you should see me in a crown . octavia's coronation

[cass]

O C T A V I A

She’d asked Victor to bring it along with him to her coronation as mayor. They may as well all start calling her Queen Octavia, she was in charge now and they’d all be falling at the steps in front of her feet. Oh, how excited she was to shove her heels in their faces and walk all over their crumpled bodies as she climbed higher and higher.

District Two was going to rise she was going to make sure of it. She had plans, so many exciting plans. First, she’d start pushing drugs further and further into the grotesque slums of district two. Use it as both a reason to kill off the weak as well as have them removed permanently.

Next was opening the Peacekeeper's pockets, wrapping them tighter and tighter around her thumb until they begged for her to tell them what to do.

Creating a strong and unbeatable district was what they all needed. Octavia’s heels clacked against the paving of the district square. A hand slid the crown onto her head with careful precision as she approached the microphone.

“People of District Two,” she began, eyes roaming the grown with barely contained greed. “You have chosen correctly. It is time-“ she pulls the microphone free, stepping to the edge of the platform as she raises an arm. “It is time for our district to be the gods and goddesses of Panem and crush the weak.”

She pauses, a grin forming on perfectly cared for teeth, flashing with contempt as her gaze flickers to Mathew- her victory had never been in question.

“We will make our district strong again, we will forge the greatest victors the Capitol has ever seen. We must work harder, train our children to be stronger and faster and more brutal. Weakness will no longer be tolerated- we will stand and conquer together.”

And Octavia will be the queen that rules them all.

S T R A U S S

kaitlin

[gamemaker kelsier]

f i n n .

"i was
alone
anyways"

District Two was going to fall.

Finn stood beside his siblings in a neat little row by the stage. Octavia could paint them however she pleased, strong, obedient careers, whatever. In the end, they were what they were. Orphans, a woman like Octavia was no mother no matter how nicely she'd painted herself.

She was going to eat Two alive and Finn had played a part in helping her get there. He looked over the crowd as his 'mother' spoke to them. They seemed to be eating out of the palm of her hand. That same general moroseness fell over Finn and he sighed. In the end, there was nothing that he could do. Finn was a pawn and he knew it, better than Meredith ever did. She'd never seemed to accept that.

The idea of rebelling seemed really nice but in the end, he was happier alive than dead. Even as mayor, Finn was certain that Octavia would have no issue getting rid of him. There was a mound of overturned dirt out in the woods somewhere just waiting for him.

So he smiled and applauded the apocalypse in Two as it fell into place before their very eyes, survivor's guilt already starting to eat away at him. Oh well, add it to the pile. All he had to do was look nice for the cameras, right?

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

Declan thinks he's going to be sick.

There are reporters all over the place, and he already knows that at some point or another one of them is going to try and talk to him and the last time he tried to dodge a reporter Octavia had threatened to choke Izzy to death. He wishes that she would just threaten to kill him instead, but she knows better than that by now. Declan has only barely valued his own life for years.

Worse, she could figure out that he's so horribly torn between wanting to outlive this games and go on to be an adult and find a way to stop the Strauss siblings from ever being able to adopt another child ever again and wanting to be the one put into the ring this time because that means he can just let himself die and have all of this over with and—

A camera flashes and he comes back to himself.

Octavia's speech is horrible, a gaudy show that makes Declan want to vomit all over the stage just to make it stop, but he won't. He has to come up with an answer to whatever question a reporter is going to throw his way. What do you think about Octavia winning? someone will probably ask. I think she's a piece of shit, is his instinctual response when it comes to his opinion on her, his opinion on any of the goddamned Strauss siblings really, but he can’t say that and he knows it.

He inhales, and finds his smile.

It doesn't touch his eyes.

[✨ zozo.]

For the most part, Ruth had done everything in her power to stay out of Octavia's way. She wasn't about to change that - especially not now.

So she made herself small in her crowd of 'siblings', not a hard feat to do. She kept her wild hair pulled back, her head bowed down, her shoulders hunched and let the constant drum of fatigue lower her energy levels. From the moment she had realised Octavia and Victor had no intention of doting on their daughter she had learned to make herself quiet. To blend in with the wallpaper. To go about her day worrying instead of speaking, sitting in the shadows, curling herself up underneath her bed sheets and not making a sound. At the orphanage Ruth had done her best to stand out. Here, she knew all too well what happened to kids who showed weakness.

(Her cheek still held a whisper of a memory, how her skin had stung from the first and only time she'd tried to hug her new mother, and it took everything in her power not to subconsciously raise her hand to touch the now-healed flesh on the left side of her face.)

She never even got to see Meredith's body. Buried in the back yard, she assumed, next to all the dead kids. Ruth hoped that the girl was at peace, that the closest soul she'd had to a friend wasn't rolling in her grave at the sound of Mayor Strauss.

"We must work harder, train our children to be stronger and faster and more brutal. Weakness will no longer be tolerated- we will stand and conquer together."

Ruth wasn't so sure if she wanted to survive if it meant standing alongside this wickedly vile woman.