talon's speech | { i'm still the supreme }

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

The stage had been waxed simply for this occasion; she'd seen to it herself. The crowds seemed bored, as was typical for these sorts of things. It was predictable at this point: Talon announced that she would be running for another term, a few pissed off parents tried to avenge their children who died in the games by trying to lead a district for some reason, Talon won the election, Talon got a new addition to her office in the Justice Building. It was practically scientific.

Her entire adulthood had been spent on this stage, staring out at crowds sometimes full of fear, or excitement, or heartbreak, or boredom. Still, part of her job was to walk out on this stage and explain to them why she had always been the right choice before, and why she would continue to be the right choice for as long as she damn-well pleased.

She was still the supreme. No one got to take that from her until she held it out in her freshly manicured hand and offered it to them.

"Thank you. Thank you all," she said into the microphone, holding her hands up to silence the applauding crowd.

"It is with honor that I have been given the chance to serve you all for over a decade, and it is with  your graciousness and your belief in me that I will continue to do so in the future," she forced a smile, making a mental note to fire her speech writer as soon as she got the chance. This sounded like she was trying to win a goddamn beauty pageant.

Offhanded, she folded the papers stacked onto the podium in half, hiding the words from her view. She kept her gaze forward, her lips moving.

"The fact is that I've done a lot of work on District Nine. Green-lighting the housing projects, expanding the job market and decreasing the unemployment rate a staggering 11% in the past three years alone, starting the Feed Me initiative," To be truthful, those were only the legal things she'd done that she could name off hand. There were several others— negotiating trade deals with District Six for better medical supplies, convincing Leia to help her smuggle in a few career trainers, not to mention the others she'd smuggled in and given new identities to increase her chances of winning the last election. She hadn't needed them, of course, but she'd been so distracted then.

Hell, she was distracted now. When wasn't she?

"But, I'm not done. While gang violence has significantly decreased during my time in office, I want it completely eradicated. I want our streets to be safe again, and I will not stop until they are. Gone are the days of our citizens living in fear. Gone are the days of an honest man's earnings being taken from him by someone wearing a mask— it ends now."

Bull. Shit.

Not only was it completely impossible to erase the gangs of Nine without a firing squad and a way to explain why half the District Populous was dead, but Talon had learned that they could be quite useful to her. When they could be controlled, at least. The second someone thought they were too big to listen to her, that was when she shut them down.

There was no need to fear the darkness. Not as long as it kept her secrets.

Still, the crowd applauded. They always did.

"You ask me how I will help my District, and my answer is this: exactly what I have been doing all the while and more. You wanted more jobs, you wanted better homes, you wanted food in your stomachs. I delivered."

A bit self-absorbed, but true nonetheless.

"You want your safety? Let me give it to you, District Nine."

They were standing now, clapping and whistling. This was her dominion, the source of her power. She let it consume her until the room was silenced again by her steady hands raising themselves into the air.

"I am Talon Irvine: the face you know, and the name you trust. And it is with you that I will leave this District better than it was when it was handed to me."