Combo Divergence Part 4: Petra
The Scouts squad turning when they pick up Brutus in the 3QQ Arena and resuscitate him is the same as with Selene. Here's what changes when Petra's on the squad.
They’re one gun down, Marius carrying the unconscious form of Enobaria in his arms with his rifle strapped to his back. They gave up on the gurney back at the room - they lock them to the floor along with half the equipment in the interrogation chamber, Petra remembers from orientation - and Marius is the only one who can haul her long distance, even if it means the loss of one of their guns. Petra takes the flank position, and they run through the hallways with nothing but Dash’s terse instructions as he checks the schematics on his handheld.
Most of the facility’s forces have concentrated on Coin’s forces in the main wing; so far their squad has only run into a handful of guards. With any luck they won’t find any more; Petra took the three out at the kneecaps, only for Rigel to grit his teeth and shoot them in the chest. “They’d only bleed out,” he said, the lines of his face tight. “And we can’t have them identify us in the off chance that they don’t.”
They hadn’t had time to raise the visors on the corpses and Rigel wouldn’t let her anyway, which is probably for the best. Each time a Peacekeeper falls Petra wonders if it’s one she’s eaten lunch with - or worse, one of the girls she’d trapped against the wall for kisses between training matches. Alli and Emma had both been assigned to the Scouts around the same time as Petra, and if Petra took off one of the helmets and saw their faces she would just shut down. There’s nothing in the Academy that prepared her for this; they don’t have extra-credit modules for people who are planning to be traitors.
They’re nearly out, according to Dash, when they round a corridor and end up face to face with a squad of Peacekeepers, who immediately backtrack to take cover behind the wall. Petra grinds out a curse, and Marius turns his back to shield Enobaria as best he can while Petra darts around to cover his six and waits for the first shots to fire.
Except nothing happens. “Hold!” the squad leader barks. “Hold your fire!”
Petra shoots Rigel a panicked look because no, she knows that voice and it could not be worse because it’s Brin. Brin, who’d been kicked up to squad leader earlier than most because her raw charisma catapulted her through the ranks; Brin, who took Petra and Dash out for drinks the day they got their assignments and didn’t make fun of Petra when she tried to buy the not-into-girls not-into-younger officer a drink. Brin, whose taste runs to giant, muscled men like Nero and Brutus - and Marius, which Petra mostly manages not to tease her exec about.
“I’m coming out,” Brin calls, and she edges round the corner, rifle lowered but ready to fire if need be. Petra’s breath sounds harsh and loud in her ears, and she moves in close to Dash and grips her gun hard enough that her fingers ache. Brin pushes up her visor, and she stands there in the hallway looking as though Rigel and Marius had walked up and punched her in the gut. “What are you doing?”
“We’re rescuing our Victor,” Rigel says. “What are you doing?”
“My job,” Brin shoots back, but her forehead is furrowed and she lets out a long breath. “There’s no coming back from this. Think about what you’re doing.”
“It’s long past that,” Rigel says, and Brin’s gaze flickers. “Brin, she’s our Victor, and look what’s been done to her. To all of them. You’ve been with us. You know what we’ve seen, what we do. You have to know this isn’t what we signed up for. This isn’t the world we’ve been trying to build.”
Rigel can command the room with his presence when he wants to; he’s young and attractive and fights off jokes that he’s related to Ronan, Two’s first Career Victor, but that isn’t what he’s doing now. There’s no rhetoric or theatrics in his voice, only a quiet, exhausted resignation that twists Petra’s insides. Brin hisses through her teeth. “And what happens if I let you walk away?”
“We take her to safety and try to make it better,” Rigel says simply. “Please. It’s not right to leave her here; she’s my Victor and I won’t do it.”
Petra has done the math before, they all do, counting up which year one of them would have gone in if they’d made it to the end, but somehow she’d let it slip her mind. Enobaria won the 62nd Games, and if Rigel hadn’t taken that hit to his leg and injured out he would have been on the stage next to her. He might even be dead. Enobaria is Rigel’s Victor more than the rest of them the same way Selene is Petra’s, whether they ever met after that or not. Of course he can’t let her go.
Brin wets her lips, then finally she swears under her breath and signals to her squad with a sharp gesture. “Fine, go, I’ll keep them off. Just don’t get caught or we’re all fucked.”
Petra can’t look at her, can’t bear to see herself reflected in however Brin sees her now, and so she ducks her head and runs. Marius follows suit, booted feet falling heavy on the hard floor, and Dash brings up the rear with his grenades at the ready. None of them say anything.
They actually make it to their shuttle, Snow be praised, and Marius - silent and white-faced and grim-jawed - takes Enobaria inside. The dull, muffled sounds of the firefights inside vibrate through the soles of Petra’s boots, and her mind drags back toward that corridor and Brin’s squad as if someone had jammed a hook in her brain and started reeling her in.
“What’s going to happen to Brin?” Petra bursts out suddenly. Rigel stiffens but doesn’t answer, turning away to check something on the control panel. Petra barely restrains herself from grabbing her commanding officer’s arm, because the world might be falling apart but there are lines. “What’s going to happen to her? She’s in charge and she let us go. What will they do to her?”
Rigel’s hands tighten on the console, and his shoulders hunch but he doesn’t turn to look at her. “You know better than to ask those kinds of questions, soldier.”
