parachute with bandages and pain medication, Callista is inclined to agree. She splints Hera’s leg as best she can, checks the map for the location of the nearest emergency medical stash, and sets off.
Halfway there they’re crossing a side street that intercuts the main thoroughfare leading to the mansion when Callista stops. “Wait,” she says. Hera’s hand clutches her sleeve, fingers tight with pain. “Do you feel that?”
Hera shakes her head, but given the pallour beneath her skin it’s not likely she feels much. Callista leans her against a nearby fountain and bends down, splaying her fingers against the concrete in an unconscious parody of the gesture Nero used to do in the Arena to mess with his packmates when he pretended, silently, to be a master tracker.
Except this time it’s not a joke. This time there’s a steady rumble beneath Callista’s fingers, and she leaves Hera for a moment to dart out and peer out through the buildings.
A line of artillery vehicles wheeling up the street in a line, headed straight for the thoroughfare. If they get there they’ll ring the mansion and cut off the strike team, picking off anyone who attempts to enter.
The strike team has to get there first. It must. If the tanks arrive first, the chance for a surgical strike will be over, and the cost of life for taking the mansion will be so much higher.
Someone has to stop it.
No one else will get here in time.
Crouched on the ground, one hand pressed to the pavement, Callista starts to laugh.
“Hera,” Callista calls out. Her head spins, a giddy blood rush. It’s not funny. It’s the funniest joke she’s ever heard. “Is there a trap trigger in this area?”
There is.
A series of charges buried in the street ahead of them, quite devastating, meant to stop an incoming force intending to march on the Presidential mansion, with the trigger in the centre of the fountain. Of course, the original intent foresaw an invading force, not a rescue, but it serves their purpose well enough. The first wave brings a shockwave, disrupting any ground troops; the second, a wall of fire to finish the job.
The charges are set to detonate in a wave from the far end of the street, giving whoever activates them just enough time to get clear before the final set of explosions takes out the entire intersection. Assuming, of course, that whoever triggers the defence grid is a young, able-bodied soldier in her prime.
Callista locks gazes with Hera as they look up from the device. “Go,” Hera says. “I’ll stay, I’m the one who can’t run. One of us should make it out.”
It makes sense. It’s simple math, good Arena logic; why should two people die when one can survive? Why should Callista die when she earned the right to be immortal?
Callista glares at her mentor and snatches the device from her hand. “Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “I’m a murderer again. Who’s going to control me if you’re not here?”
She helps Hera into the fountain, and together they find the switch hidden in the centre. The tanks are rumbling down the street now, well within the range of the traps. Callista shares one long look with Hera, takes several gulping breaths, and presses down on the switch.
The first explosion rocks the street, sending the back row of tanks flying onto its side. Callista laughs and bares her teeth at the ensuing ball of smoke and fire.
They call the city and its traps the 76th Arena. If it really were, Callista thinks, there would be cameras everywhere and an audience of millions glued to their screens to watch her heroic sacrifice. As the explosions draw nearer, the best she can hope for is that the bowl of the fountain shields her, that there’s enough left of her for someone to find and bury.
Hera’s hand finds hers, fingers squeezing tight as the explosions draw near. “I regret nothing,” she says, voice thin with pain but nevertheless determined. She always did commit, even to a Victor far more blood- and sex-crazed than she could possibly have imagined when looking at the files in black and white.
“That’s sweet,” Callista says, resting her head on her mentor’s shoulder. One more to go now. In the distance the air flickers; she thinks she can see the first wave of flames. She refuses to close her eyes. “I have quite the list.”
They get all the way to Snow’s front door, then Rigel sucks in a breath because the four white-armoured guards standing there are his friends.
They’re wearing half-helmets and gleaming armour, and they’re standing in a row like they’re an honour guard on parade instead of in a defensive matrix. It throws the rebels enough that they advance cautiously - he hears Lyme in his earpiece, telling them to beware a trap - and they sneak closer instead of storming the gates.
But Rigel knows why they’ve done it. They’re here for him.
For all their sneaking, for all they managed to beat Coin’s forces and make it to the mansion first, the Scouts had to know Rigel would be coming, and this time they’re prepared. This won’t be a Brin situation. It won’t even be Troy. Arcturus won’t offer them a pardon, not when they’ve fought their way up to Snow’s damned doorstep. Never mind that he and Rigel were squadmates for three years. Never mind that they’re friends. Arcturus will still shoot Rigel through the head if given half a chance, and he’ll have ordered his squad to do the same.
(Of course he will. Rigel can still see Troy’s helmet exploding in a mess of bone and blood as Selene’s bullet blew his skull apart.)
The most Rigel can hope for is that Arcturus doesn’t fight dirty - but then the door opens and another armoured figure steps through, and Rigel’s stomach plummets because it’s Emin.
The Scouts rotate a lot. They’re deployed in squads of four, two partnered pairs, and that’s how they operate, but assignments rarely last for more than a couple of years. Rigel and Marius were juniors together back in the day and they’re partners now, but they’ve only worked the same squad for maybe half their careers. Rumour has it Snow doesn’t like to leave squads together for too long in case they start to be loyal to each other instead of to him.
Given that Rigel’s squad followed him into rebellion, he’s not sure he can argue against that one.
But the trouble is, while it might work for most squad assignments - Rigel will absolutely shoot Arcturus even if he feels bad about it later - you will always bear some extra loyalty to your first commander, it’s human nature.
Rigel’s first commander just stepped out of the mansion.
Beside him, Marius exhales a quiet curse. He and Emin weren’t so close, he got along better with her partner Galen, but it’s still - still.
Everything goes very quiet and very loud all at once. Rigel hears Lyme in his ear but the words don’t register. He asks himself but can’t answer: he doesn’t know if he can bring himself to shoot the woman who made him hot chocolate on winter days, who showed him how to strap his gear down so it was both secure and comfortable to sleep in on long haul missions, who taught him how to divide things in his mind so he could do his duty and still retain his humanity. Emin is the kind of Peacekeeer Rigel has always wanted to be. He’s based his entire career on following in her footsteps.
What’s worse is that her very presence here - Arcturus’ presence - is Emin all over. She is the commander of the Scouts, a position she’s held for the last two years even though she’s not the most senior, because she’s smart and driven and, above all, loyal. If Snow could trust anyone to watch over him as he slept, it would be Emin. But Emin’s gift is not that she’s good at fighting (although she is), or that she’s smart (although she is): it’s that she is an absolutely fantastic judge of character. She gave Rigel his squad; she gave him Marius as his second; and now she has arranged Snow’s defence in exactly the manner that will unsettle him the most, make him hesitate.
She’s using herself as a human shield, and Rigel is as impressed as he is heartbroken.
Emin exchanges a quiet word with Arcturus. Her gaze sweeps the perimeter, and Rigel knows she can’t see him in his hiding spot but somehow her gaze pierces him anyway.
For the first time since beginning this whole misbegotten operation, Rigel is glad that, for once, he’s not the one in charge. “Thoughts?” Lyme’s voice finally registers in his earpiece.
“It’s a message,” Rigel murmurs back. That’s the one thing Emin doesn’t know; Rigel has led the other missions where they’ve run into the Scouts, but this time he’s just the local expert. “They know we’re coming, they know who we are. They’re waiting for us.”
“Waiting for you,” Marius says from his side, quiet so it won’t carry over to Lyme. “Rigel -”
“Quiet,” Rigel says, aside. “Not now.” Tapping his earpiece again, he continues. “This won’t be the only line of defence, just the obvious one. Be careful of traps.”
“All right,” Lyme says, oblivious to the side conversation. “Form up, let’s go.”
He’s right. They don’t bother talking, and it is a trap.
