Busy Sidewalks // WT

[charade]

KATELYN PERSIMMON

Katelyn supposed she was in a pretty good mood. She’d bought some honey that came straight from home and was still chewing on a particularly tough piece of honeycomb. The jars of honey would go into honey cake for the orphanage and a nice flan for the Izars. Perhaps she ought to open her own bakery one of these days. Lord knew she baked enough most days to fill one. She passed by several stalls, waiting for something to catch her eye, and to her surprise it was a person that did.

When the twist of the seventieth quell had blessed her with only a single tribute to look after, she had spent the days leading up to the bloodbath watching and re-watching every games from the previous fifteen years or so in an effort to bring Kirito home, getting familiar with how past victors had made it to the finale and trying to apply it to what she taught. It had worked. Worked the year after that too. Too well, judging by the hell that had been her last couple of years. She’d have to remember to ask Arbor about Aranica the next time she saw him.

The other victor was a brunette, maybe ten years older than her, though Katelyn had a good five inches on her height, or so she reckoned as she tried to figure out what the theme of the stall was. She gave up after a few minutes. Honestly, it was probably easier to list the things the stall wasn’t selling. It reminded her of the ramshackle pawn shop back home, the place where you could find anything if you looked hard enough; most of which was stolen and whose owner was probably part of the Izar clan.

But Katelyn had no need for tools or a violin. She passed by the mirrors and the racks of shoes and suspenders, glanced quizzically at the basket full of rocks and came to stop by the cookware. There was a nice set of hand painted dishes and some utensils that looked like they might be real silver. What really caught her eye however, was a set of metal cookie cutters shaped like several different animals. Katelyn gathered up the cookie cutters, visions of holiday dinners dancing in her mind and approached Aranica.

It was ridiculous really, she was a grown woman who’d be thirty in a few years, but she felt like a teenager again whenever she tried to talk to the victors older than her. Maybe it was because they’d seen more shit then she had. Buried more tributes. Hell, that Turner woman from five had had to bury her own daughter. The victors from the fifties, the ones that weren’t recluses anyways seemed to share an understanding with each other that transcended district lines. It was like that for certain other groupings as well. A generational thing, she concluded after a moment’s thought.

“Uh, hey. Aranica right? Mace spoke highly of you, but I don’t think we’ve met.” She fidgeted for a moment with the small metal outlines as she thought of what to say. “Hell of a thing, this quell twist, isn’t it? Feels like I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”


table coding (c) ghosty

[WT]

Serendipity starts losing money on the fourth day, which is frankly about two days longer than Aranica expected them to hold out. They left the second ledger wherever Illario keeps it, a secret even from her and Kette; that was the only option, but the moment they agreed on that, she knew the numbers would get messy. Even on an ordinary week, Illario walks a delicate tightrope—a task he learned to manage without training and with minimal help, through painstaking trial and error and the occasional reluctant gamble. He does it better than Aranica ever could have demanded of him, but opening up shop at Ratmas Markets was as harebrained an idea as the one that launched the whole project. She can hardly blame him for struggling to keep his balance without dropping all the brand-new variables in his head.

So when he warns her about the dip, she shrugs, smiles reassuringly, and changes nothing—not the prices, or the hushed side meetings, or the way she casually overpays people just enough for it to look like bad business sense. Perhaps she'll have to work harder later to make that travel permit look viable, but they'll blame the losses on underestimated transportation costs and untangle things at home. In the meantime, it hardly hurts her cause to have a recorded, auditable reason to pull a little more money from her Victor income than usual.

Her days fill too quickly to waste time on worrying, anyway. Between the heavy moments ("No names," says a steely-eyed woman from Seven trying to finance exactly the kind of rebellion that Aranica used to think was too dangerous to get involved with, "not until I know you won't turn me in.") and the sweet ones ("This is four hands against one!" she shouts through laughter as Vibeke and Rune pelt her with snowballs, two hours before Mace is due to drop by with the rest of the family), she barely seems to have time for the perfectly mundane chores that make up most of her every year. Every time she looks up there's something new to do, even if it's as small of fixing a pile of linens that someone left scattered over a table.

That's where Kette interrupts her: tucked in the corner of the stall, using the edge of the table to even out the creases as she folds. "Here, I'll take that off your hands," she says by way of greeting, then grins. "Hand?"

