hound and i / parker and maryn

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

maryn hale ;

Only hours after her etiquette lesson with Sierra, Maryn is standing just outside of Parker Lachlan's quarters, balancing a charcuterie board with one hand and grasping a wine bottle and two glasses with the other. Looking at her in the glow of the hallway lights, there's no telltale signs of the events that have just transpired. The blood has been scrubbed clean from her skin, she's wearing clothes fit for an evening of fine dining, and the smile on her burgundy lips is like a blade hiding in a bouquet of flowers — thorns are not enough for Maryn Hale. They have never been.

She wants steel. Knife in the windpipe.

Kicking one of her stiletto heels against the door incessantly, she wastes no time stepping across the threshold when Parker finally greets her. Silently, and with purpose, she goes about laying the scene for the conversation. She places the refreshments on the dresser, spreading out the charcuterie board on the tribute's bed, kicking off her shoes, and then scoffing. "Ah, so this is why you always look so miserable." She takes in the interior of the space, frowning sourly and grabbing the bedside remote to start playing a hologram of a luxury restaurant on the walls. The candles add a little cheer to the room.

Pouring two glasses, one for herself and the early frontrunner herself, she doesn't see the harm in it. Really, it's perfectly traditional. When the rats play their little insignificant part, they get their piece of cheese. And here she is with limitless options, perching on the edge of the satin sheets and nodding to the space opposite of her, extending the wine to Parker. "I feel like it's been a long day for the both of us. So many problems to solve." Beat; she smirks like the movement can cut. "You included.

Then she sighs, reminding herself that she has not come here for carnage — at least not yet. "That aside, allow me to be blunt. I've here to discuss business." She goes about making herself more comfortable, all in the hopes of putting the other girl more on edge. As much as she loves having power over people as a given, there's something about demanding respect from other powerful individuals that has always thrilled her. She knows it's not a fair match — drop a mountain in the way of Maryn's goals, and she'll see it torn apart — but she cannot deny there's a sense of familiarity to the whole thing.

It feels as nostalgic as it does foreboding.

"Come. Break bread with your host."

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

parker lachlan;

Maryn Hale walks through the door like she owns the place, and you have to give it to her, she sort of does.

You're not above admitting that you're surprised. You knew they might be pissed about the private show you put on that involved planting landmines in their precious center. You knew that they might like the creativity, the dare, the gall. Gamemakers are hard to read that way. Sometimes they're in it for the show, and sometimes they like to play things by the book.

By the book says you end up with lashes on the back of your hands and slices across the back of your ankles right before you go in the arena. By the book would mean ensuring you die day two in a tragic mutt fight gone unexpectedly.

"Ah, so this is why you always look so miserable."

"That's just my face."

By the books is not Maryn Hale kicking down your door in stilettos and offering you a glass of wine.

She kicks off her shoes in that way you've seen girls do after parties, curled up on the bed in their wrinkled, wine-stained dresses. Those girls didn't have the same bite that Maryn does, but it's a little sliver of familiarity that your brain scrambles to grab purchase on. Anything to make sense of this, to make it smaller and easier to swallow without blinking.

You take the glass.

She monologues, just a bit. She's speaking as concisely, you think, as she knows how. The drama is a part of it all. You bite the inside of your cheek slowly, suck both of them in and make yourself look even more ghoulish in the process. Your head tilts of its own accord, so many questions that you know are going to go unanswered.

Sip, feel nails in your other palm, swallow.

"Hm," mouth flat. You step towards your bed that she has claimed, rightfully, as hers. Slinking forward, you make yourself comfortable, pull your legs up under yourself and press your back against the wall behind the bed. You feel better when it's not exposed. Methodically, you reach forward, put a piece of cured meat on a cracker and plop it into your mouth.

Chew, stare directly at Maryn, swallow.

You refuse to flinch.

"Breads broken," you say. "I'm listening."

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

maryn hale ;

Parker stares her death in the eye, gazing down the barrel of a loaded gun — and she gives nothing away. No joy, no grief, just pale and blue and cold. Fleeting glimpses of a snowbird flying through the trees. She's an orphan in the winter, hungry and shivering, and above all else, still alive. There's something compelling about a person who doesn't know how to stop fighting. A dog gnawing on the bones of a picked clean carcass. A heart still beating on the dissection table.

The tribute from Four is all of these things, and then.

And then.

That's the it factor that keeps drawing Maryn in — that thread of likeness that seems to connect them like a tether. She tilts her head to the side, more than willing to smile wide enough for the both of them, extending her glass to cheers the inevitable. What's a little god to a big one? To be a powerful woman is to become mythos. They regard each other evenly. "I want you to kill Celeste Brere." Gunshot in the middle of the day, in a crowded restaurant, she says the request like it's nothing at all.

Like it's the easiest thing she's ever said.

