Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Reaping Day in Eleven almost universally dawns hot and humid and sticky, an irritation when nice clothes are the requirement. Cal sighs as he steps out of his bathroom, eyeing his closet with the kind of dubiousness he usually reserves for stylists - Merrin, who took over Eleven two years ago, is decent and he likes her, but after years of dealing with Taron fucking Malicos, he has an innate aversion to the concept of other people in charge of his fashion. He hates Reaping Day, and not just for all the obvious reasons. It isn’t just the fact that he knows two more children will be chosen to go die in an arena he can’t get them out of, isn’t just that he’s about to have to return to the Capitol and to the horde of too-rich people so eager to get their hands on their current favorite Victor, isn’t just the constant reawakening of the memories of his own Games, still too fresh even after seven years.

The worst part of it is putting back on the Capitol skin he has to wear every time he leaves District Eleven behind, the one that makes the people he grew up with - who used to be his friends - treat him like he’s more Capitol than District.

He hates it. He hates more that there’s nothing he can do about it, because talking about the… arrangement President Palpatine has been forcing him into since he was sixteen would get the people he cares about killed just as surely as refusing would, and it’s all his very public flings with Capitol citizens and the myriad trips he’s made to make back there in between Games that spark the anger. He can’t even blame his District for looking at him with that much disgust. The  Capitol owns his body just as surely as they own everything else in this damn country.

Cal sighs again, rubbing his hand over his forehead, and tugs a custom suit out of his closet that he’d gotten the last time he was in the Capitol, tailored to fit him and much subtler than the traditional wild fashion. The knee-length jacket fits tight around the shoulders, biceps, and chest, flaring out at his elbows and the bottom of his ribs, and the green fabric - made to bring out the color of his eyes - is decorated with faint patterns in gold foil and thread, made to shimmer as he moves and the light catches them, and the pants lace up the sides, the shirt underneath it all silky and a little sheer. He likes it, actually, but it’s hard to enjoy liking it when the fancy clothing is such a part of- everything else. And it’s hard not to think about the fact that the money he’d spent on this suit alone could feed a whole family for months.

Well. He has more money than he’ll ever need. Too bad no one in his District would touch a Victor’s coin, especially not his.

Hell, it’s too early for this. Cal drags on his outfit, steps back into the bathroom to make sure it looks neat, and then resigns himself to spending the next hour working on his hair and face, because if he looks sloppy for the cameras BD will scold him. He can almost hear the escort’s voice now: you’ve been doing this long enough, Cal Kestis, you can behave. Or something like that.

At least this is a familiar routine, after years. Hide the acne, but not the scars - the Capitol loves them for the hint of danger they give him, which he knows because he’s had lovers tell him that far too many times - or the freckles. Eyeliner and a little mascara and lip gloss, and thankfully he doesn’t have to go too into it, not just for the Reaping, but it still feels like he’s putting on a mask over top his own face. Especially when he looks at himself in the mirror after and all he can see is- the man on the screen, on the front of gossip rags, the winner of the Sixty-Third Hunger Games is-

He shakes his head hard and turns his attention to his hair instead, brushing it out and braiding two strips back from his temples before he pulls it all up into a bun, neat and smooth at the back of his head. He should eat something, probably, before he heads down to the town square; Uncle Tapal will be disappointed if he doesn’t. He’s never hungry on Reaping Day, though, not anymore. It takes another quick minute to change out the studs in his ears for dangling gold chains studded with emeralds, and then- well, and then he’s ready, or as ready as he’s ever going to be.

When he looks at himself one last time in his bathroom mirror, he almost can’t even tell that he didn’t sleep last night.

Uncle Tapal has coffee waiting at the kitchen table for him when he goes downstairs, and the sounds coming from the kitchen suggest he’s probably actively cooking breakfast. He appears in the gap between the kitchen and dining room at the sound of Cal’s footsteps, though, running a critical eye over him. Cal holds his  arms out at his sides and spins in a slow circle, a little more dramatic than he needs to be. “Well? Do I meet your standards?”

He tries to keep his voice light, but there’s a brittle edge to it all the same. Uncle Tapal doesn’t mention it, just hums, stepping forward to gently correct his collar. “Are you staying for breakfast?” he asks, and Cal sighs, hesitating. His uncle has raised him since he was a child and his parents died in an accident - a bad storm, a lightning strike, supposedly. He’s still not sure the whole thing wasn’t fabricated by the Capitol for an excuse, though for what he doesn’t know. Maybe there doesn’t even need to be one.

“I need coffee,” he admits, yawning, and Uncle Tapal nods, gesturing at the table. He doesn’t have to ask why. “I…can try to eat something, not sure how much I’ll want. Do we still have any of those muffins left?”

“We do,” his uncle says, and ducks back into the kitchen to check on his cooking - but a minute later he brings out a muffin on a simple plate, and Cal takes it with a quiet word of thanks and sits down.

He spends breakfast drinking coffee and picking at the muffin, trying to ignore the swirl of nausea in his gut. Every year it should get easier to be a mentor, to watch children from his District die, and maybe that’s why instead it gets harder - because he knows what he’s watching, because he doesn’t want to turn into a Career, cruel and cold and calculating and only caring about the glory. Because every year he gets older, he sees the tributes less as his peers and more as children. He’s twenty-two now, ten years older than the youngest potential tributes; it feels so different watching BD read the names than it had his first year, when he was newly-sixteen and could only be grateful that he wasn’t still in the arena himself. (He’d thought everything was over, now that his Victory Tour was done and he was the one on the stage. Then President Palpatine had pulled him aside, after his tributes died but before the he was allowed to head back to Eleven, and informed him of the arrangement and the consequences if he refused it. And, well. No one ever really escapes the Games.)

He gets maybe two-thirds of the muffin eaten by the time he gives up. It’s good, but it sits like a lead weight in his stomach, and there’ll be food on the train anyway, more of it than the kids will know what to do with, probably. He hopes this year’s tributes are older; the oldest teenagers are hardest to work with, most of the time, because they’ve learned his reputation from their parents and friends and they don’t think they need to listen to a slut who’s gone all Capitol and lost himself in his riches, but they also tend to live longer than the twelve-to-fourteen year olds, and he can usually at least delude himself into thinking some of them will win. Makes it worse when they inevitably die, because Victors almost never come from Eleven, not with all the better-equipped and better-fed and better-trained Districts, but- well, if he gives up he’ll have let the Games break him, and he can’t do that. He can’t. No matter if he’s never resisted one thing the Capitol ordered him to do.

Eventually, he finishes his third cup of coffee and stands, makes sure he’s still cleaned up and camera-ready, and says goodbye to his uncle. Uncle Tapal will be down at the square later with the rest of the District; it’s early right now, a little over three hours before the Reaping is supposed to begin - theirs starts broadcasting at one pm, an hour before Twelve’s - but he’s sure the train has already arrived with the crews, and he ought to go meet them and let himself be talked through the program as if he hasn’t done it enough times to memorize it. It makes BD feel better to argue him around, especially when they have new camera crews. Cal does like them, so he doesn’t mind letting them do it, though according to his fellow Victors - who have known BD longer than him (not that either of them will tell him what their initials stand for, or even how old they are) - he’s getting taken advantage of. He bears that with good humor, because at least Cere and Eno care enough about him to tease him.

The Victors’ Village is a ways from the square in the opposite direction of the orchards. The houses are kept in perfect repair by crews that come out from the Capitol every couple years to make sure they haven’t been damaged, both in the event of new Victors managing to earn their way here and because sometimes the Capitol does interviews and features on the older Victors set at their homes, for the interest of the citizens and because nothing is sacred. The hike along poorly-paved roads - good enough for the occasional car to come through, when Capitol crews arrive, but full of potholes and never maintained - takes almost half an hour to get him into the heart of the town, and it’d be a lot more annoying if he hadn’t taken to commissioning shoemakers for all of his boots so that they’re comfortable and sturdy. As it is, the worst thing he has to worry about is getting dust on his outfit - the only time he’s allowed to be dirty on-camera is if it’s been applied deliberately to look authentic. Ugh.

As if anyone who’s ever styled him has ever put their hands in a pile of earth before, much less done any farming.

Eno - Victor of the Twenty-Eighth Hunger Games and one of the oldest living Victors who hasn’t fallen into morphling or alcohol or other self-destroying coping mechanisms - and Cere, who won the Forty-Sixth Games, are already in the square, up on the stage alongside a camera crew, setting up their close-range views. The long range crews are up on top of a couple buildings surrounding the square already, arranging their own equipment, and a few quiet onlookers are gathered at the edges, watching the Peacekeepers set up the tables for the registration. For the most part, though, the town square is quiet, echoing only with the soft sound of directions being passed back and forth and people moving around. Another crew is hauling in the giant glass reaping balls that will contain all the potential tributes’ names, and the town mayor has been accosted by BD about decorations.

There are never actually any decorations worth speaking of, but Mayor Windu - a tired older man with no spouse but a daughter he’s raised who managed to never be Reaped - mentions something about leaf garlands that might be able to make the stage look a little less bare, and someone is sent off to the Justice Building to retrieve the decorations.

Cal climbs the stairs up the front of the stage, slipping up to stand next to Cere, wearing some kind of drapey robelike tunic. She smiles at him warmly, and on her other side, Eno offers him a nod, but they don’t pause their conversation, and he doesn’t ask them to, just listens in and tries to figure out exactly what they’re planning. The pre-Reaping photoshoot,  it sounds like, because of course there has to be one of those, even in a District like Eleven that isn’t a fan favorite and rarely produces winners. Cal doesn’t exactly match the other Victors, or even their escort, but that’s not a surprise when none of them are under the direction of their stylists until they actually reach the Capitol. It is the current topic of the camera crew, so Cal mostly tunes them out; BD will update him later.

Speaking of the District Eleven escort, they’ve gone for purple this year. It clashes horribly with Cal’s specific shade of green, but eye-searing colors are half of what distinguishes Capitol fashion - he’s used to seeing it by now. BD themself is tall and slight, one dark brown eye and one that’s such a vivid blue it has to have been genetically engineered - once they said something that implied they replaced their original eye because of sight problems - with a short, straight, fluffy undercut they’re always dyeing different colors and a whole bunch of piercings, round golden glasses perched on their nose. Cal’s known them since he was a tribute himself, and not only have they never seemed to age, he still has no idea what gender they are. It’s rude to ask about that kind of thing in the Capitol, they’d informed him the one time he’d tried, and he’s certainly learned that as he’s spent more time there. Capitol citizens have an attitude towards gender and sex that the Districts generally don’t, and it’d been a minefield to navigate when he was first introduced to their high society. Now, he almost thinks he’d prefer it if not for- well. The arrangement. It looms over every single thing he does, every outfit he wears and every party he attends and every interview he gives.

He hates the Capitol.

The three hours before the Reaping go by too fast, as they always do when camera crews are involved. About an hour before it’s scheduled to start, the crowds start to file in and fill the space, the adults in the back and pacing around the edges of the square, the children lining up in neat rows in the sections that’ve been specifically cordoned off by age and gender. One of the camera crews is still taking shots of him against the Justice Building’s crumbling marble backdrop - he smiles or pouts and poses as directed and doesn’t think too much about it, watching the square instead, and the pit in his stomach continues to grow. He regrets eating the muffin, but nausea is a familiar companion, one he can grit his teeth and ignore.

Cere squeezes his shoulder in sympathy, after the photos are finally done and they’re directed to settle into their chairs to wait for the event to begin. He offers her a small smile, one more natural instead of the easy, charming, fake thing he wears for the cameras, and glances out over the crowd - too many of them are watching him. Him and his Capitol fashion, him and his Capitol smile, because that’s all he really is anymore, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter.

Cal takes a seat, leaning back and folding a leg over his knee in a position designed to draw attention to him, because the cameras are rolling now, and he has to be the person they expect to see. He watches silently as Mayor Windu steps up and gives his yearly speech on the history of the Hunger Games, the Dark Days, all the propaganda that the Capitol requires, and there’s a short video played behind his words to accentuate them - and then he steps back and sits down, looking even more tired than he had before, somehow. The lines creasing his face get deeper with every Reaping Cal watches him preside over, like the deaths are worn right into him. Cal understands the feeling.

BD takes over the proceedings from there, cheerfully announcing the advent of the Seventieth Hunger Games and delivering their usual opening remarks, then moving to the first of the tall glass balls the names are kept in. Girls first, then the boys, that’s always how the Reaping goes, and Cal lets his eyes wander out onto the crowd, the adults shifting and talking quietly among themselves in a few places, the Peacekeepers standing at attention, the children almost uniformly still and small, though some of the eighteen-year-olds look a little less terrified and a little more calm. Either they’re resigned to the potential they’ll end up on the stage, or confident that they’ve escaped it for so many years they almost certainly won’t be taken this time.

Cal never made it through enough years of the Reaping, himself, to have either belief. He’d barely been fifteen when his name was called, and after that- well. He’d had his own issues to worry about.

BD pulls a piece of paper from the bowl and returns to the microphone, long purple vest swinging against their knees with the motion. “Kata Akuna,” they read into the mic, clearly, and Cal goes very still.

The thing is - the thing is. Most of his District hates him, but only most. There are a few outliers - a handful of the elders who still remember him as a kid who either don’t entirely believe his camera persona or don’t care, because they still consider him one of the kids; Cere and Eno, of course, who know exactly why he does what he does and have done their best to support him through it; and one man who appeared in the District nine years ago, two years before Cal’s Games, with his young daughter, who refused to speak of his past and put every effort into becoming a member of the District, no matter that he spoke with a Capitol accent. That accent is long-gone now, and his daughter barely ever developed one, and there are many people who forget that Bode Akuna is definitely not a District Eleven native at all. Cal actually suspects he’s done that on purpose, because people aren’t supposed to move between the Districts (except for the very rare Capitol-sanctioned move, usually reserved for Peacekeepers with families being put on permanent assignment elsewhere), and they definitely aren’t supposed to leave the Capitol behind for the Districts, but he doesn’t know anything about Bode’s history, so it all remains speculation.

