The flashbacks don’t take long to start. For a person who’s been transplanted into a new body, it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t. He isn’t real because he can’t be real. The laws of possibility state strictly that the dead remain dead, and yet, here he is. The dead, walking through an empty home.
His new house is for him and him only. His parents and several siblings meet him at the train station when he gets home but he refuses to speak to any of them.
He can’t listen to what they have to say. He doesn’t want to hear it, whatever empty words they might have for him, or worse, if they have love.
No one is allowed in. Maverick is not allowed in, not even allowed to talk to him. He walks past Agatha’s empty house, the lights darkened. He often finds himself in Orpheus’s bed, discovering his new body, discovering that the only thing approaching pleasure is in the carnal. Nights slip by. His old weed dealer is happy to see him.
The first flashback is in his cavernous bedroom, which he learns is cold in the winters. It feels like the bitter mountaintop, and suddenly the covers are not simply cotton, but rather, a blanket of snow, and before him is Seraphina: Take care of yourself Everett, and I’ll catch you in the next lifetime, okay?
How? His voice is an echo and is begging. It is raw, he is raw. He’s not sure if he’s speaking aloud or not, but no one is here to confirm. How do I take care of myself, Sera, how?
She is trapped and so is he. She beneath the boulder, he beneath the memory of it. He knows he isn’t here but he doesn’t know how to get out; his heart pounds his ribcage as if begging to escape it.
Sera doesn’t tell him how to take care of himself. She doesn’t tell him how to run away. She doesn’t say anything but tells him, over and over: Even Crash Justice can’t muscle his way through this one.
And what if he can’t?
Hours spent paralyzed beneath the memories. It’s Seraphina, then it’s Marino, falling from the ferris wheel. It’s Margot, torn to shreds by the wolves. It’s Burly, slicing at his face — the scar recreates itself every time he looks at himself in the mirror, not a memory but a present happening. It’s Memphis’s silent begging. It’s Agatha:
You better fucking win.
I did it, he says, on his knees like he’s praying in his room, the bathroom, the living room, the kitchen, I did it. Now what?
No one will tell him. None of the ghosts know the answer because none of them lived.
Sloane and Tommy visit him together and he kills them both again. And again. And again. It becomes more difficult to discern reality from unreality. He tries to write things down: I am here, I am real, I am Everett Lance and I won the Hunger Games.
But it isn’t true.
He is Everett Lance and he lost the Hunger Games.
Both things cannot be true.
They are.
On the outside of the house is latticework up which vines crawl. It’s easy to grip, easier to fall from, and the first time he tries it, escaping the memory of Memphis, who lays dying on the beach in his bedroom, he nearly falls. He catches himself on a pipe, but in the moment where freefall felt certain, Memphis disappears. The sand is gone. Only he is here. Moments later, he’s on the roof.
He knows that he is losing it. The roof doesn’t care. He lays flat and looks at the stars. He looks at the tattoo on his arm and traces the waves with his fingers. This is how he knows he is a person, even if he doesn’t know who that person is.
Maverick leaves for Seven. It’s better this way.
There’s a thunderstorm one afternoon. The lightning sends him in two directions at once: he is in the forest, holding Delta’s body as she dies, and he is in the middle of a town, watching the sky spin.
Whose memories entrap him?
He climbs onto the roof, away from the bodies that pile in his room. The lattice is slippery and he nearly falls twice, three times. The roof is slippery. No one comes to stop him. He doesn’t die. He’s lucky.
The stylist comes and asks if he’s more loyal to the red or blue team, and which he’d like to wear on his Victory Tour.
He tells her to put him in black.
He goes for long runs. He drinks himself to sleep. He lets himself cry. Nothing helps. Only the roof, slippery, steep, his weight and himself clinging to the shingles, can quiet the other tributes and drown out the Arenas.
He goes hiking, blazing his own trail. He finds steep cliffs and sits on the edges. He wonders about falling. He doesn’t. He goes to the shooting range, hits the first target and drops the gun.
