They can practically see Hudson’s thoughts running wild with the information. It makes them wish they had found a way to share it sooner, that it hadn’t been thrust on them so unexpectedly, first with Citron’s revelation, then from Gage, apparently, probably with just as little information provided about what actually happened, if he knew the details at all. There’s a letter, tucked into one of their many notebooks, unfinished, written to Hudson, with that information in it, but they never got the point of needing to find a way to pass it on, although now they wish they had, they wish someone had gone through their notebooks and passed out that collection of letters when the Capitol took them after the wedding reception.
There’s no use in wishing to change what they cannot, though, and so they focus on giving Hudson that confirmation, and any information they can, now. It seems that Gage gave them a general picture of it at least, as they quietly, hesitantly go on. Traitors in every sense of the word. It’s difficult to hear, difficult to consider without judgement or anger, but they know someone else with a similar label, and they know the struggle Aven went through, is still going through. They have to imagine the Overgroves were given the choice between protecting their family and protecting the underground of Three, and chose the former.
“Yes. It’s the truth,” they say quietly, after a moment. And then it’s near impossible not to keep going, to give Hudson the little they do know from their own lifetime in Three. “I’m not surprised it wasn’t spoken about once your family was in Twelve. It’s a precarious position to be in, and being given the punishment of a new home in a higher District is much less harsh than most in their position face, the sort of punishment I believe my parents may have faced. They wouldn’t want to risk anything to jeopardize that.”
They turn over the knowledge in their mind, trying to decide if there’s any safe way to explain things, what the Capitol labelling them traitors in the first place had been about, not the sort of treason that Silver themself had been punished for in the least, but they’re not sure how possible it is. Perhaps what’s important at the moment is simply being able to confirm this for Hudson, after what they can imagine has been a lifetime of questions about what had led their family to Twelve in the first place.
“It was…a different sort of betrayal. A betrayal that many people in Three are guilty of without perhaps possessing truly…radical intentions. And then a betrayal of those people. I wish there was a simpler way to explain it.”
All at once, they feel the walls closing in on them: this place, everyone who’s listening, watching, making it so they can’t talk plainly, that Silver can’t give them the answers they know that they have, that Hudson can’t ask the questions that they’ve had for their entire life without wrapping them up in layer after layer of obfuscation. It frustrates them. All at once, they feel like they could cry. Or scream.
Their parents could have spoken plainly, though. Their parents could have told them all of this at any time, been honest and true, if they only just wanted to. But they didn’t. Gage could have told them, too. Could have done it at any time in their parents’ house in Twelve, or he could have tried in the Victors’ Village, or any other moment before the moment that might have been the very last one they’d ever have together, the one that was supposed to be a goodbye.
They want to believe it could have changed something, if they’d known earlier. Maybe they would feel like they knew their own parents, maybe they’d feel like they belonged in their own family, instead of held separate by this great thing they were on the outside of. Maybe, in the Tower, they would have been able to understand Gage better. Maybe they would have been able to reach him, before he ran into the Games on his own, leaving Hudson fearful for what he’d do in there.
“They never said anything. They were just—afraid, I think. And angry. All the time,” they say. They don’t know what it means that Silver is implying that their parents didn’t have radical intentions, what it means that they head instead, and whether Silver thinks that makes them better or worse. It sounds worse, they think. Maybe it’s easier to betray a cause you don’t believe in, but—how could they not believe in it? How could they see that rebellion was there, and possible, and turn their back on it? What did they believe in instead?
And maybe they don’t have something in common with their parents, like they hoped, but Silver says something else that catches their ear, makes them ask: “Your parents? They—they met a different fate?”