Bode is…Cal doesn’t entirely know how to describe him. They’ve only spoken a few times, mostly casual small talk in passing at the markets or the merchant district, but Bode always inquires after his health after he comes back from a trip to the Capitol and looks at him like he’s still a person and has never, to Cal’s knowledge, talked about him behind his back, at least not cruelly or leaning into the rumors. When people talk about him, they talk about someone with a deep commitment to his daughter, who would do anything for her, who treats his neighbors well and works hard and is definitely part of the community, even if he’s a bit reclusive about it. And his daughter, Kata…

Cal looks at the girl walking slowly up to the stage now and swallows, hands balling into fists in his lap. Kata is twelve. She’s twelve, with wide dark eyes in a pale face, and she looks terrified but she’s not crying, just- resigned as she climbs up the stairs to shake everyone’s hands, and the wind howls through the streets and no one speaks louder than a murmur. Of course they don’t. No one likes it when a twelve-year-old is Reaped, but no one will ever say a damn thing about it, no one will volunteer, no one will risk their own lives to protect someone else’s. Knowing what he does, having been through what he has, he can’t even blame them, and that’s the worst part.

The Victors, generally speaking, stay seated until both names have been called; mentors don’t really interact with their tributes until they’re on the train, after the traditional hour for goodbyes. Cal ignores that rule now as BD goes to announce the other tribute’s name - he stands and moves over to be next to Mayor Windu like he would at the end of the Reaping, ignoring the look the older man gives him. Cere follows his lead, which he’s grateful for, because it’ll maybe take some of the attention off him - and when Kata comes up to shake the mayor’s hand, traditional for the newly announced tributes, Cal puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes reassuringly.

“Chin up and smile,” he tells her very quietly, hoping none of the mics or cameras will pick it up. “You can cry on the train - but if you want them to take you seriously, don’t let anyone see you be scared.”

Kata blinks at him, eyes wide, but then she nods and lifts her chin, stepping into her spot as the boy - an older teen whose name Cal didn’t catch - climbs the stage. There’s the requisite handshakes and final remarks, and then Peacekeepers climb the stage to escort the tributes into the Justice Building for their goodbyes, and Cal is left with the final wrap-up and BD flitting around him and Cere talking about schedules, watching as Kata turns back at the building’s entrance, glancing over her shoulder to find him, and offers him a tremulous smile.

Male mentors are supposed to help the male tributes and vice versa. Twelve-year-olds don’t have a chance at winning the Games, not when they’ll be facing Careers so much older than them. Cal is a fucking idiot for even daring to think about breaking or getting around either of these two things, but- but. Bode is one of the few people who’s been consistently decent to him since he won his Games and came home wrong, and Kata is- she smiled at him.

Fuck. Fuck. The thing about being the Capitol’s favorite is that he has a whole lot of pull, if he plays the game right, if he bargains the right things away, even if it means selling himself outside of the arrangement he has with the president. Not just among the regular people, but among the potential sponsors, and even among the Gamemakers, if he does it right. Not among the Head Gamemaker and his proverbial second-in-command, Orson Krennic and Galen Erso - it’s an open secret in the Capitol that those two have something going on with each other, and have since before Erso’s wife and daughter died in a car accident - but he doesn’t need to get them to work with him, not if he has enough of the other Gamemakers willing to take a favor, a secret, a night. 

Cal swallows, clenching one hand in and out of a fist, gaze still fixed on the entrance to the Justice Building where the tributes had disappeared, and Cere clears her throat next to him, a gentle warning before she puts a hand on his shoulder that he appreciates. “I know that look,” she says. “What are you planning, Cal?”

Cal looks at her, at the arch to her brows, the warmth on her face. Cere has gotten him through a lot of hell over the past seven years, especially after Eno has had to mostly step back from mentoring because of his age and it was just the two of them heading into the Capitol for every Games, especially when the arrangement first started and he was sixteen and struggling with the weight of it, staring at himself in mirrors and wondering if he would ever recognize the man he saw again. She knows him- probably better than his uncle does at this point. “Nothing,” he says finally, even though he knows it’s probably futile - but he doesn’t want her to worry, and if he tells her what he’s considering doing she’ll try to talk him out of it. “It’s just been a long time since Eleven had a Victor.”

“Yes,” Cere agrees, her gaze piercing him through. She obviously doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t push, just tilts her head to one side, watching. Behind her, a crew is tearing down the glass reaping bowls, and the town square is emptying, all the people who survived the Reaping heading back to their homes to celebrate that. (And isn’t that terrible?) “It has been.”

Cal doesn’t board the train during the hour allotted for the goodbyes. He should, because he should be ready to receive the tributes and give them the first sets of advice, but BD can handle getting them settled for the first few minutes, and there’s always a gap between when the tributes board and when the camera and cleanup crews are ready to leave, long enough for what he needs. Instead, he waits in the Justice Building’s foyer, mostly empty but for the occasional Peacekeeper or crewperson that passes by, and watches out the front window as the stage gets dismantled and carried away, the square slowly being returned to its usual state. By the time the hour is up, there’s little sign left; almost like the Reaping didn’t happen at all.

If only. If only.

The familiar sound of booted footsteps catches his attention, eventually, and he turns from the window, tucking his hands behind his back, to see two Peacekeepers escorting Bode Akuna back through the halls. The man’s face is tired and strained, a faint redness around his eyes, but he’s remarkably well put-together despite it all, and there aren’t any signs of wet patches on his broad shoulders and chest - which doesn’t mean Kata didn’t cry, of course, it just means she didn’t do it on him, but Cal hopes she was able to follow his advice anyway. Bode is also watching him, his dark eyes inscrutable, and Cal thinks, not for the first time, that he really is very attractive.

(He never lets the thought go any further. He wouldn’t know what to do with it, if it did.)

Cal tilts his head at the Peacekeeper escort, sharp. “Step off,” he says. “I’ll take him the rest of the way.”

One of the Peacekeepers backs off, but the other, an older man who has been around for a while, sighs. “Don’t push it, Kestis, you’re not a substitute for an armed escort. You know that. Anything you’ve got to say can happen in front of us.”

“You really want to argue with a Victor on Reaping Day?” Cal asks, idly, and watches the younger Peacekeeper blanch. “I don’t need a gun or a uniform to be an armed escort, Smith. Back off and let me talk to my tribute’s father.”

For a long moment, there’s just silence, and Cal can feel the weight of Bode’s gaze on the side of his face - he knows it’s probably because he doesn’t look particularly intimidating, in a sheer shirt that only barely implies to hide his chest and a flashy suit coat that’d hinder his movement. He looks like he belongs at a Capitol party, not in a dusty, ivy-covered building threatening Peacekeepers; one of the lines he’s heard around the District, even when he isn’t dressed like he’s on the Capitol streets, is he’s bent so far over backwards for the Capitol I’m surprised he’s still got a spine. Enough people have repeated it, deliberately within his hearing, that it’s stuck around, and why shouldn’t it? It’s true enough.

He can’t let himself keep thinking that way, though. So instead he just raises an eyebrow and watches as Peacekeeper Smith sighs and nods, backing away. “Fine. I’m not paid enough to argue with Capitol darlings.”

Cal smiles, long and slow and exactly like he would if he was on camera. It’s so, so easy to slide into that persona, a little bit to the left, the same face he wore in the Games, to let his voice drop into an almost-purr. “You can call me a slut to my face, you know,” he says, and Smith mutters a curse under his breath.

“If you didn’t make it so obvious you enjoyed it your District might not hate you, Victor,” the Peacekeeper snaps back, and salutes, rough and insultingly sloppy. “Let’s get out of here. Can’t stand the stink.”

Cal rolls his eyes and lets the smirk linger, pretends he doesn’t want to put his fist in the Peacekeeper’s face, and holds himself deliberately still until both of them have left the foyer behind. It’s- fine that they think of him like this, that they hate him, that he’s a Victor before he’s one of their sons. He hasn’t given them any reason not to feel that way, and most of his Capitol engagements are very, very public. Not everyone watches the television this far out from the city, but in the hours of electricity they get there are plenty of people who choose to forget their problems by turning on the TV, and of course plenty of Capitol programming is going to focus on the Victors. Besides, there’s plenty of mandatory propaganda pieces, and those are bad enough.

“Ha,” he mutters under his breath, then sighs, sobering, and turns to Bode, who hasn’t stopped looking at him. The expression on the other man’s face is hard to read. “Sorry about that. Look, I just wanted to talk to you for a minute before we head off - does Kata have a token? If you’ve got anything small, something she could use to remember her family with…”

Bode’s face does something complicated before it settles on a surprisingly soft, open expression that does little to hide the exhausted grief in his eyes. “Yeah, hold on,” he says, digging into his pants pockets. After a second he produces a brooch that doesn’t look like anything that should belong in the Districts, a burnished bronze star-shaped pin with little clear-white stones set into it that glitter even under the dim lights. “This work? It was my wife’s, old family heirloom.”

“That’s beautiful,” Cal says, surprised, and holds a hand out - Bode drops the brooch into it reluctantly, like he doesn’t want to let it go. “It should clear through the Board fine - the pin might be an issue, but I can argue with them if they throw a fit. It’s clearly not poisoned and even I needed a little bit bigger blade than this to kill people with.” He winces the moment the words are out of his mouth, aware of how they sound, and sighs. “I’ll give it to her on the train. I, uh- that was most of what I needed to ask you about, but…” He shouldn’t say this, almost certainly. He’s still forming a plan, if he can even call making a list of who will be most open to bribes in the form of his body planning, and he doesn’t know if it’ll be enough. 

Or does he? If it’s not enough- then he just offers more favors. You can get anything in the Capitol if you’ve got enough to offer, and the Games work the same way, no matter that most people don’t want to acknowledge that. “Did she cry? During the goodbyes,” he clarifies, and it’s not what he’s thinking about saying, but it’s important to know. He has to know- if she’s as strong as she looked, when he first saw her walking up to the stage, small but not empty.

Bode blinks at him, maybe a little bit thrown by the topic change, then shakes his head, smiling wryly. “No,” he says, and he sounds- proud, somewhere under the pained hoarseness Cal is all too familiar with. “No idea who she learned that from, it’s not a lesson I wanted to teach her.”

Cal shrugs one shoulder, looking off at the window again - the square is nearly entirely empty now, the train will be leaving soon. BD will be so annoyed if they have to delay because he held them up. He takes a few steps towards the doors further down the foyer, and Bode immediately starts to follow, picking up on the worry, maybe. “I told her not to,” he says absently. “On the stage, I mean, it’s what I was telling her. Can’t cry where the cameras can see you, that’s the first rule of the Games. Tears don’t win sponsors.” He shakes his head - thinks, unwillingly, of his own Reaping, shaking as Uncle Tapal hugged him in the receiving room and told him it was alright to cry, to feel his emotions. Cal had known, even back then, that he couldn’t if he wanted to survive. He’d seen enough Games to know that the tributes who cry were the ones the Careers targeted first, once the gong sounded.

Bode is looking at him again, and Cal can’t even begin to process what emotion the other man is feeling, so he just shrugs again, rubs at the back of his neck. It’s a tic, one he’s mostly eradicated when he’s on camera, but he doesn’t want his camera personality or body language to show up right now, so he has no real choice but to let it happen. “Look, I promise you, I’m going to bring your daughter home, alright?”

There’s a hollow half-laugh and Bode looks away from him, face shuttering. “I appreciate the sentiment,” he says, “but we both know that’s not a promise you can make, Kestis. I don’t need you trying to make me feel better about my twelve-year-old’s chances.”

Cal steps in front of him and stops walking, forcing Bode to stop and look at him, and crosses his arms over his chest. “What do you know about what promises I can and can’t make?” he asks, and this is definitely beyond what he should be even alluding to, but there’s something gripping his chest and he doesn’t like the way Bode is looking at him, doesn’t like the hopelessness and despair and morbid almost-humor in his eyes. “You can get anything in the Capitol if you’ve got enough to bargain.”

Bode’s eyes snap back to his face, some strange, sharp intensity in them. “What are you-” he starts, and Cal cuts him off with a wave of one hand, spinning back around to open the Justice Building’s door.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says breezily. “If you need anything during the Games, head to the Victor’s Village, third house down if you take the circle to the right. My uncle will be there, and he knows how to reach me by phone if you need to talk - or if you just need money or something we have plenty. Alright, I’ve got to go, BD will raise hell at me if I delay the train’s departure and they are not any less scary when they’re mad now than they were when I was fifteen.”

“Cal,” Bode says, and the sound of his first name stops Cal in his tracks, halfway out the door. He turns back, the afternoon sun warm on his shoulders - too warm, he’s taking this jacket off as soon as he’s on the train - and that look has yet to fade from Bode’s face, but it’s edged a little bit with- concern? That makes no sense. The only people who are concerned about him in the Capitol are Eno and Cere, and probably his uncle, though he’s tried to keep the reality of it from his uncle as best as he can, because he knows Uncle Tapal would probably gladly let the Capitol kill him if it meant the arrangements would end. “Just…” The man goes quiet for a minute, throat working, and Cal watches him back, trying not to think too much. “Be careful. Don’t bargain away something you can’t get back for something that isn’t a guarantee.”

“I did that a long time ago,” Cal says, and it’s meant to be flippant but- isn’t, when the words actually slip into the air. They hang there between the two of them, heavy and too-soft, and Bode’s expression flickers, deepens. The moment stretches out like molasses in the summer heat, Cal unable to pull his gaze away from the way the doorway frames Bode within it. There’s something strange in the air, in Bode’s conflicted expression, in the way every second ticking past both feels like an eternity and nothing at all, and Cal needs to go, needs to find a car and catch the train, needs to prepare himself for another year of mentoring and the lengths he’s going to have to go to, but he can’t quite make himself leave.

He should say something else, probably. He’s built an entire persona on being glib and quick-witted, so why does he feel a little bit like he’s been struck dumb?

Bode opens his mouth to say something and Cal finds himself almost afraid of what might come out - and then it doesn’t matter anyway, because the train whistles once, shrill and blaring, and he jumps practically out of his own skin. “Shit,” he mutters. “That’s my cue. See you in a couple months, ha.”

As he turns to leave, he hears Bode murmur, almost inaudible, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” and it makes something clench in his chest.

In the Capitol, in the Games, nothing is ever in your favor. That’s the first lesson any Victor learns.

And if they can’t learn it, it’s the last.

