Merry Ratmas, Thundy <3

70
She walks in at midnight to find him slumped over at the Gamemaker's desk, the triple-monitor setup scrolling through data. Editorials, disparaging them for decisions made over months and weeks. Betting, odds - Warren's favorite - in shambles, Noah Bowers' and Maya Xiaoqing's faces set staggering in grayscale. Junior Gamemakers brown-nosing their way through the crowd, media feeds detailing how they could have done the job better, how they could have killed someone else, someone with less opportunity.

How it was a mistake, one that Whip and Garnet should pay for.

"They just want to get ahead," she says, taking the seat beside Warren. She swivels in her chair, and he looks at her out of the corner of his eye and nods, still focused on the data, mapping the schematics.

It's silent, for a while. Just the clatter of fingers on keyboards, a simulation run three more times, a retrospective soon shared over two plates of food: chicken nuggets with as many dipping sauces as they can carry, fries crispy and light - perfectly salted. She pours him some rose, generous and sweet. He makes her laugh, even as the pop-ups continue to appear on the screen; one-offs threatening their demise. She gets a text from Xenia that their bodyguards are on standby, should anything happen.

"Were we wrong?" she asks as the sky begins to lighten, taking another sip of her drink. Her words are a volume left skimmed, paragraphs left in the spaces. Warren dips a nugget in ketchup and takes a bite.

"No," he says, "It'll all work out."

She nods, and as the first assistants begin to enter the control room, she places her bet.

75
For a Moreno, Anise thinks, Kyros seems awfully sure that he won't make it out of here. Between the slurred speech and the look in his eyes, it's as if he's already planned on letting the waves wash over him, drifting into oblivion with the soft boom of a cannon.

He asks her if anyone will remember them - Gabrielle, District Four, answers instead, taking a long sip of her scotch. "No, but isn't that the point?" Eden Turner, VIctor's daughter, sits besides them, her first taste of wine resting on her lips, nodding with the sounds.

"Is it?" She asks, resting her hands on the mug. It's not, not if Anise has anything to say about it. But she admits the despair has settled, resting just underneath her skin. It lies in wait, a choice made with the weight of the world on their shoulders. "If we're just here to die, you would think we'd have chosen a quicker method."

They knew the price of stepping forward, but they're all here for a reason. Whether it be to meet their demise head on, to step out of their mother's shadow, or to buoy their own. She rubs her thumb against the coarse clay of her mug, the cranberry vodka sharp, a sin against the precision.

Their night is spent in silent commiseration, a morose ubiquity slowly turning to something else: solidarity. She pours Kyros a generous glass of wine - clear and bubbling, as he laughs at a quip that Eden mutters under her breath, one that makes Gabrielle smirk.

"Kyros," she asks, his attention gained slowly amid the turbulence of the crowds below, the cars honking and the hovercrafts causing her hair to whip into her face. He nods as she removes the strands from her mouth.

"Do you want to be remembered?"

He pauses for a while, sips numbly at his drink. She pours herself a glass as the minutes tick by, the liquid like nothing she has ever tasted before. A tang, a sweetness at the tip of her tongue, a bitterness at the back of her throat. Melancholy, bottled and sold.

"I dunno."

"That's alright", she thinks, and pours him more wine. I'm sure you will be.

77
"What's with you? Come out of the closet."

“Uh, no. I’m hiding.”

"From what? Nothing's gonna murder you today. Is an escort all up in your butt or something?"

She stands outside of the broom closet with her haul slung haphazardly around her shoulder: bags of chips, more flavors than she's ever seen in her life. Bottles of sweet cider, individual portions of potent wine, of cocktails mixed and stored for later. An entire basket of baked goods. She was planning on sharing it with Bruce, but the shaky mess between herself and the door seems like he needs something too.

Eventually, the door creaks open and she wedges herself inside, sitting next to the boy, slumped over like a bag of potatoes. She raises both eyebrows, a sly grin on her face

"I've got things to do Moreno, and this food's not gonna eat itself."

He acquiesces: his training score, abysmal, fantastically abysmal and she snorts when she hears the number. She'd seen it last night, when the scores were broadcast across the district - but she was more focused on the average Six that had been plastered next to her name. Six, for her display of prowess and ambition? Those Gamemakers didn't know gold from their own shit.

Ezen goes on, his fears turning towards home, towards the future that seems to be spelling out his doom in blood-red letters. And while Alice's had it rough, it's a different kind of fuckery than a Moreno's lifespan: trained to fight, trained to die, It's all so melodramatic - especially given their amazing track record. Even in the worst of times, when her siblings looked down on her, high and mighty from their thrones, she knew that even on a shallow level, they had cared.

