Oleander May [Peacekeeper | District Eight]

Oleander May -- twenty-four -- Male -- District Eight -- Peacekeeper

"I would never," Alina says from the ground. She's crying, but quietly, her eyes clear behind the tears; you can't tell whether she expects someone to listen, or whether this is the desperate calm of someone watching their life crumble and realizing they've run out of options. "You know I couldn't, May, you know me."

I know you hated him, you almost say, but the captain ignores her and you gratefully take his cue. "Luna found the gun in a hidden compartment in her desk," you say instead. "There were no fingerprints, but they're checking the ballistics upstairs."

"Doesn't sound like there's much doubt. Tell Luna she pulled a miracle out of her ass, I thought we'd be picking at this one for months."

You exchange pleasantries and turn to go. When you're almost at the door, he calls back out: "May? Start finding out where she got it."

You nod your understanding—if someone is dealing weapons in the district, you need to know yesterday—and leave without another glance at Alina.

---

"This way you'll know I'm safe," you try.

"We'll know no such thing."

"Housed, then. Fed." You clasp your father's hands. "We can't afford to keep me here and you don't need my help with the sheep anymore." They don't even have the sheep to keep them company anymore, though they do still have Mick, for as long as the stubborn old dog hangs on. "And I—"

"Family belongs together," your father insists, at the same time your mother cuts in with "How can you want to work for the Capitol?"

That, finally, makes you drop your eyes. At the end of the day, even the Peacekeepers people like to call good—the ones who make friends with citizens and avert their gaze from petty crimes—are gears in a machine built to hurt people. Even if they station you in the Capitol, where you never have to arrest one of your own people, you'll eat stolen food and rest in luxury built on suffering. You don't want any part in it. But you already boxed yourself in.

"The papers are signed," you say. "I have a few weeks. Let's have a normal weekend for now. Please."

They agree to talk later, but when they hug you, it already feels like saying goodbye.

---

Unsurprisingly, no one wants to talk to you. You go out of uniform, but Peacekeepers—especially those people remember as a child—are too well-known for that to make a difference. They invite you in, say exactly as little as they can get away with, and do their best to hide their relief when you see yourself out.

You go back to Alina.

She hesitates at first, clearly expecting you to push her for her own statement after all, but relaxes when she sees that interviews really do go more easily with her there. People know her, and despite all odds they trust her enough to talk even with you next to her taking notes. She won't take payment for her time—the cause is enough, she says—so you take her to dinner to say thanks; eventually, those evenings become something closer to dinner with a friend. Not quite, but almost.

Progress remains slow, but for a while, it's enough to make you believe this is more than a pipe dream.

---

Growing up on a farm wasn't, for all that your grandparents liked to fret, lonely; you had good friends at school, and you always knew your family was there for you. It was private. Sharing space with so many strangers feels harder, sometimes, than training until you drop.

Little by little, though, some of them stop being strangers. You learn who will look down their nose at you if you complain at the end of the day, and who will offer to trade chores. Gen's easy laugh—loud when you're alone, barely a breath when some thought amuses him in the middle of training—makes him your favorite. You avoid Iunia for weeks, but when she finally catches you for a conversation it's not what you expected; even the Capitol has its poor, apparently, even if by and large that means eat plainer food and don't get artificial iris implants instead of go to bed cold every night until someday you don't wake up. Libi is from District Ten, too far for you to find pieces of home in one another but close enough to reminisce together anyway.

Things still aren't ideal. Along with everything you expected—the grueling pace, the propaganda—the medics like to snap at you like it's somehow your fault you got here underweight. Once at inspection your group's inventory doesn't match the last report, and you all get chewed out about how this is why they shouldn't pull recruits from the districts, even though most of you are from the Capitol and it could have been anyone's fault. But it's not as bad as it could have been.

---

Your mother fusses at your hair like the story of your last few years might fall out of it. It tickles, but you let her be. Where you've had years to get used to the shape of your skull in the mirror, she remembers you fluffy-haired—and gaunter, and in civilian clothing. No wonder it's a shock.

Also, you might be too busy trying not to cry to complain. She looks the same—a few more wrinkles in her warm brown face, a little more grey in her long hair, but her eyes are as bright as ever and you remember this bright yellow dress. She still smells like rose perfume, the one indulgence she held on to when everything fell apart. It's your mom. It's your mom.