"Still not funny," Aranica says, rolling her eyes but not bothering to hide a smile. Kette raises her eyebrows playfully, but snatches a towel and shoos her with it instead of arguing. "You're already helped so much—" Aranica starts, and Kette waves the towel harder, her expression suddenly and oddly intense. "Alright, alright!"

She's not sure what she expects as she steps out of the clothing racks. Not Peacekeepers, Kette would have warned her about that, but some sort of trouble, perhaps—an unruly customer, or a nosy reporter, or someone looking for information that they don't know Kette doesn't have. Instead, she finds Katelyn Persimmon browsing quietly.

After brief consideration, she busies herself at the register, letting Katelyn meander past household goods and the board full of buttons. It's hard to tell whether she wants to be noticed; her movements aren't exactly furtive, but she does nothing to draw attention to herself either. If she wants to be left alone, Aranica has no reason not to do so.

That doesn't mean she's not relieved when Katelyn does step forward a few minutes later, a bundle of what look like cookie cutters cradled in her hands.

"Aranica right? Mace spoke highly of you, but I don’t think we’ve met."

"Yes," Aranica says, smiling easily. "Katelyn?" Out of habit she starts to raise her hand to offer a hug, then checks herself and uses it to lean against the register table at her right. "Not except maybe in passing, I think. But it's good to meet any friend of Mace's. He's talked about you, too." She hesitates for half a breath before adding, "And it's good to see you safe." As safe as any of us ever are.

There's a moment, under the soft metal clink of cookie cutters, where she thinks about asking. She doesn't, and after a few beats Katelyn says, "Hell of a thing, this quell twist, isn’t it? Feels like I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop."

"Fuck, tell me about it." Aranica shifts her balance off her hand so she can reach up to hold her rock. "Not to mention the shock for the kids. And I can't b—well. I wish I could say I can't believe they're still making them register, but if wishes were horses, right?" Here, in public but away from cameras, she lowers her voice but bothers to school neither her tone nor her grimace. "How are Carmen and Faux, do you know? And the rest of you?" She knows Kirito only vaguely through Mace—he showed up for Arbor's birthday, joking one moment and thoughtful the next; she'd been glad for both—and Harbinger barely at all, but then, she's never set the boundaries of her concern at the people she knows. She's not exactly planning to start now.

[charade]

KATELYN PERSIMMON

Katelyn swallowed the last bit of honeycomb in her cheek as Aranica mentioned that Mace had talked about her too. That old brooding cowboy; it was nice to know he thought of her. Maybe she’d bring him a cake once the games were in swing. Chocolate. Or buttercream. When Aranica had intimated about her absence, she’d let that slide with a knowing nod, unwilling or unable to pursue that train of thought.

Safe. What a concept.

Then again, who knew what hell had been visited upon other victors for being too daring or too defiant? Maybe Aranica understood. Suddenly, Katelyn found herself wondering if those more reclusive victors from fifties and sixties had vanished from the public eye by choice. Katelyn nodded along as Aranica talked about the quell, staring briefly in confusion as the other woman grabbed a rock. It was indeed a shock for the kids, and deplorable that fourteen of them still had to register.

For fuck’s sake, Carmen Stirling was only thirteen! Six more years of the reaping when she’d already lived through the games once? On that note, Aranica asked her about everyone— the tributes. They weren’t her mentees, not when she hadn’t done anything to help them.

Katelyn ran a hand through her hair and blew out a sigh before leaning on the counter. “I don’t know the Stirlings. But I wish I’d been there to—“she stopped herself. How would Aranica take it if she said she wished she’d been there to kick Carmen in the butt, tell her to fight till her last breath; not throw her life away for the boy from two. To not give up. Or give in. And kill him. Yeah, maybe not the best topic. “I wish I’d been there.” She finished lamely.

“Faux… The Rhodes boys are tough. Sweethearts once you get to know them, but tough. They’re more family to me than my parents ever were.” Granted, she worried about Harbinger from time to time, but he seemed to have his shit together more than she did these days. “We’ve lost two of them to games over the last decade. And one of Kirito’s cousins. It hurts. Arbor warned me…” she shook her head, not wanting to fall down that rabbit hole.

“But you move on. Kirito was the mayor of our district for a few years. Hell of a good thing, for him and Eleven.” The world kept moving, even if she felt the same. A contradiction, because she knew she wasn’t the same.

“As for me? I’m…”

Katie, you big goof. A shudder wound its way around up her spine, and for a moment she swore she could taste a martini on the back of her throat. She shrugged.

