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Gamemakers were winners.
By their very nature, the games they played were always rigged to succeed. Perhaps Seneca Crane had misjudged his strategy, but Plutarch Heavensbee had been playing the game for quite some time longer, and he was seasoned at picking both plays and players.
But playing with two faces - that was potentially the most delicate game of all. Plutarch was lucky to have much in the cards to place bets on.
Within tabletop's reach he had an arsenal of seasoned actors lined up, individuals poised to play their parts, to take their roles in rebellion, and the strengthening support of an elusive underground empire.
Getting Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark and the affable Victors central and united was a first move. District 13 would follow soon thereafter.
Marching out of one war meeting and straight into another was a more recent game he had mastered. Plutarch left Snow's office soundly, sure enough for the both of them. He had put the snake to rest. Snow would lie in wait, fed and appeased, content in his den for a while.
Now the Head Gamemaker readied to negotiate all over again with another president. He slipped on a surveillance suppressor in his own office, removed the bugs, took a drink and kindly dismissed of the Avoxes.
Plutarch set his glass aside and set his face to the benign warmth of a conspirator.
The secure line from 13 connected and Alma Coin, gray and austere as ever, revealed her face. She was, as always, washed clean of color or poison - though he often still found it startling how serpentine she could seem. The gold eyes shined cold and colorless as ever.
"Gamemaker."
"Madame President," he dipped his head in respect.
This was not the first of their meetings, but it was as crucial as the tenuous early connection, now that the spokes of great change were in motion. With the planting of the seed of the Third Quarter Quell, true change was gaining momentum.
They were affluent in all things save for time - always the richest of resources - and in just a few months time Katniss Everdeen and her allies would be concentrated in a circular death trap of Plutarch's sole operation.
The first steps had been put in motion, but soon they would have to run to keep pace, and pray that the hasty allegiances and ideals would hold. Part of that was the groundwork which was being laid down concurrently.
What golden time they had began trickling away like sand somewhere long ago; perhaps with the threat of deadly nightlock in the arena, perhaps with the first four fingered salute in the District 12 reaping that year - or even as far back as the careless execution of the jabberjay species Snow held such disdain for.
But for now, Plutarch had his wits, his mounting allies, and all the time in the world.
"Alright. Let's get to work, shall we?"
He smiled in assent. Coin did not smile back.
Deep in the heart of the Capitol, Plutarch Heavensbee schemed.
4
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With the announcement of the Quell, Finnick felt the entire house drop like a stone into the sea.
Tension brewed blue in the air, and when the occupants shifted, his mother dropping a bowl and Annie breathing a gasp beside him, his ears popped in preparation for the impending implosion.
Naturally it blew out like an ocean storm: heady and full of noise. Objects clattered. His father yelled. His mother screamed right back. His siblings argued like children once again and all the while, sat heart to heart, there was the frightened hummingbird pulse jumping so close to his own.
This time of the year was usually precious time spent away from the Capitol. It was spent home - spent with Annie. In the time between mentoring and with the Capitol elite, it was the small moments back in District 4 where his life as a Victor could be set on a small standstill. It was impossible to ever truly escape the status, the shadow of fame, but it was nice to pretend.
In the commotion of the Victor's Village, nobody noticed them leave.
Finnick stood on quick and balled feet and led Annie out of the back screen door.
The sea breeze blew in and they slipped out, soundless as a ripple. Beside him she had begun to cry. Annie’s tears were quiet, tiny things, jeweled drops that wet the cool winter sunset, the pinking February sky.
Hand in hand, arm in arm, they walked over the grass knoll of the yard and out into the soft white sands of the beach. Finnick led them to sit in the sand. Curled together, he grappled for an anchor to steady them amidst the sudden storm. They held each other close and breathed together.
Evening washed out the bright colors of the day, and the water lapped ahead of their toes, dark and lulling.
Out here where it was always safest, they watched the sun set and the sea breathe and kept count with it. He kissed away the salt on her cheeks and dried her eyes with his palms.
"It’s alright, love," he murmured, "it's going to be okay. I swear it."
Even heartfelt, his words were hollow. Long ago they had promised not to lie to each other - Finnick cursed that promise now. The only words that could be whispered were empty and impossible to promise.
Annie closed her eyes tight once, sunset red lashes dewy with grief. She spoke with a voice so terrified that Finnick's heart broke even further.