The train is a deeply luxurious thing, but it’s only half as opulent as the Capitol itself, and Cal takes it multiple times a year, so it’s easy for him to forget just what it looked like to him the first time he stepped aboard. Seeing the tributes witness a taste of Capitol wealth for the first time usually reminds him, sometimes more sharply than other times. This year, the boy has already disappeared into his room by the time Cal gets there - Cere lets Cal know his name is Max, from one of the poor parts of the District, and despite being older it’s doubtful he has what’s needed to win. Cal acknowledges her with a tired nod, because her judgement on that is better than his is, even if this is his seventh Games, and she catches his shoulder, a concerned look in her dark eyes.

“You should get some rest, Cal,” she says, like she does every year. “Especially if you want to try to pull a win this year.”

Cal makes a face at her, eyes narrow. What exactly does she suspect? “I can sleep at night,” he tells her. “Right now I need-” he kind of wants a drink, but he tries not to let himself have any when he isn’t in the Capitol, because he gets enough of them forced on him at parties when he’s there. “To eat something.” That’s the usual routine, eat once the Reaping is over.

Cere nods, squeezing his shoulder. It’s still a comfort, even all these years later. “Let me know if you need anything,” she says. “I assume you want to take Kata? It’s unusual, but the Capitol will hardly argue against something you do.” She says it wryly, but there’s the same exhaustion hiding behind the emotion that he feels.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding. “I…you know why.”

It isn’t just that Bode is nice to him, that this is his daughter. It’s- she’s so young. He just…he looks at her and he wants to protect her, however he can. Usually he tries to shove that urge far, far down where it can’t interfere with his mentoring, but this year-

No one would ever look twice at a twelve-year-old as a winner, usually. He just needs her to be able to survive. He can do the rest.

“I do,” Cere agrees. “I just want you to be careful, Cal. You can’t win someone’s Games for them.”

“Can’t I?” Cal asks, lifting his chin and holding his mentor’s gaze, and she sighs, face flickering with dismay, because- she knows just as well as he does how much power he can have if he reaches for it. “Thanks for swapping with me, you’re the best,” and he tosses her a smile - a mostly-real one, even - before ducking further down the hallway towards the dining car. The train lurches into motion as he goes, a familiar jolt he rides out, and the cars settle into a smooth rocking once it reaches its full speed. They’ll be in the Capitol by morning, with just enough time to discuss strategy over breakfast.

And whether he plans to rig the Games or not, they’ll still need strategy.

BD is in the dining car when Cal steps inside, already stripping out of his suit jacket and tossing it onto one of the chairs, an absent motion. They’re sipping on a shot glass - he doesn’t even want to know what’s in it - and sitting at the bar, and they offer him a toast when they see him. “Your tribute is at the other end of the car,” they tell him, and Cal doesn’t even blink at them already putting that together.

“Thanks, BD,” he says instead, starting for the back of the car. “Have a drink for me, or whatever.”

“I already did,” BD says cheerfully, and Cal rolls his eyes, ducking around the bar and to the part of the dining car that’s full of couches and low tables instead of upright chairs at dining tables. He swipes a tablet off the bar as he goes, containing the menu, tucking it under his arm, and glances around to find Kata tucked in a corner of one of the couches, knees tugged up to her chest and a decorative pillow in her arms. She’s sniffling, small and quiet, and he swallows hard.

He’s met her once, before today. It’d been a couple years ago, in the markets in the middle of summer, when Bode had had her with him on a rare day off from work and Cal had been out trying to get rid of some of his extra wealth. He’d been having somewhat mixed success at that, because while most of the people with things to sell won’t refuse his business, they won’t take what they see as charity, especially not from him, and even trading away his higher-quality imported food for local things gets- difficult sometimes.

But he’d run into Bode, and he’d been almost ridiculously glad to see the man - even if they were at most acquaintances, Bode always had time for a bit of small talk and conversation blessedly free of insinuation or Capitolisms, and in a District growing increasingly-hostile to Cal’s presence (for reasons he can’t even blame them for) it’d always been a balm, like a breath of fresh air. Still is, really, though Cal hasn’t spoken to him for a couple months. The one time Kata had been with him, she’d been curious and asking all sorts of questions about the Capitol and the Victor’s Village and his clothes and anything else she could think of, so Cal had laughed and bought her a snack and sat down with her under a tree while Bode stood nearby, watching them as he told her all about everything she wanted to know.

He wonders if she still remembers that.

Cal shakes himself out of the memory and crosses the room to her couch, clearing his throat to catch her attention. She looks up at him, eyes wet, and he offers her a smile. “Can I sit down?”

She nods, tucking her face back against the pillow, and he does, propping the tablet up against his lap. For a few moments he just sits there, not speaking, scrolling through the dining car’s menu while she cries quietly next to him, and eventually she peeks over at him and asks, in a shaky voice, “What’s that?”

“The menu,” Cal says, sticking a pot of coffee and another of hot chocolate onto his order, then a bread and cheese dip he likes a lot. “I didn’t eat breakfast, so I’m getting a snack now, since it’s a couple hours until dinner still. Do you want anything?”

Her eyes go wide and she sniffs, wiping at her cheeks. “I can just have anything on there?”

“Anything you want,” he agrees, shifting sideways so she can see the tablet screen easier. “Just try to only pick one thing, you’ll want to enjoy dinner.”

Kata blinks at him for a moment, like she doesn’t quite believe him, and then she nods and they spend a few more minutes going through the appetizers until she picks out a curry she likes the sound of and they send the order in. Cal tucks the tablet aside on the cushions and turns to her, drawing one knee up onto the couch and leaning onto it, tilting his head to one side. He’s twenty-two now, sure, but he knows how to make himself look younger and he pulls on that experience now, folding himself in to be easier to talk to.

“Here,” he says, and pulls the brooch from his pocket. “Your father gave this to me. You get to have a token when you’re in the arena - I’ll have to take it back from you once we get to the Capitol, so the Board can take a look at it and make sure it’s allowed, but you can have it with you for now.”

She reaches out a trembling hand, fingers wrapping around the brooch, and there’s a little quiver to her lip again as she tucks it up against her chest, making a small, muffled sound. “Thank you,” she whispers, pinning it to the shoulder of her dress - a pretty, homespun green and blue thing with makeshift frills on the sleeves made from ribbon. “It’s…all we have from Mama. Did you talk to Papa before we left?”

“I did.” He falls quiet for a minute as a server brings out their food, Kata’s damp eyes going wide again when she sees it, and he thanks them quietly as he leans forward to pour himself coffee and Kata some hot chocolate, shifting so he can pick at his dip. “I told him I was going to try to get you back home.”

“Kids my age never win the Games,” Kata says, but she doesn’t sound defeated, just- uncertain, confused. He hands her the hot chocolate, watching with more than a little delight as her whole face changes at the taste - he still remembers the first time he had it too, sweet and hot and creamy and like nothing they have available in the District.

“Kids your age have never won the Games before,” Cal corrects her. The bread is good, but in this, at least, Eleven has the Capitol beat - there’s nothing quite like hot, fresh bread from home. “All we need is a good angle, sponsors, and an in with the Gamemakers, and as long as you can hide and stay alive, you won’t need to be able to beat the other tributes in a fight.” Cal taps her nose, gently, and she manages a small smile in return. “You’ll get three days in the Training Center to study different skills, and I can give you a list of which stations are the best ones for you - the trainers there will help you learn as much as you can. We’ll start talking strategy tomorrow morning at breakfast, because I need some time to think up a good scheme,” and he winks, earning a tiny, watery giggle, “but if you have any questions, now is a good time to ask. Once we get into the Capitol, the clock starts ticking.”

Kata nods solemnly, adjusting herself so she can set her tray on her lap and start eating. She’s eating maybe a little too fast and messily, but he can’t exactly blame her - she’s probably never quite had enough to eat. “Do you really think I can win? Even against the Careers?”

Cal hums, sipping his coffee. He’s still not super hungry, but it’s easier to eat when he’s sitting here talking it through instead of holed up here alone but for BD or the serving staff. “The Careers are scary because they always get all the supplies,” he says very seriously, and she nods again, attentive, like she’s really absorbing every word he says. She probably is, he thinks, a little bit dismally - she had to expect she’d be cast aside in favor of the much older and more likely to win tribute as soon as she got onto the train. She’s still pale enough she has to be terrified. “Sure, they’ve got training you or I never had, they’re bigger and stronger and usually crowd favorites - but that doesn’t make them smarter, and it doesn’t make them impossible to beat. I beat them in my Games-” definitely not what he wants to be thinking about right now- “and you can beat them too.”

“How?” Her voice shakes just a little, with equal parts eagerness and fear and desperation, and Cal leans forward and smiles.

“First, we get the crowd to love you. I’ll teach you how to talk to the cameras, and your stylist, Merrin, will dress you up to fit whatever angle we pick. Second, we figure out what to focus on in your training and what you should do for your private session with the Gamemakers - if we can get you to score well there, that’ll be a big help.” Cal counts off his fingers as he talks, and Kata’s eyes track the motion. “Third, once you’re in the arena, I do my job and win you not just sponsors to give us money so I can send you gifts, but Gamemakers willing to adjust the arena for you to help you win. It’s not an unusual practice - the Gamemakers run the Games to make it as dramatic as possible and keep the approval ratings high, but they’ve also been known to turn the Games in favor of tributes they or the Capitol likes enough. All we need to do during the week before the Games is make sure you’re one of those tributes, no matter how old you are. So, Kata,” and he pauses to take another drink of coffee, “what are you good at?”

Kata hesitates, dragging her spoon around her bowl of curry. “I don’t know,” she says. “I…like to paint things sometimes?”

“That’s good,” he says encouragingly. “There’ll be a camouflage station during training where you can learn to paint yourself into your surroundings. What else? Do you ever help with the harvest?”

She nods slowly. “I’m small enough I can get up high without breaking the branches.”

“Then you’re probably pretty good at climbing trees, right? That’s useful if the arena has them - if you’re careful you can use them to get around and to escape.” Cal considers her thoughtfully, tapping one finger against his lips. “How much do you know about plants?”

And Kata brightens, grinning widely for the first time since the Reaping. “Papa and one of the aunts in town taught me a whole lot,” she says cheerfully. “I like learning about how they grow, so I’ve been studying how to find the edible ones to help us have more food, and learning which ones can be used as medicine. I probably don’t know as much as- the older tributes would, though.”

“It doesn’t matter what they know,” he tells her, “just what you do - the things you already know you can study during training to get an edge up on other tributes who will only have the time to learn during those days. Our goal is for you to be the cleverest tribute in the arena and win by outthinking everyone else - do you think you can do that?”

Camouflage, survival, and he’ll make sure to send her to train with the knife specialists too - would teach her himself if that was allowed, but of course mentors can’t pass on any practical skills. Only the Careers get that chance, because of course they get to train for years before they end up in the arena- but that’s another line of thought he shouldn’t let himself go down, not right now, not in front of Kata. He has to keep himself focused on encouraging her, not- sliding into all the ways the outer Districts are such underdogs it’s amazing any of them ever win, because if she thinks he doesn’t believe in her then there’s no way she’ll have enough hope to do what she needs to, and Cal…he hasn’t put himself this all-in on a tribute ever, he thinks, not even his first year as a mentor. He knows it usually isn’t wise to get his hopes up, to believe, because it’s so rare that any of them win, he’s only the third Victor Eleven’s ever had in seventy years of Games - and yet. And yet.

He has everything he needs to push a win through, as long as she can do her part. And even this brief conversation is enough for him to believe in her.

“I…do you think I can do that?” she asks, dark eyes trained on his face, and Cal shifts, setting his lunch tray aside so he can reach out both his hands. After a moment, she holds out her own, and he takes them, squeezing them gently.

“Yeah, Kata,” he says softly. “I do think so. I know we don’t know each other very well - but do you trust me?”

She nods without hesitation. “You started to help me as soon as my name was called. You- talked to my papa for me so I could have a token in the arena. I didn’t think…when they called my name I thought-” She sniffs, face screwing up, and Cal frees his hands to move her own tray out of her lap, shifting so he can tug her into a hug.

“It’s okay,” he soothes, running a hand over her spine. “You can cry now, no one’s watching you. I’ve got you.”

A sob cracks through Kata’s chest and she presses closer, shoving her face into his shoulder. His shirt will probably be ruined - but it’s not like he can’t get that replaced. “I don’t want to die,” she chokes out, her tears turning the thin fabric of his shirt damp almost immediately. “I want- I want to go home. I want to see Papa again. He’s- he’s so scared and he was trying to hide it but Mama already died and it’s not fair!”

She’s shaking under his arms. Cal closes his eyes, forcing down the lump threatening to block up his throat, because he can’t- he can’t do this right  now. He can’t be anything but steady. “I know. I know. You’re not going to die, okay? I promised your papa, and I promise you too. We’ll find a way to get you home.”

He rocks her back and forth, humming quietly under his breath, and his hatred of the Capitol burns in his heart like a fire he can never quite stamp out, coals sparked to glimmering life. Maybe he’s gone native, like his District says. Maybe he’s just the Capitol’s favorite whore, a sellout who will never properly belong in either world and will never know what it’s like to have a real life outside the Games. But at least he can use that. At least he can protect one child and her father.

He won’t let himself think of the possibility of failure. He can’t.

The Capitol, as always, glitters like a jewel-studded canopy in the night. Cal looks out the District Eleven Training Center apartment’s living room window and watches the cars move back and forth on the streets far below, the lights swirling with color where parties spill out onto the roads or on rooftops or through distant windows. He could change it to any number of settings, if he wanted to, but even when he was a tribute he hated pretending he was anywhere but here. He never saw the point in it.

It’s been a long day. They arrived in the Capitol this morning, right after breakfast and a spirited strategy discussion - during which Cere’s tribute took blatant offense to being passed up for a twelve-year-old and took his upset at the situation out on Cal himself, hurling insults Cal’s heard a thousand times. He doesn’t even blame the boy for it. But it’d made the morning tense, and Kata had struggled with that - and Cal himself hadn’t exactly enjoyed the conversation either. Cere had done her best to keep everything under control, and so had BD, and they’d eventually managed to turn to talking actual strategy, but- arguments like that are always exhausting.

The parade had been this afternoon-evening, and Merrin had done impressive work with Kata, dressing her in something that’d made her look like a sparrow, maybe, or some other small bird – of course the parade outfits have to be thematic, but stretching the boundaries of that is possible, and a pair of birds was certainly more memorable than Twelve’s tributes, who had mining hats and some strategically-placed belts and nothing else. Ugh. Cal thinks - hopes, at least - that they made a decent enough impression, and there’s still the days of training and the interview. While Kata is in training the next three days, it’s his job to reach out to his first contacts and start talking her up - and start making bargains. He needs to talk to at least one Gamemaker.

