90th Victor Presentation

As expected, the tributes have played their parts well.

Little puppets dancing on the gamemakers' stage, tangling themselves in the golden threads of fate like Cricket performing in aerial silks, hunted down like flies in a web by Hades' ingenious mutts — torn into little pieces that make for quite the convenient burial process. On the second dawn after Talon Grey strikes down Ellis Gallagher with a blade clean through the boy's cheek, Maryn applies her red lipstick in the vanity mirror and watches the full yet-to-be-aired recap of the Ninetieth Annual Hunger Games play on the tablet at her side.

Careful and precise as ever, a sharp wing of liner to accent her piercing blue eyes, she takes her time to watch, impassively, and bore over every detail of the production her and her fellow gamemakers have created for their intended audience. She makes sure all the right moments are carefully highlighted, and that all useless side-material has been cleanly edited into the background noise. She wants only the warfare, and the glory, and the suffering. The punishment. That's all this experience has ever been about.

She watches a boy drown in peaceful waters / watches a girl attempt to fight machines with only the skin on her two hands / watches a mech suit crumble around its tribute like an iron maiden slamming shut. Never once does she flinch. Even when she guides her champion to the end like Charon atop his ferry, watching her fondest treasure melt down to liquid gold in the palms of her hands. And it should burn, but she only feels the numbness. As each of them, all twenty-three, make their final statements in their death march to the inevitable.

This is an exercise in power.


Wearing a sleek, black dress and with her ponytail falling neatly along her exposed back, Maryn considers herself ready for the coronation to come. She shuts off the device when the recap finishes, smirking in quiet approval to herself, striding casually to the door of her bedroom suite and opening it to reveal the newly appointed victor waiting for her. "Perfect, you're right on time." Admittedly, she had received notification that Talon had been ready to meet her nearly an hour ago, but she ignores this with a flourish of her hand.

"Walk with me. The ceremony will begin shortly." She barely takes the time to glance at them, only long enough to keen over the details of their outfit and find the fabric acceptable. She stays true to the schedule, always arriving sharp on the time. It's a kind of magic she likes to think she learned from her big sister, an uneasy air about her that comes so naturally to the Hale family. Maryn is a murderess in all her fineries.

The scent of death clings to her under the guise of lavender and sage.

"You will be expected to address the crowd, eloquently and simply, and then you will proceed to watch the entirety of the Ninetieth Annual Hunger Games, as is tradition." She stops down a long hallway, only a short pace away from the entrance to the stage, to the next chapter of the young victor's life. Their heart still beats, and with every thud they only fall more in debt to her, to her accomplices, to this very nation. When she regards them, she nearly sneers, sickly sweet smile on her lips.

When people think of her, she wants them to think of her manicured nails digging into their open wound. Just that brutal.

"I wish you prosperity, Talon Grey." Their grave has already been dug. Perhaps repurposed given the circumstances, but that doesn't change the fact of the matter. They have already been mourned by the people who love them, have already damaged themselves in a way that cannot be easily repaired, and all that hurt has simply lead them here to this moment. Standing on shards on glass, just on the other side of a tank full of sharks, and now the salt water is seeping into all of their cuts. It's an ending that goes on forever.

This is it how it will always feel.

"And when they show your kills, do be sure to smile for the camera. It's only cinema, after all." She types a quick message into a device secured around her wrist, alerting Hades and Cricket of her expected arrival time. Then she nods at the guardsmen by the doors, watching as they swing open for her and the tribute-turned-celebrity awaiting the devotion, the fear, the pity of the roaring crowd. All of it. Every dagger in their heart is an agony well earned.

Taking the stage like stepping into a second skin, she gestures grandly to her companion trailing behind her, bathed in the spotlight glow. "To Panem, to our great and just Capitol, I hereby introduce the Victor of the Ninetieth Annual Hunger Games... Talon Grey!"