"You're a grand cast of characters this Games. So many big aspirations in such tiny bodies." As she speaks, she seems to sneer around the words, unflinching as she holds Parker's gaze. "But that's the fun part for me, you know? Give an artist her reason." She's vague in the way a politician is — as obvious as a dancer giving what could be her final performance. The world has tasked her to purge the unworthy, and she has no qualms with this. She knows no demons worth fearing.

"The problem with the girl from Eleven, you see, is that I can't touch her." Her teeth break a cracker trough the middle, swallowing the bite smoothly. "Or, I should clarify, I refuse to be involved her." Her mind flashes back to the traitor's private session, the badge glaring up at them on the training room floor, the rage building inside of her even now. All of these hours later. Hades said it plainly, that he refused to have another Cecily Deerling, and she couldn't agree more.

She wouldn't humor the thought of it.

"She's a declared rebel, and unfortunately for her and I, the concept of the rebellion doesn't really exist to me." It sounds a little ridiculous, speaking as if she has the power to just a erase a thing, and yet here she is. Drinking wine with a lesser devil, looking for a hound to see to the dirty work that she can't be troubled with. "I can't deal with her myself because I can't interact with it. She's a statistic only good for collecting dust in the archives. Nothing more."

Maryn leans closer, dares a biting animal to snap at her.

"I'm looking at someone who can make that a reality for me."

This is not a choice, but she phrases it beautifully. There is always a viper hiding beneath the rose. Every metaphor ends the same way.

"And, oh, the reality I could give you in return."

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

parker lachlan;

Maryn Hale behaves as though she's a drama star.

There's an involuntariness to it though that you don't want to make light of, a sort of sanguine litheness to each of her words and sentences that would enrapture lesser minds. Even you have a hard time not letting yourself get taken aback by the frankness of the woman, the ways in which she both puts everything on the table, and then decorates it with roses and tiny white chocolates.

In her own rights, you have to give it to her again, she is a star, or she is soon to be one, and this kind of personality is probably half of the reason that she's able to sit in front of you now. From her mind has sprung an arena, and sitting in front of you telling you that you're going to kill Celeste Brere first, you can see why she's a star.

More impressive, you can see why she's a gamemaker.

People across the Capitol and Panem are going to know her name, if they don't already. Her words are pearl handle daggers, delivered deftly and unabashedly. She seems to you, like a woman addicted to control; as far as addictions go, you suppose there could be worse. Her behavior is as such because she has crafted for herself a world in which she can behave however goddamned well she pleases, and the camera never stops rolling, baby.

The thing is, you've always found watching television excellent practice for being dead.

She wants you to kill Celeste. Everything else was fodder.

You can't help but wonder, eyebrows raised in faux disinterested caution, what she would do to you if you said no. You don't have an interest in doing so, except maybe to see what would happen, but that's not much your style even if it would get you more information.

"You know," you say, mouth an intentional flat line. "It would've done you better to not offer me better realities. I would've made me ask for them."

Now you smile, thin lipped.

"Now I'm listening."

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

maryn hale ;

"It would've done you better to not offer me better realities."

"Would it have?"

For every dagger hiding up Parker Lachlan's sleeves, Maryn Hale has a sword to match it. She smiles in the face of indifference, flicking crumbs onto the tribute's sheets — like nothing about this space is meant to feel safe or clean or even real. They both know this is temporary. The images on the wall play on a loop, candles burning and never going out, people having the same conversation over and over with glasses of wine that never run empty. If she stares long enough, the younger girl might just catch the metaphor being told all around them.

But Maryn only snickers, placing her drink on the bedside table and folding her hands on her lap, all too willing to give Parker the business deal she's been hoping for. The devil reaches out, and the souls throw themselves into her embrace like flies to honey. The fire consumes them all the same. "I think you mistake me, sweetling." Her tone shifts, black ice collecting on a dark road. This is a kindness. The sharpness of it shouldn't take away from the truth. A gunshot to the knee instead of the face is a mercy. Women like her only miss by choice.

"This is the better reality. You killing a rebel, winning my favor." She leans forward like a reaper over a casket, staring down at a thing that is inevitably fated to die. Her face remains still, no joy or sadness or much of anything to be read across her features. This is their game of roulette. Except she's the only one allowed to hold the gun, and Parker's temple is the only place the barrel will ever rest. None of this is fair. It will never be fair. For as useful as she might become, this tribute is still a prisoner. Maryn is the fucking warden.

"It's either that, or I erase you from history as soon as the gong sounds. There's your one alternative." Staring down the edge of a blade, she holds all of the power, and she reaches for more. When she chooses to strike, she will always take the head. "The only question you need to ask yourself is this: do you want to be the rat or the rat catcher?" Her wolfish grin returns like the snap of a mouse trap, jaws closing around something that will never be allowed to escape her.

And the candles keep burning, and the wine keeps flowing,

and she keeps smiling.