leaking out poison and hope

"I don't know what I'm doing," Samiyuq admits over dinner, four months after the first time a coded message to the remains of District Five's rebels received an answer—why should we trust you—and half a day before ze's slated to leave Five for the third time in hir life and the second on a train. "I'm a soldier, not a..." Ze shakes hir head, unsure what to call this position ze's found hirself in. Definitely nothing that the colony room or even battlefields prepared hir for. Too little access to be a spy, too little power to be a leader. A figurehead, perhaps, but if so ze doesn't know who for; an example, perhaps, but if so ze doesn't know what of, or rather can think of too many options for any of them to mean much.

A Victor, ze's told, but anyone who takes that title at face value hasn't been paying attention.

"So don't be whatever that is," hir parent says, stabbing a potato with a gesture that would unfazed if their eyes weren't trained so intently on Samiyuq. "Go, come home. Keep your head down."

Samiyuq tilts hir head. It's easy sometimes, seeing them putter quietly through early morning light or croon reassurance to distract a goat from the sting of a vaccine, to think of hir parent as soft. Never helpless, ze knows the solid core of their resilience too well to ever believe that—but gentle, mellow, a person whose spine is guarded by no sharp edges. And it still isn't sharp, the way they're looking at hir now, but it's not gentle, either; it's the look they get when they stand their ground to Peacekeepers, one that makes hir remember suddenly and with a twinge of embarrassment that this is the person who carved a life for themself in a place that refused to welcome them, who never flinched telling Samiyuq what the broadcasts said about the people ze killed—who in a heartbeat would do as much to protect hir, even if it hurt them more, as ze would to protect them. "Tayma?"

They shrug. And they ask, for the first time ze can remember—hir parent, who grew up in a mountain ayllu^[1] where no one raised or built anything alone, who a lifetime and thousands of miles later still helps set tarps over neighbors' fields ahead of storms in return for nothing but the vague promise of a favor and considers it ayni,^[2] duty rather than choice, asks—"What do you owe any of these people?"

Ze doesn't think ze would stop if they asked. Ze would if they were in danger, yes, in an instant—but if they asked? Once, at the start of all of this. Not anymore.

They both must know that, and they both must know what hir saying no would do to both of them, which is why ze trusts that that isn't what they're asking.

"I—" Ze sets hir fork down. Thinks of Jonas begging hir to stop children from suffering before slumping at the end of hir sword, thinks of having to identify Zoran for the records with half his face rendered unrecognizable, thinks of bats and blood and years of struggle leading only to more struggle. Thinks of a choice made on hir knees in the sand. Finds the challenging glint behind the calm in hir parent's eyes and thinks of the two countries that have shaped hir, the one that tried to kill hir and the one ze's never seen. I have to believe we can try, ze told Antigone. "It's not about owing."

"Allin."^[3] Their face melts into a smile—a little sad, a little proud, warm all the way through. "Then you'll figure it out."

Ze supposes ze doesn't have a choice.

---

In the end, ze can do little besides keep hir head down. On the train to Four ze finds a moment to try the phrase ze was given, but none of the Peacekeepers assigned to hir respond. And slipping away from hir handlers is hard enough in Five, with the advantages of space and familiar ground and assistance, that ze can count the number of times ze's risked it in these first six months on one hand; ze keeps hir eyes open, but ze knows from the start that ze doesn't have a prayer here, boxed into room after train car after room and never out of sight of a uniform.

This wasn't unexpected, ze tries to remind hirself. And Nemesis-Cassiel was painstakingly slow at times, months of work for a single night's results. But at least the months of training and planning and veterinary care and monitoring took work—at least ze could look back at the end of every day and see progress. Ze dreads going back to Five with nothing to report, especially with the threads of trust between hir and the resistance in Five so fragile, almost as much as ze hates the sense of futility.

