prelude to {apocalypse} // minerva/killian

It had been almost a year now.

She'd been in Five at the time, assisting a small pocket of resistance fighters in a smuggling operation. This one had been particularly delicate - a shipment of explosives designed by scientists in Thirteen specially manufactured to take out each any every power plant that operated within the district. Once she had confirmed that the explosives would not put innocents in harm's way and that their sole function was to disable the structures, she had signed on.

After all, someone needed to do the dirty work if it came down to it, and she was no stranger to dirty work.

The operation had gone without a hitch, the crates had been successfully delivered to the hideout, and she had been making preparations to slip away into the night when a single sentence had floated past her ears.

"Dude, did you hear that Killian's made a reappearance?"

She had turned her head in surprise towards the speaker, a youthful red-headed boy of about nineteen, at the mention of the name. "Did you just say that Killian of all people has been seen?" she'd asked dubiously.

"Yeah, one of our guys in Eleven reported that someone fitting his description showed up at a bar there a couple evenings back." the boy had replied, excitement shining in his eyes.

"Is he sure?" she pressed, still not quite believing it.

"Completely. Our guy said he'd spoken his name and everything." The boy was grinning now.

Interesting, she'd thought in response. Killian was known for his ability to slip in the shadows at will, making it so that allies and enemies alike never quite knew where he was at any given time.

To have so blatantly revealed himself in a district bar could only mean one thing.

How very interesting indeed.

That night, she'd set off on the long, arduous trek towards Eleven.

***

Perhaps it had been fate that she had arrived in Eleven the evening after their last representative had been eliminated from the Hunger Games. Or perhaps it had been sheer coincidence.

Whatever the case, the entrance to the agriculture district had been largely unguarded, the majority of the Peacekeeping force no doubt scouring the streets for any signs of unrest. She'd taken out the two standing guard with minimal effort, suffocating one into unconsciousness and dropping the second with a well placed punch to the jaw.

She'd left a few empty bottles of alcohol by their limp forms just in case someone happened to stumble upon them before they regained consciousness.

She hadn't been to Eleven in years, well before Katelyn Persimmon had claimed her improbable victory and lead two tributes to equally improbable victories in the following years, but little had changed in the interior, with the town itself still featuring its modest dwellings and same twisting pathways.

And if rumors held true, and Killian really still was out and about again, she knew exactly where he would be.

Slowly, surely, she made her way into the heart of the District. The streets were mostly abandoned, the sane folk having gone to bed for the evening and the more adventurous paying her little mind as they passed each other.

As she drew nearer towards her destination, she made a quick detour to stash her weapons and supplies in an abandoned dwelling. Somehow, she thought to herself, no matter what the mood at her destination was, she figured that more than a few people would give her unwanted attention if she walked in with a sword at her waist and a gun on her back.

Finally, she arrived at her destination. The bar looked old and worn down, sporting little in the way of change since she had last seen it.

She couldn't help but chuckle at the realization.

Even now, years later, some things never did change, whether they be person or building.

With that thought bubbling inside her skull, she pulled her hood over her head and made her way inside.

***

Even after several years, Killian was not difficult to spot for those specifically looking for him.

She spotted him sitting at the counter, a glass of something unrecognizable sitting in front of him. His goatee was speckled with patches of gray that hadn't been there before, his stance looked a little more worn out than she remembered, but there was no mistaking.

The grin returned to her face as she made her way over to him, eyes focused squarely on the side of his head. Pulling back the seat directly to his right, she slid into it smoothly and silently, breaking her gaze away from him and focusing it directly in front of her.

She waited for perhaps ten seconds before she moved, turning her head to once again face him.

"It's been a while, Killian." The tone is light and airy, teasing, almost, as if they were merely old friends meeting in a bar after an extended period of separation.

Which, she thought, it was, in a sense. If you took out the whole resistance fighter aspect of each of them, anyway.