downright iconic | d1 [10th]

Post by umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars] on May 4, 2024 16:15:44 GMT -5

D E L I A

"When you say 'with' the tributes, do you mean-" She started, placing Billy next to Boone in the newly-erected play pen. Errol cut her off by clarifying: "Like, with them. As in, 'inside the exhibit' with them." Her stomach flipped at that. It'd been almost half a decade since her win, and despite her willingness to play along, to agree to read the lines the Capitol wrote on screen, to accompany the pathetic old geezers who paid for it to dinners, or events, or beds, she still felt as much a tribute as each passing year's new batch of them. Victorship, it seemed, was the one wound even time could not heal.

She kept her eyes on the two boys babbling away in the play pen, on Billy shaking a rattler while Boone found immense interest in his own foot.

"What if..." She cleared her throat. There was no tribute in that exhibit whom Delia couldn't best at that point, she was sure of it. She refused to entertain the notion that one of them could randomly choose her of all people to attack, when doing so wouldn't improve their chances of winning and would basically confirm their own death. She shook the thought just as soon as it entered her head. But in the back of her mind, she knew that things were changing. People were. Panem itself. She'd watched one of the kids from her district raise their hand and request to be there. That took guts; she should know. She would've if they hadn't called her name when they had. She had too many things she needed to prove at that point.

Now, though, she didn't need to prove anything except that she wasn't worth the wrath the Capitol was capable of, and that even if she could still slit Terra Montague's throat and never lose a night's sleep, she didn't have to in order to move on. She had the boys now. And Errol was practically begging to move their relationship along- he'd mentioned rings several times and each time he did, Delia rolled her eyes. "You spend money on a ring, I'm pawning it the second you look away for something actually worth while." She figured she could string him along for another year or two at least before he started getting serious about it. She reached to pinch his cheek, brought back to the present.

"Fine. Watch them, though. Boo has been sneezing since we got here. Must be allergic to something." He nodded, politely not mentioning that he was 1000% the better adjusted of them and easily the primary parent. "Of course."


She steeled her nerves just outside the gate. There was an unsettling instance where she could hear the dull roar of the electrified fences die so that they could open the door, and it felt deliciously close to something like freedom. In that moment, if all of them revolted at the same time, the Capitol might not have been able to gun all of them down before a few made it out, at least. Of course, after last year, she heard they were going to start putting trackers in the tributes so no funny business came about.

She stepped inside, pulling the fuchsia fringe of her sleeves closer to her as if it might protect her from the very real humans baking in the sun on the other side.

"Lovely Laine... Awesome? October..?" She did not know many complimentary 'o' words, it turned out- "and I guess any other tributes who aren't totally lame: Come over here to get some totally necessary lifesaving advice from the, like, world's foremost expert on the Hunger Games!"

Worth mentioning: she still had absolutely no idea what she was going to say.