don't let the ever-rolling motion go and get you down [a+b]

Samiyuq is familiar with long games. The slow march of war saw to that—long stretches between bursts of violence, weeks raising a litter of bats toward a single explosive night, months hir outpost spent making the Capitol choke them by inches—and it's been a lonely and frustrating two years, spending hir scant free time from the farm earning the remaining Five rebels' trust by painstaking degrees. That never made it easier to go from IDing bodies for the coroners to the colony room, and it doesn't make it easier now to walk quietly away from the home surrounded by guns to a train carrying teenagers marked for execution; it only makes it easier to remember that there is a future on the other side of these things. That the war doesn't end when there are some battles that can't be won.

But sometimes, ze thinks, heart in hir throat, abandoning all pretense at stoic detachment to roll to hir feet as the tributes take hands and mill alone or in bunches and leave their swords in the sand and don't fight, and don't fight, and don't fight—sometimes those battles are worth waging anyway.

They're not the first person to call out to the audience, to give voice to this thing happening on the sands—and the crowd, though louder now, had taken no more kindly to being told I ain't performing shit for you—but the tribute now turning from the crowd to their fellows, blade in hand but held low, is the one who reminds hir of Iphigenia. In some ways, when ze never knew the one and will in all likelihood never know the other, the comparison feels inexplicable; in others, it feels inevitable: a teenager standing firm amidst booing, voice audibly unused to projecting on this scale but words steady. They're not the same person, and perhaps that's for the best. Iphigenia asked for the wrong thing; the idea of a fair victory here would be laughable if it wasn't tragic. But ze admired—still admires—her conviction. It mattered that Iphigenia believed in people enough to try, in the same way it mattered that she cut her cape into a makeshift hijab, that Antigone said we have to do this the right way and Persephone and Samiyuq agreed, that this colosseum has heard languages Panem wants dead—the way it matters every time a person looks at power bearing down on them and says, you can't take this. The way it matters, a year later, that a tribute is leading a rallying cry, and more of them are listening.

The Capitol's powers that be won't let themselves be upstaged by children; whether they're held here until twenty-three of them starve or the Peacekeepers open fire, only one person will walk off those sands. And they know it, or at least Rimaq^[1] does—all we are doing is delaying the inevitable. But it matters that they're trying. That not a single tribute has given in to what looked inevitable, and more are raising their voices: Frick you. (The corner of a sad smile pulls at hir face for a heartbeat, vanishing before it solidifies, as ze recognizes Mohamed from the Square.) If you want bloodshed, put in some work. We're still here.

It's not Iphigenia's call for peace, or even the smattering of tributes three years ago trying to convince each other that they didn't have to fight; it's closer to Emmi's how dare you to the spectators, a moment mangled and disparaged in replays but a moment the Capitol has only treated that way because she made sure it had power.

Not peace; resistance.

They're still here.

Eyes on the tributes and the Peacekeepers, waiting for the other shoe to drop with deadly force, Samiyuq spares little enough thought to the civilians in the stands that ze thinks the first hot dog is a fluke. An appalling, childish fluke from a Capitolite who thinks children refusing to be party to their own collective execution is something between a hockey match and a bad play, but a fluke nevertheless—until something else splashes across another tribute, and then the idea catches on.

The peacekeepers let it happen. Samiyuq wants to deck each of them in turn; instead ze reaches out to wrench the arm of a neighbor reeling back with a funnel cake. Powdered sugar bursts across them both as the Capitolite yelps, more surprised than pained, and the pastry slaps down to the marble floor. "The hell do you think you're doing?"

It should be laughable, two grown adults squabbling over fair food.

It's not.

"Just having some fun, geez," they mutter, but they sit back, already waving at the nearest vendor for a replacement. Like it's really just about the funnel cake, to them. Like it's really that little in their life.

Not done bristling but unwilling to give them any more of hir time, Samiyuq turns back to the tributes in time to see the other shoe drop.

"Aka,"^[2] ze breathes, a punch to the stomach given shape. "Aka."

There are things Samiyuq will never forgive hirself for, because they will never be Samiyuq's to forgive. Nemesis-Cassiel was home to most of them. Ze accepted before ze joined the rebellion that ze wouldn't walk away with clean hands no matter what ze wanted, and neither the sleepless mornings huddle around casualty reports nor the piping voices of bats welcoming their future killer back into the crèche ever let hir forget it. That these things were means to ends and not ends in themselves, that the civilians were collateral and the bats were a tool and the measures were taken out of desperation, didn't make any of their deaths any kinder. But hell, at least the cruelty wasn't the point. And ze would do all of it again, facing forward with steady hands, for a chance at a world where zoo animals aren't tools to torture kids for the crime of not wanting to murder each other.

Someone in the stands with hir whoops.

Effective action depends on choosing the right time and place. Stadium seating full of bloodthirsty strangers and white-coated guns is neither, and Samiyuq is familiar with long games. But there are children and a lion hacking pieces off each other in front of hir, and Samiyuq isn't thinking of Capitolites or guns or slow wars, isn't thinking of much in particular at all, when ze twists to put the full weight of hir body behind elbowing the asshole in the temple.

In the elongated moment it takes for the cheer to cut off and the toppling Capitolite to catch themself on the person in front of them, ze remembers to think and clenches hir jaw, less in fear of the guns around hir—with so few to show off there is still a measure of protection in victorhood—than in fear of the guns back in Five. What's done is done, though, and all ze can do in the moment is figure out where to go from here—a task in itself, with the crowd roiling and nothing ze can do for anyone on the sands. This isn't a battlefield where ze can fire and hope the other side runs out of bullets first.

Not for the first time this afternoon, but for the first time since hir eyes locked on the sands at that first loud shout from Mario, Samiyuq looks through the mess of fabric and noise to Adder, hair now drenched, and Babe a few columns down on her other side. They've never had the chance to exchange more than locked eyes, and these days Samiyuq is less inclined than ever to trust strangers; but there's something to be said for shared experience, even with strangers, and the three of them share parts of this travesty with no one else. It's a relief, even before ze identifies the green dripping off Adder and laughs dryly as ze puts together what must have happened there, to see them.

At least none of them are quite here alone.



title song is "Bilgewater" by Brown Bird.

[1] Speaker.
[2] Shit.