Never again.
Life moves both forwards and backwards at a dizzying pace. He ignores texts, calls. The Peacekeeping Academy wants to make a hero of him but he’s read what they said when he died. They dismissed him, said he was a traitor for volunteering.
He is a traitor but he’s not sure to whom.
Spring begins, though he will never again trust the seasons.
The day he leaves for the Victory Tour, District Two is shrouded in cold weather, common for this time of year, but when he arrives in District Twelve, warmth is beginning in the upper reaches of Panem.
It’s an honor to be here today…
In Twelve, no one stands on the podium before Margot’s photo. He doesn’t know who or what to look at and the ringing in his ears is his own panic. He speaks quickly. He doesn’t succumb to the memory of Margot’s death, though he can feel the dirt in his hands as he digs.
I’m so privileged to have been chosen out of so many tributes to come back for the Quell…
In Eleven, the weather is even warmer. Trees blossom but there are no green leaves or pink flowers in the square where the stage is set up. Apple’s face looks at him from the projection, but as in Twelve, no one stands before it. It was only her, the only tribute from her District chosen to return. He had told her he hadn’t wanted to kill. It feels like a lie now.
My love for Panem kept me going through the Arena…
In Eight, there are more faces: Marino, Nikita, Franklin, Jeannie. The four of them stare at him and he tries to avoid eye contact. For a moment he can’t tell if they’re real or not. Or if they were ever real. The cards: he reads from the speech he’s been given. Nikita and Franklin have no family present, but Hunter Twill stands in front of Jeannie’s picture in sunglasses, shooting him a thumbs up. In the recap, he saw Jeannie explode, but couldn’t see her face. He wishes he could have seen it. Could have buried her like he’d buried Delta and Margot. It was a dignity that she deserved but would never get. And Nikita, stronger than him, smarter than him — should she be here right now instead of him? Should they all? 39 Victors rather than him, it feels like more than a fair trade. And Marino’s family, he knows they’re looking at him. He knows that Margot is not the only guilty one. He’s the only one remaining to bear the burden. It’s too heavy. In Eight, he stumbles, stutters, the world tilts and he sees stars — the speech is cut short, he is brought off the stage, excuses are made for him that he doesn’t deserve. His new body is checked over, questioned: are you alright? Do you feel alright? They think it’s because he’s a clone, and he doesn’t know how to say it’s because of everything else they’ve done to him.
Even though it was difficult, the trials that the Gamemakers set us were always fair…
In Seven, Alder and Maverick are there. Maverick tries to talk to him but he doesn’t want to speak. He has been given no cards to tell him how to face his old best friend. Alder leaves him be which feels like more mercy than he deserves. Burly’s family stands tall and proud; they glare at him. He can’t look, he can’t look. He leaves Seven as quickly as he can.
Panem has always been strong through trying times, whether or not the trials we face are fair...
In Six, he walks onto the stage and is immediately in the woods of the Arena. Sloane is on the ground to his left, Tommy to his right. There is blood all over his hands, all over his notecards. Amphora’s family, her smiling face, she looks so happy. How could she be happy here in the Arena? Tommy’s family stands in front of his picture; a wolf, decaying like him, prowls in front of them. Hadn’t he mentioned a mother? He feels sick. He forces himself to look because he doesn’t want to be a coward. He adds one thing into his speech:
I’m sorry.
On the way to Four, he makes a request. As the train rumbles towards the ocean, preparations are made. One wish can be granted, surely, for the Victor of the Quarter Quell, the boy on whom the Capitol is leaning to bring peace. When he gets onstage, Delta’s face is one of four. The Dunes are there, he recognizes them by the family resemblance, and thinks of Mako in the Capitol, happy. The Blues pull his attention, though, and he sees immediately that she gets her red hair from her family. They do not look at him unkindly, and after the speech, for the first time, he lingers. He tells them he thought it would be nice; to remember her. That he wishes she would have been brought back. That she deserved the Victory. She deserves to be remembered. Above him, lightning flashes but he digs fingernails into palms and forces himself to remain here, in the present; it’s what they deserve.