Their advance must trip an invisible sensor, because the moment they cross into effective rifle range the four guards raise their weapons to their shoulders and fire into the night.
And they shouldn’t be able to see them, but the first salvo catches Rigel right in the shoulder.
“Get down!” He yells over the comm, diving for the ground. Marius grabs him and hauls him behind cover. The motion jars his shoulder, and Rigel bites back a yell. It’s not lethal, not even debilitating thanks to his armour, but damn if it doesn’t hurt like hell.
Distantly he hears Lyme give the order to open fire. He clicks the safety off -
- And Vance’s head explodes, an echo of Troy’s all over again, but without the faceplate to give them a semblance of detachment.
Selene, of course. Rigel’s heart sinks. He never wanted this, bringing his kids into the rebellion to kill their friends and colleagues, undoing all Selene’s detox training only to fling her right back into close-quarters murder. He’d sent Dash and Selene back to be long-ranged support when they got close to the mansion in an effort to protect them, but that just means she’d had her sights trained on the four guards since the beginning. Rigel doesn’t like the toll it’s taking on her, whatever good her sessions with Claudius have done her.
The other three dive behind cover - but not good enough, as a rebel soldier rears back and hurls a grenade at the front door. The resulting explosion takes out the pillar, and shots from a dozen rifles take care of the rest. In seconds, it’s done.
Rigel doesn’t know if his bullets were the ones to kill Arcturus. He doesn’t want to know - and yet, he does. Perhaps this is what it feels like ot be in a firing squad.
“Let’s go!” Lyme shouts, and yes, that’s good, press the advantage -
“You’re hit,” Marius snaps at him when Rigel makes to move up with the rest.
“I’ll live.” Rigel shakes off Marius’ hand. “You heard the commander. Lene, Dash, pack it up and get over here, we’re going in.”
“Yessir!”
There’s no sign of Emin as they stampede up the porch stairs and through the narrow doorway. Rigel’s mind screams bottleneck as they force their way through the hole, enlarged by the grenade explosion but still small, too small. And yes - the first two rebels through the door fall immediately, victims of the second line of guards posted up the stairs in the antechamber. Without speaking, Rigel and Marius take cover on opposite sides of the entrance and fire: two more Scouts fall.
Still no sign of Emin. Where is she?
But there’s no time to think. Lyme leads them on the bloodiest, most brutal house-cleaning Rigel has ever been on outside of floor exercises; Snow’s mansion is all narrow corridors or wide, sweeping chambers, both of which are absolute murder on any attackers. The one advantage they have is prior access to the floorplan, their previous recon missions, and that Lyme and Brutus also remember the layout from various post-Games parties.
It’s a cold comfort to the fallen, but they at least aren’t losing as many as they would otherwise.
Rigel takes another hit - to the leg this time, and at close range even pistol fire hurts like a bitch - and there’s a close call when Hector and Ella manage to jump them from behind a hidden door. Ella manages to get a blade into Marius’s side, sliding it through a gap in his armour like the master knife-fighter she is, before Rigel shoots her. Someone else gets Hector.
It’s Dash. He and Selene have caught up.
“I’m fine, just a scratch,” Marius snaps, waving off the juniors’ concerned questions. He’s bleeding, but not badly; he pulls off his spare ammo bandolier and wraps it around the gash, cinching it tight. Rigel meets his eyes, and Marius nods; worse than he’s saying, but not just bravado either. “Keep moving.”
They split up again when they reach Snow’s indoor courtyard. As soon as Lyme calls the first floor clear, Rigel sends Selene and Dash up to the balcony to set up again. Selene immediately starts to protest, but Rigel silences her with a look. Her rifle is useless in the corridors, and while she’s made good use of her pistol, that’s not the best use of her skulls and she knows it. Rigel lingers long enough to see Dash boost her up a nearby tree, then turns to move up.
On the far side, near the greenhouse, Rigel runs into Emin again.
She’s not alone this time either. She has another pair of Scouts with her: Kris and Ted, a couple years below them, and when he was a junior Ted used to follow them both around like a puppy, and Kris was Marius’ partner before their current assignment.
Emin meets Rigel’s eyes, and Rigel cannot fire.
“I thought I might see you here,” Emin calls, and she sounds incongruously amused and resigned, as if she’s caught Rigel sneaking back into base with a hangover and not attacking President Fucking Snow’s mansion.
He cannot do this. He needs to do this. He must.
“Been a while,” Rigel shoots back around the tightness in his throat.
“It has,” Emin acknowledges with a nod. The look in her eyes is … sad. “You’ve changed, Rigel.”
“I -” I haven’t changed, the world changed, Rigel starts to say, but then he sees the muscles in Emin’s shoulder tense - as if she’s firing, but why would she fire - she’s firing on you, idiot -
Rigel throws himself aside, but it’s too late -
He sees the muzzle flash and then -
Marius should have made Rigel stay behind.
The thought runs through his mind, drowning out all else, as he dives behind cover. He should have made Rigel stay. Rigel was compromised as hell, it was obvious from the start and from the way he drove them forward like it hurt to stop moving. Marius would even have had a good reason; first his shoulder injury, and then his leg. He should have made Rigel stop.
Emin is still just standing there, gun arm outstretched, but that won’t last; at any moment now she’ll turn to him -
So Marius shoots her first.
It’s not even a conscious decision, not really. Perhaps Marius wouldn’t have been able to do it if it had been. But it’s almost - spinal reflex, just like how his arm twitches to the right and pulls the trigger and Ted goes down too.
The crack of a sniper rifle echoes off the walls, and Kris falls. Poor bastard must have leapt too far out from behind the greenhouse when he dove for cover; he never did have very good situational awareness, never stopped to consider other angles of attack -
For a moment the courtyard rings with silence.
Marius lurches out of cover and all but collapses by Rigel’s side. He reaches out to roll him over, but stops himself because it won’t help. Blood, too much blood, spilling onto the stone, and it’s no good, he knows it’s no good, nobody survives being shot in the fucking throat like that. It’s no good, he’s so still, and yet -
(Emin has always been an incredibly quick draw, smooth as silk; she used to challenge the kids and laugh. She used to teach him and Rigel.)
His brother is dead, killed by his commander, now dead by Marius’s hand. He told Selene this would all be worth it. Marius would really, really like that part to be now.
There’s the rhythmic thump of booted feet - running - Marius heaves himself to his feet as Dash rounds the corner, followed closely by Selene. Selene’s eyes are dark with helpless fury; she must have seen some of it from behind her scope even if she didn’t have a shot. And Dash - Dash is -
Dash has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and over the last few months Marius has seen that take its toll, but this is the first time Marius has seen Dash in legitimate danger of shattering.
Marius can’t do a thing about it, not when he’s only barely holding it together himself, and any kindness now - any softness at all - will just tear them both to pieces. Not in the middle of a pitched battle where any distraction at all could mean their deaths. But what he can do is give him direction, purpose, a target.
He’s the squad leader now.
“This ends when we find Snow,” Marius announces grimly. “We need the president alive, but only him. Take out anything that stands in our way.”
Selene blows out a breath and grins, and it’s wild and angry and Marius will deeply regret this later but it’s not her he’s worried about right now. Dash meets his eyes, and Marius sees his own grief reflected in the boy’s gaze - grief and rage, destructive in its strength. But unlike Marius, Dash will turn his inward unless it finds another outlet. If nothing else, Marius can give him that.
“Yes, sir,” Dash says, and Marius nods.
Time to hunt.
Dash never seriously thought any of them would die.
It sounds really stupid when he thinks about it. It’s a war, people die, people have been dying, he’s killed them himself, good people, and even before the war Dash was no stranger to death. Hell, his parents are dead. He knows people die.
He just - somehow - thought that all four of them make it out the other side.