Enobaria is in the med bay with electrical burns all over her body and half her teeth pried loose from her skull because the Capitol wanted her questioned. Petra has only assisted on practice interrogations herself but in another year she would be expected to sit in, and in another to actually take an active role. Petra always comforted herself with the fact that these people deserved to be here or they wouldn’t be, but now -
The Scouts are a secret organization, hidden from ordinary citizens and even the regular Peacekeepers who patrol the districts. They take care of their own, and that means they clean up their own messes. If Brin had decided to take them down instead of letting them pass - if she’d succeeded and they’d been captured - likely she would have been the one doing the questioning. If they catch Brin -
“Permission to go back and retrieve Squad 47,” Petra says, and that’s the second time she’s spoken without thinking but as soon as the words leave her, she knows she won’t take them back. “We can’t leave them there. They helped us.”
“We have a mission, soldier,” Rigel says, and now he turns and gives her a hard look, a commander’s look, and normally Petra would stand down but today she only stares back. “Our mission is to remand Vee-Six-Two to the rebels, and we’ve done that. We can’t take on additional risks.”
“They’re going to get caught and tortured because of us,” Petra says. The powers that be won’t just let the break-in slide, not after everything that’s happened. Whether they manage to identify Brin as having let some traitors go or not, anyone who survives will be punished, and the jails haven’t exactly been full of live prisoners lately. They’ll be on the hunt for the masterminds, for whisperers, for anyone who allowed the rebels in, and they’ll start with the ones with the most knowledge to share. “We can’t just let that happen. You said this isn’t the world we wanted to build; neither is letting our own people hang for us. Is it, sir?”
Rigel clenches his jaw. “Petra, you can’t just put an entire mission in jeopardy because of personal feelings -“
Petra snaps back, stung. “I’m not asking to go get her because I have a crush!” she snaps, before she can stop herself. “I’m asking because it’s the right thing to do! How much time do we have before our window?”
They can’t leave until the rebel’s program finishes working their system’s false registration into the manifests, and every second used to feel long as a century but now it’s a waterfall. Rigel checks the screen. “Twelve minutes.”
“Then give me eleven,” Petra says. “I promise, whatever happens, that I’ll be back in time to complete the mission. Just let me try.”
And if she doesn’t - if she gets shot and bleeds out in the middle of the Capitol’s most top-notch torture facility - well, she’d rather that than live while leaving good people behind, but Petra knows better than to say that aloud.
The look Rigel gives her makes her think he knows anyway, and he taps his fingers against the console. “Dash?” he calls out, and he appears at Petra’s elbow like a frowning, overly concerned ghost. “Go with her, back her up in there. Don’t let her do anything reckless.”
“Yes, sir,” Dash says with a significant look at Petra.
Petra glares out of reflex, but Rigel is letting her go and that’s all that matters. Dash restocks his bag of grenades, Petra loads up on extra clips, and together they slip back out into the hall.
“You know you’re insane,” Dash says in a low voice. Explosions rumble in the far end of the facility. “This is insane, what we are doing is insane.”
“I don’t care,” Petra bites out. “I’m not letting good people take the hit for us. Not this time. Like you’re any different, Mr. Didn’t Want To Be A Fisherman.”
They’re halfway to the bottleneck where they ran into Brin’s squad when the scattering bursts of gunfire tear through the corridors. “I knew it,” Petra mutters, but the adrenaline is high and she has her mission and she will not fail, not today. “Stay back and cover me, I’m going in. Once I make contact, get ready to make a hole.”
Dash nods, and Petra lopes off ahead of him.
Brin and her squad are pinned down in the alcove taking heavy fire. One of her soldiers - Ryan, maybe, it looks like one of the younger ones just by the build - is down, red blood staining the white uniform and onto the floor while he fumbles with a makeshift bandage. Petra dives under the bullets and rolls up into a crouch at Brin’s side.
“Hey,” she says. “Hurry up, we only have a few minutes.”
Brin goggles at her, ducking to avoid a shot that explodes into the wall behind her, sending bits of plaster and concrete flying. “What are you doing here?”
“Returning the favour,” Petra says. “Dash, now!”
Dash lobs his grenades, and the concussion blast knocks them back and Petra’s ears ring half-deafened from the explosion but the rain of bullets has stopped, for now. Brin staggers to her knees and stares at Petra, uncomprehending, and Petra pulls herself to her feet. “We have to go,” Petra says, heart pounding, and this is the part she’d be crazy to admit that she loves but she does love it. Danger and adrenaline and the surety that what she’s doing is the right thing; it’s a satisfaction that’s been denied her for far too long, and it buoys her up now.
Brin stares at her, wide-eyed, but her boy is down and she has to know better than Petra what will happen if she stays. “Shit,” she mutters, then, “All right, squad, you heard her, we’re pulling out.”
The other two get the injured soldier between them, and Petra leads the way back toward the shuttle. They run into two more groups of guards on the way, but Petra is flying high and her reflexes are honed to trigger levels and she takes them out before they have the chance to fire. They make it back to the shuttle with two minutes to spare, and Petra almost laughs out loud because for once the universe is on her side.