The Blues invite him into their house. It is small and comfortable. They offer to show him her room but he doesn’t want to see, not yet. He says this: Not yet. Maybe I’ll come back. They thank him for protecting her and sticking by her side. In their home for the first time in months he feels like he’s real. He apologizes for not being able to save her and cries.
We are better as a united nation than we are as individual parts, and I was better in the Arena with my allies than I was alone.
In Three, he finds Seraphina’s parents. She’d asked him to tell them she loved him and he won’t break a promise, even if his hands are shaking. Even if his lunch threatens to make a reappearance as he faces, directly, the parents of the girl he killed. The McCabes are kind, though, understanding; they just want to know what he and their daughter spoke about and did. They haven’t seen her in ten years, never expected to get her back. He tells them about swimming in the pool, eating the last cookie and facing her wrath. It feels nice to have a good story to tell.
The relationship between the Districts and the Capitol is one of peace, mutual protection, and balance.
In One, many faces, many families, look back at him from the crowd. He is tired, his body is exhausted and the travel has worn him out. Throughout the trip he has been tested, they’ve taken blood draws and measured his heart rate, had him undergo various physical examinations to be sure that all is well. They want to make sure, they say, that the stress doesn’t wear him out in this new body. He thinks it’s funny and laughs, but they don’t seem to get what’s so humorous about it. Diana’s face; she had offered him mercy, hadn’t hurt him though she could have. In front of Mandi’s face is a crowded podium; she was right about having a big family. There are so many people who love her; his knees threaten to buckle under the weight of all that grief, but he holds it together on the stage. He’s getting good at pretending.
It’s one I am proud to be a part of as your new reigning Victor of the Quarter Quell.
He returns home last, and even though many of the Districts saw warmer temperatures, it’s snowing when he walks onto the stage to give his speech one last time, this time to his home. Before him are the faces of Lionel, Agatha, and Isabela. Only Isa has people standing before hers, her family. The snow falling — he wonders if the Arena is broken, because it’s supposed to be springtime now — doesn’t deter the crowds. The District is proud of their Victor, proud to have brought it home for the Quell and the second time in a year. Cain is there, Orpheus is there, Trixie’s there, he’s the only one who feels like he’s missing. Where is he? Where is this person they’re celebrating?
The speech is not his. It’s bad, cliche, and it feels sour in his mouth. In the other Districts, they hated it; a few people even booed, though they were swiftly punished for it. In Two, though, he sees people nodding. He sees hands over hearts. He feels sick. Sick in this place that made him. Sick with the altitude of the heights they’ve lifted him to.
Afterwards he is only allowed one night at home before he has to go to the Capitol for the ball. In the empty house, they are all speaking. Carlos, Travela, Memphis, Marino, Burly, Sloane, Seraphina, and Tommy. Their fingers press against the wallpaper, they want to get out, but they can’t any more than he can. Agatha is stuck telling him, over and over, to win. He’d better fucking win.
Why? he asks, but she never has a good answer for him.
He climbs up onto the roof. He looks at the stars and tries to place himself in the universe.
4. Meditation app (often opened with good intentions, promptly zones out)
5. Some puzzle game Chip downloaded to his phone once and he’s now addicted
Alder doesn’t use his phone too much in general, not many people in Seven have one, so it’s more used for random, little functions here and there. And taking stealth photos of Maverick and Trouble.
It didn’t take long for Everett to find Maverick. They shared a floor in the Tower; technically Maverick’s stuff was still in his room, the trainer’s room, on the second floor, and he had to return sometime if only to grab his bag before retreating back to Seven.