“I’m pushing thirty; I’m not the wunderkind that mentored two victors back to back anymore. Been a decade since Harbinger came back to me.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Ancient history at this point and I’m sure people are sick of hearing about it.” Katelyn was tired of it as well, even if it was the defining moment of her career.

“I’m sorry, I don’t usually go on like that,” she said with a half laugh, absentmindedly rubbing the scar on her throat. “How are things in twelve? Carter and Hellion? Stella seems like a nice girl. Must have come as a surprise after all these years.”


table coding (c) ghosty

[WT]

Around them, muffled by the soft walls of the stall but too vibrant be held at bay by cloth and will, the sounds of the market swirl. Two passerby on the sidewalk, slowing for a moment as one fingers some trinket on the front display table, argue over what to have for dinner. Across the snow-laden tent boundaries, someone barters with Aranica's stall neighbor. A musician who might stand three stalls down or a block and a half away plays something with the feel of a folk song, lilting and just a touch melancholy in the way that comforts more than it pains.

Something about the noise sharpens rather than blurs the edges of the stillness after Katelyn cuts herself off. Aranica can't be sure exactly what she means, but it isn't hard to guess; it hadn't been easy to watch Carmen's last morning in the Arena—her throwing her life down exactly the way Aranica herself had once meant to, Shy dancing around it, both of them children sobbing hysterically with no one to comfort them but each other. Knowing only one person makes it out never eases the deaths, and knowing that in the end Carmen came home does nothing to soften the blow of remembering the time she gave up on her own right to live. "You're here now," she says softly.

The rest is, for all the grief that trails them all—and Aranica remembers Iain and the Rhodes boys, not as well as she'd like to but in interview snippets and the occasional crossed path in the Training Center; they seemed like good kids—gentler territory. Move on they do, if only because there is no alternative: build families, find work, do what they can to shape a better future. (Mayorship sounds, frankly, exhausting at best, but this isn't the first time she's heard praise for Kirito's work in the position; it's good to hear that it treated him well in turn.) Aranica is smiling already, and answers the quiet laugh, when Katelyn says, "I'm sorry, I don't usually go on like that."

"Don't worry, I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to hear it. I'm glad you all have each other." All the same, she accepts Katelyn's redirection with an easy nod. "Stella's lovely, you're right. Remind me to introduce you sometime, if you don't run into her first. It hasn't been easy on her, but it's... well, it's nice, having someone young around again. Not that the rest of us keeled over at thirty—" at that she lifts her eyebrows, but grins again, hoping Katelyn takes the teasing as lightly as she means it— "but some of the tributes seem more comfortable talking to someone closer to their own age.

"Maybe not all of them, last I heard Hellion hadn't talked to any of the four of us. But she has her family." She sighs, then shakes her head once, as though she can shake off worry like a dusting of snow. Little as she wants to press where she isn't wanted, it's hard to guard a piece of someone's life for a month, then step back and hope that they're okay from a distance. Perhaps that's as much the parent in her as the mentor. "Carter, I know a little better. He—I don't know if you know, his brother died a few years back. Mitchell, in the Seventy-Fourth." She spins her rock back and forth in her fingertips for a moment, looking for the balance between saying what she means and saying more than she thinks he might want her to. So little privacy is left to any of them, and to Carter in particular, catapulted from one spotlight to another; Jamie Laws cares too deeply for his family and his District for Aranica to doubt his reasons for candidacy, but the extra layer of public scrutiny can't have been easy. "So he took being the one to come home pretty hard," she settles on, "but he's getting there. He's a sweet kid, he brought me some garden clippings for my birthday the other month." Some of the herbs went back to the Laws in scones, most went into the cabinet above her stove, and one small cutting still struggles along in a pot on her porch, currently tended to by Ruchel—and probably in better hands there than with Aranica, no matter how keenly she listened to Carter's instructions. Gardening seems good for him; every plant reaching its way through the ground to sunlight is concrete evidence of his hands coaxing something to life. She hopes Hellion finds something of the sort—gardening doesn't sound like her speed, but something to give the days structure if not necessarily meaning, and a smile here and there. She deserves that much.

"I wish I knew what else to do," she adds in a quiet rush. "For—any of them. All of them, really." What mentor—what mentor who gives a shit—doesn’t know that feeling? The living and the dead. Gardens and smiles and grief. I wish I knew how to rip apart this whole fucking operation faster than anyone could kill me for it, she means, but that's not the kind of thing you say to a friend of a friend surrounded by walls that waver in the breeze. "They're always... They deserve better."