Kata’s going to need some kind of supplies near enough to her starting platform to let her grab something and get away from the bloodbath, and so he’s going to have to arrange for one of the Gamemakers to leave what she needs close to her. Which means he’s probably not going to be back in the apartment at least one of these nights. Hopefully no one needs him while he’s gone.

For now, though, things have settled down. They had dinner in the apartment tonight, attended by Avoxes, one of them a dark-eyed woman wearing a headscarf who looked vaguely familiar - he’s probably seen her before in the complex, or something, even though they usually rotate the staff through yearly. She’d spent the whole evening silently watching the tributes when she wasn’t serving them, and Cal had- understood the horror on her face. Twelve-year-olds upset everyone who isn’t a Capitol citizen, after all. It’s easier to handle the Games when the children involved aren’t actual children.

Dinner had gone a little bit better than breakfast, with Max and Kata resolutely ignoring each other, and Cal had carried most of the conversation, talking with Cere and Merrin about nothing important, catching up on the local gossip. Or at least, it’d sounded like nothing important, and really most of it was just trashy shit from the most recent rags, but at least a few of the tidbits will help Cal in fishing out sponsors. A rich socialite depressed after a very public breakup will be eager to find something new to shove herself into, financially and emotionally and probably physically, after all, and he can work with that. Even if it makes the skin want to crawl off his body.

He lets out a sigh, dragging a hand through his hair, and there’s a faint blur of motion in the window’s reflection; Cal turns to see Merrin walking over to him, her usual leather jacket discarded and her feet bare. The dark tattoos curling across her face stand out in the low evening lighting, and when she offers him a small smile in greeting he can just barely catch the edges of the canines she’d had filed into fangs - subtle changes, all told, especially when compared to some of the stylists in the city, but they suit her. She’s also one of the only friends he has- anywhere, even if he includes Cere and Eno, which is…well. 

“Hey,” he says with a sigh, and she raises a neat eyebrow at him, gesturing for him to follow her to the couch. “Styling notes, right?”

“You’re brooding,” she informs him, and he rolls his eyes and crosses the room to the couch, grabbing a small decanter of brandy and two glasses on his way.

“I’m not,” he argues back, dropping down to sit, and ignores the disbelieving look on her face, pouring them both glasses. He shouldn’t be drinking, but he’s earned a glass or two for making it through the Tribute Parade without snapping at anyone, including the other mentors, some of whom he knows decently well and some of whom hate him for their own reasons. “I’m just…thinking. There are a lot of plans to make during a normal Games, and this is different. I’ve got a lot to arrange.”

Merrin hums, tilting her head to one side and watching him, gaze sharp. She takes the brandy glass from him with a tattooed and manicured hand, her rings clinking against it, and takes a sip, momentarily quiet. “...there are no guarantees in the arena, Cal. You know that better than anyone.”

Cere had said almost the exact same thing. Cal tightens his hand around his own glass, taking a long swallow, the bite and heat a pleasant sensation. “I don’t care,” he says, ignoring the way her lips twitch despite the seriousness of the conversation.

“I know, but it has to be said by at least three different people before you begin considering another point of view, so I am adding on.” She tilts her head again, eyes thoughtful and narrow. “Cere, I presume?”

“Fuck off,” he grouses, leans his head back against the couch. “Yeah, Cere. Look, I don’t need a lecture, I know nothing’s guaranteed and I know I can make it all but anyway. You can get anything in the Capitol if you have enough to bargain.”

Merrin sighs, and then she pulls out a folded piece of paper, passing it over. “Speak with the names on this list,” she says. “They are, also, mostly men. You are welcome.”

Fondness and relief warms his chest, and Cal takes the note with a nod, tucking it in his pants pocket. “Cere told you,” he says, not a question, a hint of accusation in the words, and she huffs, shaking her head.

“Eno called me.”

“Eno? How did he- that bastard,” Cal groans, swallowing down half his glass in one go, no matter that the alcohol is high enough quality it deserves to be savored. “Of course he guessed before I’d even decided.”

“He informed me you stayed back to speak to her father,” Merrin says, and he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Of course. He forgets, sometimes, that despite Eno’s age and grandfatherly personality, the man is a Victor too - he’s clever and observant and knows what to do with what he sees. “You will need a reason why her, and not the others you have mentored.”

Cal sighs. “I know,” he says, and doesn’t keep going, tapping one finger against the side of his glass instead. He doesn’t have a logical one. Because he likes her, because he doesn’t want to see another child die, because her father is one of the few people in his District who might eventually be a friend - and he can’t say any of those things, because they’re all weaknesses. Fucking hell.

“...Cal,” Merrin says, soft, and he glances over at her, leaning his cheek against the back of the couch. “Once you do this for something you want to see happen, they will take notice. They will push you harder. Be careful of how much you give away.”

“I know,” Cal repeats, a little more firmly, and pretends his voice doesn’t shake slightly. “I don’t care. I have to do this. I just-” he laughs, shakes his head, finishes his glass. He shouldn’t have another, probably. He pours one anyway. “Her father might be the only friend I have outside our team. How could I face him if I let his daughter die?”

“I understand,” she says softly, reaching out to rest a hand on his wrist, the gesture telegraphed. He lets her do it in a way he never would’ve with Malicos. “I will help how I can.”

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s barely more than a whisper.

He just- he needs this to succeed. It doesn’t matter what he loses for it.

She nods, and after a moment she says, “You would be able to face him, if it was necessary. You would do it the same way you face the other parents from your District - knowing they cannot know the truth, and putting on a smile in spite of it.” She pauses, frowns. “The trouble is- you do not wear the mask with him, not as much. Isn’t that right?” Cal opens his mouth to deny that, then stops, because- well. He can’t, not really. Her eyebrows shoot up her head. “You like him.”

“Merrin,” Cal hisses, setting his glass down on the coffee table with a thunk. “It’s not like that, come on. I barely even know him.” He glances around the suite room pointedly, eyes lingering on the places there are almost always bugs, then gives her a sharp look that he hopes conveys shut up before they start listening but also I really am not involved with him like that.

How would he even have a relationship with anyone? He spends at least a third of the year in the Capitol, sometimes even more, depending on the year and what people want from him. Every sort-of-relationship he’s had here has been based on transaction, even if whichever lover it was at the time didn’t think of it that way. If Bode knew- knew what was going on, knew about the arrangement and the truth of things, he wouldn’t want Cal anyway, wouldn’t want to concern himself with someone who’s such…damaged goods. Someone who can’t even commit to a real relationship because he’s always going to be in the tabloids with Capitol folk. Who would want to deal with that humiliation?

That’s assuming Bode would ever want to have a more than surface level conversation with a Victor. If he really is from the Capitol like Cal suspects, he’ll have plenty of reasons to want to avoid that.

So really it’s just better not to think about it at all. Not to risk hoping for any kind of connection deeper than the flimsy, nonexistent one they have right now. If he succeeds in bringing Kata back- he’s not even sure if Bode will want to talk to him then, either, no matter what conversation they had before leaving. And Cal is really thinking way too much about this for someone who doesn’t care, isn’t he?

“No, I suppose not,” Merrin says, and he lets out a breath, rubbing at his forehead. “You are here a significant amount of time.”

“Yeah,” Cal mutters, scooping his glass up and taking a swallow from it. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore. “I am. So - Kata. I need to know what angle you’re planning to dress her from so I can coach her for her interview later this week.”

Merrin nods and launches into a discussion, pulling out a sketchbook and flipping through it to a few rough designs. They’re based on ancient mythology that the Districts won’t recognize, but the Capitol will be all over, some old, old tale of the goddess of death and spring, and Cal likes the concept. It’s empowering without trying to make Kata out to somehow be more deadly than she actually is - no one will believe that, will accuse them of trying too hard. This he can work with, though, and he tells Merrin that, okays the designs and thanks her for spending the evening with him.

After she leaves, Cal sprawls out on the couch and drinks his brandy and thinks, reluctantly, of his former stylist, who had both styled him during his Games and been on his District’s team for four years after. Malicos had never asked for anyone’s permission to style tributes the way he did, though of course he always went along with the proposed angle. He’s the one who had first put Cal in what would become his signature style, later on - all sheer shirts and sensual lines and implications, designed to draw attention to his narrow waist and his green eyes and long legs. The Capitol had eaten the style up, and Cal- doesn’t entirely hate wearing it, he has to admit, but for years Malicos had styled him so possessively and it wasn’t until he was eighteen and mostly doing his own makeup and outfits that he’d started to put any variety into his wardrobe at all.

More than that…Cal doesn’t like thinking about his first year as a mentor, but it’s hard not to. Finding out about the arrangement, when arguing against it would’ve gotten his uncle killed, had been terrifying - he’d told Cere and Malicos and BD about it with no small amount of trepidation, and Cere and BD had done their best to offer support in their own ways. Malicos…it was support, Cal thinks. He’s grateful for the offer the man made him later, in a dark bedroom, so that his first client wouldn’t be his first time ever, even if he still had almost no experience. But he hadn’t enjoyed it, and there hadn’t been anything gentle about it - though maybe that’d been on purpose, because very few people he’s seen since have been so either - and he’d had a hard time being around the stylist after that, hadn’t wanted the man to touch him or be alone in a room with him.

He’d never told Cere about it. It’d just never seemed- appropriate to bring up, and then Malicos had retired after the Sixty-Seventh Games and Merrin had replaced him almost immediately. She’d been respectful with Cal, had backed off immediately after he snapped at her for touching him, and they’d developed a working relationship very quickly - and by the end of last year’s Games he’d gotten comfortable enough to ask if he could stay over with her when he was at the Capitol for various reasons so that he didn’t have to use the Training Center. She’d agreed immediately, and it’d caused some minor scandal that occasionally still crops up from time to time, but they both ignore it.

He’d love to be able to dismiss the stupid allegations by going on record talking about his attraction being exclusive to men, but he’s not allowed to do that - his attraction, like so many other things, belongs to President Palpatine. He’s from one of the outlying Districts, not even a Career, he should be grateful he’s allowed to be on semi-equal ground with so many Capitol citizens, or something like that. Should be grateful to go to so many parties, to spend so much time at the center of the country, to have so many adoring fans who all just want a touch, a taste, a night or three or thirty. 

Cal balls a hand into a fist around his glass, staring at the ceiling. He needs to put himself back together and head to bed - he doesn’t want Cere or worse, one of the tributes coming across him like this, and he’s going to need as much sleep as he can get for everything that’s upcoming. He knows that, knows that he’s about to be handling a brutal schedule once the Games start, because it’s hard to sleep even on normal years for fear of missing something important happening in the arena. He knows he’s sliding into the unstable thought patterns that characterize every year at the Games, when the fervor is at a height and he feels more like a commodity than a person - he’d seen some of the features playing on TV today, and they’d been discussing him, in between looking at the new tributes, because of course they had. His outfit at the train station, his smiles, what gossip he might be a part of this year.

It’s- he can’t say sickening. It’s exhausting, is what it is. As if being in the Training Center, back on the same floor he was on the year he was the tribute, doesn’t bring his memories roaring back twice as bad as they are the rest of the year. As if he doesn’t think about the cold, wet, high stone ridges and plateaus and steppes of the arena whenever he closes his eyes. As if he can’t remember the screaming-

No, better not go down that path tonight.

BD finds him later, halfway through the bottle of brandy, and takes the alcohol away from him, dragging him upright and into his bedroom and planting him onto his bed with a firm command to sleep, unless he wants to ruin Kata’s chances by being too hungover to properly mentor her in the morning. He whines and complains and the next thing he knows he’s peeling his eyes open in the morning to a glass of water and several pills next to his bed and a horrible, heaving nausea and spinning headache that make it hard to think. He wishes he could just hide away in the bedroom, wishes the Games never happened at all, wishes he’d been the one who went off that cliff he can’t stop dreaming about.

But if he’s going to save Kata, he can’t fall into that pit. So he takes the pills and stumbles his way into the shower, and despite the throbbing in his head, he starts to plan.

The three days of training always go by so fast. Cal spends the second night in bed with a minor Gamemaker who has been watching him for years but could never afford to pay for him and would never have the kind of clout to collect a gift from the President, sucks the man off with his apparently singularly talented mouth and then gives him another round up the ass to remember him by - and extracts a promise, both in the post-orgasm haze and in the morning before he heads back to the Training Center, to make sure a specified list of items are scattered around Kata’s platform, within easy reach of her at the gong. The Gamemaker doesn’t even seem to have noticed that Cal didn’t get off, which is probably a good thing. That’s what the shower is for, anyway, he’d rather his own hand over someone else any day.

Kata scores an eight in her private training session on the third day for spending fifteen minutes painting herself into the wall - a very high score for a twelve-year-old, and Cal is proud of her. He hugs her tightly when the scores go up, and even congratulates Max on the eight-point-five, which is a respectable score for an outlying District. The day after is a flurry of preparation for the interviews, practicing angles and responses and discussing what common questions Caesar might ask and how to answer them and what it’ll feel like up on the stage. Kata is very understandably scared about it, but Cal tells her where he’ll be sitting and promises he’ll be there, tells her she can just talk directly to him if she wants, and she settles a little, though he can tell she’s still unhappy. 

Of course she is. She’s a tribute in the Hunger Games.

But the interviews go- decently. Other tributes stand out more, the Careers as always and, surprisingly, the girl from Three, who is clever and wearing a white suit covered in paint splashes she informs the crowd she did herself, to much excitement, but Kata has a flower crown twisted into her hair and a white dress and even her obvious nervousness doesn’t stop her from being sweet and endearing and clever, making a couple sarcastic remarks that get the crowd rolling that Cal swears sound like something he’d say. He has no idea where she got that idea from, they didn’t talk about it during coaching.

He spends a few hours that evening trying to hook sponsors, but not too many, because it’s the last night before the arena and he won’t have any chance to give Kata advice after this. They spend another hour together that night, talking about what to do, and he apologizes for the fact that he won’t know what the arena looks like until she’s in it.