"Tell me you have time to stay," she says. "Your father will be home in an hour, don't go—"

"Ma, I'm staying." You hug her until she pulls away to drag you into the kitchen. "Where is he?"

"Still spinning cotton." She lights the stove under the kettle with a match and smiles shakily when you go for mugs, but have to try twice for the right cabinet. "You haven't missed much."

"I want to hear all of it."

She hums. "I still work there, too. Mella's oldest had a baby."

"No shit?" Haven't missed much, your eye.

She eyes you, but doesn't scold your language. "Linna. She calls me Auntie." That's delivered with relish, as though in any world her best friend's granddaughter wouldn't love her.

You pass the time until the kettle boils coaxing more about Linna out of her. The conversation lulls then, each of you taking sips in companionable silence, until you set your mug down and steel yourself for the question you've been putting off. "When did Mick die?"

"Wh—oh, of course you don't know." Paying no attention to your dropped jaw, she takes a deep breath. "Mick!"

Your breath catches at the click of nails on wood. After a dizzying eternity, a muzzle even greyer than you remember peeks around the corner. Mick picks up speed at the sight of you and you slide out of the chair, slamming your knees painfully on the ground in your own haste to meet him. "Holy shit, what are you, boy, sixteen?"

"We think he's dead every other morning," your mother says as he leans his considerable weight into you and rumbles like a motor. "Dumb old dog sleeps like a rock."

"Ma!"

"Don't Ma me! He's slow as molasses and nearly as deaf!" She does soften, though. "Maybe he's been holding on for you."

You do cry then, for the first time in a long time, shaking softly with your face buried in your oldest friend's shoulder. Your mother is kind enough to sip her tea and pretend not to notice.

---

"Do you think they'll let us go home?"

All four of you are squished cross-legged onto Gen's bed in the handful of stolen time between the end of the day's training and lights out. You've been watching Libi teach Gen a clapping game while Iunia reads next to you, but when you glance over the book is in her lap and she's staring sightlessly at the opposite wall. "I know we don't have any say in it," she adds, "but—is it even possible?"

"Maybe you," Libi says without rancor and without breaking the easy rhythm of her hands. "I don't think they'd really trust the rest of our loyalty." Iunia makes a strangled sound, and Libi stretches out a foot to nudge her ankle. "Chill, I know you didn't mean it like that."

"I mean, we could bribe th—" Distracted, Gen misses a clap and makes a face as Libi raises her hands victoriously. "Fuck. Okay, we're going back to cards."

You snort. "What money are any of us offering for bribes?"

"The money I'm about to win playing five-card draw, you pessimist. You in, Iunia? Lee?"

Iunia dog-ears her book and scoots forward. You stay exactly where you are and raise your eyebrows. "Lee?"

"Olly?" he tries, and shakes his head when your eyebrows go even higher. "We've known each other for years, come on. Your family doesn't do nicknames?"

That's the issue—Lee reminds you of Ilex—but you don't want to open that can of worms. "I will call you Genadi."

He grins. "When did I say I minded? Ander."

Libi laughs, which is fair—Ander is terrible. You open your mouth, then pause as you recall that "you can call me Gen" does not, in fact, entail "I hate being called Genadi."

You lean forward and hold your hand out for your cards. "Andy's fine. But only because I'm going to feel bad for you when Iunia robs you senseless."

Iunia collects her hand with exaggerated primness as Gen laughs. "It doesn't count as robbery if you tell them first."

---

The files Alina Mackay pulls from a hidden desk in her drawer are stacked neatly and arranged by date as though she's been waiting for someone to ask for them. "I don't think anything will stick," she tells you matter-of-factly, "but it's good of you to try. It's nice to know some of you care about more than pushing people around."

"Be careful saying that," you say, biting back a flash of fear for her as you tuck the last set of files into your bag. "Peacekeepers aren't your friends, Miss Mackay."

Her smile wavers and her eyes flick to the bag, so quickly that you would have missed it if you weren't trained to pick up on that kind of tell now. "Don't worry. I know who aren't my friends."

