count my cards, watch them fall | d12 train

"If anyone asks," Bellezze says in a stage whisper as she touches up something around Aranica's eyes, "it is so nice that Miss Rex and Mr. Flynn got over their flu so quickly."

"Belle, what the hell?" Aranica says flatly, because cryptic has never been Bellezze's style, but Aranica knows neither who Rex and Flynn are supposed to be nor why she should harbor any less resentment toward them than toward the rest of the stream of journalists interrupting her work. But Bellezze only taps gently between her eyes until she deliberately relaxes her brow, fixes whatever part of her makeup that furrowing it mussed, and scampers off to—Aranica hopes—do her actual job for the girl now in her care.

You'll know when it becomes important, her rock says.

I guess.

Baffling as that was, it has nothing on the pile of invitations, questionnaires, and tax reports that Aranica is somehow expected to handle while Hell and Carter have their visiting hours elsewhere in the Justice Building. She's ready to file the whole thing away and get back to work, but she barely has a hand back on her pen when the doorknob rattles again. With a heavy sigh she sets the pen down, then pastes on her most practiced easygoing smile and says, "I'm so sorry, you'll need to speak with Dynamo t—holy shit."

In the doorway, looking much less startled than Aranica feels and sporting loudly incorrect name tags, stand Illario and Kette. Aranica scrambles out of her chair and meets them halfway across the room in a hug that nearly knocks all of them off their feet. "Where are Rune and Vivi? How are Rune and Vivi, is something—"

"They're with my mom, everyone's fine." Illario pats her shoulder before pulling back. "Bellezze tracked us down."

"Is she always, uh...?" Kette makes a series of hand gestures that Aranica has no idea how to decipher, but feels in her bones anyway. "Or is that weird? That's weird, right?"

She grimaces. "A little of both. She's been hovering."

Kette tilts her head slightly as Illario asks, voice hushed despite the solid walls, "Is it the Quell?"

"We still don't know anything." Which is its own kind of stress, but Bellezze has never liked to worry about anything that isn't in front of her.

"Carter," Illario guesses.

Aranica scrubs at her eyes with the heels of her hands, one of the few tiny luxuries she genuinely appreciates about having both arms on. "If I give everyone permission to make up interviews, will they stop asking me how I feel about siblings?" Sibtribs, they call them in the Capitol these days, with the same enthusiasm they used to throw behind talking about Kieran and legacies when they still thought they might get to sink their teeth into him. As though anything about this is cute, or sweet, or fun.

"Probably," Kette says with a pat to her arm that's more sympathetic than her voice, "but they'll also say you're sleeping with Mace again and plotting to kill Saffron. Again."

She's not wrong. "Fuck, I hate reporters."

"Hey now. I, uh—" Kette twists her collar up to squint at her own nametag—"I, renowned reporter Laelia Rex, resent that attack on my storied and beautiful career."

Illario bounces a mock fist off her shoulder with a playfulness that doesn't reach his face. "Were they close?"

"I think so." It's been a few years, but that was always Aranica's impression, at least. She supposes she'll find out for sure soon enough. "Which is why I'm not who she should worry about." Illario raises his eyebrows. "Fine, I'm... compartmentalizing." Not her word, only one she's been scolded with often enough, not that anyone has ever convinced her that that specific coping mechanism is a mistake. Surviving the Games has always been a matter of prioritizing, and she can have a nice long breakdown about Dru and Anani next month. "I just wish... We all need to be on board for them now, not later, that's all. Bellezze needs to focus on Hell."

"Okay, when doesn't that woman do her job?" Kette asks. Which is a fair point; the Gamemakers haven't kept Bellezze on for nearly three decades as a reward for failure. "If you get to worry about, like, everyone, she can handle two or three people."

That's fair, too, but Aranica doesn't have to like it. She screws up her nose. "What would I do without you."

"Crash and burn," Kette says fondly.

"Illario, you're my favorite again."

"When did I stop being your favorite?"

Fuck, but it's unfair that the scattered pieces of her family have never been allowed to meet.

Before she can answer, the door swings open. Except for Aranica washing something blandly professional over her expression, they all freeze, but the intruder is only Bellezze, scurrying toward them with all the urgency her delicate shoes allow.

"I think," she says with warmth out of tune with the way she grips Kette's left shoulder and then Illario's right, "that maybe you're not done puking after all and you should go outside. Right now."

She doesn't give them time to so much as hug goodbye, but—with Liddy and Sycamore and Vibeke and Rune—they did that earlier. Separation will sting again later; for now, Aranica only spares a moment to smile at the door closing in their wake. Rebellion has never been any more Bellezze's style than enigma, and there's a good reason Aranica has never breathed a word of their real work at the shop to her, but it's difficult to resent her when she goes to so much effort for these small moments of kindness.

Not impossible. But difficult, and surviving the Games has always been a matter of prioritizing.

Aranica sits back down to her pile of envelopes, and manages to only want to hit her head on the desk a little when Iairus throws the door open three seconds later.

---

Whatever Bellezze saw at the end of that visit, or whatever she and the others talked about on their way out, she must have decided that her duty has been fulfilled for now. At least, to Aranica's relief, she's nowhere to be seen as Peacekeepers shuffle the mentors through the Justice Building and onto the train.

Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any easier to get to where she needs to be. The train has barely kicked into motion when, as she half expects and entirely dreads, Dynamo appears to claim a word, never mind that his lecture after the Seventy-Sixth Reaping is still carved directly into her eardrums. He only lets her go when Ambroos pokes his head in to demand measurements he already has, which should take about thirty seconds but somehow turns into a session of Iairus throwing nearly-indistinguishable jackets at her and complaining about all of them. Eventually Ambroos helps her convince him that yes, the turquoise will do nicely, and no, the electric turquoise isn't really necessary, don't you think. Then he starts eyeing hats.

She all but dives out of the train car without saying goodbye. Somewhere in the fading background, Ambroos starts laughing.

Free at last, it only takes Aranica a few minutes to find her charges. Stella, bless her, is already with them in the dining car; she looks unsurprisingly tense, with heavy eyes and a glass of something folded against her shoulder, but she's upright, and as Aranica crosses the car her voice resolves into "—here for you."

There will be time to talk, if she wants to, once Carter and Hell are with Jenas and Bellezze.

Carter steals her attention as she reaches Stella's side. She didn't hear the question he's answering, but anything that could have been aggressive about "Nothing" is swallowed in the quiet, detached way he says it.

And then her heart wrenches at the rest of it. She remembers what I just need to see my sibling again felt like at eighteen and at twelve, and she knows what it feels like now, and children—young adults—any of them should never have to feel like that, not about anyone.

At least he's not quite resigned to death. If Aranica has learned one thing in the last quarter century, it's that—miraculously and agonizingly—hope still matters.

Aranica gives Stella the ghost of a smile before looking back to Carter. "If there's one thing any of us can promise you, it's that you won't be alone. Even when you're in the Arena, we're working with you on the other side." She nods to Hell, swallowing—at least for the moment—her curiosity about what brought her here. Bidelia certainly hadn't looked like she expected it, but that's not the point, right now. "Both of you."