He trails Marius and Selene on automatic, bringing up the rear as they sweep through the greenhouse to Snow’s private office. Lyme and Claudius and a few others enter from the other side, and Dash isn’t paying a whole lot of attention but he does notice Claudius freeze when he counts three and not four.
There’s no time, so Dash shoves it out of his mind. Later. He’ll think about it later.
The back door to Snow’s private rooms is locked and armoured. This is something they discussed in planning, and yes - Marius gestures him forward, and Dash pulls out his kit and gets to work. Within two minutes he’s set it up and shoos everyone back, and with a flick of a switch he blows the door open.
It’s a textbook job, clean and professional, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. A little bit, maybe, but it’s like trying to staunch a flood with a washcloth.
The others storm through first into a hail of fire.
Snow’s defenders aren’t a stupid bunch, all told, but neither are the rebels. The ones in front dive aside or to the floor, and the ones behind, Dash included, fire over their heads; someone chucks a grenade in, and the explosion deafens them all.
When the smoke clears, another three rebels are dead, but so are the Scouts.
And in the next room -
“We have Snow,” Lyme announces, grim and victorious. Even through his haze of grief and rage, Dash has enough presence of mind to be grateful that he isn’t the president, staring down the barrel of the Victor’s gun right now.
Dash has a few seconds to ride the short high of victory before the rest crashes into him. They have President Snow in custody but the rest of the city is still fighting - and Rigel is dead and leaking out onto the courtyard. Suddenly it hurts to breathe.
“Come on,” Marius says, shaking him by the shoulder. “It’s not over yet.”
read on AO3 here
The headache throbs behind Lyme’s temples and presses in a tight band around her forehead. The various notes and blueprint sketches and battle plans swim before her eyes, but she forces herself to keep staring, cramming in every detail her brain is capable of absorbing. Whenever Coin’s people call the attack, that’s when they’ll make their move, and Lyme needs to be able to recall every detail, every parameter, every possible iteration of the plan she and the rebels went over now because there won’t be time before they head out.
It’s Rigel and the Scouts with the inside knowledge of Snow’s mansion, supplemented with the intel they gathered during the last extraction, and Rigel and Marius who drew up the plans but it’s Lyme who will, at least nominally, be leading the strike team against President Snow. Every rebel mission needs a figurehead to follow, and since Lyme is the reason they have most of the reinforcements from Two they do have - and since the soldiers from Thirteen have at least fought alongside her and know her worth - that makes her the obvious choice.
No pressure, of course. A few months ago Lyme was a civilian whose only relevant experience was killing a handful of teenagers and criminals almost thirty years ago; now, the rebellion’s obsession with recognizable leaders has propelled her to the forefront, but she’s no more qualified to lead the strike team than most of the soldiers she’s commanding, and far less than most. Most of Lyme’s military endeavours have involved throwing herself at the mountain in a futile mission with the secret aim of justifying an air-strike massacre.
Lyme pushes both hands into her hair, digging the heels of her palms against her eyes. She mentored Misha with only a year of training and little more than determination to see her through it, and Misha had won mostly on her own power. Likewise, Lyme reminds herself, her soldiers won’t be standing around waiting for her every order. They all know the plan, they might look to her for inspiration and to call the actual command, but they know what they’re supposed to do.
By this point there’s absolutely nothing new Lyme could possibly get out of studying the plans any longer, but if she stops giving her brain something to focus on it’s going to veer into how she should probably talk to Brutus, only this time she has no fucking clue what to say.
The first time Brutus lost a tribute, Lyme gave him three weeks of moping in his house, choking down the bare minimum of tasteless, Centre-worthy food, ignoring his living Victor and growing a depression beard before dragging him out to the basketball court for a game of one-on-one. He’d hated her for it the whole time, only ended up snapping out of it when he’d beaned her in the head with the ball and sent her skull-first into the concrete. But it had been enough to break the surface, get him breathing air instead of murky misery, and she’d sent him back home to Emory to take those first steps toward healing.
But this - this is different. Brutus isn’t moping, he’s not sitting in his room refusing to eat or talk to anyone, he’s not shutting anyone out or going through the motions of grief. He’s helping the Scouts plan for the inevitable attack, he’s doing last-minute supply runs and running recon and doing exactly the same thing Lyme is doing: keeping himself busy so there’s no time to think about it.
Petra, Lyme can’t help but notice, hasn’t cried since she arrived, and while she’s been pale and quiet and isolated herself from pretty much everyone except Devon and Emory - including Ronan, which Lyme will ask about after this is all over and can make time for simple pleasures like interpersonal dramas - she definitely hasn’t exploded or snapped or shown any kind of emotional upheaval that Lyme would have expected from their most volatile Victor.
Petra and Brutus are playing chicken, Lyme thinks. Normally Brutus would call her on it, hold her down and tell her she has to process this, let it all out and scream and cry and do whatever she needs to, but if he does Petra will throw it right back in his face and ask him why he hasn’t, if emotional catharsis is so great. Absolutely everything about this is terrible, but as far as the war goes, it’s maybe not the worst time to cope by being stoic workaholics.
At least Petra hasn’t come scream in her face about high treason, and as far as Lyme can tell she’s left Claudius alone too. It’s not like Lyme hasn’t had practice handling stony silence at this point.
“Hey.”
Lyme does not flinch, or jump, or freeze, because Career reflexes have taught her better than that, but she does let herself take one long breath, in and out, before responding. “Hey,” she says, still staring down at her desk instead of turning around to look at the person who appeared in her doorway, silent as a cat.
“You left me,” Artemisia says in a conversational tone that’s as casual and safe as a knife flipped between the fingers. “Do you have any idea how shitty that made me feel?”
Lyme swallows. “No.” She takes a risk, swings around in her chair to look at her, but Artemisia has her guarded face on, and not even Lyme can crack it today, not yet. She twists her hands in her lap, catches herself reaching for her sleeve in the old nervous gesture, wanting to pull the fabric down over her wrist. Artemisia’s gaze flickers, a pointed one-two glance that misses nothing.
“You promised me two things when I won,” Artemisia continues. Her voice remains bland but it’s a lie, like taking the first step out onto cloudy ice. She holds up one hand, index finger extended, marking tallies in the air. “You said you wouldn’t hit me - good job on that, by the way, credit where credit’s due - but do you remember the other one?” She sucks in a breath, and there’s the first real crack in the nonchalant armour, because it shakes on the inhale, though she catches herself on the way out. “You said you’d never leave.”
Lyme digs her fingers into her knees. “I know.”
“Sorry, no, you said you’d never leave me, ever,” Artemisia says, her words twisting on a hidden pain. “And I know you meant it when you said it, but that just means at some point you stopped. At some point down the line you stopped living out that promise and started thinking about when you’d leave me behind. What I can’t decide is whether it’s worse if you made a conscious choice to break your word or if it never even occurred to you.”
Exhausted is the wrong word. It’s a quiet, bone-deep weariness that fills Lyme now, not so much a feeling as an absence. “I’m sorry,” she says. The two most useless words in all of a person’s vocabulary, but not saying them is worse.
“I know.” Artemisia’s mouth thins, twitches in a ghost of a smile, but then it fades. She leans her balance sideways, thumps against the door frame with her arms crossed. Her fingers twitch like she’s searching for the knife she would have had to leave behind. “It’s not just you leaving when you said you wouldn’t, I was eighteen years old and now I’m eighteen years out and people break promises, welcome to reality. But what gets me is that all those years of Claudius being glued to your side, being the perfect, well-behaved mentor’s-dream Victor to my absolute shit-show nightmare, I was never jealous of him. Not once. It never even crossed my mind, because you were always so good about making sure I knew you loved me too.” She shakes her head, eyes going far away. “Until you went back for him and not me, I would’ve sworn up and down you never had a favourite.”
