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When Enobaria gets home from the Games, she learns from her mother that her father was involved in an accident at the quarry, a terrible collapse that injured four and cost him his life. She knows what this is: a warning from Snow, to stay in line or see the rest of her family end up the same way, but she doesn't dare say as much to her mother. Even when her brother takes her aside, she denies it to his face.
"I was there, that day, Baria," he says. He's older than she remembers, and she realizes that the 6 years since she won have passed in the blink of an eye. "There was no reason that should have happened."
"Are you claiming it was sabotage? Murder?" she growls, pushing back against him. They're in a back corner of her mother's house, their voices low. He has the same frame as her, as their father, thin and tough, stronger than he looks. Her mother and sister are shorter, stockier, but no less imposing when it came down to it.
"I don't know," he says, every syllable slow, intentional. "That's why I'm asking you. What the fuck happened in the Capitol?"
She resists the urge to spit on the floor of her mother's home at the mention of the Capitol, at any allusion to that night. "Nothing that would implicate our family," she says clearly. "I stay out of such squabbles." Her head is held high as she turns away, and though she hears him sigh, he doesn't reach for her, nor does he touch the subject again.
She misses her father terribly, more so because only she knows the truth about his death. That he had to suffer because Johanna Mason pushed the wrong Capitolite too hard when he was trying to rape her. She lies awake at night, tonguing the sharp points of her teeth and replaying that night over and over again, trying to figure out a way she could have averted the tragedy. But all roads seemed to end in tragedy. Even if she had never invited Johanna, even if she brought Cashmere along instead, she surely would have been punished for failure to deliver the requested tribute. It was unfair, and she was always bound to lose.
Lyme visits her with flowers to put at her father's grave, which is a thoughtful gesture, as Enobaria hadn't gone to collect any herself. She puts the flowers in some water to keep them fresh, and she fucks Lyme on her bed, the act of having sex that she wants cathartic after weeks of non-consensual Capitol whoring.
After, laying naked under the sheets, Lyme tells her that she thinks the most recent victor, a girl from 3 named Alva, will probably have to prove herself a Capitol supporter, or she might have an accident on her Victory Tour. "She won with a bomb. He won't want someone with that kind of knowledge running around unchecked. I'm sure they'll be investigating District 3, also."
Enobaria had watched her victory in a sort of daze, waiting for the Games to be over so she could find out her punishment. But Alva was interesting, she was something different. She played a long game, collecting components and stashing them away, and then at the end, exploded half the arena. The thought was refreshing, in a way- that life as she knew it could just change in an instant.
Enobaria stares at the ceiling. It had never felt hopeful, but with her father dead, Snow's threat made real, it feels truly bleak right now. "I thought you said it was peaceful right now." Lyme had said as much, after Finnick's Games.
"It's true," she concedes. "There's no rebel activity for him to be worried about, and at least compared to before, the relationship between the districts and the Capitol is very placid."
Enobaria can feel tears forming, and she wills them not to fall, wishes the gravity of lying on her back will help them absorb back into her skull. "Then why? Why would he make Jo and Augustus into whores? You said-"
Lyme is up on her side, propped up on an elbow, and she kisses a tear in the corner of Enobaria's eye. She hates this, the fear that comes with not understanding, the feeling of blindness. It was like her first moments in the arena. "I said he uses the tributes as whores to placate the Capitolites, yes. They love the tributes, they get attached to them, they find them darling. But for the tributes," she coughs. "For the districts, it's just a vector of control. He lets some go if he doesn't think he needs to keep an eye on them every year, or if the Capitol doesn't find them as interesting. Those two, he must have been worried about."
Enobaria can understand this, Johanna Mason was liable to spit in Snow's face as soon as she would shake his hand, and Augustus Braun seemed docile, a model 1 tribute, but he had a bone to pick with the Capitol. "And if he makes good on the threat? If he kills her whole family and there's no incentive to whore anymore?"
She doesn't say Johanna's name, but Lyme doesn't seem to need that information to answer the question. "Remember, it's about control. If he decides to kill an entire family, it's because he thinks doing so will give him greater control, somehow."
