they say the war is over

It isn't the silence that makes Samiyuq grit hir teeth.

Every morning after sending out a flight, the team huddled around coffee and a crackling radio to wait for reports: ruined roads, military caravans delayed or destroyed, resources tied up responding to fires. Gaps where any of the above should be expected, the only clue they could usually rely on to map bats flying astray or timers failing. Inevitably, and received with grave silence except for the rapid scratch of Yadira taking shorthand notes, civilian casualties. Not all of them cared, exactly, and certainly few of them mourned; they knew the average Capitolite would scarcely mourn them, and every soul in the rebellion either knew at the outset or very quickly decided what they were willing to sacrifice for their goal. But they made sure they knew. Even when the people they killed were nameless and faceless and hundreds of miles away, goddammit, they made sure they knew.

Ze held every last pup in hir own hands, that last day, clicking with them and running gentle fingers behind their ears as their fluttering stuttered and slowed and ceased.

It isn't the silence, no; it's the people—not all of them, but plenty; strangers, neighbors, market regulars who buy hir parent's wool and linger to chat every time, old friends who welcomed hir home and conspicuously didn't ask where ze'd been—pretending not to notice it, lowering their gazes and shuffling to the side as though hiding their relief changes its timbre. I know you have families to keep safe, I know you want to live, half of hir wants to snarl, and that's fine, you don't have to help me, I don't even know if anyone could—but look at what you're allowing. Look at what we've all allowed.

Terror holds the other half hostage. They know. They must. All the care ze took slipping out of Five and back into it mattered as little as every effort those two days bookended; they know, and there is no fight ze can take on to undo that.

Ze could try to fight anyway, or try to run; there are always choices. But there are always consequences, too, for people beyond hirself, and in the end there is only one choice ze can live with now; so ze makes it without hesitating, the way ze once told hirself ze would walk to an execution if ze ever had to, head high and eyes clear—and, scratching through the air as though torn involuntarily loose by hir first step, sounds hir parent's "Mánan!"^[1]

Samiyuq tries to take a leaf out of Adder's book when ze arrives in Five, flanked by as many Peacekeepers as took hir away from it: measure every sound and expression, offer hir audience in white as little as possible to interpret. But the moment they're finally allowed in range ze can't help but melt into hir parent's embrace, clinging to their waist and pressing hir temple against the side of their head. "Sami," they say, wrapping their arms around hir shoulders gently, and ze only barely has the wherewithal not to make a fractured sound at the familiarity of this moment ze thought ze might never have again—their voice, their hand-woven shawl comfortably rough under hir fingers, the light scent of melon shampoo from the braid brushing hir cheek. "I love you."

They could, Samiyuq suspects, say it in runasimi without so much as a word from the Peacekeepers. Ze bought them a warped sort of safety alongside hir own life, and everyone here must know it—must know that they're the first and final reason ze has ever lifted a hand to kill, and that they're hir leash now, for as long as they both live. But theirs is a gentle sort of strength—stability and a talent for holding on to joy and dignity in a country that tries to strip them of both, not bravado and a habit of pushing limits. They've always been the type to walk a precipice with their feet two steps back from the edge, even one where they didn't risk dragging family alongside them if they fell.

They've done better by Samiyuq than ze has by them, in that.

Ze tightens hir arms as far as ze can before hir shoulder screams. "I love you, too."

Perhaps recognizing that Samiyuq needs a moment, perhaps overcome themself, they fall silent and simply hold hir, swaying almost imperceptibly. They only stop when they lift one hand to run through hir hair and Samiyuq flinches at the tug on the gash at the back of hir head, stapled shut but still tender; their entire body freezes with their hand, and Samiyuq swallows another cracked keen not at the pain but at the care. Love, ze never doubted; it's another thing entirely for them to have watched the Games—to have seen even the start of what ze's tried to shield them from, all this time—and still think they should be gentle. "Sorry."

"I'm fine, Tayma."