“Don’t be sorry,” she tells him, though she’s pale and hunched in on herself where they’re sitting together on the couch. It’s late - Max has already gone to bed, and Cere as well. Both he and Kata should really follow that example, but sleeping the night before the Games begin is always hard and he can tell Kata is struggling with it too. “Nobody knows what the arena will look like except the Gamemakers. It’s not your fault you can’t tell me.”

Cal huffs, gently nudging her shoulder with his knuckles. “I’m still sorry I won’t know,” he says. “I want you to have all the advantages you can going in tomorrow. But I believe in you either way, alright?”

She nods, tilting sideways to bump into his arm, and Cal pulls her close into another hug. “When the gong sounds,” she says, small but determined, “I run?”

“There should be some supplies right next to your platform,” he tells her. “You grab them and then you run, and you don’t look back no matter what you hear. If you can, find a place to hide or climb out of the reach of attackers, but your goal is to put as much space between yourself and the Cornucopia as possible, then find somewhere you can hide and survive until the final eight. You’ll start being forced back closer soon, once the number of tributes gets down that small - but I’m going to make sure all you have to do is survive, alright?”

Kata nods again. “What about alliances?” she asks, hesitant. “If someone finds me- if they want to be my ally, should I let them?”

Cal hums, considering. “I think that’s up to you,” he says. “Just remember that alliances are always temporary in the Games, and you have to be careful with trusting other tributes. But I trust your judgement, and if you think an offer for an alliance is one that’ll help you, then you should take it.”

“Okay,” she agrees. “Okay. I think…I’m scared,” she admits. “I’m really scared. I don’t want to kill anyone, and the Careers- everyone is so much bigger and older than me. But…I trust you, and I think- no, I’m going to do it. Just like we talked about.” Her face shifts, going firm and certain, and Cal smiles, ruffling her hair.

“Good girl,” he says warmly. “Remember everything I’ve told you and you learned in training, remember that the cameras are always watching, be fast, be careful, and be smart, and I’ll do the rest. I promise.” He waits for her to agree, a soft chiming okay, and then he stands up, tugging her with him. “And now it’s tributes’ bedtime. This is the last uninterrupted night of sleep you’ll be guaranteed for a while, you should take it.”

Kata makes a pouting face at him that doesn’t entirely hide her anxiety. “Only if you do too,” she tries, and he smiles.

“I’ve got a few more messages to send before I sleep, but I will as soon as I can. Go order yourself a cup of cocoa and lay down, at least close your eyes, alright? We’ll talk in the morning.”

It takes a little more encouragement, but eventually she sighs and nods and drags herself down the hallway to her assigned bedroom. Cal watches her go, waits a few moments to make sure she doesn’t come back to ask him something else, and then goes back to the living area to write up sponsorship requests and respond to party invites and contact the rest of the people on Merrin’s list. 

He’s only halfway through when the phone in the corner of the room rings. Cal jumps, then mutters a curse under his breath - usually anyone who’d want to contact him would use his tablet - and hurries over to the phone, dropping into the chair next to it and pulling it off the cradle to his ear. He blames the stress of the impending Games for why instead of answering it politely, he says, “District Eleven Training Center, I hope you have a damn good reason for calling at midnight on Launch Day.”

There’s a moment of silence, a crackle of static, and then a familiar voice says, “Hey. You, uh- should I let you go?”

Cal blinks, thrown, finding himself pulling the receiver away from his ear briefly to stare at it like that’d make it make more sense. “Sorry- Bode?” he asks. “I, uh- it’s been a long day. I wasn’t expecting…it’s three in the morning over there, why are you awake?”

The instant the words are out of his mouth he winces. Of course Bode is still awake - his daughter and only living family goes into the arena tomorrow. “Uh,” he mutters, rubs at his forehead. Where’s his easy speech when he needs it? “Did you need something?”

Bode lets out a breath that’s audible over the line. “I know I can’t talk to her, but could you pass her a message, if I gave it to you? I just wanted to wish her good luck, and let her know…I’m proud of her, no matter what happens.”

Cal swallows. “I’m not really supposed to,” he admits, “but- yeah, I’ll pass it along. I’ll have just enough time to tomorrow during the sendoff.” The phone line is bugged, but he’s sure Bode knows that, and it’s not like they’re saying anything illicit, just a good luck wish from father to daughter that Cal is passing along.

“Thank you,” Bode whispers, a catch in his voice that even the shaky phone connection can’t stifle. “Is she ready for the arena? Are…you?”

Some combination of the late hour and the distance talking through a phone affords him makes Cal be honest, makes him slip into a quiet tone he doesn’t use often when he’s in the Capitol. “No one is ever ready for the Games,” he says. “Not even the Careers can be. It’s- terrible, actually,” and he laughs a little, hollow. Shakes his head. “Sorry, that’s not what you’re asking for. She’s as ready as I can get her, but- If she survives the bloodbath, I can keep her alive the rest of the way. I just need her not to freeze up when the gong sounds.”

“Tell her…” Bode goes quiet for a minute. “Tell her to sing our lullaby when she’s alone, and her mama will help her.”

Cal digs the heel of his palm into his eye, a sudden wash of heat behind it that he can’t tell the source of. “Okay,” he agrees, tilts his head back to look out the window over the city. It’s beautiful, from this far up. Hard to see the rot for the glitter. “You know…you’re a good father, Bode.”

“Not good enough to protect her from this. From dragging her into our mess.” Bode’s voice is barely above a whisper, almost inaudible through the static, and Cal closes his eyes.

“Don’t,” he says, firmer than he means to. “It’s not your fault she was Reaped - no, I don’t care who you were, I don’t care what mess you mean, whether it’s my mess or something else. The Capitol puts on the Games. It’s…not your fault.” It isn’t. What are they supposed to do, blame every parent who ever had a child for willingly raising a family when they knew those children might get Reaped? Blame everyone who ever makes a mistake? “Is it my fault I got Reaped, because I got tesserae? It’s not the tributes’ faults, it’s not their parents’ faults, it’s just-”

He grits his teeth, stops himself. The line is tapped. He shouldn’t keep going, shouldn’t let himself sound like he means anything by the anger and the exhaustion, because it’d be so, so easy to lose everything when all the President needs is an excuse.

“I know, Cal,” Bode says, dripping with that same tiredness Cal feels. “Just doesn’t feel that way right now.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Cal mutters, scrubbing a hand over his face. He lets out a long breath, forcibly redirects himself, because- that’s not a conversation path they can keep going down. “If you- need me during the Games themselves, I probably won’t answer right away, you might have to leave a message. I’m not- going to get back into the apartment much. Sponsor meetings, keeping an eye on the arena, everything else, they take up most of my time. I’ll keep an eye on the phone when I can, though.” His tablet screen lights up and Cal squints at it, mutters a curse under his breath as he flicks his gaze across the notification. Offhand, he adds, “You know, if someone tells you that yeah, they’d love to set up a meeting with you, but they’ve already got something going on in the evening, you wouldn’t respond with, great let’s get dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the quarter, right? Or is that just me?” He groans, shoving his forehead back into his hand.

“Sounds like the Capitol, alright,” Bode responds, and there’s a faint thread of amusement to the words, even if it’s nothing close to laughter, a little more of the warmth he usually is so full of. Cal rolls his eyes at the wall, tucking the receiver between his shoulder and his cheek and unlocking the tablet screen.

“I shouldn’t be sending sponsorship messages at midnight,” he mutters, then lets out a breath, dredging up his fake smile and starting to type, talking slowly through it as he does. “Right. It’s so good to hear from you again, old friend, and I’m touched to know you remembered which restaurant we spoke at last year.” He pauses, switches tone as an aside. “He doesn’t, for the record, I bet his secretary has a note about it. Unfortunately, I already have an evening engagement that I can’t reschedule - that sounds too professional - I have an evening engagement who would be so disappointed if I didn’t show - better. Could we meet for lunch instead?” Bode is- laughing, through the phone, the sound faint but present, and Cal smiles to himself, unaccountably pleased. There’s the quiet rasp of wet breathing behind it, but- that’s hardly a surprise, considering everything, and he tries not to think about it. What would he do, tell the man not to cry? “What do you think? Oh, I should sign it off with, your treasured correspondent, Cal Kestis, that’d be good. I try to get him as a sponsor every year and he’s never once taken it.”

After a pause, Bode takes a small, hitched breath and says, “I hope you can get him this year, then.”

Cal hums noncommittally, hitting send on his tablet and setting it aside, shifting his weight in his chair. “Yeah, I’ve got an offer he can’t refuse this time,” he says, then sighs, sobering abruptly. He’s being an idiot. “Sorry, I- this is just mentor shit, it’s not important to you. I should let you get some rest before the broadcasts start - you just wanted to pass on the messages for Kata, right?” Professional, he can be professional, even if that’s not what his camera persona usually is. Bode was reaching out to him to pass one last message on through him, not because he wanted Cal to- help, or distract him, or ramble about whatever random thought pops into his head.

Bode doesn’t respond right away. When he does, after another minute of quiet breaths, Cal can almost picture him ducking his head. “...yes. And- thank you. For really trying.”

“It was the least I could do,” Cal says, and doesn’t specify why. Either Bode will or won’t understand why, and- it probably really doesn’t matter either way, in the end. He wonders if Bode would still appreciate his daughter’s life if he knew what Cal was going to use to buy it. Probably not quite as much - Cal won’t even have the excuse of Palpatine told me to for the people he’s about to bargain himself away to, and he knows Merrin was right when she told him Palpatine will take notice, and will push harder, after this. He’ll probably get a couple months back at home after the Games, whether he wins or loses here, and then- he doesn’t want to know how long he’ll be summoned back for. He doesn’t want to know what kind of favors he’ll have to give.

It doesn’t matter. He had to do it either way. If Bode finds out- and wants to never speak to him again- well. That’s the risk he has to take.

“Get some sleep,” Bode suggests, a little more clear, a little less teary. “Sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“I will if you will,” Cal retorts, then pauses, frowns. “I have no way of enforcing that. Yeah, I plan to, once I’m done with these messages. Goodnight, Bode. Tell my uncle I appreciate him letting you into our house this late at night.”

A pause. “Your uncle also says to go to sleep,” Bode says, a little wry. “Goodnight, Cal.”

There’s another second or two of static on the line before it finally clicks. Cal leaves the receiver tucked against his ear for another full minute, listening to the emptiness of it, and pretends he can still hear someone breathing on the other side.

And then he hangs up the phone and gets back to work.

Cal hates opening day, Launch Day, almost more than he hates the rest of the Games themselves. Between the tribute goodbyes - brutal this year, Kata clings to him and almost cries when he whispers her father’s messages into her ears, and watching her board the hovercraft makes him wish he could do it for her - the mess of the bloodbath, and the advent of sponsorship parties in earnest, it’s exhausting, and the other mentors being around just make it more frustrating to deal with. Some of them are kind to him, like Obi-Wan Kenobi, winner of the last Quarter Quell, Twelve’s only living Victor, and the Capitol’s favorite before Cal had come along - they have an understanding based on that shared social status. Some of them, the Career Victors mostly, dislike him strongly, but he deserves that one for personally killing half of the pack during his Games and stealing the victory from them. There’s a strange hierarchy of friendship among the Victors that Cal has struggled to find a place in, even after so many years, but whatever their feelings on him they for the most part at least respect him.

He gets his first glimpse of the arena about ten minutes before the tributes are brought up into it. It’s a mentors-only camera angle, panning up to show the overhead angle. The Cornucopia rests in a wide circular plain at the center, unsurprisingly, and the supplies spill out from it all the way to the tribute platforms, almost. Cal traces his eyes over the circle and notices that one of the spaces the launch tubes will appear up through has supplies thicker around it - that must be where Kata will be. Good. The rest of the arena itself is…it’s a maze. Thick walls of trees partition off winding paths that lead to dead ends or water or roaming packs of mutts or criss-cross back over each other. There are probably other environmental traps in there too, Cal thinks, but the Gamemakers don’t show their hand this early and the arena preview is just meant to give the mentors a better chance and flaunt the impressive handiwork.

It’s a very different setting than his own Games had been. But the amount of trees makes him feel relieved, actually, because Kata is a good climber and will be able to make shortcuts around the maze by running across the branches, or so he hopes.

He just needs her to survive the bloodbath. He can take care of the rest.

When the tributes are finally brought up and the gong sounds, Cal watches with his heart in his throat - but Kata does exactly what she’s supposed to, scoops up a backpack and a sturdy knife and a small set of spiked climbing gear from the ground around her platform, then darts away for the nearest tree wall. One tribute, from one of the middle Districts, Seven maybe, goes after her at first, but she outruns him and he turns back to the bloodbath instead, only to almost immediately die to one of the Careers.

Kata disappears into the trees. The bloodbath lasts for three hours and eight tributes die during it, none of which are Careers. He’s a little disappointed by that, even though he’s not surprised - Careers don’t usually die at the start of the Games, but if they had, it’d make the rest of this easy.

Cere’s tribute survives too, vanishing into the maze in the opposite direction from Kata with little supplies. Cal takes a few minutes, after the bloodbath, to congratulate her and the other remaining mentors, to exchange sympathetic looks with the ones whose tributes died in the opening violence, and then he settles himself grimly into his camera persona and goes to start making bargains.

He spends an afternoon flirting with a pair of Gamemakers, offering himself and some of the secrets he’s heard from his years in the gossip scene in exchange for Kata’s protection from Gamemaker-induced events. They don’t want an entire night, thankfully, more interested in the secrets than the trysting, pulling him away into a service stairwell to exchange whispers and kisses and promises. The evening he alternates between watching the Games broadcasts and charming the money out of a very rich socialite who likes that he lets her touch all she wants, even in public. (He isn’t the only mentor at that particular party, and he notices the other Victor watching him from across the room with both knowing and determination. She just nods at him once when he meets her eyes.)

He catches an hour of sleep in the earliest hours of the night, on a couch at Headquarters, after he’s left the woman back at her apartment divested of a not-small amount of money, satisfied by how the Capitol’s most popular Victor had courted her into it and taken care of all her needs. Ugh. He wishes he had time to shower, scrub the revulsion off his skin, but he doesn’t want to risk not paying attention to the screen when he might be needed.