Mav hadn’t been hiding. He’d just spent the day before primarily with Alder, which happened to be on the seventh floor and not the second. In part, he wanted to keep the conversation with Everett at bay for as long as he could. He had to get his head straight, figure out what the hell he was going to say, how he was going to explain himself. He knew that Everett would see his being with Alder as a betrayal, but he had never meant to betray him, had never meant to hurt him — he’d been dead, that was a pretty good fucking defense, wasn’t it? And sure, he’d been wracked with guilt for it, on and off, had hesitated as long as he did before admitting his own feelings to himself because Alder was, after all, Everett’s killer.
But if Mav had been taught anything, any core value, at the Academy, it was that the Games were a different world. They were a world in which you could kill and be lauded. On the outside, killing was a punishable offense, would get you thrown in jail or worse, facing down the firing squad. But in the Arena it was different. The rules were erased. Alder had had no choice.
Everett had shot first.
Of course Maverick missed his best friend, of course he fuckng did. It had been 18 months of grief and mourning, the sort that could ebb but never entirely leave him. He knew he’d never have full peace nor would he be able to forget Everett. Ev was his first for so many things. His first friend, his first crush, his first love. Though the feelings of infatuation could and did fade, he maintained love for him in his heart and knew that he always would. The fact that he was back now in a new body identical to his old one didn’t change it. He was his best friend. He always had been. Everett knew parts of Maverick that he had never shown to anyone before Alder. That was significant.
But it didn’t make it any easier when he was finally faced with Everett, who was standing in the lounge, wearing the Capitol-issued pants and t-shirt that they gave to the tributes for training. Maverick had just wanted to grab his things, to get changed before heading down to the training center to begin work. (Not that he wanted to train anyone else. He selfishly wanted to give only Everett a chance. It was the least he could do for the guy who had died for him. The guy who had died so he could live.)
“Sorry,” were the first words from his lips, while Everett stared as if he were the one seeing the ghost. The ‘sorry’ wasn’t meant to cover everything, but rather, what you say when you’ve interrupted someone, when you want to excuse your presence and move on as quickly as possible. If Maverick didn’t make a move to continue to his room, then it was because of Everett’s stare, which seemed to somehow pierce through him and pin him to the wall.
It was the stare of someone who knew.
“Sorry?” Everett repeated, his tone tilting up at the end, turning it into much more of a question, one that asked everything he wanted to know. Jeanine had pointed out that he had been dead, that it couldn’t be out of spite that Mav would be with Alder because he was simply gone, and he could fathom the idea that the entire world didn’t revolve around him but he couldn’t put these pieces together. Each of them had jagged edges: Maverick was dating Alder, had been for a year or so, as far as Everett could tell; Alder had killed Everett.
There was room inside of him for many things. For guilt at his own killing: Carlos. Travela. Memphis. Marino. His first two kills had been in the bloodbath, had been in a moment of panic, he’d been swept up in it all. But those last two… he had known them both, talked to them both. Memphis had simply been in his way. Marino had been an accident.
The dart was meant for Alder, but Everett was not an idiot, he knew what he’d have done had it met its target. His sights would have shifted to the other boy. He was a killer. He had simply wanted to survive.
Somewhere he knew that it was possible that Alder had wanted the same. Or maybe he’d just wanted revenge for Marino. But Everett had talked to Alder, he fucking knew him, was it possible that he and Maverick could really have something together?
“Okay, I assume you found out about Alder and me,” Maverick said, stepping forward, his hands up like he was proclaiming his innocence with the gesture while simultaneously revoking it with his very statement.
“Cain told me.” The words clipped, short. Everett could do nothing but stare. Maverick looked older, his hair was longer, his edges seemed softer somehow, how was that possible? The world had only ever made either of them harder.
“I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you myself.”
“So you avoided me.”
“You avoided me too.”
They had always been too similar. Growing up you become a mirror of the people around you and attached at the hip as they’d been, they couldn’t help but grow in the same way, towards the same source of light. Both of them clinging to the violence they were taught to speak in. Was that what Maverick did with Alder?