An armed soldier rounds the corner right as Brin is ushering the last of her team inside, and he raises his rifle and fires at her. And no, no, they did not come this far just to take a hit during the escape, that is not how this story is going to end - not Brin, not anyone - and so as soon as his arm moves Petra launches herself at Brin and knocks her down.
They hit the floor hard - behind them someone fires, the soldier falls with a heavy thump and the clatter of his gun against the floor - and Petra’s entire world is on fire. She can’t breathe, can’t feel her ribs, can’t feel anything for five glorious seconds before the pain hits her like a truck.
There’s shouting, and hands pulling at her, and Petra’s head hurts and everything is so loud and annoying and she just wants it to go away. When the darkness hovers at the edges of her vision, it’s easy not to fight.
Petra wakes up in hospital, again. At least the one in the rebel facility is grey, not blinding white. “That wasn’t my fault,” she says immediately, forcing the words out because every time she gets herself shot she ends up with a lecture as soon as she’s awake enough to hear it.
“No, for once it wasn’t,” Rigel agrees, and good, that means he’s alive and probably everyone else is, too, or he wouldn’t sound so amused. “I’ve told Dash he’s not allowed to make sad faces at you, even if you did actually jump in front of a bunch of bullets this time.”
“Not for fun,” Petra says. Really not for fun, there is nothing fun about this, not when even breathing hurts. “Brin, is she - and Enobaria -“
“She’s safe, and so’s her squad.” Rigel lays a hand on Petra’s head, comforting. “And Enobaria was retrieved and is being looked after right now. Mission accomplished.”
Petra’s eyes are heavy and she doesn’t bother trying to force them open. The rebels don’t have unlimited access to morphling like the Capitol hospitals, and this is real exhaustion, not the drugged kind, pulling her down. “Good.”
Rigel claps her shoulder, but if he says anything else she misses it.
Brin is there when Petra wakes up next. “There she is,” Brin says, smiling just a little. She looks like Petra felt when they pulled Brutus from the Arena and found themselves traitors all in the same breath; overwhelmed and a little frightened, but determined to make the most of it.
Marius sits next to her, and normally Petra would be cheering for him to comfort her through it except he’s too much of a good guy to take advantage of Brin’s rebel crisis and so he probably won’t make a move. “Good job, chipmunk,” he says, reaching over and giving Petra’s ankle a squeeze through the blanket. “Glad to see you pulled through.”
“I know the routine by now,” Petra says, flippant, and when Marius glares at her she bares her teeth in a grin. “What? I’m pro at getting shot by now.”
“Maybe you should try to be pro at not getting shot so damn much,” Marius says, but Brin pokes him in the side and he subsides. “You took three bullets, girl. I didn’t even know you had enough body mass to sustain that kind of injury.”
“Oh ha ha,” Petra drawls, and Brin laughs.
Brin lays a hand on her arm, warm and solid and real, and Petra is not going to think about where she’d be right now if things were different. “Is this where you tell me we didn’t have to come back for you, or I didn’t have to take that hit, or whatever?” Petra asks, frowning. “Because bullshit. You definitely didn’t have to let us go in the first place. Anyone can block a bullet, but you went against orders.”
This time Marius and Brin both exchange a look, and Petra has seen that look a hundred times when they’re joking around off-duty and is not about to be called ‘precious’ when she’s in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, thank you very much! “The next person to call me ‘chipmunk’ is going to get an IV needle in the thigh,” she warns.
Brin grins at her, and Petra has long resigned herself to the fact that nothing is ever going to happen for one of a dozen reasons, but her stomach flips over anyway and her cheeks turn warm. “No chipmunks,” she agrees. “At least, only badass ones.”
“This badass chipmunk saved your life,” Petra shoots back. “I’m pretty sure to normal people that would at least be worth a kiss.”
Marius covers his mouth with his hand to hide a laugh, and Petra snaps her mouth shut in shock. All right, maybe there is some morphling in her system because even when tipsy she’s managed to keep a better hold on herself than that. But Brin only grins wider, and damn it all if the heat in Petra’s face doesn’t keep spreading.
“No, you’re right,” Brin says, and - what? Really? She scoots her chair forward, reaches over and curls one hand at the side of Petra’s face. Petra’s eyes are wide and she probably looks like a stupid owl that’s just stepped on a thumbtack but what else is she supposed to do, and Brin leans forward and presses a kiss to Petra’s cheek.
“Don’t break my soldier!” Rigel calls out from the doorway, and oh, okay, Rigel’s here too, that’s great, is someone selling tickets?
Brin just laughs and sits back, giving Petra a reassuring clap to the side of her face. “Soldier’s fine, aren’t you, Petra?”
“Yes,” Petra squeaks out. “I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine. Everyone’s fine here.”
Brin actually winks at her, a full on cheeky wink that should probably be classed as an illegal incendiary substance based on how Petra’s face responds. “Yes, we are,” she says. Petra squeaks, and Rigel makes an exasperated sound and kicks everyone out.
“I’ll send Dash and a pack of cards to make sure you stay in bed,” Rigel says, and Petra is grateful for his warning because otherwise she might have had to admit that it hurts so much she wasn’t actually planning on sneaking out of bed.
Dash has a bandage on his arm and a shit-eating smile on his face that means Marius told him about Brin, but he plunks himself down in a chair and deals out the cards without any further comment. Petra gives him a haughty look and picks up her hand, and they might be traitors but that’s two Victors and a friend she’s saved, so maybe it’s not all bad.