The 69th Games come too soon, when she's still enjoying time with her nieces, dinners prepared by her mother, and even beginning to get along again with her brother and sister. She'd seen Lyme a few more times over the months she was home, though Lyme was sure to keep the visits spaced out and casual-appearing, paranoid Snow would be able to associate the two of them and use it against one or the other.
When she returns, Enobaria sees Johanna in the mentor booth, gaunt and doped up on morphling. Haymitch Abernathy is often checking on her, surprisingly gentle for a man she's hardly ever seen without a bottle. "Come on, Jo, you have to eat something," he'll say, or "Let's go to the roof, I want you to roll me a cigarette." She wonders if they're sleeping together and finds she doesn't mind if they are.
Cashmere is often sitting next to Enobaria in the mentor booth, her surgery on her nose and jaw successful. She looks like Gloss's sibling, perhaps, but all traces of "twin" are gone, certainly. She wonders if that's the idea, if the first years, the first clients scarred her so much that she wanted to become someone else, someone apart from him, or if this was just a desire to become as Capitol as possible.
Enobaria doesn't ask, not as they're working in the booth, not as she's fucking Cashmere, listening to her call her name as she comes, and not as they lay together after, watching the Games on mute, smoking Cashmere's cigarettes. Enobaria doesn't really like them, but they do keep you awake, and she needs to meet a client in an hour.
"Calpurnia is going to divorce her husband," Cashmere says.
"Why?"
"He thinks she has no time for a relationship, that she neglects him." Cashmere pulls out a handmirror from her nightstand drawer and begins adjusting her false lashes. "It might be true."
"What about you?" she asks Cashmere.
"What about me?"
"Dating anyone? You practically live here now."
"Would you be jealous?" Cashmere says, turning her head to meet Enobaria's eyes. And it's the face on every ad, the face she sees when the Hunger Games cuts to commercials, the most famous, most beautiful victor, right beside her, naked for her, appealing to her. She wonders if she would be jealous.
"I don't know, I might be," she admits.
Cashmere smiles. "Same. If you started dating Johanna, or Alva, I'd be so jealous I'd kill them in their sleep."
And that's when Enobaria realizes that Cashmere doesn't know. She has no idea that Johanna's family was murdered, that Enobaria's father was murdered, that Alva herself was most likely murdered. Cashmere has embedded herself so deeply into the Capitol ecosystem, she missed nearly all of what was happening around her.
When she's home from the Games, Enobaria spends most of it in the Victor's Village. Her siblings were both adults by the time she won, so no one elected to move with her, all preferring their own homes in the main village, but now it's difficult to even go up there, as her brother and sister are fighting constantly.
One day, she risks a trip to her brother's while he's at work so she can see her nieces, who are 8 and 10 years old now, and working on their homework without great enthusiasm. They are enrolled in regular school, not the training academy, so with any luck, they will never see the arena.
"Auntie, father almost came to blows with Auntie Tamora!" they gush, eager to tell her the news. The homework is forgotten, and they are busy showing her this and that - their newest items of clothing, a cake one of them baked, as they intersperse the story here and there.
"Auntie Tamora was saying that there's to be some festival next weekend, and we asked if we could go."
"Yes, every day is the same, we want to see a festival!"
"But father said 'no one in our family is going to see the show of might from the Nut!'" her niece says, in a startlingly accurate portrayal of Enobaria's brother, Tullus.
"And Auntie Tamora said we ought to be seen there, so there's no confusion," the younger adds.
"That's when it got serious."
Enobaria can tell the two of them don't quite grasp the conflict, but everyone in 2 can feel the tension between the masonry guild and the military. She sighs. Part of her wants to tell them they really ought to go to the parade for their own safety, but she knows better than to overstep her brother. "Well, that's more exciting than my days," she says, but they are unconvinced, begging her to tell them about the Capitol until she is describing the silliest outfits she's seen and the strangest foods she's tasted. It's nice, it's relaxing, and it makes returning to her empty home feel that much worse.