It wasn’t about picking favourites, Lyme wants to tell her. The words bubble up inside her in a desperate fountain, and she has to dig her fingers into her wrist to stop herself. It’s just that she and Claudius had taken the treason plunge years ago, and the absolute terror of that shared secret had been enough to nearly paralyze her. She didn’t choose Claudius because she liked him better, only because he had made the same ugly, impossible choice she had. When the time came to run there had been no questions, no extra decisions to make, only the final step in a journey they’d started long ago.
Together, without Misha. Who - while not a rebel - was certainly no loyalist. She would have followed, Lyme realized with a sick gnawing in her gut. Not for the rebellion, not for any cause, but for her mentor. If only Lyme had asked.
“It gets better.” Artemisia tips her head back to stare at the ceiling, and Lyme breathes very carefully at the telltale shimmer at the corners of her eyes. “I’m still hurt, and angry, and you know how I deal with it, I hurt the person who hurt me until it stops hurting me so much. And what I want to do is keep hurting you, except every time I do it doesn’t make it any better, I just feel more and more like shit. And the worst part is -”
She swipes a hand across her eyes, a furious, jerky gesture that digs a hook into Lyme’s chest and twists. “The worst part is Odin’s dead, and all I can think is what if it was you, what if Odin came back alive and it was you who died on your stupid mission. What if you died and I was still pissed off at you, only then I got mad because I’m still angry, I shouldn’t have have to stop just because one of us might get killed in this stupid battle and have regrets forever -”
Lyme has spent enough time of her own caught in spirals to recognize one, though hers tend to be internal rather than the torrent of words that made up Artemisia’s particular brand of external processing. Half a second of indecision, then she pushes herself up, crosses the room and pulls Artemisia into her arms.
She stiffens, then collapses, boneless and exhausted and grateful, the sudden weight causing Lyme to lock her knees or risk dropping her. Lyme edges backwards, careful not to trip, until she finds her chair, where she tugs Artemisia into her lap like they aren't both grown women only two years apart.
“I fucking hate this,” Artemisia says into her shoulder. She curls her legs, heels digging into Lyme’s thigh. “I’m still angry. I want to keep being angry because it feels like I earned it, and nothing else makes sense right now. But I’m so tired and I want my mentor back, and it hurts.”
Lyme rests her cheek against the side of Artemisia’s head and wraps her arms around her, holding her steady even in their awkward position. “I don’t know if I deserve to say you have your mentor back,” she says, carefully. “Because you’re right, mentors make one very important promise, and I broke it. I’ll have to earn that back, and before a battle when there’s no hope of keeping it is not the time to try to make it again. But - I’m here, girl, and I there is nothing I regret more than not taking you with me.”
“Even though I would’ve made a shitty rebel,” Artemisia says, with a trace of her old irreverence. “From the sounds of it, thirty seconds of me in a room with that woman and she would’ve had me executed.”
“She would have fucking tried,” Lyme snarls, and Artemisia laughs and headbutts her.
“You’re right though,” Artemisia says after a while. “‘Mentor’ hurts too much, but I’m glad you’re back. Once this is all over, if we’re not dead, we’ll have to go home and beat the shit out of each other until it’s fixed. You know, like civilized people.”
“Damn straight,” Lyme says, and pulls her in tighter.
And then - a commotion, a sudden cacophony of shouts and footfalls, and a runner pokes his head into the door. “We got the go-ahead,” he says without even blinking, as though it’s completely normal to look in on the commanding Victor and see her cuddling at her desk. “Beetee just sent word. Coin’s sending everyone in against the Capitol now. Orders are to scramble and get everyone in position.”
Artemisia slides off Lyme’s lap, posture alert and ready, hands at her sides. She and Devon and Emory are part of the ground squads, making their way through the city and mingling with Coin’s forces to draw out the Capitol defences and give the strike team - Lyme’s team - as much time to get to the mansion as they can. They’ll be heading into the city separately and won’t see each other until it’s all over.
“Understood,” Lyme says, and the runner disappears to pass the message on. She turns to Artemisia, a rock in her throat, but they’ve been through this, Lyme and her squad need to move fast, get as far as they can before the entire city arms itself at word of Thirteen incoming.
“Go get ‘em, boss,” Artemisia says, two furrows between her eyebrows.
Lyme kisses her forehead once, quick and desperate, then tears herself away and runs toward the hangar bay.
No time for goodbyes, and it’s bad luck anyway. Mentors and tributes don’t say goodbye on the rooftop by the hovercrafts, they say ‘good luck’ or ‘see you soon’ or ‘I’ll be waiting’. One of Nero’s girls, a wild, brilliant girl with wicked eyes, grinned at him and said I’ll try to steal you a souvenir. Another one said I’ll cut out their hearts for you - or maybe that was the same girl, two sides of the same promise. It all runs together now.
Point being, mushy goodbyes and tearful final confessions are for people who know they’re not coming back, and every Two knows that the best way to invite something to happen is to speak it into power. And so they don’t; Lyme stops by for a second on her way out but they don’t speak, Nero just holds her face in his hands and presses their foreheads together before stepping back. Her eyes blaze hard, shadowed by hollows, and he’s never been prouder.
“Can’t believe you get Snow all to yourself, you cheater!” Enobaria calls after her.
Lyme glances back over her shoulder, turns around to jog backwards in place. “Too slow,” she tosses back, but then she grins a little. “Don’t worry, I’ll save you some.”
“You’d better,” Enobaria huffs, but then she’s gone, and his youngest grumbles and shoves her hands into her armpits.
It took a war for his girls to get along, but Nero isn’t going to question it, and he refuses to feel guilty for the happy glow that sits in the centre of his chest.
He and Enobaria are fighting, of course they are. Nero doesn’t want to fight, he’s hated the Hunger Games and the Capitol and the whole sick, twisted system since he was a kid, carried the truth about its twisted underbelly since the first cougar with her sweet, sickly smily dug her manicured fingers into his shoulder, but he’s - tired. What Nero wants is to gather up his girls into his arms and carry them away somewhere safe, somewhere without guns and bombs and streets that apparently explode or flood with tar or the hundreds of Arena traps the Capitol saw fit to seed the streets with.
But Lyme has gone to take out the president, and Enobaria has been itching to draw blood ever since these rebels cleared her from medical, and Nero isn’t going to sit in some safehouse while Enobaria lets loose on the city on her own. So here he is, outfitted in hasty protective gear with a standard-issue rifle and very basic training, waiting for his grid assignment while the others gather.
He lets himself think, wistfully, of the safehouses where Petra and the older, loyalist, injured or less able-bodied Victors will be spending their time, but there’s no point in that, not when Enobaria has managed to pull a pair of knives out of thin air and is already practicing her strikes.
“Where did you get those?” Nero asks mildly, already composing a mental apology to whoever is in charge of inventory.
“Don’t worry, I asked nicely,” Enobaria says, not looking at him. Nero turns his stare on her, and she glances briefly at him, eyes sliding away, then scoffs and turns back, hands planted on her hips with the blades sticking out askew. “I did! Nobody’s bleeding, no broken bones, no soft tissue injuries, and nobody wet themselves. Devon would be proud.”
Nero cracks a grin in spite of himself. “Well I know I’m proud, baby girl,” he says, and Enobaria flashes him a smile. It’s - still strange, seeing the false teeth, straight and white without a hint of fangs or gold. Makes her look younger, even past thirty, if only because his last memory of her with teeth like that is from before the Arena. “Save the rest for the streets.”
