the dark storm you bring {izzy+flynn}

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

The reception they have put on for us is nauseating. It would have been bad enough at the best of times, but after months of being held inside decaying, tired buildings full of infected citizens, the gold leaf crockery and crystal chandeliers inside our carriage couldn't be more crass.

Wet tissue and dry paper towels have smeared the red stains from my upper lip, and my face is clear again, but the acidic taste of blood still stubbornly lingers in my mouth despite my best efforts to wash it away with sickly fruit juices and overly rich foods.

I find solitude at the rear of the train, an open room with a panoramic window that gives a full view of the landscape between districts.

I look back at District Six. The place where I have spent my entire life is rapidly shrinking in the distance. Just like that, everything I have know and done is reduced to a series of ugly monochrome blocks lazily sketched on a pale horizon.

I stand for a few seconds, shaking, alone in this carriage, surrounded by extravagance and plenty. It's deathly silent, until a scream erupts from my lungs, and my hands clasp around an ornate vase, which is subsequently launched with force at the wall, smashing into a thousand individual pieces.

I stand it it's ruin, panting.

[gamemaker ☢️ ivan korsch]

FLYNN GARNER
YEAR OF THE 92nd

A full month has not even gone by since the last of the symptoms were beaten away with cocktails of infusions and the most unusual of therapies. They have barely just managed to wheel me out, back into public view. The mix of lingering radiation damage and a manufactured plague has been one heavy negative reaction on my body. I didn’t even get a chance to celebrate my first and second place at the science fair!

Grief, quarantine and clinging onto life. That has been my year and now I am back on the same damn train again, ready to take the same damn journey (hopefully without the disease part).

One is the same age and now they are starting to be younger than me. My only relief is that I have no idea who either of them are but that never put a hold on the attachment before.

Here we go again.

Everyone is scattered across the carriages; the escort makes sure the warm indulgences are not going to waste. I decline an offering of mulled wine as I pass through the catering carriage. ”Do you have any idea where Kiko and Isabella are?” They just shake their head and shrug.

The back of the train is the usual solitude. Just like the floor to ceiling window on the sixth floor of the training centre. The perfect place to escape. To escape interfering mentors who want vomit advice onto tributes the minute they board the train…

Everything sounds so muffled at the back of the train, rattling carriage joints and metal scraping on the tracks beneath my feet. It would probably sound louder if both of my ears worked.

Isabella stands amongst the remnants of shattered porcelain pieces; it looks like a vase has fallen victim to her frustrations. Now do I treat her like a patient who I know has a good chance, or the fragile tribute whose odds are never favourable? This is usually where the attachment begins…

”Are you okay?” I say, moving further into the carriage and letting the door seal shut behind me. ”You can let out all of your frustrations if you want but maybe not too much. You might need some saved for when the time comes…”

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

When the time comes...

And when is that? When I am standing a breath away from another person, knives drawn, teeth bared? No, this anger is for now. For right here. I'm not going to divert or redirect it at anything or anyone. I am here, and I am furious, stood breathing heavily in the shattered remains of the vase, a wide-eyed kid standing before me and telling me how I should be behaving and what I should be feeling.

"My whole life has been taken from me." I exhale, trying to find composure underneath shaky breaths.

He's no older than me. Just a scared kid trying to act like he knows better, but in truth he's no different, he's still terrified of what comes next. Raised from obscurity to Six's golden boy, Flynn Garner stands before me, the personalisation of imposter syndrome. When he speaks, it's not with confidence, when he advises, it's without conviction.

I'm disillusioned, staring down the train tracks being swallowed by the horizon's vanishing point, everything and everyone reduced to nothing before me, being left behind, never to be seen again.

I stand in my reaping clothes, now soiled by sweat and blood, a good four inches taller than the Victor before me, and I take a step closer to him, so he would have to look up to meet my gaze.

"So no, I'm not okay."

[gamemaker ☢️ ivan korsch]

FLYNN GARNER
YEAR OF THE 92nd

Neither of this year’s tributes chose to be here, not like the idiot thirteen-year-old five years ago. Nearly half of a decade of experience but I still feel like a rookie. I have nothing to show for it, just a measly negative track record and the little kid reputation that will never shift. Even after a two-year growth spurt and a deeper voice than the tween on the old video reels.

And somehow, I still want them to take me seriously…as a doctor!

not okay.

Of course. No one with an inch of an intelligible brain, even the volunteers, would be okay right now. This is not just a train journey. Life right now, for my two mentees is just as rickety as the carriage wheels on the tracks beneath us. Derailment is not rare on this journey, is more likely to happen than not. And I am one of the very few operators trying to help it reach the right platform. The twist to all of this being that there are two engines on this train, and I meant to promise to them both that I will save them.

Isabella stands closer to me; her clothing is already stained with blood, and it is not a look that I thought I’d be seeing so soon. ”You are not injured are you?” My voice trembles with the question, the well acquainted panic slowly sets its home. I shift around the carriage, reaching out at objects that show no resemblance to the first aid items that flash in my mind. ”You need medical, you can’t show up in at the Capitol looking like that!”

[rook]

izzy rodríguez

He notes the red marks staining my pristine white reaping blouse, and the crust of crimson leading out of my left nostril like a medical student pointing out all the visible symptoms but struggling to connect the dots into one conclusive diagnosis. His innocent eyes blink, still pure even in the aftermath of his trauma - an enduring, lasting innocence.

For as long as I can remember my head has swelled under pressure, and the vessels in my nose decompress like flood gates, sending an unwelcome, unsightly amount of blood pouring from my nose.

These episodes are often ill-timed, during drugs exchanges, standoffs, moments of high emotion where I need to keep cool and project strength.

At first it was embarrassing, with rival gun-runners thinking me sickly and frail, but when I dealt with rogue buyers, put down illegal traffickers, even took care of Peacekeepers, all with blood running down my nose, they stopped mocking me and instead began to refer to me by another name.

Red.

"Why not?" I ask the boy, taking a step closer to him.

They should be used to a little blood by now, their taste for it is insatiable, infamously so. They've seen worse. They demand atrocities that supersede a bleeding nose and the crimson stained blouse of a girl from Six.

"Isn't this exactly what they want to see?"