“I wanted to find you,” Maverick said, “I wanted to teach you some stuff—” He hadn’t planned the words, hadn’t really thought about it, but it was true. He wanted to work with Everett. He’d watched his every move in the Games enough times that he knew exactly where his weak spots were. With three days of training, he could strengthen those places, if Everett would let him.
“I don’t need to learn anything.” Everett was aware of his own weak spots, of course he was, he’d gotten killed. You don’t die and think yourself a god.
“Why did you volunteer?” The question came from Maverick’s lips almost unbidden, and yet it felt like it’d sat there for 18 months, waiting to be spoken. To speak it at last was a relief; to face down a potential response, less so.
“I have no fucking idea.” Everett’s gaze faltered, he looked away finally. “Why the fuck did you kiss me?”
“Why did you kiss Orpheus?”
There were too many questions. Too much confusion on both sides. The air between them was filled with it. The uncertainty too thick to wade through. It’d take more than a few days. It’d take more than a few years.
“You don’t know Alder,” Maverick said, as if the conversation were progressing in any linear way. “He’s different from the person you met.”
“He killed me.”
“He was in the Arena.” A pause. It didn’t feel like enough. “And believe me, I fucking hated him at first.”
“So what changed? You’re his boyfriend now.”
“I got to know him.” Maverick couldn’t plead with Everett to understand, didn’t need him to understand. He’d already made his peace with the fact that he’d never have Everett’s blessing, though the reason used to be because Everett himself was dead. The dead do not forgive, they don’t have the capacity. Perhaps the living didn’t forgive either.
That would need to be okay.
“Why?” Everett had meant the word to be like a dagger, the weapon he’d wielded through the Games, the one he’d have killed Alder with. But it wasn’t as sharp. He was looking for answers, not looking for another kill.
“I didn’t mean to,” Maverick said, not wanting to apologize and yet knowing that Everett was owed at least a partial explanation. “I swear, I never set out looking for him except to beat his ass at his Victor’s Ball. I was pissed. So fucking pissed. But — you know, you volunteered, too, I was pissed at you.” His gaze tried to find Everett’s but Everett couldn’t look at him directly, the question of his own volunteering too difficult to face.
“You might have died,” Everett said. The conversation’s veering off its intended path was typical for them, often on the same wavelength growing up, not needing to draw one another a map to get from one thought to the next. Even now it was easy to find old patterns.
“I might not have.” Maverick knew that surviving meant Alder’s death, though. He knew that he owed Everett a thank you.
“I couldn’t just let you die,” Everett said, stepping around Maverick’s statement. “Because you — you, I mean, you could have been, you can be somebody, but I was just gonna be a Peacekeeper, just a brute. Just a no one. You could have done anything. It’s not — I’m not like some martyr or some shit, I didn’t even think it through, Mav, I just… you fucking kissed me, you dick, and I — I don’t know, next to you, who the fuck am I, what the fuck am I? I’m just a stupid fucking soldier.”
It wasn’t true, Maverick didn’t think any of it was true, Everett had never just been a soldier, nor was he a brute. He was a person. Just as capable of great things as Maverick was himself. But Mav’s great thing was going to be the Games. It was going to be a Victory. Enough time had passed that he wasn’t still angry with Everett for taking that away, but there was still a place in him that held something akin to resentment. Resentment for the fact that he had made the choice for both of them. Resentment that he’d done the right thing when Maverick wouldn’t. Resentment that he’d died. The tangle of it was too much.
“You’re not a stupid fucking soldier,” Maverick said, “you’re a stupid fucking volunteer.”
“This time I didn’t ask for it.” There was almost pride in Everett’s voice. Pride that he’d been thrust here without making the decision for himself. Maverick knew that pride masked something else, something much more real.
When had Everett been given a choice? When in his life had he been allowed to decide his own fate? Only once. Only once, and he’d died.
“You gonna train me?” Everett asked after a silence. “I heard you work at the Academy.”
Maverick didn’t know if he should be ashamed of that or not. He never had been before, not around anyone from Two, but was this what Everett tried to give him when he’d volunteered? Was this the ‘more’ of which he was supposedly so capable? He felt, for a moment, like he’d been given a gift and had squandered it.