BD arrives with two more sponsors, each only pledging small amounts of money but money nonetheless, the next morning. Cal watches Kata make a small meal out of some dried jerky from her backpack and some mushrooms she found at the base of the tree she spent the night in, ones that are safe to eat. She’s low on water, but she doesn’t let that deter her, creeping along the tree walls to follow the open paths through the maze, constantly moving. The grey jumpsuit she’s been given to match every other tribute has been smeared with pitch and dirt, which has to be uncomfortable, but it lets her blend in better. The Games commentators spend a few minutes watching her use ropes and her climbing gear to cross a gap between branches so she can get away from a nearby tribute without them noticing her and make comments on her ingenuity, and Cal waits, breath caught in his throat, until she escapes, and then goes to meet more people and use the moment in his favor.

Late in the evening on the second day, Kata runs into another tribute properly - the girl from Three who made a splash during the interviews, Sabine Wren. They talk. Sabine praises Kata for being clever and offers to ally with her. Kata agrees. Cal doesn’t sleep at all that night, drinking coffee and waiting for Sabine to turn and betray her - but the alliance proves a true one, at least for now, and they keep going together, in and out of the trees, hunting down a source of water.

By the end of the third day, the Careers have organized their supplies and set out, heading into the opposite side of the maze from Kata and Sabine, hunting down the tributes who aren’t careful, who haven’t hidden themselves. One of the tributes from Five sneaks into the Cornucopia while the Careers are gone and makes off with an impressive number of supplies - Cal marks him, mentally, as one of the ones to watch out for.

He talks to more sponsors, and the first week goes by. The maze confuses tributes, makes it hard for them to navigate, even the Careers trying to hunt; there’s not as much action as the Capitol wants, and the people he starts talking to complain about it, start to ask why they should put their money towards a boring year? The Gamemakers must hear the complaints too, because during the night of the seventh day, they set off an event in the lower half of the maze.

Cere pulls him away from a sponsor, apologizing, to watch the screens as walls of suffocating fog kick up, herding four of the more spread-out tributes towards the same dead end. Kata and Sabine are in that area too, forced to abandon their half-made camp and run - Cal wraps his hands tightly around the edge of the table he’s sitting at with Cere until his knuckles go white, sinking his teeth into his lower lip, uncaring that it could ruin his makeup. Kata is supposed to be left out of these kind of events, that was the whole point of offering himself to Gamemakers, so he’d have some modicum of control over the actual arena-

“Breathe, Cal,” Cere murmurs, and he shifts his gaze back and forth between the trackers blinking over the small to-scale map at the center of the mentorship room and the screens, each one focusing on a tribute or pair of tributes in the area. Kata looks scared, face pale as she runs alongside Sabine through the open path. They’ve been doing alright together so far, have worked out watch shifts and agreements about splitting up again if they make it to the final eight and sharing supplies, and Cal has been proud of her - been hopeful, because he knew she had the cleverness to do this, she just needs the chance to compete alongside people older and stronger with more combat training, but the Games aren’t all about how well you can kill people even if that’s what’s rewarded.

If she dies this early-

But she’s not alone, he reminds himself, trying to listen to Cere. She has an ally who is more than capable of killing someone, and she has a knife, Cal believes in her- but if they’re forced into a confrontation like this…

On the screen, Kata glances off to the side, staring at the tree wall, and Cal follows her gaze to notice that unlike the other parts of the maze, the fog doesn’t extend to the trees around them. “Shit,” he hisses, pushing halfway to his feet - Cere puts a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs her off, pacing back and forth in a small square. “Come on,” he mutters, “be smart about it.”

Kata glances back ahead, then looks over at Sabine, reaches out, grabs her fellow tribute’s hand and pulls them both sideways. The trees are so close together they’re hard to move between on the ground, underbrush choking the spaces between them, but all she has to do is get them out of the path of the fog and that doesn’t take much climbing skill at all.

Cal digs his fingers into his temples - he’s tired, he needs more sleep, but there’s never any time for it - and holds still as a taut string, tension leaving his muscles trembling as he watches the screens. The wall of fog creeps closer and closer, and Kata and Sabine duck further through the trees, Kata showing Sabine where to climb and how to balance properly on the branches. On the other side of the wide, circular room Cal is in, Sabine’s mentor, a woman named Hera, looks over and catches Cal’s eyes, a matching grim expression on her face - despite being from Three she’s one of the nicer Victors, and also one of the only ones he knows who dared to settle down and have a family - they both know how risky this is. He’s not sure if she knows yet what he’s been doing, but it also has to have spread through most of the mentors by now, that Cal Kestis has thrown himself into the playing for the sake of a twelve-year-old.

The fog passes by, and Kata and Sabine, tucked into the branches of a tree off the main path, remain untouched by its poisonous properties. Cal lets out a long breath of relief and settles back into the chair, taking a drink from his coffee mug. “Okay,” he says, turning to look back at Cere again. “Okay. She’s going to be fine.”

“Take a step back, Cal,” Cere advises him, and he winces. “You know you’re in too deep - I don’t mean with the sponsors, I mean with the arena itself. If you get too emotional here you’ll struggle to be objective when it comes time to make decisions.”

He knows she’s right. It’s hard to care right now, especially after a week of watching Kata in the Training Center, seeing how sweet and bright and kind she is. He can’t- “I know,” he mutters. “How’s Max doing?”

Cere presses her lips together. “Still alive,” she says, which is impressive. “Close to the Careers - if he doesn’t realize he needs to move, they’ll catch up to him in the next two days. I’m hopeful, but…” She sighs, shakes her head. “We both know he isn’t going to be a Victor.”

“Yeah. Sorry, Cere.” In a normal year, that would be his responsibility. In a normal year, they both lose both their tributes, usually pretty early on, anyway. Being a mentor really does wear you down, doesn’t it? “I should get back to-”

“You should get some sleep,” his mentor tells him, very seriously, and he makes a face, though he knows she’s not wrong here either. “Kata’s safe for now, and I can watch both of them for a few hours while you rest - there will be a change in the arena tomorrow morning because of this, you know that. You’ll need to have your wits about you.”

Cal opens his mouth to argue, but he really is tired, so he nods, slumping a little. “I’ll stay here - wake me up if something happens.”

“Of course.” She turns back to the map, and Cal pushes back from the table again, heading to the couches to find a corner to curl up in.

He catches maybe three or four hours before he’s awake again, back to the planning and the grind. A quick duck back into the Training Center to shower and change into a new outfit - he can’t have the sponsors thinking he’s slipping, after all - means he’s away from Headquarters when Kata and Sabine start moving again, and by the time he gets back, the changes Cere mentioned are already in effect.

The environmental hazards he figured the maze had to be trapped with are active, almost all of them. Kata and Sabine move through territory that is swampy, or trapped with fireballs, or glittering with an unreal haze that thankfully both of them are too smart to venture into - Cal doesn’t want to know what that does to people. The traps never move to kill, and he’s not sure if that’s because of the drama or because of his agreement with the Gamemakers - probably a bit of both, honestly, when he considers the part of the maze they’re in, because in the middle of the swamp Kata manages to find an untouched pool of treatable water to refill their bottles, against all logic. Sabine is suspicious about it and says so, and Kata just blinks up at her, crouched over the pool and dripping chemicals into her canteen. “Cal promised he’d take care of me in the arena,” she says, and Cal has to close his eyes against the emotion that rises up in his chest, threatening to choke him. He can’t tell what it is beyond the fact that he almost wants to cry and can’t, because his face is made up and he doesn’t have the time right now to go fix it.

Sabine stops arguing with Kata after that.

That evening, though, they walk into a dead-end part of the maze that Cal remembers from the first glimpse of the arena as mutt territory. Nothing is visible until they try to make camp, and then giant wolves jump out of the trees, razor-sharp teeth gleaming in the low light - twice the size of normal wolves and far more aggressive, with claws and teeth that can kill from a glancing blow. Sabine shoots a few with the bow she’s carrying, and then they run back for a safer part of the maze - but too slow. One of the mutts drags Kata underneath it with a giant paw, and though she manages to escape between Sabine’s arrows and her own knife, she’s limping badly, a bloody gash on her calf.

Cal spits curses and goes to check their sponsorship money. It’s- a lot, Kata was fairly popular going into the Games despite her age, and he’s been doing a lot of work, but the price of gifts is obscene and he’s going to need to- make up so much if he goes through with this. Kata is crying in pain, though, and being fast and able to climb is her biggest strength in the arena, and he promised-

He buys a very-well-stocked medical kit, with bandages and painkillers and antibiotics and needles and thread and creams and salves, and has it sent to Kata alongside a thermos of hot chocolate. He shouldn’t have included the last bit, they don’t have the sponsor pull that he had in his Games and it’s a frivolous use of money along the lines of what Cere warned him about, but he doesn’t care, because Kata bursts into tears when she sees the hot chocolate and looks up at the sky and tells him thank you and that’s all that matters.

Cere stands with him, watching as he approves the gifts and goes through a list of new people to reach out to. Max died earlier in the morning, killed by the Careers. Cal had only felt a distant sorrow about it. “If she wins,” Cere starts, and then doesn’t finish the sentence.

She doesn’t have to; Cal knows what she’s worried about. He’s putting far too much of himself into the mentoring for Palpatine not to take notice, and it won’t just be his uncle the President threatens after this, he’s sure. Kata being a Victor will just make it easier.

But it’ll make it easier for Cal to protect her, too.

“I know,” Cal says, and pulls a small makeup kit out of the bag he keeps with him when he’s in Headquarters. “Keep an eye on them for me? I’ve got sponsors to catch.” He offers her his most winning smile and pretends he doesn’t see her eyes tighten at it.

He better go freshen up his face.

Wind whistles around them, sharp and cutting and heavy with the threat of impending rain, and Cal makes a face at it, slinging his bag off his shoulder with a sigh. “Good thing we’re up high, I bet they’ll flood the ravines again tonight,” he says absently, looking around at the ledge they’ve made it to, and Trilla hums agreement, squatting down to peer dubiously over the edge.

Other than the bowl-shaped plain at the center the Cornucopia is in, the arena is mostly made of high stone mountains and ravines, meadows and gullies and cliffs among them, cold and wet and miserable without the right gear. Cal is everyone’s favorite tribute, though, so he received an insulated thermal tent as a sponsorship gift three nights in, the most expensive gift he’s ever seen in any of the arenas. It’s resistant to just about any kind of damage, meaning that sleeping in it won’t be a risk because the Careers can’t set it on fire or something like that, and it blends in well, so he’d laughed and thanked the sky and then winked at Trilla and told her they could share but he wasn’t going to sleep with her - she’d just rolled her eyes at him and said something about the Careers not catching her with her ass out, and then they’d both laughed again, and it’d been more real than anything that came before it. Cal is getting good at making himself look real, though, he thinks - making it so the Capitol doesn’t realize most of this is just an act, because they can’t realize that he isn’t the pretty sarcastic playboy they’ve all fallen in love with, not when that act is keeping him and his District ally alive.

Not when it’s the only leg up he has over the Careers.

“You think they’ll find us up here?” he asks, pulling the tent out of the bag - the wind catches at the fabric it’s made out of and he mutters a curse, tilting his face up to the sky. “Hey, Gamemakers, feel like turning the wind down for a few minutes? I’m trying to work, here.”

“Cal,” Trilla says, with no small amount of reproach, and then groans when, a moment later, the gusts die down to a comfortable breeze. “It is embarrassing that that worked.”

“Only for you,” Cal says cheerily, spreading out the ground sheet and activating the weights at its corners. Of course it is for him, too, but he’s not above using whatever tactics he has to to win, and if that means flirting with the Gamemakers, then that’s what it means. “I’m over here happily setting up our tent without getting blown off the ledge.”

Trilla gives him an unimpressed look, and they bicker back and forth as they set up camp - Cal abandons the tent for a bit to eat with her, the last of the rabbit meat they cooked before they headed this far up the mountain and the leftovers from a fresh basket of food he’d received as a sponsorship gift yesterday. Probably they should’ve rationed it a bit more, but Trilla is good with snares (among other things - she’s taught him how to strangle a man or slice their neck with a wire) and there are enough edible plants Cal isn’t too worried, especially because he knows as long as he continues to act the right way, the Capitol will keep sending him gifts. And he’ll keep thanking them for it like it’s the best thing in the world.

He hopes his uncle isn’t watching.

Cal is chewing on a piece of sweet nut bread and crouched back over the tent, attempting to get the poles to behave - honestly, couldn’t they have sent him one that sets itself up if they were going to spend the money, or just some sleeping bags instead - when Trilla calls a warning out and then goes muffled. Cal spins around, one hand pulling his bag back over his shoulder, the other still holding onto the tent, expecting an animal-

It feels like it happens in slow motion. Three of the Career pack have come out of nowhere from over the ledge, they must’ve been climbing the cliff - they’re not the ones that’ve been hunting him - and footsteps crunch elsewhere, echoing now that there’s no wind or voices to cover them, coming from further down the path he and Trilla took to get up here - they’d hidden the narrow footpath they found, or so he’d thought they had, to this ledge that the only other ways to get off it are over the edge or up the cliff higher. It was supposed to be a safe place to camp for the night and figure out their next plan, because they needed to either take the Careers out or lose them if they were going to keep moving and find a place to establish a permanent camp to work out of. It was supposed to be- it was supposed to be-

He’s only been in the arena for a week and a half. They’ve killed two tributes and been avoiding the Careers, but everything else has been- fine, really, barely difficult at all. They haven’t been hungry because of his sponsorship gifts. They haven’t been cold because of his sponsorship gifts. They’re both clever and can fight, and the only danger has been- the other tributes, who they’ve been staying a step ahead of. Until now. Until-

Until Cal asked the Gamemakers to turn off the environment, and who else would they do that for?

He pushes himself to standing- and the boy from Two, who has a writhing Trilla in a chokehold at the edge of the cliff, turns and flings her off. She screams - throws her hands out but there’s nothing to catch herself on - falls-

“Trilla!”

Cal doesn’t even realize he’s moving until he’s planting his foot into the boy’s chest, all of his body weight behind the kick. It’s enough to send the Career staggering back on the rain-slick rock, and then he can’t catch himself either, body following Trilla’s into the air. Cal pulls his knife in his free hand and stabs it into the stomach of the girl from Two, slashing sideways and twisting to make sure she won’t be able to recover, turns. The tent fabric is still in his left hand; he can’t make himself let go of it. He’s not sure why. It drags limply on the ground, a wide square. Trilla’s gear is scattered around, his own half-together on his back, and adrenaline and anger and grief shudder through him like a wild wave he’ll drown in. He has to- go. To run. He turns away from the girl from Four, the other person who must’ve climbed the cliff, looks towards the footpath, only to see the other three Careers breaking into view there - they followed him. They’re the ones he’s been running from, the ones he knew he had to lose. He’s- he can’t breathe.