This is not what she wanted. Not what any of them wanted, how could anyone want this -- except it is, for the grey-uniformed traitor-rebels who took them in after Brutus clawed his way back to life, and it is for the other grey-uniformed rebels they pretend are so different. They wanted this, the siege on the Capitol, the wholesale murder of Peacekeepers -- Petra's colleagues, her friends -- all of it. None of the casualties mean anything to them. It's all about the greater noble purpose of -- well, nobody has actually said, really, and when they do it makes no sense. It's not peace, that's for sure; peace is not gunfire and grenades and people falling in sprays of blood.
And Petra chose this. She chose it when their squad followed that message instead of taking Brutus back to base, and she's still not sure she made the right call. Maybe if the Capitol had seen how hard he'd fought to live, they would have realized that their hasty execution attempt had been just that. Maybe they would have --
No, they wouldn't have. Petra knows too much now, seen too much and heard too much and read too much, and all the information she's gathered over these past few months match up with the niggling suspicions that had started in her own brain once she and Dash were sent on border patrol, flaring up the first time they learned torture techniques from a pleasantly blank-faced woman who said things like 'interrogation' and ‘incentive’.
All Petra can do is hope she did the right thing, but it's hard to think that when their squad moves up to the entrance of President Snow's mansion and Petra recognizes every single guard standing in a line. There's Arcturus, Rigel's former squad-mate, who used to rest his elbow on Petra's head and grin down at her while she threatened to shiv him, high ranking officer or no high ranking officer. There's Vance, whose repertoire of filthy, vaguely sexist jokes used to annoy her until he noticed she didn't find them funny and knocked it off whenever the juniors were out with them. And then there's --
Emin. Emin, Rigel's former commander, the one who would have selected Petra from the pile of candidates and recommended her for the Scouts. Emin was the first person who saw past the suicidal mess of Petra's psych eval and found the glimmer of potential underneath. It's because of her that Petra has her family, her life, and she's logical and principled and fiercely loyal to the president and the nation. Emin is everything Petra wanted to be, everything that that day in the hovercraft Petra chose to turn away from.
Emin is here, and she knows they're coming. Helmets off, all of them, it's a trap -- Rigel and Marius have a hissing conversation that doesn't make it over the comms, which means they know, and Petra doesn't have to report her suspicions -- but there's nothing to be done about it. The sword is swinging and there's no choice but to land the blow.
They move out. They trip a sensor -- of course they do, Emin might have had their guards be helmetless and recognizable to throw the rebels but she's not stupid, far from stupid -- and the fire turns on them almost immediately. Petra throws herself to the side to avoid the first salvo, and she snaps off a shot that takes out Vance in the leg and brings him down. She could have taken him out with a full-on shot to the chest except -- well, except.
They pull back to regroup, and maybe they can do this, maybe they can take out the entrance with nothing but disabling shots even though Petra knows her colleagues and as long as their fingers will still curl around a trigger they'll keep fighting. But then one of the rebels throws a grenade at the entrance and the night turns white and gunfire explodes around her and when Petra risks a glance there are four bodies crumpled on the floor, their blood staining the marble stairs.
"Let's go!" Lyme shouts in their earpieces. Dash grips her arm, his face pale and jaw set like the day they gunned down those runaways from One, but he doesn't take his eye off the entrance, picking up his rifle.
Ahead of her Rigel and Marius have another quick argument, and Petra catches the words "You're hit" right before Rigel brushes Marius off and makes to stand.
And -- no. No.
She can see it now, the images unfolding in her mind like a bad dream that doesn't go away when she opens her eyes. Rigel pushing on despite his injury like he always does -- like she always does, like CO like soldier -- taking another hit (the leg? the side?) and still going because he's stubborn and proud and reckless. Making it all the way inside, except that Emin is not one of the corpses slowly cooling on the ground, she'll be in there, waiting. He'll see her and he'll hesitate, of course he will, because Rigel is flawed and human and above all chooses life above duty in the end.
Emin won't.
Rigel's head explodes into a spray of blood in Petra's mind, and without another thought she moves, taking him down with a full-body tackle as the others move out past them. "Petra!" Rigel shoves her off, and his voice is commander-sharp and tightly furious. "What are you --"
"Did that hurt, sir?" Petra demands, and Rigel's face devolves into a knowing 'oh' that's almost sheepish, and above her despite the death and destruction Marius' eyebrows creep up and one corner of his mouth twitches. She finds the spot of red blooming out on the shoulder of his uniform, sticks out one knuckle and jabs it hard into the bullet wound. "Did that hurt? Did that? Are you injured, sir? Do you think you should maybe stay back?" She continues to poke him, hard, like little kids in the Centre used to do, and all around them the city is on fire and their friends are dying but Marius lets out a bark of laughter at the look on Rigel's face.
"I think she has a point," Marius says. "Rigel, you're hit. Stay back and guard the entrance, keep us safe from the backup when it arrives. Petra, you stick with him. Dash, with me."