At the 70th Games, Finnick's girlfriend is a tribute. He perhaps doesn't explicitly say this, but it's no secret. Among the mentors, this is common knowledge, and even those who are not rooting for Finnick and Annie find it hard to root against them, exactly.
She can feel Finnick's stress, feel the way he is pulling against the restraints of the Capitol. When she sees him follow a Capitol woman with a clipboard into a backroom of Antioch she follows, afraid he's getting tangled into a rebel plot that will get him and his girlfriend killed. The door closes before she can follow them inside, a lush private room at the back of the club, so she nurses a drink until she can apprehend him when he exits. She keeps an eye on the Games in the meantime, her tributes both still in it, camping out in front of the Cornucopia and shooting down anyone who tries to approach the stream for water, and Finnick's girl was still in it too, high above them all in a secluded cave.
She is surprised when Plutarch Heavensbee approaches her. She knows him on sight: he's in charge of the video clips made about each tribute, and the more extensive videos made to showcase the victors, so she's worked with him before, but only professionally. But seeing him makes her realize who the woman was: his personal assistant, though her hair was different than the last time Enobaria had seen her.
"Do you have business with Fulvia?" he asks, his smile easy, his tone amicable. He glances towards the door she entered with Finnick.
"No, I'm waiting for Finnick," she says.
"Well, their appointment is liable to take an hour or so. Let's have a drink while we wait." He buys two drinks without asking her preference and nods at the door next to the one she had been standing outside of. She quickly feels over her head, and wonders if she had misinterpreted the situation, if looking out for Finnick was actually screwing herself over.
Plutarch sits, easy and comfortable in his chair, and sips the drink. "Don't worry, I just want to talk," he says. "I heard what happened to your father, and about the tension in 2 right now."
"What do you know about it?" she says. She's on guard, unsure of his intentions.
But his calm smile remains. "I know your friend Lyme. She is part of a large network of informants. I dare not say more, in case you decide to turn around and rat her out to Snow."
Plutarch was a rebel? Lyme was a rebel? The latter is less of a surprise, but the fact that she is hearing of it here, now, in the backroom of a club in the Capitol, from a high-ranking Capitol official and not from Lyme herself is making her tremble. "What is this? Recruitment?" she supposes Finnick is next door being recruited as well.
"More of an interest check. I would never ask anyone to give more than they wish, but I had reason to believe you would want to see the Capitol fall."
"It will never happen," she says automatically, her sister's words in her mouth. "You have no chance."
"Not yet, no. It will take time. 5 years or so, I think. We're not as disorganized as you think. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you more unless you join us. You understand why, I presume?"
She nods. She thinks about everyone she knows, everyone she cares about. Cashmere would say no. Johanna would say yes. Tamora would say no. Tullus would say yes. Gloss would say no, Lyme had already said yes. And the unknowns: her mother, Finnick, Augustus. And then she thinks of the arena, of tearing out a man's throat with her teeth, just for the chance to live another day. "I can't," she says. Because the truth is, a rebellion, to her, is not worth dying for, not worth risking the lives of her mother, her siblings, her nieces, the victors she's come to care about. Snow knows how to precision strike where it hurts, but he wouldn't be afraid to just bomb her whole district. Everyone in 2 knows their history, how their district clambered to favor hand over hand from the rubble of the Dark Days. "Sorry, I can't," she repeats.
Annie wins the 70th Games by default, though the Capitol doesn't find the ending particularly 'violent' or 'exciting'. The hours and hours of waiting for the last tributes to drown are tedious and long, not the tense, hands-on combat the Capitol prefers.
This disappointment seems to be made up for by the fact that Annie Cresta is beautiful, tall and thin and mysterious and strange, but she doesn't come back for the 71st Games. Her Victory Tour was strange, her remarks stilted and interrupted by tics, stomping or covering her ears, or a shout or laugh that didn't seem to make sense, so Enobaria is sure she is not well, but none of them are well, really, yet they are not allowed to stay home.