Samiyuq has said that too often in the last year and change for either of them to believe it. But all they say, as they more carefully twist the ragged ends of one lock of hair between their fingers, is, "I can cut this at home."

"Please," ze says, half startled by the vehemence of hir own relief. If ze'd still had the sword in hand ze thinks ze might have gutted the Capitol doctor who trimmed the hair near the gash for the staples—but if there's anyone alive ze can stomach putting blades near hir skin right now, it's them, and leaving it ragged will only leave hir with shaking fingers every time ze reaches to tie it back. Then ze pulls away, catching hir parent's hand with one of hir own as it falls from hir hair, because this isn't the conversation ze meant to have. "Tayma, I," ze starts, then grimaces. "There's..."

There's too much to say, is what, and no space here to say it. Ze needs to know what the Capitol showed the Districts, how they cut truth together into something else; needs to tell them what ze can about the people whose lives ze brushed, the people whose lives ze ended; needs above all to say, however they'll try to rebuff hir, I'm sorry you had to watch that. I'm sorry you're part of this now. I know none of this is what you ever wanted and I am so, so sorry.

Ze wouldn't have told Maeve there was no shame in fighting if ze didn't mean it, and ze refuses to let survival be one of hir regrets. That doesn't mean, among bats and blood and bodies, that ze has none.

"I know," they say softly to whatever part of that they hear, the back of their free hand light against Samiyuq's uninjured cheek as they search hir eyes. Either finding what they're looking for or deciding this isn't the time and place, they let that hand fall and look away from Samiyuq to the contingent of Peacekeepers remaining. "Are we free to go?" they ask, the words clear and deliberate—a question they've asked Peacekeepers before.

The Peacekeeper in front shifts his eyes from Samiyuq to hir parent without moving another muscle. "I'll be escorting you home."

Hir parent glances at hir sidelong, and Samiyuq blinks slowly, warning and apology and lament in one gesture. For my safety, I'm sure, ze bit out when they told hir; hir parent handles it more gracefully, with a smile and an "Of course." so smooth that anyone could be forgiven for believing having a handler in their own neighborhood was their idea. They offer Samiyuq an arm; ze takes it, even though ze's treated hir wounded leg to far worse than a walk through District Five, and feels the squeeze of their hand for the understanding solidarity that it is. They only ever wanted to protect hir and ze only ever wanted to free them, and if they let hir go to war against their better judgment and ze dragged them into it after hir despite hir best efforts, at least they're alive to handle the fallout together. "Shall we, then?"

Land of the free, ze remembers, and it's almost enough to make hir laugh. Ze swallows it, but ze can feel it at the back of hir throat, sharp and bitter—but not broken.

The Capitol has hir leashed, but ze will not let them have hir broken.

"Don't," Samiyuq hisses, snapping hir head toward their voice.

At first ze finds only a ripple in the crowd, then flashes of their red-striped tunic—then them, pushing through people like they don't even notice them. "Huk kutis ripurqanki—"^[2]

"Tayma. Allichu."^[3] Ze's never seen them like this—not dragging miscarrying does back from the brink of death on little more than catnaps for sleep, not holding hir hands and saying atispaykiqa, kutimuykuy^[4] the day ze left, not crying in the doorway the day ze came home—and hearing the raw crack in their voice rattles hir worse than hearing hir name. Be careful, they've told hir time and time again, dig your heels in if you can but keep your head down when you need to, and here they are—

"—mana yapay ripuykita qhawayta atinichu, Samiy—"^[5]

"Tayma, sayay!"^[6]

If ze's ever raised hir voice to them before, ze doesn't remember when. It stuns them into doing as they're told, one hand clapped over their mouth and eyes screaming louder than their voice did, and for a heartbeat they stare at each other across the concrete, both of them breathing as though they've just run the length of the grounds. Ze wants nothing more than to do just that—their neighbors would look after the goats if they vanished underground, if Samiyuq would only run to them and grab their hand and go.