Petra starts to protest -- she's not hurt or hit or compromised, she's fine -- but then Marius shoots her a solemn, understanding sort of look and no, shit, yes she is. Because they're going to find the president, and after everything she's heard, all the intel she's gathered, Petra still can't bring herself to believe that the man who personally requested her for more than one honour guard and remembered her favourite kind of cookie and never, ever patronized her for being too small or too old fashioned could have done all the things they said he did. Just like Emin and Rigel, if the order came to put a bullet in his brain, Petra couldn't do it.
"Yes sir," Petra says, and Marius nods. Dash looks back at them, agonized, and something tears free in Petra's chest because this could be the last time they see each other. (It won't, she tells herself firmly, it won't, he's going to live and come back to them because he can't die here, not after everything they've done -- but it could. She knows it could.) There's no time for goodbyes or speeches but she can't leave it like this, something screams at her in her head and she doesn't know what it is but she can't --
Before she knows what she's doing, Petra fists her hand in Dash's uniform, yanks him down and kisses him hard on the mouth. Their teeth clash and he tastes of soot and gunpowder and blood and he's startled enough that he freezes, but he starts to kiss her back right before she shoves him away. "Wha --"
"Come back and we'll talk," Petra says, head roaring and ears ringing, and she doesn't like boys, what is she doing, but the jangling in her chest settles.
Dash gives her a bewildered look, but then his expression resolves and he nods. "Okay," he says, and Marius's expression is amused for one more second before he claps Dash's shoulder and they're gone.
"You have a flair for the dramatic, chipmunk," Rigel says, and Petra grunts, unzips her jacket and tears off a strip from the hem of her shirt to tie around his arm.
"Chipmunk me again and I'll shoot you in the head, sir," Petra snaps, and it's not funny with their friends lying dead but they're all Careers here, and they all understand Arena humour.
"I'd let you if you could reach," Rigel shoots back, wincing when Petra pulls the makeshift bandage tight.
"If I kneecap you first, then I'll be able to reach," Petra says, and Rigel laughs and pulls her in with an arm around her shoulders, ruffling her hair before they turn back to watch the entrance.
They’re one gun down, Marius carrying the unconscious form of Enobaria in his arms with his rifle strapped to his back. They gave up on the gurney back at the room - they lock them to the floor along with half the equipment in the interrogation chamber, Petra remembers from orientation - and Marius is the only one who can haul her long distance, even if it means the loss of one of their guns. Petra takes the flank position, and they run through the hallways with nothing but Dash’s terse instructions as he checks the schematics on his handheld.
Most of the facility’s forces have concentrated on Coin’s forces in the main wing; so far their squad has only run into a handful of guards. With any luck they won’t find any more; Petra took the three out at the kneecaps, only for Rigel to grit his teeth and shoot them in the chest. “They’d only bleed out,” he said, the lines of his face tight. “And we can’t have them identify us in the off chance that they don’t.”
They hadn’t had time to raise the visors on the corpses and Rigel wouldn’t let her anyway, which is probably for the best. Each time a Peacekeeper falls Petra wonders if it’s one she’s eaten lunch with - or worse, one of the girls she’d trapped against the wall for kisses between training matches. Alli and Emma had both been assigned to the Scouts around the same time as Petra, and if Petra took off one of the helmets and saw their faces she would just shut down. There’s nothing in the Academy that prepared her for this; they don’t have extra-credit modules for people who are planning to be traitors.
They’re nearly out, according to Dash, when they round a corridor and end up face to face with a squad of Peacekeepers, who immediately backtrack to take cover behind the wall. Petra grinds out a curse, and Marius turns his back to shield Enobaria as best he can while Petra darts around to cover his six and waits for the first shots to fire.
Except nothing happens. “Hold!” the squad leader barks. “Hold your fire!”
Petra shoots Rigel a panicked look because no, she knows that voice and it could not be worse because it’s Brin. Brin, who’d been kicked up to squad leader earlier than most because her raw charisma catapulted her through the ranks; Brin, who took Petra and Dash out for drinks the day they got their assignments and didn’t make fun of Petra when she tried to buy the not-into-girls not-into-younger officer a drink. Brin, whose taste runs to giant, muscled men like Nero and Brutus - and Marius, which Petra mostly manages not to tease her exec about.
“I’m coming out,” Brin calls, and she edges round the corner, rifle lowered but ready to fire if need be. Petra’s breath sounds harsh and loud in her ears, and she moves in close to Dash and grips her gun hard enough that her fingers ache. Brin pushes up her visor, and she stands there in the hallway looking as though Rigel and Marius had walked up and punched her in the gut. “What are you doing?”
“We’re rescuing our Victor,” Rigel says. “What are you doing?”
“My job,” Brin shoots back, but her forehead is furrowed and she lets out a long breath. “There’s no coming back from this. Think about what you’re doing.”
“It’s long past that,” Rigel says, and Brin’s gaze flickers. “Brin, she’s our Victor, and look what’s been done to her. To all of them. You’ve been with us. You know what we’ve seen, what we do. You have to know this isn’t what we signed up for. This isn’t the world we’ve been trying to build.”
Rigel can command the room with his presence when he wants to; he’s young and attractive and fights off jokes that he’s related to Ronan, Two’s first Career Victor, but that isn’t what he’s doing now. There’s no rhetoric or theatrics in his voice, only a quiet, exhausted resignation that twists Petra’s insides. Brin hisses through her teeth. “And what happens if I let you walk away?”