She listens to the same sentiment over and over from Cashmere as she gets drunk with the twins after the tribute parade, the tributes off at some appointment with the stylists. "She is faking it, probably," Cashmere says, "To get out of coming back."
"Maybe I should do that," Gloss mutters. He's gained weight, his stomach a little flabby now, more of the Haymitch body-type from all the drinking, though Gloss towers over the man from 12.
"Cash, you ok?" Enobaria asks, as Cashmere spills the drink she had been fumbling with for a moment.
"Shit." Cashmere grabs for a napkin to blot up the spilled water. "The doctor isn't sure what's causing that tremor. He says the tobacco isn't helping either, but I can't give it up." Her voice comes out muffled as she crouches to pick up the cup. "Anyways, did you see Haymitch getting laid into by Blight at the Welcome Dinner? Is he fucking Johanna?"
"No, I was looking at Brutus eyeing Elin," Gloss says. "Seriously?"
Enobaria laughs. "He must have been looking past her, at Cecelia," she says. "There's no way he would be into someone who 'poisons her body with that disgusting drug'," she says, imitating Brutus's gruff way of speaking, then glances over her shoulder to make sure he's not nearby, since they are on the 2 apartment balcony.
"Speaking of," Cashmere says, "Calpurnia told me one of the staff on Brutus's show said he had some bone to pick with Haymitch, actually." She shakes her head, checking the spill was cleaned before lighting up another cigarette.
Enobaria does a double take when she sees Johanna in Illyria. She hasn't seen the other woman in the club since the year her family was killed, and wonders what has changed that she's suddenly come out to socialize again, but she sees what Johanna is wearing - a mini skirt and black halter top, heeled, strappy sandals, and realizes she's working.
She can't fathom what Snow has on her, who he could possibly threaten to make her work again, when her eyes settle on Haymitch Abernathy. She doesn't know what compels her to go to his table, feels her feet taking her there before she even knows what she wants to say. He looks surprised to see her, and almost smiles, before his gaze turns confused. "Those are nice braids, did Seeder do those?" he asks.
They are nice, and Seeder did do them, but that's not what she's here to talk about. She slips down into the seat across from him, her voice a hiss across the thrumming music, but she knows he'll hear her. "Why is she back working?" she asks. "To keep you alive?"
He raises an eyebrow at this, looking honestly shocked at this guess. "For me? God no, though if you've noticed we'll have to tone it down." He finishes his drink. "It's for Finnick. To keep his girl away from the Capitol."
Enobaria isn't sure if she believes this. Johanna was back, whoring herself for Coriolanus Snow, so that Finnick Odair's girlfriend could stay in her home district during the Hunger Games. "You're full of shit," she says.
Haymitch grabs two drinks from a passing tray and offers her one. She does sip it, just for something to do. "It's true," he insists. "She loves him."
"What a mess," she says, accepting his explanation for now, and putting back the drink.
When Brutus approaches the table, she thinks he's coming for her, to tell her she's late to the mentor booth, or some other reason. But he doesn't even seem to see her, all rage as he grabs Haymitch by the collar. "You piece of shit!" he yells, glasses smashing as the table shakes. "She told me what you did!"
Haymitch makes no effort to defend himself, just smiles somewhat lazily. "It doesn't matter," he says. "I messed up. She messed up. But in the end, Elin will never love you back."
They all know Brutus's punch is coming before it lands, with a sickening crunch on Haymitch's left cheek. Enobaria is up after that first hit, pulling him back, but Brutus is sick with rage, trying to get after Haymitch, his shouting incoherent. "You did this! You ruined her!"
And then Johanna is there, after Haymitch falls to the ground, covering him with her own body, daring Brutus to punch her instead. Perhaps it's seeing that, seeing the stupid skimpy outfit that she is wearing reminds him of the other thing: the fact that Haymitch and Elin might have fucked each other up, but there was also the whoring, the impossible demands of young victors.
Johanna shoots Enobaria a deadly, hateful glare, and Enobaria can't do anything but turn away and take a defeated, desperate Brutus back to their apartment.