“I do,” he said, “I brought home a Victor. I can do it again.”
Everett shook his head, just once. “You can train me, but don’t expect shit.”
Maverick wasn’t sure what that meant. What would he expect? A Victory? A willing participant?
“We’ll see,” he said, knowing that they hadn’t come to any conclusion, that nothing had been decided or resolved. But that was okay, it didn’t need to. For now, it was time to train. “I’ll see you downstairs in ten. No, five. Be ready to fucking work.”
He shudders as Maverick’s mouth finds where his pulse thrums just beneath his jaw. In turn, he bares his neck, tilts his head in demand of more. He craves this, the electric feeling Maverick’s lips send sparking down his spine, the shudders and gasps it draws from him. There’s comfort and routine in it, but there are always places the tempo skips. He wants him, they want each other, but Alder’s body is a map to Maverick’s pain, he wears his grief on his skin.
There’s his bones. He’s no stranger to heartbreak, but the past three months have worn on him heavier than before with nobody left to lean into. He can count his ribs up his side, drawn taut after several too many forgotten meals and sleepless nights. Most days, he wakes feeling fragile. On those days he tiptoes around reality, buried in an errand for a rebellion he hardly understands, then finds enough life at the bottom of a bottle to do it again the next day. On the worst mornings, he can feel himself breaking into pieces, bit by bit, until he feels can’t possibly gather enough of himself to do more than lay in bed, turned toward the blank, empty wall opposite himself. This was where he decided to leave him.
When Maverick kisses him again, hard and feverish, he fears he can feel the cut of the words Alder’s used to break his heart in the sharpness of his cheeks against his, the press of Alder’s long fingers into his back.
There’s the scar. After a year, it is no longer the gnarled, ugly thing it once was, an impressive thirty-three stitches across his belly. It’s now pink and sharp against his pale skin, he can see the turns of Everett’s jagged knife when he can stomach examining closely. It no longer hurts, but he still wakes screaming most nights, trying to tear a phantom dagger out of his gut.
Maverick pretends he doesn’t see it as clothes come off, hands, eyes, mouths wander. He always has, his eyes slide over it as if it is not there. He’s never touched it. Never acknowledged it. Alder doesn’t blame him; it’s Everett clawing through the veil in their most private of moments, screaming I was here, I was here, I was here, when all either of them want to do is forget.
His heart, too. When he woke in a sterile Capitol hospital room, body aching, he was told he was lucky to be alive, that he flatlined on the way there. He knew better than to think it was luck, his heart was a spiteful thing, always had been. If Maverick could not have Everett, he would have his killer and his audacity to survive. Every breath he takes is stolen from Everett’s lungs, every beat of his heart mocking the one that Maverick really wanted, the one that has gone still. This heart escaped the Games, it fluttered in his chest as a heavy crown was settled over his hair, it had endured what Maverick dreamed of and envied for twenty-one years. Alder had stolen away his best friend with his laurels.
Alder’s heart thrums a heady lover’s rhythm against his ribcage, vibrant and alive. His eyes fall shut, his fingers twist into the soft sheets, but he’s all too aware of his body, despite the rising wave of pleasure. He knows what his body means to Maverick. That every breath should come as an insult, and every touch a dagger to his hopes.
He wishes it wasn’t midday. Wishes they could do this in the dark.
There’s the peak, the tumble, the inevitable following stillness as they both catch their breath and let reality seep back in. Reality is never far off in the Tower. Alder watches the rise and fall of Maverick’s chest, face half-pressed into a pillow.
He wonders if Maverick keeps him around because the painful reminders of his body are all he has left of anything he once had.
celia: hope you enjoyed my voice memo performance of the entirety of Nicki Minaj's 'Super Freaky Girl' whilst I was drunk last night
celia: any chance I can men in black beam that out of your memory?
celia: please? 🙏