“We take her to safety and try to make it better,” Rigel says simply. “Please. It’s not right to leave her here; she’s my Victor and I won’t do it.”
Petra has done the math before, they all do, counting up which year one of them would have gone in if they’d made it to the end, but somehow she’d let it slip her mind. Enobaria won the 62nd Games, and if Rigel hadn’t taken that hit to his leg and injured out he would have been on the stage next to her. He might even be dead. Enobaria is Rigel’s Victor more than the rest of them the same way Selene is Petra’s, whether they ever met after that or not. Of course he can’t let her go.
Brin wets her lips, then finally she swears under her breath and signals to her squad with a sharp gesture. “Fine, go, I’ll keep them off. Just don’t get caught or we’re all fucked.”
Petra can’t look at her, can’t bear to see herself reflected in however Brin sees her now, and so she ducks her head and runs. Marius follows suit, booted feet falling heavy on the hard floor, and Dash brings up the rear with his grenades at the ready. None of them say anything.
They actually make it to their shuttle, Snow be praised, and Marius - silent and white-faced and grim-jawed - takes Enobaria inside. The dull, muffled sounds of the firefights inside vibrate through the soles of Petra’s boots, and her mind drags back toward that corridor and Brin’s squad as if someone had jammed a hook in her brain and started reeling her in.
“What’s going to happen to Brin?” Petra bursts out suddenly. Rigel stiffens but doesn’t answer, turning away to check something on the control panel. Petra barely restrains herself from grabbing her commanding officer’s arm, because the world might be falling apart but there are lines. “What’s going to happen to her? She’s in charge and she let us go. What will they do to her?”
Rigel’s hands tighten on the console, and his shoulders hunch but he doesn’t turn to look at her. “You know better than to ask those kinds of questions, soldier.”
Enobaria is in the med bay with electrical burns all over her body and half her teeth pried loose from her skull because the Capitol wanted her questioned. Petra has only assisted on practice interrogations herself but in another year she would be expected to sit in, and in another to actually take an active role. Petra always comforted herself with the fact that these people deserved to be here or they wouldn’t be, but now -
The Scouts are a secret organization, hidden from ordinary citizens and even the regular Peacekeepers who patrol the districts. They take care of their own, and that means they clean up their own messes. If Brin had decided to take them down instead of letting them pass - if she’d succeeded and they’d been captured - likely she would have been the one doing the questioning. If they catch Brin -
“Permission to go back and retrieve Squad 47,” Petra says, and that’s the second time she’s spoken without thinking but as soon as the words leave her, she knows she won’t take them back. “We can’t leave them there. They helped us.”
“We have a mission, soldier,” Rigel says, and now he turns and gives her a hard look, a commander’s look, and normally Petra would stand down but today she only stares back. “Our mission is to remand Vee-Six-Two to the rebels, and we’ve done that. We can’t take on additional risks.”
“They’re going to get caught and tortured because of us,” Petra says. The powers that be won’t just let the break-in slide, not after everything that’s happened. Whether they manage to identify Brin as having let some traitors go or not, anyone who survives will be punished, and the jails haven’t exactly been full of live prisoners lately. They’ll be on the hunt for the masterminds, for whisperers, for anyone who allowed the rebels in, and they’ll start with the ones with the most knowledge to share. “We can’t just let that happen. You said this isn’t the world we wanted to build; neither is letting our own people hang for us. Is it, sir?”
Rigel clenches his jaw. “Petra, you can’t just put an entire mission in jeopardy because of personal feelings -“
Petra snaps back, stung. “I’m not asking to go get her because I have a crush!” she snaps, before she can stop herself. “I’m asking because it’s the right thing to do! How much time do we have before our window?”
They can’t leave until the rebel’s program finishes working their system’s false registration into the manifests, and every second used to feel long as a century but now it’s a waterfall. Rigel checks the screen. “Twelve minutes.”
“Then give me eleven,” Petra says. “I promise, whatever happens, that I’ll be back in time to complete the mission. Just let me try.”
And if she doesn’t - if she gets shot and bleeds out in the middle of the Capitol’s most top-notch torture facility - well, she’d rather that than live while leaving good people behind, but Petra knows better than to say that aloud.
The look Rigel gives her makes her think he knows anyway, and he taps his fingers against the console. “Dash?” he calls out, and he appears at Petra’s elbow like a frowning, overly concerned ghost. “Go with her, back her up in there. Don’t let her do anything reckless.”
“Yes, sir,” Dash says with a significant look at Petra.
Petra glares out of reflex, but Rigel is letting her go and that’s all that matters. Dash restocks his bag of grenades, Petra loads up on extra clips, and together they slip back out into the hall.
“You know you’re insane,” Dash says in a low voice. Explosions rumble in the far end of the facility. “This is insane, what we are doing is insane.”
“I don’t care,” Petra bites out. “I’m not letting good people take the hit for us. Not this time. Like you’re any different, Mr. Didn’t Want To Be A Fisherman.”
They’re halfway to the bottleneck where they ran into Brin’s squad when the scattering bursts of gunfire tear through the corridors. “I knew it,” Petra mutters, but the adrenaline is high and she has her mission and she will not fail, not today. “Stay back and cover me, I’m going in. Once I make contact, get ready to make a hole.”