“Oh don’t worry.” Enobaria’s voice goes dark, like the bubble of fresh blood from a long, straight cut through soft flesh. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
Partway through the last-minute reminders of their assignments, as a rebel soldier hands out small handhelds with cloned maps of the various traps around the city centre, Nero registers a presence beside him. He glances sideways, once, then again, startled at the sight of Callista next to him, dressed in fatigues with her long, black hair braided tightly to her scalp.
“Calli?” Nero blinks at her, looks past to see Hera standing at her other side, jaw clenched. “I thought - you said you and Hera were taking a safehouse.”
Callista doesn’t turn to look at him. She stares straight ahead, arms crossed, one finger tapping against the swell of her bicep muscle, visible even through the baggy uniform fabric. “Here’s the thing, darling,” she says, deceptively casual. “I have lived my life miraculously free of guilt and second-guessing. It’s a marvellous existence, quite cleansing, I do recommend it. Except that for the past few weeks I’ve been entirely unable to continue. Food tastes terrible, sleep is elusive, and while I’d very much like to blame it on substandard accommodations -” She blows out a breath. “President Snow deserves to burn, and his Capitol with it. For everything they’ve done to you, for the Ones, for Creed, for all our children. And yes, for every other person out in the districts suffering whom I’ve never given two shits about and whose problems I don’t have a fucking clue. So, yes. I think I have to be there to help bring him down.”
Nero gapes at her, but Callista only turns to him and smiles. It is not a nice smile; this is Callista the Butcher, who sliced open a boy in the Arena in the midst of the throes of passion. Nero sucks in a breath, discomforted to feel an odd shiver of the old attraction he thought he’d abandoned thirty years ago when Callista patted his cheek and said oh no dear you’re much too like a puppy.
“And then I’m going to find that rebel president and make myself a new stole out of her intestines,” Callista says pleasantly. “Murder us, I thank you! As soon as we’re done using her soldiers I’m going to tear her to pieces and feed them to my cats.”
“That’s the spirit,” Nero says, wishing he could cover Enobaria’s ears.
“Count your kills, darling,” Callista says lightly, touching his shoulder in a brief brush of fingers. The contact takes on a strange significance in Nero’s head; he has the odd thought, that tomorrow, next week, next year he’ll still feel the ghost of her touch on his arm. He chases it away. “We’ll all be comparing notes later.”
“Battlefield, not playground,” her mentor reminds her, and she threads her arm through Callista’s and leads her toward the front.
They don’t talk as they make their way through the city. No jokes, no banter, not even audio checks over their earpieces. The point scout at the front relays signals back via gestures and signals, and each person sends them back down the team in rapid succession in a matter of seconds. Quick, professional, and silent.
Claudius still can’t believe they’re really doing this. All the other missions, the recons, the supply runs, the extractions, everything he did with Selene and Dash and their team that led up to this, it all had a layer of separation. Get in, get out, keep a small footprint. It hadn’t really felt like rebel activity, not really. Even sneaking into the mansion to spy on Petra, they’d never actually gone anywhere near President Snow.
This is really it. Years ago, young and angry and terrified, head stuffed full of questions and realizations he didn’t really understand, Claudius had never really thought he’d get here. His thoughts of rebellion had never gotten much further than packing his bags and leaving with Lyme when they couldn’t take pretending anymore, but here they are, fighting their way through the city on the way to his Games-damned front door.
It’s as close to the Arena as Claudius has ever gotten.
They can’t risk gunfire, not here, which means that every kill they make is hand to hand. Claudius has a pair of daggers as well as his rifle, and Lyme borrowed one of Nero’s machetes while Brutus managed to scrounge up a spare sword. The others make do with clubs, knives and other non-ballistics weapons, but it’s a messy business. There’s a reason the strike team is almost entirely ex-Careers from Two and it’s not because they don’t trust the rebels from other districts. This might be war, but if the mission parameters involve fast, silent kills without the aid of guns, it only makes sense to send people who’ve done this before.
The first time Claudius sinks his daggers into an enemy it’s a strange, unwelcome flood of memory and sensation. The kick of adrenaline, the rush of the kill - he shoves it back, refuses to ride the wave, to let it carry him. He grounds himself (take a breath, identify your surroundings, pick a point and focus on it), shakes the blood from his daggers and moves on.
They clear the area and keep going. Claudius catches Lyme looking at him, the ghost of concern flickering from her face, and he would be amused or annoyed or offended that she’s checking up on him except that he’d just been doing the exact same thing to Selene, giving her a quick once-over to make sure her head’s still in the game. But no, Selene looks pale but present, and she notices him staring and gives him the same I’m fine Mom look he shot Lyme.
Almost there. This flashback-inducing killing can’t be good for any of them, really, but either there will be time to sit down and untangle the psychological mess they’re creating for themselves once they capture Snow or none of this will matter. The Arena has a wonderful way of burning away every extra, unimportant detail, distilling each action, each decision down to its essence. Claudius holds his daggers in an easy grip and follows Lyme deeper into the streets.
The streets stretch out ahead, eerie and empty, the various signs and billboards and outdoor fountains and holographic art displays shut down for the duration of the war. Adessa curls her lip as she pass them, empty shells that mark the Capitol’s extravagance, monuments to the colossal waste of power it could no longer afford to keep up following the destruction of the primary hydroelectric plant.
Far away from this quiet, ridiculously opulent residential quarters, the main battle rages, but Adessa pays it no attention. She has her own quarry to stalk today, and her blades have already tasted blood today.
It sings in her veins, the old song, filling her like perfume, like the heady scent of lilacs on a warm spring night, like hot blood spilled on a sultry evening when the air sticks close and the sweat lingers. Adessa feels every beat of her heart like a pulse of fire in her chest, and she draws her briefcase close and strokes one finger over the silver clasp.
The house she seeks sits at the end of the cul-de-sac, overwhelming and ornate to the point of obscenity. Four stories, three pools, marble columns, holographic glass walls and a backyard mutt menagerie: the mansion of Lina Davenport, premier muttation designer, first-tier supporter of Coriolanus Snow, and Nero’s number-one sponsor and self-styled “true love”. A true love who had sunk her claws into Nero’s shoulder on his Tour and used her influence to make Adessa’s perfect, obedient Victor into the closest thing District 2 had to a sex slave.
All of Nero’s other “lovers”, all odious, love-struck, ludicrously wealthy women twice his age who’d preyed on him as soon as he was placed on the market, now lay dead in their homes, dismembered or dissected or any number of personalized horrors. Adessa had saved the best for last.
She’d been half afraid the old instincts would have rusted after so many years. It’s been decades since Adessa’s Arena, and unlike some of her more undisciplined colleagues, Adessa never took another life since stepping onto the hovercraft the day the trumpets played. But as it turns out, no matter how out of practice she feared she might have been, with the first slide of steel into skin, it all came rushing back.
She makes short work of Lina’s outer security, using the codes she’d borrowed from Nero’s files in the Victor Affairs office months ago. No minimalism here, Lina’s house is as tacky and nausea-inducing inside as it is out: a disgusting, cacophonous display of wealth that ignores every rule of taste and class because Lina, like most of the Capitol, believes in overt shows of power and prosperity.
Adessa finds Lina downstairs, hiding in a panic room. This is a surprise, and breaking in affords Adessa with a pleasant mental challenge that actually distracts her from the low, rolling thoughts of murder as she matches wits with the state of the art system. If she hadn’t been training for this for the past few years, ordering in various door locks and alarm systems and teaching herself how to master them in an elaborate fantasy sequence designed to maintain her sanity and burn off her rage, her revenge might well have stopped here.
