when winter sings | {talon}

[dars]

She sat behind her desk as if it were a throne, hands folded carefully on top of a single manila file, eyes trained on the mountainous landscape in the distance. She'd had these floor-length windows installed nearly a decade ago. The white carpet had been there for quite a while as well. And the petrified wood hanging on the walls, the beautiful pheasant feathers, it was all stuff she'd collected herself.

The point was this was her space. Her throne. The office surrounding her was much like District Nine. When she'd first gotten it, she'd been given four square walls painted white, and a desk that must've been at least half a century old. And what she had done for it was exquisite, beautiful.

She couldn't stand the idea of someone walking in and taking her seat while she was in a meeting, pretending they had a hand in all of it. Sammy Gustav was a joke. But he wasn't the only thing she had to worry about. In fact, she wasn't really sure she had to worry about him at all yet. But Monroe, on the other hand—

Her fingernails lightly grazed across the surface of the manila folder, stopping once they got to the edge.

"April," she called toward the ajar door. A young woman almost instantly leaned in to make eye contact with her.

"I need all the information you can possibly gather on—"

She thought about it for a moment. Was there a chance she could tell Monroe and he would understand? Or would he hate her?

"On Sammy Gustav. We need to bury this before it becomes an issue."

[dars]

Either Talon had severely overestimated April's detective work, or Sammy Gustav was singularly the most boring man to ever live. How the hell had he managed to grow up in the slums District Nine of all places without ever getting in to trouble?

She read what little information she had— "Blah blah blah leg defect, blah blah blah."

There was nothing she could use against him as blackmail, or as incentive. He wasn't qualified enough that she would've even hired him to work for her once she beat him in the election, so that was out. She wasn't going to resort to offering money until there was a legitimate chance he could actually beat her.

A single address, written in April's overly-curvy handwriting onto a sticky note kept begging her to notice it.

If she wasn't ready to resort to money yet, she certainly wasn't ready to resort to that.

She carefully picked it up and sat it into the locked drawer of her desk, clearing her throat as if someone might have seen her.

[dars]

"I heard your, um, Mother was getting sick again."

She sat across from Monroe in a very public restaurant for lunch. It was of the few nice ones District Nine had, the kind that only people with jobs a few steps higher than Factory workers could afford. White walls, white table cloths. You had to be rich to use something that could so easily be destroyed.

"Do you need time off?"

She was trying to sound sympathetic. The truth was she held a great respect for the woman who raised Talon's son when she couldn't, but there was also a tinge of jealousy. Especially now that Talon had gone and done something as stupid as hiring him to work for her.

"No," he said simply. He was like her in that way, unwilling to take off his armor, even when amongst supposed friends. He looked vulnerable, if only for the briefest of moments, before his typical charming smile returned. He would be a damn good successor. One day.

Not this day, but some day.

"Are you ready to order, then?"

She smiled back at him, then sipped her lemon water.

[dars]

She actually saw one.

A sign in a front yard with big white letters spelling out "GUSTAV" over a boring red background. At first she thought it must've been a joke, but when the poll updates came in, she felt like a brick had just been slammed right into her stomach.

She had Monroe and April do some digging, only to find out that he was struggling with finance. Good, she thought, grinning. Although, it did mean money was out of the picture in terms of bribery. No way in hell was she going to be the one to fund his campaign against her.

She thought about it for days before finally pulling out the little slip of paper she'd put in her locked drawer. It was the first time she'd even let herself entertain the idea, and she almost instantly felt a ping of guilt. He wasn't a bad kid. But he should've known the risks of jumping into shark infested waters without knowing how to swim, right?

He was just in over his head, and the district certainly would suffer if she didn't stop it somehow.

She shoved the paper away, sliding it back into her drawer as if it might bite at her if she wasn't careful.

She couldn't.

[dars]

"PK. Helmsby is on the work detail list."

April's voice was a whisper, despite the door being closed and no one who mattered being close enough to hear anything. Talon had trained her well, it seemed. She didn't know the full story, but she'd learned she didn't need to. When Nightlocke showed up, something always seemed different about Talon. And something always changed. Her poll numbers shot up overnight, a gang leader went missing, Talon missed work.

"Thank you," Talon whispered back without looking away from the papers in her hand, "I need a lemon water, please."