Dash nods, and Petra lopes off ahead of him.
Brin and her squad are pinned down in the alcove taking heavy fire. One of her soldiers - Ryan, maybe, it looks like one of the younger ones just by the build - is down, red blood staining the white uniform and onto the floor while he fumbles with a makeshift bandage. Petra dives under the bullets and rolls up into a crouch at Brin’s side.
“Hey,” she says. “Hurry up, we only have a few minutes.”
Brin goggles at her, ducking to avoid a shot that explodes into the wall behind her, sending bits of plaster and concrete flying. “What are you doing here?”
“Returning the favour,” Petra says. “Dash, now!”
Dash lobs his grenades, and the concussion blast knocks them back and Petra’s ears ring half-deafened from the explosion but the rain of bullets has stopped, for now. Brin staggers to her knees and stares at Petra, uncomprehending, and Petra pulls herself to her feet. “We have to go,” Petra says, heart pounding, and this is the part she’d be crazy to admit that she loves but she does love it. Danger and adrenaline and the surety that what she’s doing is the right thing; it’s a satisfaction that’s been denied her for far too long, and it buoys her up now.
Brin stares at her, wide-eyed, but her boy is down and she has to know better than Petra what will happen if she stays. “Shit,” she mutters, then, “All right, squad, you heard her, we’re pulling out.”
The other two get the injured soldier between them, and Petra leads the way back toward the shuttle. They run into two more groups of guards on the way, but Petra is flying high and her reflexes are honed to trigger levels and she takes them out before they have the chance to fire. They make it back to the shuttle with two minutes to spare, and Petra almost laughs out loud because for once the universe is on her side.
An armed soldier rounds the corner right as Brin is ushering the last of her team inside, and he raises his rifle and fires at her. And no, no, they did not come this far just to take a hit during the escape, that is not how this story is going to end - not Brin, not anyone - and so as soon as his arm moves Petra launches herself at Brin and knocks her down.
They hit the floor hard - behind them someone fires, the soldier falls with a heavy thump and the clatter of his gun against the floor - and Petra’s entire world is on fire. She can’t breathe, can’t feel her ribs, can’t feel anything for five glorious seconds before the pain hits her like a truck.
There’s shouting, and hands pulling at her, and Petra’s head hurts and everything is so loud and annoying and she just wants it to go away. When the darkness hovers at the edges of her vision, it’s easy not to fight.
Petra wakes up in hospital, again. At least the one in the rebel facility is grey, not blinding white. “That wasn’t my fault,” she says immediately, forcing the words out because every time she gets herself shot she ends up with a lecture as soon as she’s awake enough to hear it.
“No, for once it wasn’t,” Rigel agrees, and good, that means he’s alive and probably everyone else is, too, or he wouldn’t sound so amused. “I’ve told Dash he’s not allowed to make sad faces at you, even if you did actually jump in front of a bunch of bullets this time.”
“Not for fun,” Petra says. Really not for fun, there is nothing fun about this, not when even breathing hurts. “Brin, is she - and Enobaria -“
“She’s safe, and so’s her squad.” Rigel lays a hand on Petra’s head, comforting. “And Enobaria was retrieved and is being looked after right now. Mission accomplished.”
Petra’s eyes are heavy and she doesn’t bother trying to force them open. The rebels don’t have unlimited access to morphling like the Capitol hospitals, and this is real exhaustion, not the drugged kind, pulling her down. “Good.”
Rigel claps her shoulder, but if he says anything else she misses it.
Brin is there when Petra wakes up next. “There she is,” Brin says, smiling just a little. She looks like Petra felt when they pulled Brutus from the Arena and found themselves traitors all in the same breath; overwhelmed and a little frightened, but determined to make the most of it.
Marius sits next to her, and normally Petra would be cheering for him to comfort her through it except he’s too much of a good guy to take advantage of Brin’s rebel crisis and so he probably won’t make a move. “Good job, chipmunk,” he says, reaching over and giving Petra’s ankle a squeeze through the blanket. “Glad to see you pulled through.”
“I know the routine by now,” Petra says, flippant, and when Marius glares at her she bares her teeth in a grin. “What? I’m pro at getting shot by now.”
“Maybe you should try to be pro at not getting shot so damn much,” Marius says, but Brin pokes him in the side and he subsides. “You took three bullets, girl. I didn’t even know you had enough body mass to sustain that kind of injury.”
“Oh ha ha,” Petra drawls, and Brin laughs.
Brin lays a hand on her arm, warm and solid and real, and Petra is not going to think about where she’d be right now if things were different. “Is this where you tell me we didn’t have to come back for you, or I didn’t have to take that hit, or whatever?” Petra asks, frowning. “Because bullshit. You definitely didn’t have to let us go in the first place. Anyone can block a bullet, but you went against orders.”
This time Marius and Brin both exchange a look, and Petra has seen that look a hundred times when they’re joking around off-duty and is not about to be called ‘precious’ when she’s in the hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, thank you very much! “The next person to call me ‘chipmunk’ is going to get an IV needle in the thigh,” she warns.
Brin grins at her, and Petra has long resigned herself to the fact that nothing is ever going to happen for one of a dozen reasons, but her stomach flips over anyway and her cheeks turn warm. “No chipmunks,” she agrees. “At least, only badass ones.”