You fold the flap of your bag closed gently, like the cargo you hold now is as breakable as it is precious, and turn to face her head-on. "Will you tell me about working for him? Not today, but mixed in with the other interviews. It might help."

"Nothing will stick," she repeats with the kind of certainty you know from your parents: the kind from someone who has carried something alone for a long time and never expects to set it down. "Everything bounces off money. What doesn't... He's got connections." She bites the corner of her lower lip. "Your people."

You'd suspected as much, and hope the lack of surprise in your reaction might reassure her. "You never know."

She looks to the desk, picks up your helmet, and presses it into your hands like one more file.

"Think about it," you say, but you accept the dismissal.

---

Iunia tries to be happy for you. Neither of you talks about it; you just return her shaky smile with a sympathetic one and congratulate her on getting to stay with Libi, who is herself surprisingly relaxed about staying in District Two for someone who spent half of training complaining about the climate.

Gen knows you best, well enough to stare for a long time when you nonchalantly say you can't imagine why they're sending you back to District Eight. Well enough not to ask.

---

What you remember is this: you grew up with sheep in a modest house on land that wasn't yours but felt like only you and Ilex had ever known it. On sunny days the two of you would play tag around the herd, laughing when you startled the smallest lambs and trusting the grizzled sheepdog to keep you safe with the rest of his charges. Every spring your parents sold wool in square bales, and through the rest of the year they made soft cheese that you never got sick of eating (though Ilex did, and complained about it often). Eventually there was less and less of both as the sheep dwindled, until you left behind the remaining handful to live in a smaller house where your brother caught a cold that never went away.

What you pieced together, behind your parents' backs, is this: your parents are good with animals, and terrible with money. There was a debt, and a man who said he could fix it until the debt was to him and he could afford to stop being friendly. The whole time you and Ilex stewed in betrayed fury over being uprooted, your parents were trying to keep you from worrying about eviction notices and tense negotiations with new landlords.

The trail doesn't end there, but it passes a gate locked by richer and more powerful people than run in your circles. In the end, you can only think of one way for a destitute farm kid from District Eight to get to the other side.

You sign your soul away on a sunny afternoon two weeks after you graduate high school. The bored-looking official who takes your paperwork verifies that you've sat through your final Reaping, tells you when to come back, and goes back to unsubtly reading a book under the desk before you're even out the door.

---

Killing someone, it turns out, is easier than target practice. One bang, and you're standing alone in an office, trying to convince yourself to feel something about the blood pooling on the other side.

You do feel bad about the second murder—and murder it will be, for all that you'll be miles away. Alina deserves better than for you to kid yourself about that. You wanted to find a scapegoat you could feel a little righteous about—an actual murderer with any luck, or one of the Peacekeepers he works with. Failing that, you planned to turn yourself in, but that was before you saw the looks on your parents' faces when they saw a son in their dining room again. And Alina has the motive and opportunity, and you know exactly where she hides things.

It's not a perfect crime. You never figured out a clear explanation for how she got the gun, which is a loose end that will haunt you until they catch you or you die. No one should be looking for this one, though; it was struck from the inventory years ago, after turning half the Academy upside down turned nothing up and someone's supervisor's supervisor decided a clerical error sounded more likely than a recruit dismantling a Vektor and eating the pieces.

(Your relief went unnoticed, as did the gun, waiting quietly where you buried it on the grounds. By the time you retrieved it, the day before you left the Academy, there was less paperwork on this weapon than there would be on the second bribe to ensure your personal effects weren't searched on the way out of District Two.)

This doesn't bring Ilex back. It doesn't do much at all for your family, or most of those you've spoken with in the last few months; the debts will only change hands. All it really does is keep him from trying again with someone else.

You're going to have to believe that's worth Alina's life.




This isn't exactly done (exhibit A, Plot Device Man is never named because it took me 2200 words to name Oleander and Ilex so I am Tapped Out on naming) but I'm sick of looking at it. I know I'm a parody of myself at this point but 1. why is this so long 2. someone tell my brain that writing even more adults is not how you end up with reapable characters.

The ideal way to listen to Rabbit Will Run is by layering two tracks so that "last I saw mother, she covered my ears" in one and "last I saw mother, she rose from her chair" in the other line up. The instruments get a bit wonky, but the vocals make for a good round.