where the pines sing true ; seven train

He'd waited some time in his quarters, even after Jacquelyn summoned him.

Lex and Angel.

Diane and Zion.

Hanaa and Alphabet.

Sapphire and Vargen.

The list of people he hadn't been able to save grew longer with time. Part of him was unwilling to add anything more to it. Let Jacinta take the reins: she'd clearly been good at it once, as by some miracle she'd gotten Mackenzie out with a pulse. Which was ironic in at least some respects, saving someone and then falling for them, only for them to hurt you. He guessed he couldn't blame her for not wanting to care anymore, either. She was just much better at it. Mackenzie lacked follow through.

He sipped the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash, pulled the fur of his coat closer to his neck while dragging from one car to the next, until he came to a rest at the last car in the lineup. It was surrounded on all sides by windows, the forest around them rushing by in a green blur just outside. There was a long that wrapped itself all the way around, adorned with plush pillows and throw blankets, but instead of sitting on that, he took a seat on the footrest so that he could face both of his tributes at once.

The boy was small and furious, red and reluctant. Good, Mackenzie thought, the anger would be good fuel in the days to come. And the girl clearly did not fear death, for she'd signed her own ticket to meet the reaper face to face. Bravery and Anger, hand-in-hand in fundamental survival, though it wasn't quite so cut and dry and that.

"I won't lie," he said, picturing Lex mocking him every time he thought of giving them a big reassuring speech, "This is going to be hard. But you're both marketable, both have selling points I could work with." He hated treating them like objects, but it was necessary- to be successful, he had to see them in the same light the Capitol did.

"From now on, you do what's good for your brand, got it? A good brand means good sponsors, and sponsors matter more than any career status ever could." How many times had a lower district edged out the competition because they'd been gifted with a little extra armor? How many careers had suffered through poison and thirst because they couldn't get their hands on a canteen or some antivenom? Experience was not power in the arena. Power was power. And the way to get it was by doing exactly what the Capitol wanted them to do.