But at last the door swings open, and Adessa sweeps through. Lina cowers in her richly decorated saferoom, clinging to her ridiculous custom designer mutt-hound and gasping for air behind several layers of cosmetic surgery. “Hello, Lina,” Adessa says. She doesn’t bother with speeches, only sets the briefcase on a low table and clicks it open in short, precise movements, allowing Lina to get a good look at the rows and rows of sharp, shining daggers nestled inside - and the blood-stained cleaning cloth tucked along with them.
To her credit, Lina doesn’t scream, or shout, or try to run. She stares at Adessa with hatred burning in her eyes even as the fear locks her in place, as Adessa traces her fingers along her daggers and selects a few choice candidates. “You were always jealous,” Lina spits out. “You never could accept what Nero and I have! You always wanted him to yourself! You could never admit that he loved me. That we had something special! You’re going to try to make me admit it isn’t true, that he never loved me, but I won’t. I don’t care what you do to me, I’ll always know the truth!”
Adessa pauses, tilting her head to one side. She did indeed take that tack with a few of Nero’s sillier, more fatuous abusers, the ones who weren’t cruel so much as they were foolish and romantic. She’d enjoyed the moment of realization in their eyes, right before she slit their throats, the crushing defeat and horror as it sank in that Nero had not been a joyful, willing participant in their adventures. But no, Adessa thinks, watching Lina cuddle the chimeric monstrosity to her chest, she made her mark by supporting Coriolanus Snow in his rise to power, by rooting out his enemies and helping destroy their reputations, and her fortune by supplying first Gamemakers and then ordinary citizens with her unnatural creations.
No, Lina’s delusion was of a different sort. She had convinced herself that she and Nero were one of a kind, but not because she thought it innocent and pure - but because she believed Nero to be like her.
“May it bring you comfort,” Adessa says simply, and steps forward.
The only compliment Adessa will ever pay Lina Davenport is that it takes her much longer to die than Adessa would have given her credit for.
When it’s over, Adessa cleans her knives on one of Lina’s plush throws, packs everything away, and slips back out into the street, ignoring the distressed whining of the mutt-creature as the door closes behind her. It will have plenty to eat once it gets over itself, and pampered luxury creation or no, baser instincts are never far away.
Oh, how she missed this.
The gun is a poor substitute for her machetes, of course, crude and inelegant and distant, but the kickback shudders through Callista’s arm and it’s almost like the old days, swinging her weapons and slicing them through her opponents with nothing but sheer musculature and inertia to drive them through the mass of bone and muscle tissue. Now the bullets do the work but it’s Callista who aims them, Callista’s body that absorbs the aftershock, and the adrenaline still hits and the danger still thrills and she finds herself laughing all over again.
Hera will be worried about her, of course. Hera made her promise, years and years and years ago in the pouring rain, when Callista returned from an alleyway soaking wet, her clothes soaked with blood, half a dozen kittens stuffed under her shirt, that she could keep the cats but only if she never killed a human being ever again. Callista had weighed the value of the trade and her mentor’s concern, and over the years she’d skirted as close to the line as medical intervention made it possible, but she’d never broken her vow until today.
Another soldier falls, and another, and another. She’s not untouchable - Callista at eighteen thought so, buoyed by years of trainers filling her with confidence so she wouldn’t peer too hard at the numbers, calculate her actual survival odds, but she is middle-aged now, and not so sanguine - but she is unleashed, and that is a fearsome thing.
She counts her kills, just like she promised Nero, and funnily enough, that’s where it all unravels.
It doesn’t take long for Callista to outstrip every kill she made in training, not much longer for her to pass her Arena total. Soon she even flies past the number of her previous kills combined. It should be a source of pride, a measure of bragging rights, except -
A bullet flies past her head, buries itself in the building behind her and sends shrapnel scattering. Callista ducks, Hera beside her. Hera closes her eyes for a moment, breathing heavily, and she’s sixty-two years old but she came with Callista because no one is allowed to fight alone and she wasn’t about to let her Victor run into danger without her.
Callista takes a moment to catch her own breath, chagrined to admit she needs it. She’s doubled her lifetime kill count in less than a day, and she should be proud except it rings hollow. In the moments when she pauses, to breathe or reload or dash to the next area of fighting, it all floods back: she’s not fighting the people, she’s fighting the cause. These are not opponents, trained to kill her in glorious, bloody, one-on-one combat. They are not criminals sent to kill her for their freedom. They’re soldiers, trained for war, armed with guns and orders and here to do their jobs.
Killing doesn’t have the same savour to it when the casualties number hundreds, thousands, and no one sees anyone’s face. Callista tries to shake off the thought but can’t, and finally she ducks around the corner to fire off a shot.
The soldier drops, a crumple of fatigues on the street. Callista takes a glancing hit to the arm, a stray bullet that doesn’t enter her skin, and she’s glad for it. It’s not a dangerous injury, and the bite of pain sharpens her. She tears off a strip of sleeve, binds the wound, and moves on.
But it’s too late. The battle glow has faded, replaced by the hard, grim slog of the third week in the Arena, and Callista curses herself - curses Hera, curses Nero, for their obvious terrible effects on her - for letting herself overthink it. Her first and only chance for unlimited murder in over thirty years, and she ruins it with moralizing?
Still, she has a job to do, and Callista is nothing if not devoted to her duty. They fight, sometimes alone, sometimes alongside rebel soldiers - sometimes theirs, sometimes District 13’s, which makes Callista grit her teeth and wish she could shoot them all, but no, big picture, never turn on one’s allies before it’s strategic to do so - and hopefully they keep the attention and the focus off the mansion.
Through it all Hera keeps an eye on the map of the city traps, avoiding the triggers that would bring down the Arena-like machinations around their heads. Some of the notes are fairly benign or able to overcome provided there’s enough warning or space to fight (lizard mutts, fire, spikes), but some (tar flood, magma, tidal wave) are impossible to escape or defeat.
They keep it up far longer for two women in their fifties and sixties would ever be expected, but at last Hera takes a hit to the knee and collapses to the ground in an explosion of cursing. “I’ll be fine,” she spits through gritted teeth. “But I think I’m through. Let’s leave the rest of the fighting to the young bloods and find ourselves somewhere quiet to sit until it’s over.”
As there are no sponsors to charm for a parachute with bandages and pain medication, Callista is inclined to agree. She splints Hera’s leg as best she can, checks the map for the location of the nearest emergency medical stash, and sets off.
Halfway there they’re crossing a side street that intercuts the main thoroughfare leading to the mansion when Callista stops. “Wait,” she says. Hera’s hand clutches her sleeve, fingers tight with pain. “Do you feel that?”
Hera shakes her head, but given the pallour beneath her skin it’s not likely she feels much. Callista leans her against a nearby fountain and bends down, splaying her fingers against the concrete in an unconscious parody of the gesture Nero used to do in the Arena to mess with his packmates when he pretended, silently, to be a master tracker.
Except this time it’s not a joke. This time there’s a steady rumble beneath Callista’s fingers, and she leaves Hera for a moment to dart out and peer out through the buildings.
A line of artillery vehicles wheeling up the street in a line, headed straight for the thoroughfare. If they get there they’ll ring the mansion and cut off the strike team, picking off anyone who attempts to enter.
The strike team has to get there first. It must. If the tanks arrive first, the chance for a surgical strike will be over, and the cost of life for taking the mansion will be so much higher.
Someone has to stop it.
No one else will get here in time.
Crouched on the ground, one hand pressed to the pavement, Callista starts to laugh.
“Hera,” Callista calls out. Her head spins, a giddy blood rush. It’s not funny. It’s the funniest joke she’s ever heard. “Is there a trap trigger in this area?”
There is.
A series of charges buried in the street ahead of them, quite devastating, meant to stop an incoming force intending to march on the Presidential mansion, with the trigger in the centre of the fountain. Of course, the original intent foresaw an invading force, not a rescue, but it serves their purpose well enough. The first wave brings a shockwave, disrupting any ground troops; the second, a wall of fire to finish the job.
