He wasn’t kind, of course, unless compared with somebody like her. He wasn’t burning with hatred for the lower districts and it didn’t bring him joy to see tributes dying, more attracted to the arena as a piece of art of a sort. Surely, there was a certain evilness to it, if he enjoyed lasers and crushed skulls if the idea was dramatic enough to be inserted in a Gamemaker Event. Yet, the actual killings were less interesting to watch than the planning of it itself. Soft he wasn’t, but blood wasn’t sweet to him. He buried his red hands from erasing Clover’s makeup earlier in his pockets, as if it were some sort of odd symbolism, and listened, almost worried about their conversation. They haven’t talked in so long, and she seemed ready to bite.
Granted, he wasn’t scared of Karma per se, but there was something unsettling in how she glared, ready for the kill, almost. ‘’You’d be kind to. It’s almost your duty as a mentor. The show is part of all our jobs, after all,’’ he tried to retort in the same derisive way, though little did he care about how her tributes died as long as somebody did die and the arena was ran through.
The question fell heavy enough. In his mind, he’s never once thought of Karma and Clover in the same context. Mainly because he didn’t tend to think about Karma at all lately. She existed a very long time ago. Yet, her words cut and there seemed to be no way for him to respond to them while winning. And God, how he hated the games he couldn’t win. There were plenty of sarcastic comebacks in his mind, but none that couldn’t also come back to him if Clover overheard or was told, and he didn’t wish for such misunderstandings for the sake of an intentional cruelty he didn’t even mean. He took a moment to think, with his lips slightly parted.
‘’I don’t kill tributes. I orchestrate arenas. The District Three male tribute died because he struggled too much in the torture chair, being already heavily injured. The District Three female tribute died because, if I’m not mistaken, the District Two male tribute killed her after she got wounded. Besides, I am here and if I am here… who is killing the tributes?’’ he inquired rhetorically, wagging his eyebrows after the calm explanation. Truth be told, he communicated with the on duty Gamemakers through messages, only sending commands they’ve already planned, but he appeared available at the party, as much as he could, since Lysander was never too socially available to begin with. ‘’She’s a mentor, not a child. You should try it sometime.’’ Truth be told, he thought Karma was behaving childishly, after all.
The show. The fact that he called it that made her dig her fingernails into her palm. When she was younger, she was enamored with the games, convinced that anyone who won was celebrity material, that sacrificing yourself for the good of the nation was one of the most honorable things a person could do. But she was older now, she had talked to more people, seen more children die than she could count, and she was falling out of love with the idea of the games as a whole. He still orchestrated the whole thing, he was still the puppet master pulling the strings, and it seemed like the more she fell out of love with the whole process, the more he fell in love with it.
“I’m so glad that you feel like you know my job better than I do,” she said, her tone remaining just as cutting as it was previously.
She knew her words weren’t true, knew that tribute deaths weren’t handpicked by him and his team, but there was something about accusing him of such things that made her feel better about the situation. Sure, her words hung empty in the air between them as he explained to her all the things that she already knew, but the fact that she got to say them to his face in the first place made all the difference.
“How long did you rehearse that answer in the mirror this morning?” she retorted, the cupcake remaining untouched in her hand. His latter comment stung. She didn’t view herself as immature, she viewed him as the immature one, unable to truly commit to a relationship in the way Karma thought she deserved, so to hear those words coming out of his mouth left a bad taste in her mouth. “Maybe you should teach her how to do her job, she didn’t seem very good at it this year, did she? If she can’t commit to her tributes for more than two hours, how can you expect her to commit to anything?” She licked a bit of the frosting off the top of the dessert. “I never thought you of all people would end up with someone so soft and fragile.”