"They're going to take you, I know it." She shook her head, shaking fresh tears loose. "Not again. Not again. But they will. They love you too much."
Love. In the Capitol it was a poisoned word. At home in Four it was different, the sweetest balm in the world. But today the rot seeped in even here, safe by the blue shadow of the sea.
Finnick breathed in the smell of her hair and held Annie closer.
"No. They don't know me as I am. They don't have me truly. They never will."
He linked their hands soundly.
"Only you have my heart."
It was the one sure thing he could always promise her, unpoisoned and wholly true, despite everything else. Under the darkening cowl of the evening sky, it was just the two of them. They kissed, and this time salt touched both their lips as they met.
In Four, Annie Cresta and Finnick Odair said their first goodbyes on the beach.
7
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On the night of Johanna’s last reaping it snowed.
Obviously, the real thing wouldn't happen until summer, in front of District 7’s ugly Justice Building in the town square, all pomp and proper protocol. But now everyone knew there would only be one name in that glass ball for the girls on reaping day.
On this, the Third Quarter Quell Games… the male and female tributes are to be reaped from the existing pool of victors…
Distantly a woman was wailing. Otherwise it was deadly quiet for a moment in the Victor's Village, as the TVs down the street blared on in detached unison, and the moment of horror mounted in a heavy, headachey static in her brain.
Johanna was angry. Fuck if she was always angry - it was what had kept her going until now. It had kept her going in the 71st and during the tortuous trophying of a victory tour, where she hadn’t slept for an entire week. It had been lit in her early on in indignant childhood and had only grown with her spindly limbs.
In a different time, someone in her family might have laughed and tried again to tame her wild hair, and fondly said, forest fire angry, our Jo. Our fighter, our little fire spitter.
Now the silent house echoed with broken promises and nobody else but the dead. On days she didn’t laugh about it she knew rebel tears would come - so she laughed high and never cried and spent a little longer drinking, with old Aloysius a few doors down, who allowed it easier than the others.
But her anger now burned in a way that couldn't be smothered and pushed away. This was fresh, and this was horrifyingly real.
Of the few things that had kept Johanna sane over the years, the promise that she would never return to the arena as a tribute, like a marked and unfelled tree, was a constant. It was counting the small comforts that dragged her through darker nights.
It was the one sacred thing the entire fucked up, face down system had worked for: the deal was, you won the Hunger Games and got to live the rest of your life in peace. Whatever that meant. However tenous and terrible and incomplete. That was the closest to truths they got as Victors, and for so long that had remained.
Cagy restlessness like this led to ruined furniture, so she forced herself to stand in the dark lit room. Johanna took her nearest axe from by the fireplace and went outside for a walk.
At this time of year, the snows had already settled well in at Seven, and it was deep and thickly white outside. The cold tucked itself in tight under every neck, every burning, pounding weak point in the body that thrummed hot with life.
She didn’t bother with a scarf or coat or even shoes. She boiled so fully with rage that the cold hardly registered.
The air needled icily as Johanna shook on the stoop. Winter had blown down to Seven this year with a bluster to rival her own moods. It left the youngest pines in the backyard dusted and kinked out of shape, branches drooping and dripping, powdered white like gross Capitol sugar icing.
The youngest and lonest one, the four-year-old pine in the center of the back lawn, was unaffected. Johanna took care to sweep off the snow every morning and night as it accumulated in the colder months, and it always stayed clean and cared for.
It had grown steady under her watch, and now stooped high overhead every time she came and went outside. At the right time, when the sun rose and set everyday, light hit the pines and the entire crown lit up in a beautiful orange gold.
It stood dark and still now. Suddenly it seemed the mood plummeted with the cold, and the tree watched on silently toward the house, sullen.
The woods beyond it called to her like always, and slinking in deep, dragging her feet, now Johanna was free to let her weaponry loose without breaking every handcrafted stool in the area.
She let the hatchet fly and embed itself deep in a nearby tree. She wanted to yell so she did, dislodging the axe and swinging it back again and again, cursing to the tune of the rhythmic thud thud of splintered bark and bitten wood. Out here in the woods on a snowy evening, there was no one else to see, except the cold and bluing sky and the tall, grim trees. Thud thud thud thud thud thud.
Deep out in the woods of Seven, Johanna Mason screamed.