The girl from Four - he thinks her name is Masana - grins at him. “Nowhere left for you to run, you piece of trash,” she says, and Cal shakes. “Did you really think you could win the Games just because you looked pretty?”

“He took my sponsors,” the boy from One complains. “I should be the one to get to kill him.”

“He took all our sponsors, idiot,” hisses Four’s boy, and the girl from One drives her elbow into his ribs.

“Will you shut up and pay attention? Listen, Kestis, ally with us and we’ll give you a chance at the end. We just want a chance at your sponsorship deals.”

Cal shoves his knife back into its sheath. 

Two looks at him, so does Masana. They’ve all got weapons, axes and swords and knives. He knows that offer isn’t genuine, knows he’d probably end up dead in his sleep soon after accepting it. And he’s not so confident - so arrogant - as to think that having sponsors could save him if he made a deal with the Careers, especially not on his own. He’s been- he’s forgotten, a little bit, that he’s in the Hunger Games, that the odds are never in anyone’s favor no matter how much the Capitol stacks them, that they’ll all gladly cheer for his death if it makes a good show. He’s forgotten that he’s still in danger here. He’s forgotten-

He’s still holding onto the tent.

Cal doesn’t stop to think - he just takes two steps sideways and throws himself off the cliff.

Using a piece of fabric not designed for it as a parachute is…a terrible idea, and doesn’t work as well as the movies make it look like it does. The pressure of the wind against his arms feels like it’s going to wrench his shoulders out of socket, and he sinks his teeth into his lip, holds on tight as the ground rushes up at him, too fast, too fast, he’s coming down on a hill and he’s going to die - he has just enough time to think that at least he’ll be dying on his own terms before his foot slams into stone and he’s folding forward on instinct honed from years of helping in the orchards, bringing his sore arms in to cover his head and tumbling through a rough shale slope, off another edge, and into a grassy meadow a few feet further down, where he finally comes to a halt, ears ringing.

Pain stabs white-hot through his right ankle where it impacted the ground first, his whole body hurts, he’s shivering and his clothes are torn up and he’s pretty sure he’s screwed up his shoulders too, not to mention the whole-body bruise he knows must already be blooming. Something hot and damp trickles from a cut on his neck, blood probably, and when he slowly pushes himself up to sitting, his hair falling ragged into his face, the world spins and he dry-heaves, agony searing through him and vision whiting out. But all that- all that doesn’t matter, he can handle it, he can get through it, he can.

What hurts the most is peeling his eyes open to see Trilla’s broken body a few feet away, head twisted at an impossible angle, blood pooling around her. As he watches her, a cannon fires, and then two more in quick succession, probably the Careers he’d fought.

They were supposed to make it to the final eight together.

Cal lifts his head, a snarl sliding onto his face entirely without his own intent. No. He’s not dying in here, not by his own hand, not by the Careers who think the victory is their right, who think sponsors are their right, who think the arena belongs to them, not by the Gamemakers or the arena or anything else. He’s not dying in here. He’s going to win.

If the odds aren’t in his favor, he’ll make them be.

-and he sucks in a sharp breath, eyes snapping open to his Training Center bedroom, dark and empty and silent.

Fuck. Fuck. Cal digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and groans - his head hurts and his mouth is dry and his right ankle throbs dully, as if just the reminder of that fall had woken it up. He’d splinted it himself and then used the injections his sponsors sent him, during the Games, to grow the bone back too fast and dull the pain, and in the aftermath he’d had to have it rebroken and surgically fixed. The doctors had done what they could, but sometimes it still hurts, especially when the weather changes or when he’s done a lot of walking on it - or if he’s wearing really impractical shoes, which is why he only wears heels if he absolutely has to and won’t be on his feet long. Right now nothing should have triggered it, so it’s probably just- memory.

Over half the tributes are dead by now. Kata and Sabine are still together, although he doesn’t know how much longer that’ll be true - probably when it’s down to the final eight, approximately. Ever since the incident with the mutts and the hot chocolate, her popularity has gone up quite a bit - not because she’s skilled in combat or anything, but because she feels so human, he thinks, a little girl with a favorite drink and a knife and a skill at hiding, small and quiet and clever, who has avoided the Careers and survived even when she shouldn’t. It’s a good thing, of course, he has sponsors approaching him now instead of the other way around, but several of them have heard, too, the rumors that he’s- rewarding people for their money, or making bargains, and as much as he plays hard-to-get and catty with them, some of them simply refuse to sponsor her without him giving them something.

Some of them are easy. Some of them, he knows, will call up what they’re due later, and it’s going to be exhausting.

He’ll handle it. He’ll handle it. The clock says it’s almost six am - he’d come back to the Training Center to crash at around two, after a party that went way too long and a few minutes on his knees in a darkened back room, sucking someone off in exchange for their sponsorship money. He’s still drunk, he thinks, and he can still taste the bitterness of the man’s come on his tongue; he feels like throwing up.

He doesn’t let himself. He gets up instead, stepping into the bathroom and brushing his teeth until the taste is gone and then climbing into the shower, turning the water as hot as he can stand and using his favorite settings. He wants- to talk to Bode, as stupid as that sounds. It’s just- he wants to hear someone else’s voice, someone who isn’t Capitol and isn’t someone he has to sleep with and isn’t tied to this fucking stupid farce he has to play, someone who he doesn’t have to wear his face around, and it can’t be his uncle because he doesn’t want Uncle Tapal to worry - he’s sure Bode doesn’t want to worry about him either, but Bode, at least, doesn’t know him well enough to immediately see through him when he promises he’s alright. Even if all he was doing was telling Bode about Kata’s chances, or about details they probably don’t see on the broadcasts, even if it had nothing to do with him-

He could call his uncle and ask. Uncle Tapal might even be able to get Bode on the line somewhat quickly, depending how much the two of them have talked - there has to have been some kind of dialogue for his uncle to let Bode into their house at three in the morning just to use the phone. It wouldn't be completely impossible to arrange, and he’d feel better after, he’s very certain of that. But…

Cal sighs, shoving his head further back under the hot water, letting it beat down over him - he’s got hickies on  his neck he’s going to have to cover with makeup before he heads back out, and bruises on his collarbone, even though he’d asked the last person he fucked to not leave marks. You aren’t paying enough sponsorship money for that privilege, he’d laughed, and then he’d been ignored anyway. Maybe if he’s lucky he’ll sober up in the time it takes him to get his makeup done.

He feels like he’s starting, slowly, to unravel. Bode had told him not to bargain away something he couldn’t get back, and despite the fact that he hasn’t owned his own body since he was fifteen and BD called his name from the stage, he feels like he’s losing something all the same. His sanity, maybe. He’s thinking too much.

Nothing to do but keep going. Final eight is soon, and then from there he’ll have to work harder, potentially. Maybe not. Depends what the Career pack looks like by then.

Cal shakes his head and grits his teeth, moving to scrub shampoo through his hair. He forced the odds to work for him during his Games, when by all rights they shouldn’t have; he can do the same thing now. Let the consequences fall on his shoulders and his shoulders alone.

Fuck everything else.

The final eight interviews happen in the evening, while Cal is out at a club halfway across the Capitol from Headquarters trying to convince a couple of the Careers’ sponsors to switch their funding to him and Kata, and doing a halfway decent job of it too. He gets a notification from Caesar Flickerman that he’s needed for an interview, which he shows the two people he’s talking to with a laugh and a wink and a comment about, better hurry up and make your choice, soon you’ll lose your chance to have helped the youngest Victor ever win her Games - you know how to reach me. A taxi gets him back across the city, and then it’s a flurry of prep and cameras and sitting in a chair across from Caesar, who Cal has spoken extensively to since he was first Reaped seven years ago. The rapport they’ve developed is a familiar one; Caesar is more careful about it during this interview than he has been in a long time.

Maybe he can see that Cal feels like he’s spiraling apart, all the stitches of his soul coming unraveled. The Games are almost over - it’s rare that the final eight last more than a week or two, because everyone gets so excited for the big finish and the tributes who are left are usually actively trying to hunt the others by this point - and he clings to that knowledge as he laughs and banters his way through the interview, using it to try to get Kata more sponsors, the only honest part of it when Caesar asks him why he put so much on the line for a twelve-year-old, what made him realize Kata had the chance to win, and Cal let himself soften and say, because I told her to pick her chin up and smile and she did. It isn’t the only thing by far, of course. His decision was already almost made before that, even, the moment he heard her name be read out. But it’s also not a lie.

After the interviews, he returns to Headquarters to study the Games, no longer leaving the general complex for meetings - he needs to be able to respond quickly if something happens. Kata and Sabine split up amicably shortly after, having counted the deaths enough to realize what time it is, and Kata returns to mostly living inside the tree walls the Careers haven’t dared venture into, staying high above the ground to avoid the mutts that prowl through the underbrush. They never bother her. Cal knows that’s at least half because of his own work, and he’s proud of that.

The Career pack turns on themselves - both tributes from Four and the girl from One die in the resulting scuffle, leaving just the boy from Two, the only survivor, in sole control of the Cornucopia. The clever boy from Five dies to the girl from Eight, who then takes an arrow to the neck from Sabine two days later. Kata stocks up on food and makes it all the way to the central plain, stealing food from the Cornucopia when the boy from Two inevitably has to sleep and then retreating back into the trees to hide. It’s clever enough to draw more attention, and he’s able to send her another gift - night-vision goggles accompanied by another thermos of cocoa.

Her leg is mostly healed, though he knows it still causes her pain. She never complains about it though. It’s another thing that both warms his chest and makes him sad, because she shouldn’t have to deal with this - but there’s a confidence in her expression that’s new, when she slips out of the trees, and maybe she’s started to find her strength. He imagines being able to see perfectly clearly in the darkness, something the boy from Two doesn’t have, probably helps a lot.

The final confrontation happens six days after Kata and Sabine split up, in the middle of the night. Hera Syndulla managed to save up enough sponsorship gifts to send Sabine her own pair of night-vision goggles and she ambushes the boy from Two with her bow while he’s asleep - or at least, that’s clearly the intent, but it seems he’s caught on to the fact that his supplies have been disappearing at night, because her first shot goes wide and by the time she can release a second he’s on his feet. The resulting fight is an intense one, especially when he breaks Sabine’s bow in half, forcing her to draw the knife she’s been carrying - Cal isn’t even sure who he wants to win, because he knows Kata probably won’t be able to kill her friend (and they’re definitely friends; he’s seen how they talked when they were crossing the arena), but facing a Career in a fight is odds he’s not sure she can beat. Obviously the ideal is they kill each other and Kata wins through being hidden the whole time, but-

Sabine gets in a few solid blows, but in the end Two puts a knife through her ribs. Cal watches, heart in his throat, as the teenager from Three stumbles back, looking around a little wildly, and then starts to stagger-run - towards the trees. Towards where Kata is curled up on a branch at the edge of the tree wall, eyes wide behind her glasses, clutching her knife in her hand and watching the fighting. Cal hisses, clenching a fist - surely Sabine won’t try to take out her former ally with her, right? That can’t be what she’s doing - watches as the girl stumbles and falls to her knees just below the tree, coughing, blood visible between her lips even in the low light. 

And then he realizes.

Two is laughing as he walks closer, unarmed for the moment, not having bothered to grab another weapon from the Cornucopia. “Why run?” he asks as he gets closer. “This is it, just you and me left. Don’t you want to make the final fight a little more exciting?”

He’s forgotten Kata exists.

“Nah,” Sabine coughs out, chest heaving. “Think…think I’m all tapped out. But she will.”

Two stops next to her as she gestures weakly at the tree, flopping forward, confusion flickering across his face. “What-” he starts, looking up into the trees - and then Kata shouts wordlessly and drops onto his face, shoving her knife at him hard enough to crack bone, dragging the blade down as she falls. There’s a high-pitched shriek of pain, Two stumbles back and hits the ground, and Kata crouches over his chest like a wild animal, slamming the knife into his face and neck and collarbone over and over again. She’s screaming something as she does, her face all twisted up with pain and horror, and Cal- he can’t look away, feels a little like he’s cracking in two. The sound- he thinks of being on the cold ground at the end of his own Games strangling a boy with his own shirt, thinks of when he’d messed up and had to kill a wounded animal when he’d gone hunting and the horrible howling noise it’d made, he thinks of the terror-desperation-hatred of dying, he thinks of watching Trilla fall backwards off a cliff and how for a moment he’d been nothing but rage.

There are tears on Kata’s cheeks. The cannon sounds, loud and sudden, and she stops like a puppet with its strings cut, knife falling from a suddenly-slack hand, slumping sideways. Her whole front is covered in blood and the boy’s face has been rendered almost entirely unrecognizable, just blood and bone and muscle visible in the light of the moon. Kata cries in the now-silent night, shoulders shuddering, sniffling and heaving, and Cal sways sideways, beyond grateful for Cere’s presence and the steadiness of the hand she rests on his back. No one speaks, even the Gamemakers gone still.

Another cannon fires.

Kata hiccups and wipes at her cheeks, smearing blood across her face, and looks up at the sky. “Can I go home now?” she asks plaintively, her voice trembling and ragged, and Cal- he can’t watch anymore. He can’t.

He hears the arena announcer’s voice proclaiming Kata Akuna’s victory as he stumbles from the room. He doesn’t look at a single screen all the way back to the Training Center.

Kata is in the hospital for five days after she’s pulled out of the arena. The time is spent mostly fixing up her leg and the small injuries she suffered otherwise, rehydrating her and putting a bit of weight back on her, and erasing scars and blemishes from her skin. Cal spends the first full night after her victory drinking himself into unconsciousness; the next full twenty-four hours are dedicated to recovering from that while BD handles the press on Cal’s behalf and Cere and, for some reason, the dark-eyed Avox woman he’d noticed before help him with the aftermath, holding his hair back when he throws up and bringing him water and meds for nausea and headache. When Cere has to leave the Training Center for mentor business he really should be at, the Avox sits by his bedside and hums a lullaby to him that sounds familiar to him somehow, though he can’t place why, petting his hair and shaking her head at him when he tries to get something else to drink.