The silence is punctuating. She cracks open a cider, the fizz stark. "I think you need this more than me." They pass it back and forth ("What? You afraid of cooties, Moreno?"), the flavor singing of frugality. She supposes that even the Capitol has price points.

"Real talk, though - your family can go fuck themselves. Are they the ones out here, fighting for their lives?" She takes another swig.

"No, so fuck 'em. They don't matter, you do."

He asks her about home and she tells him, ale making her more forthcoming than usual - "We were the kings of three, Moreno. Then someone up and shot my dad, and all of that king of just... faded." - "Cleo was such a bitch, but she didn't deserve to go like that, you know?

"Ava's the baby, and the only one who I really talk to anymore - but she didn't show up when I got reaped. It was fine, though, and kinda fun in its own way. Being alone in a really fancy government room lets you smash all the good shit to smithereens."

Silence falls, she passes Ezen the basket of baked goods, opens a whiskey sour.

"I think we're all scared, Moreno. I mean, not as much as you 'cause imma go in there and destroy everyone and everything, but nobody's having a cakewalk."

She thwacks him on the shoulder, with gusto.

"Say the word though, and I'll punch whoever you're afraid of in the throat, m'kay?"

80
They're two drunkards in a field of grapes. She can feel the skies turning upside-down and rightside-up, a tsunami that makes waves in her stomach. She'd like to throw up, but there's nothing to wash down the taste of vomit that would be left in her mouth.

The two of them lie there for what seems like hours, the miasma of a hangover, of an attack that leaves them stumbling, lingering in their bloodstream. She can't imagine feeling any worse - it's poison leeching into her system. Eve makes little noise, for a moment Bette worries that she's died - but there's no cannon-fire accompanying her silence.

As Wander and Temple frolic through the rows, the feeling begins to subside. First by increments as small as a pebble. Then, with a flourish, it washes off like a bucket of water. Slowly, she works herself up to a sitting position. Temple asks for the jar of blood, Bette provides. A bird stares at her, and she welcomes it to join her. It does.

She looks to her left. "How are you feeling?"

Eve still lies there, small and sunken. Bette crawls over, helping her move into a more comfortable position: lying on the side, her arms and legs locked, her airway clear. She fixes Eve's hair, combs the knots out with her fingers. She drapes the rainbow flag over her, a blanket to keep out the slight breeze, wafting through the grapevines, heavy with syrup.

"Just breathe, if you need to throw up that's okay," she says. Bette's bird hops along Eve's frame, nestling near her arm. She wears part of Bette's uniform, a quarter of the pearl necklace around her neck. She peeps twice, then curls up for a nap.

As the sun sets, Wander and Temple return to roost, the vineyard walls taller when the shadows come forth. But Bette still sits, keeping watch as the symptoms fade.

C//W
She compromises with him at the food stall: they get a large bucket of nuggets, 12 dipping sauces hanging in accessible pouches on the rim. But she also gets them vegetables: pickled radish and carrots, chopped into fries; a hearty salad, with delicate leaves and savory pine nuts; pressed juice, pomegranate and beet, pear and nectarine. They feast on their collection at a small table.

Charlie brushes the hair out of her face. It's a vibrant silver, coiled and curled - Xenia got her the latest in AR technology, and it shows in the freckles dotted across her skin, now a light lavender hue. Her nose is adjusted ever so slightly, that one would think it's fake. She finds it ironic - so many years were spent under her mother's thumb, wearing whatever someone else had deemed appropriate. Now, she finds her way back here again, a facade encased with technicolor.

"How's your project going?" She asks, biting down on a radish. She knows there's no project, knows that most of the time Warren Whip locks himself in his room to drink instead. But it's a dance they've had for a time now, and she will not be the first to toe out of line. He answers vaguely - deliverables have been changed, timetables are extended. Charlie just nods. She fills the space with specifics - how the algorithms for sunrises have changed over the years, how her Loch Ness monsters are doing ("What if I named one Warren. How would that make you feel. Would Whip be any better."). She keeps away from general games talk, from betting and odds and tributes; saying something wrong might be worse than saying nothing at all.

"Chair Swings?"

They haven't hung out in a while; gamemaking is difficult at best, a nightmare at worse, and even though they now live in the same 6,000 square feet, when she comes home - whether it's by herself; or with Xenia reading off of a tablet; or with someone who kisses her gently, brushes the hair out of their face - it's to an empty living room, a bedroom door shut. She's stopped asking for rent. It's easier that way.

The air is cool on her face. She looks at Warren, and hopes he's enjoying himself. Even if he's not, even if he's thoroughly and deeply unhappy. If, even for a moment, he's not as bad, she figures it must be worth something.