As soon as April closed the door behind her, Talon felt the weight of something in her chest. Secrets burned like fire, slowly eating away at a person until there was nothing left except ash and bone and that secret, somewhere deep deep within.

The small locket around her neck grew heavy enough that she pulled it off, wanting more than anything to forget it was there, and she stood, stomping out of her office in six-inch heels.

"I'm leaving for the day," she said to April as she passed her in the hall.

[dars]

She didn't know why she even bothered trying to sleep. The moon was well up in the sky, and she laid in her bed wide awake, her porch light still on. She hadn't even convinced herself to take off her robe because she knew, she knew she wasn't going to be sleeping. Not until it happened.

Even after all these years, she still wondered if there would ever be a time that it stopped. That she would stay up waiting to hear the knock on her back door and it wouldn't come.

There was a reason she was called heartless, and she hadn't ever told a single soul about it.

The truth was, by complete accident, she'd given her heart to someone a very long time ago, and he wasn't exactly the kind of person who knew how to handle things with care. But she'd known that when she gave to him, and when she was lonely or cold, she kept it in mind.

She knew what this would become.

Hours went by, and she'd all but given up when the knock finally came.

[dars]

Winter had come in full force, the mountains in the distance and the ground outside snow-capped alike. Each step brought a crunch that was simultaneously satisfying and devastating. There were trails of footprints, chinks in the snow's armor up and down the street sides. Something beautiful and delicate was so easy to destroy- she'd always appreciated the idea of each snowflake being a little different from all the others.

She'd traded in her lemon water with lemon tea, piping hot and the only thing keeping her fingers warm as she marched further and further away from her office, from her home.

A yellow piece of paper just barely poked out of her pants pocket, the end of an address April had gotten for her months ago plainly visible. She hated that it had come to this, at least partially, but she found it necessary. She stopped short of a wrought iron fence that wrapped around a beautiful home much larger than her own. She steeled her nerves and stepped inside, knocking on the front door before she could stop herself.

"Mr. Morrigan," she said when a man answered the door, "I have a business proposition for you."

[dars]

"I've been out of the game for years now, Mayor Irvine. I have a wife. Children."

Abraxas Morrigan was trying to ruin her life, she decided. All she'd managed to squeeze out of him during their first meeting was a mere I'll think about it, and it had been a full week before he showed up at the office to meet with him.

"You shouldn't have come. Not here."

He smirked.

"Things are only sketchy if you make them appear that way. Just say I'm adding a new bathroom to your house if anyone asks."

"Does this mean you'll do it?"

Her eyes steeled on him, unmoving, unwavering. She watched as his demeanor changed from confident to unsure. God, she thought, Men are the most unreliable, ridiculous creatures.

"This isn't something that I'll ever be able to undo. The money is nice, but—"

"It's a yes or no question, Mr. Morrigan."

"Fine. Yes."

She pulled out a folder and slid it over to him.

"Sooner rather than later, please."

[dars]

Abraxas's face wasn't the one she'd been expecting to see when she opened her back door in the middle of the night.

She pulled her robe closer to her, covering herself as she stared at him with confusion.

"Why are you—"

"It's done. I need the money."

She stood quietly for a moment, evaluating him. He looked shaken, but it was the middle of the night. Perhaps he was just tired.

"How?"

"Knife. Made it look like a burglary. I need the money."

"Wait here."

She closed the door and returned a few minutes later, handing him a small bag. She prayed no one was still up; the cover story that Abraxas was supposed to be rennovating her bathroom wouldn't seem quite as believable if someone were to see him standing outside her door in the middle of the night.

"It's all there."

He walked away without saying another word.

[dars]

The next day, she stood at one of the final debates before the election would come to a close, smiling at children, shaking the hands of adults who promised her their votes until she was asked to go on stage. She stood behind her podium tall and proud, chin raised into the air while the crowd waited for the other candidate to show up.

She knew he wouldn't, of course. Abraxas had made sure of it.

Yet the applause sounded and out of instinct, she looked over her shoulder.

Sammy Gustav bounded into view without a single mark on him. If he had somehow survived a knife attack, he didn't show it.

She gritted her teeth.

Abraxas Morrigan had tricked her. And he would soon be a dead man because of it, if she had to close her hands around his throat herself.