They'd be riddled with bullets before they ever had a chance.

"Move," ze mutters to the handful of surrounding teens still hovering near hir in confusion about where they're supposed to be, most of whom don't need telling twice and the rest of whom ze doesn't waste time worrying about as ze whirls to face the stage and plants hir feet. "You want a rebel dead? Fine," ze calls out to the Peacekeepers, and on a long and lonely train ride not far in the future ze will be as embarrassed about the lack of forethought in this moment as about the desperate crack in hir voice, but in the moment all ze can think is that ze needs every eye and camera in the Square on hir now. "You can have me when you take me."

They do, but ze isn't so out of practice that ze goes down without a few good swings.

No amount of aim or poise could make Samiyuq's collapse look like anything but what it is, so ze doesn't try—merely drops hir sword at long last to catch hirself on the sand with hir hands, crying out as the impact shoots through hir wounded shoulder. "I won't forget," ze mumbles into the newly empty air, as much to hirself as to Puchukay,^[7] "prumitini,"^[8] and that's all ze has breath to choke out before the world narrows to roaring pain and the unsteady drip of hir own blood down hir shorn hair and into the sand underneath.

No morí, Kastilla, ¿ah?^{1} It's over, ze tells hirself, old echo still fresh—

(There's a quiet life ze was learning to live again, waiting back in Five the way it waited through the war, one that never quite came easily but one ze loved living more than ze feared the shapeless future: community and quiet days, ancient cycles resolving into newborn kids that care nothing for the tumult of human concerns, breakfast with the sunrise and laughter in the field and too-late nights shared over sugared milk—)

—no more, it's over—

(—a life where ze lay awake at night and wondered who in Five might still be fighting, who in Five could still use hir hands; a life where ze was learning again how to hold fragile things without hurting them, where aside from kitchen scissors and hoof shears ze may or may not ever have held a blade again.)

—I'm not done.

One person can't do what Jonas asked—what an entire grassroots army failed to do. But ze meant the promise ze did make, compromise though it was: ze's in this, now, for as long as ze lives.

Samiyuq eases hirself back by ginger increments. Even as awareness trickles back, hir head still swims and hir body screams, but hir hands are steady again when ze settles onto hir heels and folds them in hir lap, and so is hir gaze when ze looks up past the bodies and the walls of stone and white fabric to Adder Ames—legend, anathema, example, the only still point in a crowd Samiyuq can hear from the floor, the only other person who has entered the Hunger Games and lived to see the other side. Ze doesn't know whether they'll have a chance to speak before they're herded home by separate rows of Peacekeepers; ze does know the things said about her, but that tells hir little beyond a preview of the sorts of things that might be said about Samiyuq hirself whenever the Capitol propaganda teams finish shitting themselves. Who she actually is, whether ze can rely on her for information or anything else—these are things ze'll have to learn later, if at all.

For now, Samiyuq doesn't search her impassive expression for anything in particular. Ze only holds it for a long moment before nodding once and, with as deep a breath as ze can bear, tilting hir head back.

Above the bloody sand and the bodies both living and dead, it's shaping up to be a pretty afternoon, still barely a cloud in the sky; and despite everything, for the first time in a long time Samiyuq thinks ze knows why ze's still breathing.



Title song is "Everyone Is the Same" by InnerPartySystem. (Which as a song is more accurate to a much earlier, very different preliminary wip version of Sami, really; but the title still works.)

Small note that Achik's dialogue here was more grammatically complicated than any of the other Quechua I've worked on translating; it may be messy.



[1] No!
[2] You left once—
[3] Please.
[4] Goodbye (lit. come back if you can).
[5] —I can't watch you leave again, Samiy—
[6] Tayma, stop!
[7] Final; Samiyuq's narration's nickname for Persephone.
[8] I promise.

{1} I didn't die, Kastilla [Samiyuq's narration's nickname for Aisha], huh?