Hey Little Songbird | [Harlow / Sofia / Yani]
Feb 11, 2022 0:22:04 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Feb 11, 2022 0:22:04 GMT -5
Lt. H a r l o w
Hey, little songbird, give me a song
I'm a busy man and I can't stay long
I got clients to call, I got orders to fill
I got walls to build, I got riots to quell
When he’d stepped off the train and down into the dirt of district eleven, Harlow couldn’t help but smile. Not because he enjoyed the heat that poured down from overhead or the smell of shit that lingered through the humid air. He’d been to district eleven several years ago on special assignment, so he was familiar enough with the garbage lower district struggling for relevance and all of its disgusting trimmings. And in spite of what he’d come to do then, it’d slipped right through his grasp, though he’d contended through no fault of his own.
Olivia had been waiting for him in the capitol upon his return. He’d delivered the pieces of the report he’d put together: the tape of Vasco Izar’s conversation with the terrorist Sampson Izar. The cameras having captured him speaking with known contacts with connections to district thirteen. That he had used illicit drugs for a half-year through a bought of depression. Enough smoke and fire that should’ve landed him for at least a light sentence in the detention center.
‘The winds have shifted.’ Olivia had been sitting across from him in her office. The petite woman had hunched forward across the desk and snarled. She’d retained her lioness’ glare even as age got the better of her. ‘The council has no interest in locking up a popular man who has kept his people from complete catastrophe.’ That eleven had done the bare minimum after Snow’s death and managed to deliver crops to the capitol proved enough for the capitol.
That, and they were a finicky bunch.
None of them had the determination that Olivia had. They were too focused on Saturn City and the Hunger Games to turn their eyes to the districts long enough to know that there were people sowing discontent. And Vasco Izar, the short little man who they saw as harmless presented perhaps one of the biggest existential threats to Panem.
What to do with a man who believed his people deserved better, who openly spoke of injustice, and who governed on empathy so rich even his people seemed blind to the fact that he was a politician above all else?
He could’ve killed him easily enough. Mayors throughout history had gone missing. In the early days there’d been at least six mayors of eleven in a two-year span. They never found two of the bodies.
But that would require a personal sacrifice; someone would question why he needed to kill a man who was likely to retire at the next election or could be defeated when they stuffed the ballot box against him. Besides, who could ever have dreamed of revolting against the capitol? Ninety years of history had blinded them to the embers that had started to burn across districts.
Harlow did not have to wait long, of course, for Vasco to fuck up all on his own.
The man simply could not help himself. Which was fair, he was deluded into thinking that his moral fortitude would spur others into action against the most powerful military might in the world.
Olivia had shown him a copy of the recording and his little speech. The idiot had thought his little crusade to disrupt the quell might serve as a spark against the capitol, as though the other mayors would be stupid enough to follow his lead. Not a one joined his announcement (though he had wished someone had, it would’ve given even more a reason for the council to send out a stronger peacekeeper force to the districts).
Ah, well.
He drove along the gravel roads in one of the trucks taken from the local peacekeeper barracks. The air conditioning had screeched when he’d tried to turn the knob, and so he’d ridden with the top down through the choking heat. When the Izar farms had come up into view, he’d almost admired what the families had managed. All the houses neatly spaced between the plots of land, that they had turned a hilled section of the district, sure to be hell to farm into something of pride.
But then he remembered they were beetles scrambled out of upturned rocks: ready to be squished underneath the heel of his boot.
He’d whistled as he closed the car door and adjusted his peacekeeper whites. How long had he been imagining bringing in Vasco for questioning? Did he have any idea that this time he could build a case against the aging mayor so that the council would have to listen? Not to mention, if he roughed up the twerp here or there, no one would have a thing to say about it?
Harlow clambered up the porch stairs and headed for the front door. He took the circular brass knocker in his hand started to bang.
Would he be surprised that Harlow was back? And he wouldn’t have all his little victor friends to lean on now that they were in the capitol.
He heard shuffling behind the door, but the knob didn’t turn.
“Hello.” Harlow grinned with the distinct feeling he was being watch. “I’m here for Mayor Izar. I have a few questions for him. I just want to talk.”
“Sofia…” Yani stood at the foot of the stairs. She could feel her voice stuck at the back of her throat staring out the window at the man dressed in white asking for her father. She knew well enough that peacekeepers never came to ‘talk’ to anyone. In the day since the reaping, she could feel a sinking suspicion of some terrible monster creeping through the shadows. One that hurt worse than one of their names being pulled from the bowl.
Something that would come to tear all of them to shreds, if they didn’t take care.