She just points intently at his water and makes rough humming noises at him until he takes the pills she brings him and when he asks her why she’s helping, she just smiles and pats his hand.

When he wakes up again, two days after the Games ended, finally clear-headed for the first time in a day, she’s gone again, and he’s left to wonder somewhat distantly if he dreamed the whole thing. Neither Cere nor BD mention an Avox when they scold him (gently, in both cases, though BD is a little bit annoyed about having to do all the front-facing work and deal with all the sponsors) for his reaction to the end of the Games, and Cal can’t remember the tune she’d sang to him (if she even did) well enough to try to record it to figure out why it’s familiar, so he shrugs and lets it go, gets himself functional again and goes out to give interviews and talk to sponsors and, in a couple cases, seal his fate for an unpleasant couple of weeks at some point in the future. 

By the time he and the rest of their team are told to style themselves and gather for the filmed reunion between the new Victor and their team, he’s anxious - he’d tried to go visit Kata in the hospital, because there’s no way she must be enjoying being left alone, but he’d been turned away by Peacekeepers outside the doors, and Cere had reminded him gently that Victors are kept mostly sedated during their recovery period anyway, so he wouldn’t be able to talk to her. Still- whenever he has a moment alone, he keeps seeing her face as she killed the boy from Two, keeps hearing the way she’d howled, and he- 

She’d said she didn’t want to die. But he’d made the choice to keep her alive no matter what without her input, and without her knowing exactly what it’d mean to be a Victor, and- maybe it would’ve been kinder, he thinks a little bit dimly, if he’d stayed detached and let her die after all. A twelve-year-old has never won the Games before, not in all of Panem’s history, he’s pretty sure, and the media pressure will be ridiculous - her whole life is going to be lived under this shadow now, what’s left of her childhood, her teenage years where she should get the chance to be free and make dumb mistakes, her adulthood. She’ll never get the chance to do anything normally ever again. What right did he have to make that decision for her?

She said she didn’t want to die, he reminds himself. She trusted you to do it. You promised Bode. If it isn’t the tributes’ or their parents’ fault, it shouldn’t be the mentors’ either.

And yet. And yet.

He dresses casually for the original reunion - he’ll wear a custom outfit done by Merrin later tonight, for the crowning ceremony - and he and Cere, BD, Merrin, and Kata’s prep team are all crowded into an artfully-decorated room filled with camera crews positioned to capture every moment from every angle, its double doors left open to the hall that leads to it. A few minutes pass, during which he talks quietly to Cere in an attempt to stave off his nerves, and then there’s the sound of a door closing further down the hallway and his attention snaps to the sound.

Kata steps out into the hallway, wearing the tribute uniform she’d had on in the arena, clean and whole and healthy. She looks around a little, frowning, and then turns in their direction - her eyes light up and then she’s running at full speed down the hallway towards them. Cal- doesn’t know what he expected, exactly, but Kata barrels straight into him, shoving her face into his chest and wrapping his arms around his waist, and he stumbles backwards several steps from the force, lifting his hands to her back on instinct. The prep team is cheering, and so is BD, but Kata - she’s crying, though he thinks it’s in a happy way. He hopes she’s happy.

Cal sort of wants to cry too, actually.

“Welcome back, Kata,” he says softly, running a hand through her hair, and smiles down at her, for a moment ignoring the cameras and his usual persona and everything else he’s supposed to do and be and all the things he’s made himself. “I told you you could do it.”

She sniffs and pulls back to smile at him, wiping at her eyes with one hand. “Thank you, Cal,” she says, hoarse, and he squeezes both her shoulders gently. “I wasn’t sure- but I can go home. I can go home.”

“Yes you can,” he agrees. “I’m proud of you - you did everything exactly like you needed to.”

He knows this isn’t- really a good thing for anyone, not by a long shot. Kata watched her friend be murdered in front of her, then killed someone herself, not to mention the mutts and everything else they encountered in the arena; she’s going to struggle with this when they get home, he knows, and it’ll be his responsibility to help her with it as much as he can, if he even can. It’s not like he’ll be available to her much when he’s in the Capitol, and she might not want him to be her primary mentor anymore once she sees him as a Victor from the perspective of another Victor. But he doesn’t want to think like that right now; it’s really not helpful, anyhow. Right now his focus should be getting her safely through the last few public appearances and home to her father’s arms, which are infinitely better for comforting her than his are.

Eventually the reunion settles, and Merrin and the prep team whisk Kata away to get her ready. Cal is the only one of the Eleven mentors who will be on stage for the crowning ceremony - Cere might’ve been involved with  most of the process, but her responsibility was technically their other tribute, so she only gets so much of the recognition - so he’s the only one of them who has to disappear to spend the whole afternoon going through a similar process. He takes a long shower, scrubbing himself deeply clean, dries himself and his hair, then checks the notes Merrin left for him alongside his outfit for tonight - shades of green, feather motifs, glitter and drama. Well. He can do that.

It takes an almost agonizing amount of time to do his makeup. He goes for black and gold and emerald eyelids, deep and smoky, and paints actual feathers across the sides of his face and his cheeks, fanning out from the outer corners of his eyes. Hints of gold dust across his skin to make his freckles sparkle and literally glow in the light, matte lips to emphasize their shape but not draw too much attention, and then he gets to work on his hair, pulling it back into a complicated updo that takes him a few tries to get the knots and braids of right, leaving artful tendrils hanging down to frame his face and curl loose at the back of his head. More gold dust accents the natural highlights in his hair, and then he puts in chunky dangling earrings in gold and black to draw attention to the line of his neck and takes a moment to look himself over.

Yeah, this will do. Merrin better be pleased with the work he put in.

His actual outfit is a soft green suit jacket and pair of pants, made entirely out of sheer, meshy material with darker, gold-adorned panels of fabric in strategic places all down the pants and the front of it. He pulls on the pants first, marveling that they’re still at all comfortable, checks to make sure they at least cover his ass and his cock - yeah, and he shouldn’t flash anyone either, Merrin’s work holds up as always - then slides the jacket on, hooking it closed in the front, low over his navel. Without a shirt under it, the collar forms a deep vee that shows off his chest and collarbone. It’s ostentatious, of course, he can’t deny that, but he has to admit - the whole thing looks damn good together.

And the jacket  is long enough to add some extra cover around his pelvis, which is always nice. He might be the Capitol’s whore, but he doesn’t want to go around showing everyone.

When he steps out of his room into the main living room, BD is waiting for him, and the escort turns to him, eyebrows flying so high up their forehead they almost disappear. “Hot damn,” they whistle. “That may be the best look I’ve ever seen you in, Cal. Did you do the makeup yourself?”

“Did you see anyone else come in here? Merrin’s with Kata,” he retorts, snorting. “Took hours, though, I’ve used the setting spray but if someone manages to mess it up despite that I might kill them. They’d have earned it.”

BD considers him for a moment, eyes narrowing in thought. “You’re right,” they agree. “Messing up someone else’s makeup should be a crime. Are you ready for the ceremony?”

“As I’ll ever be,” he sighs. “Let’s go.”

Cal has, for obvious reasons, never attended the crowning ceremony as a mentor - he’s been in the crowd before, on occasion, when he had to stay in the Capitol for the whole Games despite his tributes dying early, but the last time he was actually on the stage for this was when he was fifteen and a new winner. He’s brought down into the level below the stage, alongside Merrin, Kata, and her prep team, and all of them are appropriately impressed by his outfit; Merrin even tells him his makeup looks better than she could’ve done by her own hand, though she fixes a few details in his hair quickly before it’s her turn to head up to the stage to screaming applause.

Kata is dressed in brown and green, leaves woven through her hair and her dress sleeveless but with fabric hanging down the back and hooked around her wrists that turns into wings when she extends her arms. Merrin has her in almost no makeup, for which he’s thankful, just a little bit to make her look better under the stage lights and emphasize the soft roundness of the baby fat in her cheeks. Cal compliments her on the look, gives her a last bit of advice - to keep her chin up and not cry, no matter what, though she’s allowed to show whatever emotion she feels during the recap of the Games. The crowd will eat that up, wants to see her reaction to the recap - and he tells her, too, that no matter what the rules technically are, she can come sit with him if it gets too bad.

“Okay,” she says, with a small, nervous smile. “No crying while we’re wearing makeup?”

“Exactly,” he says back, grinning. “No crying, no touching your face, and no playing with your hair. Stylists get very disappointed when you mess up their hard work.”

Kata giggles a little. “You look very pretty, Cal,” she tells him earnestly, as he leaves her to walk over to the platform for his turn onstage. “Don’t touch your face.”

He’s grinning too-wide and honest when he’s brought up onto the stage, to a hoard of screaming Capitol citizens and too many flashing cameras. He hopes none of them notice the difference between it and his usual smile for the cameras.

President Palpatine crowns Kata with a gold circlet made to look like twisting branches and a genial smile, and she asks him, with all the sweetness she possesses, if her mentor can sit next to her during the recap; the crowd lets out an audible awww at the request and Palpatine smiles again and agrees - and as he does so, his eyes flick from her to Cal in the background, and they’re cold and sharp and so, so pointed. He tilts his head in acknowledgement, supposedly at the change in seating arrangement, but he knows the President knows he knows the message.

He’s done far, far too much for Kata, and she’s too attached to him. Anything he does out of line now will hit her, too, not just his uncle.

Watching the recap of the Games is not great, for anyone involved. The overnight party in the President’s mansion isn’t any better. Kata is overwhelmed by the people and the photographers and the glamor of it, though she’s clearly doing her best not to show it, a tight smile plastered on her face and her arms stiff at her sides, and Cal takes turns with BD, Cere, and Merrin acting as a bit of a buffer for her, cycling in and out of the duty while also keeping an eye on the room and listening to the general tone of the public. Cal uses the work put into his styling to get out of any uncomfortable situations and wishes he could use that as an excuse more often. It wouldn’t work, probably, if he did. And the President wouldn’t like it.

Useless to wonder about, ultimately.

Kata looks like she’s about to pass out on her feet by the time the party is over at dawn. Cal puts a hand on her back and supports her to the car back to the Training Center once they’ve finally been dismissed - he’s not much better off either, if he’s honest with himself, it’s been a long week - and he’s absolutely unsurprised when she falls asleep in the back seat, leaning against his shoulder, her crown askew on her head. He watches her, the way her  hair falls into her face and then puffs away when she breathes, the way she’s finally relaxed, and wishes he could take a picture of her like this for Bode.

And then he realized he could. BD has a camera, and is in the car with them. Cal asks them to, soft so as not to wake Kata up, and they agree, promising to snap a few more candids during the rest of the process and print the best ones out into an envelope to give to him on the train ride back. That’d be a good idea, he thinks, and he tunes out the rest of the ride back, leaning his temple on the window and watching the city slide by, ignoring the occasional flash from the camera.

Home soon. And then maybe both of them can start to move past this. Cal still feels like he’s just a mess of unraveled threads, unable to properly spin himself back together - the weeks of work and bargaining and playing the game while also playing the Games have taken the kind of toll he didn’t know was possible. But it isn’t like he wasn’t already like this, a little. Something in him’s been cracked since he won. Maybe since Trilla went off that ledge. Maybe since the boy from One had him pinned to the ground, shirtless, his face cut open, saying first I’ll take your pretty face, then I’ll take your pretty ass, and you’ll learn that making the Capitol want you isn’t a substitute for actually being a winner. Cal still remembers the feeling of all the air leaving someone else’s body, the way they kick and tremble and struggle to be free.

Maybe he first started to unwind when he reached the Capitol and the best angle for him to play was the flirt.

(He’d always wanted a family. Always wanted to find a partner and settle down and raise children, even knowing the fear of the Reaping would always hang over their heads. He likes kids, and he’d always loved the idea of being in love, of having that kind of deep, abiding connection and equal relationship with someone. Malicos dressed him in revealing, sensual clothing and Eno reluctantly told him to play it up and he knew it would have consequences but he’d thought, still, back then, that one day he’d get out. One day he’d still-

No one ever wins the Games.)

Four hours of sleep, breakfast, and more prep and coaching time, and then Caesar sits down with Kata for the final interview. There are several questions about the Games - he asks her about the arena, about her alliance with Sabine, about what she was thinking when the wolf mutts attacked, how she feels about being the winner - and then he smiles, leaning forward slightly.

“Everything we’ve seen points to you and your mentor, Cal Kestis, being very close,” he says, and Kata nods a little bit, eyes flickering from Caesar to the cameras. “Can you tell me a bit about that relationship? Why is it so important to you?”

Kata frowns, thinking. “Well-” she starts, then stops, tilting her head to one side. “No one ever believes twelve-year-olds can win the Games. Even I didn’t really think- when I first got Reaped, I was sure I was going to lose and never see my papa again. Cal didn’t care that I’m young, he gave me advice right away anyway, and he promised I could win. And he was right.” She shrugs one shoulder. “He- remembered my favorite drink and sent it to me when I was in the arena. So… I trust him, and I’m glad he was my mentor.”

Cal misses Caesar’s response to that, busy fighting back a swell of emotion. The things he’s done for her - he hasn’t done them for any other tribute, and he’s had the chance to. He doesn’t think he’ll ever do it again, unless he really needs to. There will be consequences for him using his influence like this, and not just the ones he walked into himself.

But for now it doesn’t matter. The interview finishes up, they have a little while to pack - Kata attaches her token, the star brooch, to the front of her dress - and then it’s time for the final public appearance on the train station out of the Capitol, waving goodbye to all Kata’s adoring new fans (and all Cal’s adoring old ones). They’ll still have to film the reunions back at Eleven, of course, but that’s for tomorrow to worry about.

Kata turns to him as they finally get ready to board the train, hopeful and nervous in equal measures. “Are we really going home now?”

“Yeah, Kata,”  Cal says, mustering up a proper smile for her, offering her his hand; she takes it and squeezes it tightly, following him through the narrow door. He can’t wait to get out of here. He’s sure she can’t either, wants to see her father far worse than he does. (He wants to see Bode, too, his one friend in the District who isn’t another Victor, his uncle, or an elder. He can’t really justify the want, though, other than the simple desire of having a conversation that isn’t about the Games at all, that doesn’t talk about Cal as a Victor, so he tries not to think too much about it.) “Let’s go home.”