Which is, ze's sure, intentional. We can control you, every step of the journey feels designed to scream, all the way down to your narrative. They crown hir, a surprise until ze realizes it's all but a dare to mimic Adder; uncertain what either option says, ze neither lifts hir head to accept it nor bends to dislodge it. (Thinks of stories of churches half a world away covered in gold melted down from temples to other gods; thinks that Panem is not unique, thinks that perhaps no tyrant ever has been.) On the screen, ze makes no promise to Jonas, forges no camaraderie with rebels, says nothing of honor to Antigone and Persephone. Ze levels a sword at Maeve and she runs from hir without a word; Era fights a Capitol sympathizer Samiyuq never met and ze cuts him down in apparent retribution, shaky camera images angled so it's impossible to see how many fell between those two moments.

Too many people heard Samiyuq call hirself a rebel at the Reaping for them to erase the words; that was, after all, hir entire purpose at the time. But they can do hir one worse: paint hir as a traitor.

And they cut every word of runasimi—every moment ze knelt to lay a body in the sand or wish a soul safety on its way, the promise to remember Persephone, even the goddamn swearing. Ze knew to expect that, knew from hir parent that they did it even in the live run, but it still makes hir grit hir teeth. This is why the three of them had all been so surprised, that moment when Aisha and Antigone and Samiyuq stilled their swords and stumbled through a conversation in four languages. This is a manifestation of the kind of policy that rippled down from government halls to half the parent-teacher conferences of hir childhood, the kind of bigotry that echoes up from distrustful glances on the street to the hands that authorize genocide—insidious, insistent, all the more dangerous for how much of Panem will never even notice it happening.

A sliver of kastilla simi makes it through, though: Aisha, bloodied and defiant and laughing, declaring, "Rebel para siempre. Rebellion forever."—only kept so the boy who brought her down can claim the victory, call the rebellion dead, but Samiyuq snorts soundlessly at that because only one of them was right. Aisha Aquino, Kastilla, rebel, went to eternity with her principles on her tongue, and the rebellion lives in Five and One and in places Samiyuq has never been and on this very stage—will live somewhere, as long as people live, in the spirit that has opposed every empire in history.

The story they tell here doesn't matter any more than Samiyuq's—than anyone's—feelings. It doesn't matter whether ze looks at the faces of District Four and wonders which belong to the parents Jonas said farewell to as ze killed him and which to whoever might have cried out when ze stabbed Harley without the courtesy of a word, doesn't matter whether they hate hir or the Capitol does, doesn't matter whether anyone knows ze cried for the first time in months on those sands or thinks ze cared as little as the Peacekeepers in the stands did. What matters is what gets done about it all, and that doesn't end on this stage, or with this tour—doesn't end with Samiyuq at all.

Don't fucking waste it, demands the silent portrait of Antigone that greets hir in District Three, side-by-side with a boy ze only knows secondhand. Ze's calmer this time, through the empty fanfare and the mangled playback; still calm when Aisha laughs from the speakers again, calm enough to draw breath with her this time, murmuring in tandem with her voice, not bothering to raise hir own—

Rebel—
"Awqallikuqkuna—"
—para siempre.
"—pasaqpaq."^[4]

When they play the video again in District Two, they've edited the audio—moved the moment from Aisha to the Capitol sympathizer she killed, the same one Era fought, stripping that last remnant of kastilla simi to make room for, "You made one mistake."

Mindful of the detail ze knows remains posted outside hir home—not missing, either, that Ajax is the boy from Two—Samiyuq stays silent this time. But ze slides hir eyes to the cameras trained on hir, and considers how fragile this position must feel on the Captiol's end, too; two Games in and two rebels crowned, and it took all of two words, too quiet to carry off the stage even if they wouldn't be lost on most of the crowd, to provoke a reaction?

No, this doesn't end with this tour at all.



Title song is "Chairkickers" by Brown Bird.

[1] Andean, particularly Quechua and Aymara, community/local government unit composed of a network of families.
[2] Andean principle of reciprocity/mutual aid.
[3] Good.
[4] Rebels, always.