comfort crowd — d12 train blitz

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

FOOL ME ONCE, FOOL ME TWICE

Time feels like it's slipping away.

Nico doesn't know how else to describe it except that the years are starting to bleed together, the tributes starting to feel like they all happened at once and like they never happened at all. James Monaghan had come to him for the second time, grabbed him by the fucking lapels and tried to tell him that it was his job to get sponsorships, that he was in charge of bringing home the tributes, that he'd been failing at his job ever since he got it and that this was the last fucking straw the last chance. He tried to tell him that if he didn't bring Mona home, then he was going to kill Nico himself.

Nico wanted to see him try.

It wasn't that it never failed to amuse Nico when the tributes family tried to tell him that it was his job to bring their loved ones home, but... there was something unkind that it stirred in Nico's chest, something that he didn't really want to put a name to because he was terrified of whatever it was that it said about him. What it said about the kind of victor he was, like he was too broken now to really know or understand what it felt like to need someone to come back to him so desperately he'd be willing to kill for it.

Sitting on the couch across from Mona Wyatt, he wonders absently what it is she's done for the middle Monaghan that has him willing to show so much emotion. The only other time he had seen that had been when he cornered Nico outside the train after Juliet had been reaped. "So, who are you to Jamie then?" he asks bluntly.

Nico had never been any good at pulling his punches.

He was trying to learn, but if he was going to try to bring this girl home, he wanted to know whatever she was willing to tell him.

ARE YOU DEATH OR PARADISE?

[sidney]

Jamie had told Mona to trust him.

Thorne will do his job this time, he'd said. I'll make sure of it. But his voice had wavered in that moment, eyes glazed over in a sadness she hadn't seen from him before. At the time, she wondered if it was for her in particular or because if she died then he'd lose his Wraith. But as she boarded the train and was ushered toward a couch opposite the boy who'd already failed a Monaghan once before, it wasn't trust she felt. 

He looked as if he felt like he had better places to be, better things to do than sit on a plush chair and make small talk. So, who are you to Jamie then? Well, at least she was right. Straight to business. The problem was she didn't have a good answer. Who was she to Jamie? Just another raven. His right hand. His spider who climbs great heights and scales big buildings. His Wraith who claims the darkness for herself and does his bidding in the dead of night. All were true. At least she thought so. Someone important. At least she hoped so. 

"A valuable investment," she lamented softly, leaning forward to swipe a piece of neatly cut fruit from a tray atop the table between them. It carved an ache in her chest after she'd said it. Another truth, one she didn't like to ever admit. That was all she'd ever be to him. "So what's your sage advice that's supposed to keep me from getting killed?"

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

FOOL ME ONCE, FOOL ME TWICE

Nico likes her automatically.

The second she meets his eyes and opened her mouth, he knows what she's going to be about. Nothing sentimental in her tone, no curve to her eyes that said she was going to start crying or something like that. It's easier this way, when they're carved from stone, when they don't want to cry and ask him not to forget them. Losing Callum last year had been horrible, gut-wrenching, had sent him into a fucking spiral that had taken him weeks to properly shake off. He can still hear the boy's haunted voice, terrified that he'd be forgotten, terrified that he was leaving nothing worthwhile behind.

It had torn Nico to shreds watching him die. Watching him die twice.

He likes the one's that are straight to business, no fucking around with melancholy or shock or exhaustion. "An investment?" Nico asks in quick reply, eyebrows raised, but she's already moving on as he's asking the question, demanding sage wisdom while somehow managing at the same time to clearly be scoffing at the idea, incredulity thick in her throat. It's a manner of communication that Nico respects, even if it's never been something he was able to partake in himself. Too willing to fight. Too willing to be an asshole. Too willing to try and make everyone in the room feel even worse than he does at any given moment. His brows don't drop when she finishes speaking, but his mouth does make a kind of half-frown, an apathetic and unkind thing he's sure Stella will scold him for later. When he replies, it's with a shrug. "Don't get killed?"

But Stell looks like she's going to kick him in the throat for that one, so he rolls his eyes, inhales deeply, and goes on.

"Allies," is all he says. "I'd be dead without mine, so I don't care if you're a 'work alone' kind of person or if that's what Jamie thought you were best at. Get someone to watch your fuckin' back."

And make sure they don't put a knife in it, he adds in his head.

ARE YOU DEATH OR PARADISE?

[sidney]

Don't get killed?

Her eyes darted to the other stranger in the room. She hadn't bothered to address her yet, but she watched in mild amusement as her nostrils flared at Nico's half-assed attempt to answer the question. A laugh crept up her throat slowly, begging to be let free from the prison that was Mona's will. She refused to budge and instead leaned back in her seat, arms crossed and eyes reaffixed to Thorne.

"So much wisdom," she sneered, half-hearted and not as mean as it could have been. She was pulling her punches. Why? She wasn't scared, not of him. But he had won and she knew that was worth something. He would be a valuable investment in her survival, of that much she was sure. Part of her hated this was how she viewed the world now. In pros and cons, positives and negatives, dollars and cents. Jamie would be so proud. That thought churned her stomach, made her shift uncomfortably and lose track of the conversation for a moment. She finds her way back somewhere around...

Get someone to watch your fuckin' back.

Mona digested the words, let their sentiment melt like ice atop her tongue. He wanted her to make friends and immediately she hated the taste. What a stupid fucking plan. That was supposed to help? Get someone to watch my back? There was no one she would meet in the Capitol who she would trust with her life, not for a second. She'd be fool to do so. She would go it alone, all the way if she had to. She can't say for sure that she would make it, her churning stomach wasn't exactly a boost in confidence to say the least, but she knew she would survive as long as she could. As long as there was air in her lungs and a knife in her hand, she would never relent. That would be enough. It had to.

"Just so I have to turn on them later?" The thought pained her. Getting close to someone, giving them your heart only for them to crush it with their bare hands—or worse, refuse to even hold it. That's not the kind of game she wanted to play in the arena. It was her head she was going to use, not her heart. There was no place for any kind of love in death anyway.

We all die alone and she would too.

"No," she asserted, with a small shake of her head, will unmoving and mind made up. "I won't."