The charges are set to detonate in a wave from the far end of the street, giving whoever activates them just enough time to get clear before the final set of explosions takes out the entire intersection. Assuming, of course, that whoever triggers the defence grid is a young, able-bodied soldier in her prime.
Callista locks gazes with Hera as they look up from the device. “Go,” Hera says. “I’ll stay, I’m the one who can’t run. One of us should make it out.”
It makes sense. It’s simple math, good Arena logic; why should two people die when one can survive? Why should Callista die when she earned the right to be immortal?
Callista glares at her mentor and snatches the device from her hand. “Don’t be stupid,” she snaps. “I’m a murderer again. Who’s going to control me if you’re not here?”
She helps Hera into the fountain, and together they find the switch hidden in the centre. The tanks are rumbling down the street now, well within the range of the traps. Callista shares one long look with Hera, takes several gulping breaths, and presses down on the switch.
The first explosion rocks the street, sending the back row of tanks flying onto its side. Callista laughs and bares her teeth at the ensuing ball of smoke and fire.
They call the city and its traps the 76th Arena. If it really were, Callista thinks, there would be cameras everywhere and an audience of millions glued to their screens to watch her heroic sacrifice. As the explosions draw nearer, the best she can hope for is that the bowl of the fountain shields her, that there’s enough left of her for someone to find and bury.
Hera’s hand finds hers, fingers squeezing tight as the explosions draw near. “I regret nothing,” she says, voice thin with pain but nevertheless determined. She always did commit, even to a Victor far more blood- and sex-crazed than she could possibly have imagined when looking at the files in black and white.
“That’s sweet,” Callista says, resting her head on her mentor’s shoulder. One more to go now. In the distance the air flickers; she thinks she can see the first wave of flames. She refuses to close her eyes. “I have quite the list.”
They get all the way to Snow’s front door, then Rigel sucks in a breath because the four white-armoured guards standing there are his friends.
They’re wearing half-helmets and gleaming armour, and they’re standing in a row like they’re an honour guard on parade instead of in a defensive matrix. It throws the rebels enough that they advance cautiously - he hears Lyme in his earpiece, telling them to beware a trap - and they sneak closer instead of storming the gates.
But Rigel knows why they’ve done it. They’re here for him.
For all their sneaking, for all they managed to beat Coin’s forces and make it to the mansion first, the Scouts had to know Rigel would be coming, and this time they’re prepared. This won’t be a Brin situation. It won’t even be Troy. Arcturus won’t offer them a pardon, not when they’ve fought their way up to Snow’s damned doorstep. Never mind that he and Rigel were squadmates for three years. Never mind that they’re friends. Arcturus will still shoot Rigel through the head if given half a chance, and he’ll have ordered his squad to do the same.
(Of course he will. Rigel can still see Troy’s helmet exploding in a mess of bone and blood as Selene’s bullet blew his skull apart.)
The most Rigel can hope for is that Arcturus doesn’t fight dirty - but then the door opens and another armoured figure steps through, and Rigel’s stomach plummets because it’s Emin.
The Scouts rotate a lot. They’re deployed in squads of four, two partnered pairs, and that’s how they operate, but assignments rarely last for more than a couple of years. Rigel and Marius were juniors together back in the day and they’re partners now, but they’ve only worked the same squad for maybe half their careers. Rumour has it Snow doesn’t like to leave squads together for too long in case they start to be loyal to each other instead of to him.
Given that Rigel’s squad followed him into rebellion, he’s not sure he can argue against that one.
But the trouble is, while it might work for most squad assignments - Rigel will absolutely shoot Arcturus even if he feels bad about it later - you will always bear some extra loyalty to your first commander, it’s human nature.
Rigel’s first commander just stepped out of the mansion.
Beside him, Marius exhales a quiet curse. He and Emin weren’t so close, he got along better with her partner Galen, but it’s still - still.
Everything goes very quiet and very loud all at once. Rigel hears Lyme in his ear but the words don’t register. He asks himself but can’t answer: he doesn’t know if he can bring himself to shoot the woman who made him hot chocolate on winter days, who showed him how to strap his gear down so it was both secure and comfortable to sleep in on long haul missions, who taught him how to divide things in his mind so he could do his duty and still retain his humanity. Emin is the kind of Peacekeeer Rigel has always wanted to be. He’s based his entire career on following in her footsteps.
What’s worse is that her very presence here - Arcturus’ presence - is Emin all over. She is the commander of the Scouts, a position she’s held for the last two years even though she’s not the most senior, because she’s smart and driven and, above all, loyal. If Snow could trust anyone to watch over him as he slept, it would be Emin. But Emin’s gift is not that she’s good at fighting (although she is), or that she’s smart (although she is): it’s that she is an absolutely fantastic judge of character. She gave Rigel his squad; she gave him Marius as his second; and now she has arranged Snow’s defence in exactly the manner that will unsettle him the most, make him hesitate.
She’s using herself as a human shield, and Rigel is as impressed as he is heartbroken.
Emin exchanges a quiet word with Arcturus. Her gaze sweeps the perimeter, and Rigel knows she can’t see him in his hiding spot but somehow her gaze pierces him anyway.
For the first time since beginning this whole misbegotten operation, Rigel is glad that, for once, he’s not the one in charge. “Thoughts?” Lyme’s voice finally registers in his earpiece.
“It’s a message,” Rigel murmurs back. That’s the one thing Emin doesn’t know; Rigel has led the other missions where they’ve run into the Scouts, but this time he’s just the local expert. “They know we’re coming, they know who we are. They’re waiting for us.”
“Waiting for you,” Marius says from his side, quiet so it won’t carry over to Lyme. “Rigel -”
“Quiet,” Rigel says, aside. “Not now.” Tapping his earpiece again, he continues. “This won’t be the only line of defence, just the obvious one. Be careful of traps.”
“All right,” Lyme says, oblivious to the side conversation. “Form up, let’s go.”
He’s right. They don’t bother talking, and it is a trap.
Their advance must trip an invisible sensor, because the moment they cross into effective rifle range the four guards raise their weapons to their shoulders and fire into the night.
And they shouldn’t be able to see them, but the first salvo catches Rigel right in the shoulder.
“Get down!” He yells over the comm, diving for the ground. Marius grabs him and hauls him behind cover. The motion jars his shoulder, and Rigel bites back a yell. It’s not lethal, not even debilitating thanks to his armour, but damn if it doesn’t hurt like hell.
Distantly he hears Lyme give the order to open fire. He clicks the safety off -
- And Vance’s head explodes, an echo of Troy’s all over again, but without the faceplate to give them a semblance of detachment.
Selene, of course. Rigel’s heart sinks. He never wanted this, bringing his kids into the rebellion to kill their friends and colleagues, undoing all Selene’s detox training only to fling her right back into close-quarters murder. He’d sent Dash and Selene back to be long-ranged support when they got close to the mansion in an effort to protect them, but that just means she’d had her sights trained on the four guards since the beginning. Rigel doesn’t like the toll it’s taking on her, whatever good her sessions with Claudius have done her.
The other three dive behind cover - but not good enough, as a rebel soldier rears back and hurls a grenade at the front door. The resulting explosion takes out the pillar, and shots from a dozen rifles take care of the rest. In seconds, it’s done.
Rigel doesn’t know if his bullets were the ones to kill Arcturus. He doesn’t want to know - and yet, he does. Perhaps this is what it feels like ot be in a firing squad.
“Let’s go!” Lyme shouts, and yes, that’s good, press the advantage -
“You’re hit,” Marius snaps at him when Rigel makes to move up with the rest.
“I’ll live.” Rigel shakes off Marius’ hand. “You heard the commander. Lene, Dash, pack it up and get over here, we’re going in.”
“Yessir!”
There’s no sign of Emin as they stampede up the porch stairs and through the narrow doorway. Rigel’s mind screams bottleneck as they force their way through the hole, enlarged by the grenade explosion but still small, too small. And yes - the first two rebels through the door fall immediately, victims of the second line of guards posted up the stairs in the antechamber. Without speaking, Rigel and Marius take cover on opposite sides of the entrance and fire: two more Scouts fall.
Still no sign of Emin. Where is she?
But there’s no time to think. Lyme leads them on the bloodiest, most brutal house-cleaning Rigel has ever been on outside of floor exercises; Snow’s mansion is all narrow corridors or wide, sweeping chambers, both of which are absolute murder on any attackers. The one advantage they have is prior access to the floorplan, their previous recon missions, and that Lyme and Brutus also remember the layout from various post-Games parties.
It’s a cold comfort to the fallen, but they at least aren’t losing as many as they would otherwise.
Rigel takes another hit - to the leg this time, and at close range even pistol fire hurts like a bitch - and there’s a close call when Hector and Ella manage to jump them from behind a hidden door. Ella manages to get a blade into Marius’s side, sliding it through a gap in his armour like the master knife-fighter she is, before Rigel shoots her. Someone else gets Hector.
It’s Dash. He and Selene have caught up.
“I’m fine, just a scratch,” Marius snaps, waving off the juniors’ concerned questions. He’s bleeding, but not badly; he pulls off his spare ammo bandolier and wraps it around the gash, cinching it tight. Rigel meets his eyes, and Marius nods; worse than he’s saying, but not just bravado either. “Keep moving.”
They split up again when they reach Snow’s indoor courtyard. As soon as Lyme calls the first floor clear, Rigel sends Selene and Dash up to the balcony to set up again. Selene immediately starts to protest, but Rigel silences her with a look. Her rifle is useless in the corridors, and while she’s made good use of her pistol, that’s not the best use of her skulls and she knows it. Rigel lingers long enough to see Dash boost her up a nearby tree, then turns to move up.
On the far side, near the greenhouse, Rigel runs into Emin again.
She’s not alone this time either. She has another pair of Scouts with her: Kris and Ted, a couple years below them, and when he was a junior Ted used to follow them both around like a puppy, and Kris was Marius’ partner before their current assignment.
Emin meets Rigel’s eyes, and Rigel cannot fire.
“I thought I might see you here,” Emin calls, and she sounds incongruously amused and resigned, as if she’s caught Rigel sneaking back into base with a hangover and not attacking President Fucking Snow’s mansion.
He cannot do this. He needs to do this. He must.
“Been a while,” Rigel shoots back around the tightness in his throat.
“It has,” Emin acknowledges with a nod. The look in her eyes is … sad. “You’ve changed, Rigel.”
“I -” I haven’t changed, the world changed, Rigel starts to say, but then he sees the muscles in Emin’s shoulder tense - as if she’s firing, but why would she fire - she’s firing on you, idiot -
Rigel throws himself aside, but it’s too late -
He sees the muzzle flash and then -
Marius should have made Rigel stay behind.
The thought runs through his mind, drowning out all else, as he dives behind cover. He should have made Rigel stay. Rigel was compromised as hell, it was obvious from the start and from the way he drove them forward like it hurt to stop moving. Marius would even have had a good reason; first his shoulder injury, and then his leg. He should have made Rigel stop.
Emin is still just standing there, gun arm outstretched, but that won’t last; at any moment now she’ll turn to him -
So Marius shoots her first.
It’s not even a conscious decision, not really. Perhaps Marius wouldn’t have been able to do it if it had been. But it’s almost - spinal reflex, just like how his arm twitches to the right and pulls the trigger and Ted goes down too.
The crack of a sniper rifle echoes off the walls, and Kris falls. Poor bastard must have leapt too far out from behind the greenhouse when he dove for cover; he never did have very good situational awareness, never stopped to consider other angles of attack -
For a moment the courtyard rings with silence.
Marius lurches out of cover and all but collapses by Rigel’s side. He reaches out to roll him over, but stops himself because it won’t help. Blood, too much blood, spilling onto the stone, and it’s no good, he knows it’s no good, nobody survives being shot in the fucking throat like that. It’s no good, he’s so still, and yet -
(Emin has always been an incredibly quick draw, smooth as silk; she used to challenge the kids and laugh. She used to teach him and Rigel.)
His brother is dead, killed by his commander, now dead by Marius’s hand. He told Selene this would all be worth it. Marius would really, really like that part to be now.
There’s the rhythmic thump of booted feet - running - Marius heaves himself to his feet as Dash rounds the corner, followed closely by Selene. Selene’s eyes are dark with helpless fury; she must have seen some of it from behind her scope even if she didn’t have a shot. And Dash - Dash is -
Dash has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and over the last few months Marius has seen that take its toll, but this is the first time Marius has seen Dash in legitimate danger of shattering.
Marius can’t do a thing about it, not when he’s only barely holding it together himself, and any kindness now - any softness at all - will just tear them both to pieces. Not in the middle of a pitched battle where any distraction at all could mean their deaths. But what he can do is give him direction, purpose, a target.
He’s the squad leader now.
“This ends when we find Snow,” Marius announces grimly. “We need the president alive, but only him. Take out anything that stands in our way.”
Selene blows out a breath and grins, and it’s wild and angry and Marius will deeply regret this later but it’s not her he’s worried about right now. Dash meets his eyes, and Marius sees his own grief reflected in the boy’s gaze - grief and rage, destructive in its strength. But unlike Marius, Dash will turn his inward unless it finds another outlet. If nothing else, Marius can give him that.
“Yes, sir,” Dash says, and Marius nods.
Time to hunt.
Dash never seriously thought any of them would die.
It sounds really stupid when he thinks about it. It’s a war, people die, people have been dying, he’s killed them himself, good people, and even before the war Dash was no stranger to death. Hell, his parents are dead. He knows people die.
He just - somehow - thought that all four of them make it out the other side.
He trails Marius and Selene on automatic, bringing up the rear as they sweep through the greenhouse to Snow’s private office. Lyme and Claudius and a few others enter from the other side, and Dash isn’t paying a whole lot of attention but he does notice Claudius freeze when he counts three and not four.
There’s no time, so Dash shoves it out of his mind. Later. He’ll think about it later.
The back door to Snow’s private rooms is locked and armoured. This is something they discussed in planning, and yes - Marius gestures him forward, and Dash pulls out his kit and gets to work. Within two minutes he’s set it up and shoos everyone back, and with a flick of a switch he blows the door open.
It’s a textbook job, clean and professional, but it doesn’t make him feel any better. A little bit, maybe, but it’s like trying to staunch a flood with a washcloth.
The others storm through first into a hail of fire.
Snow’s defenders aren’t a stupid bunch, all told, but neither are the rebels. The ones in front dive aside or to the floor, and the ones behind, Dash included, fire over their heads; someone chucks a grenade in, and the explosion deafens them all.
When the smoke clears, another three rebels are dead, but so are the Scouts.
And in the next room -
“We have Snow,” Lyme announces, grim and victorious. Even through his haze of grief and rage, Dash has enough presence of mind to be grateful that he isn’t the president, staring down the barrel of the Victor’s gun right now.
Dash has a few seconds to ride the short high of victory before the rest crashes into him. They have President Snow in custody but the rest of the city is still fighting - and Rigel is dead and leaking out onto the courtyard. Suddenly it hurts to breathe.
“Come on,” Marius says, shaking him by the shoulder. “It’s not over yet.”