“This badass chipmunk saved your life,” Petra shoots back. “I’m pretty sure to normal people that would at least be worth a kiss.”
Marius covers his mouth with his hand to hide a laugh, and Petra snaps her mouth shut in shock. All right, maybe there is some morphling in her system because even when tipsy she’s managed to keep a better hold on herself than that. But Brin only grins wider, and damn it all if the heat in Petra’s face doesn’t keep spreading.
“No, you’re right,” Brin says, and - what? Really? She scoots her chair forward, reaches over and curls one hand at the side of Petra’s face. Petra’s eyes are wide and she probably looks like a stupid owl that’s just stepped on a thumbtack but what else is she supposed to do, and Brin leans forward and presses a kiss to Petra’s cheek.
“Don’t break my soldier!” Rigel calls out from the doorway, and oh, okay, Rigel’s here too, that’s great, is someone selling tickets?
Brin just laughs and sits back, giving Petra a reassuring clap to the side of her face. “Soldier’s fine, aren’t you, Petra?”
“Yes,” Petra squeaks out. “I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine. Everyone’s fine here.”
Brin actually winks at her, a full on cheeky wink that should probably be classed as an illegal incendiary substance based on how Petra’s face responds. “Yes, we are,” she says. Petra squeaks, and Rigel makes an exasperated sound and kicks everyone out.
“I’ll send Dash and a pack of cards to make sure you stay in bed,” Rigel says, and Petra is grateful for his warning because otherwise she might have had to admit that it hurts so much she wasn’t actually planning on sneaking out of bed.
Dash has a bandage on his arm and a shit-eating smile on his face that means Marius told him about Brin, but he plunks himself down in a chair and deals out the cards without any further comment. Petra gives him a haughty look and picks up her hand, and they might be traitors but that’s two Victors and a friend she’s saved, so maybe it’s not all bad.
This is not what she wanted. Not what any of them wanted, how could anyone want this -- except it is, for the grey-uniformed traitor-rebels who took them in after Brutus clawed his way back to life, and it is for the other grey-uniformed rebels they pretend are so different. They wanted this, the siege on the Capitol, the wholesale murder of Peacekeepers -- Petra's colleagues, her friends -- all of it. None of the casualties mean anything to them. It's all about the greater noble purpose of -- well, nobody has actually said, really, and when they do it makes no sense. It's not peace, that's for sure; peace is not gunfire and grenades and people falling in sprays of blood.
And Petra chose this. She chose it when their squad followed that message instead of taking Brutus back to base, and she's still not sure she made the right call. Maybe if the Capitol had seen how hard he'd fought to live, they would have realized that their hasty execution attempt had been just that. Maybe they would have --
No, they wouldn't have. Petra knows too much now, seen too much and heard too much and read too much, and all the information she's gathered over these past few months match up with the niggling suspicions that had started in her own brain once she and Dash were sent on border patrol, flaring up the first time they learned torture techniques from a pleasantly blank-faced woman who said things like 'interrogation' and ‘incentive’.
All Petra can do is hope she did the right thing, but it's hard to think that when their squad moves up to the entrance of President Snow's mansion and Petra recognizes every single guard standing in a line. There's Arcturus, Rigel's former squad-mate, who used to rest his elbow on Petra's head and grin down at her while she threatened to shiv him, high ranking officer or no high ranking officer. There's Vance, whose repertoire of filthy, vaguely sexist jokes used to annoy her until he noticed she didn't find them funny and knocked it off whenever the juniors were out with them. And then there's --
Emin. Emin, Rigel's former commander, the one who would have selected Petra from the pile of candidates and recommended her for the Scouts. Emin was the first person who saw past the suicidal mess of Petra's psych eval and found the glimmer of potential underneath. It's because of her that Petra has her family, her life, and she's logical and principled and fiercely loyal to the president and the nation. Emin is everything Petra wanted to be, everything that that day in the hovercraft Petra chose to turn away from.
Emin is here, and she knows they're coming. Helmets off, all of them, it's a trap -- Rigel and Marius have a hissing conversation that doesn't make it over the comms, which means they know, and Petra doesn't have to report her suspicions -- but there's nothing to be done about it. The sword is swinging and there's no choice but to land the blow.
They move out. They trip a sensor -- of course they do, Emin might have had their guards be helmetless and recognizable to throw the rebels but she's not stupid, far from stupid -- and the fire turns on them almost immediately. Petra throws herself to the side to avoid the first salvo, and she snaps off a shot that takes out Vance in the leg and brings him down. She could have taken him out with a full-on shot to the chest except -- well, except.
They pull back to regroup, and maybe they can do this, maybe they can take out the entrance with nothing but disabling shots even though Petra knows her colleagues and as long as their fingers will still curl around a trigger they'll keep fighting. But then one of the rebels throws a grenade at the entrance and the night turns white and gunfire explodes around her and when Petra risks a glance there are four bodies crumpled on the floor, their blood staining the marble stairs.
"Let's go!" Lyme shouts in their earpieces. Dash grips her arm, his face pale and jaw set like the day they gunned down those runaways from One, but he doesn't take his eye off the entrance, picking up his rifle.
Ahead of her Rigel and Marius have another quick argument, and Petra catches the words "You're hit" right before Rigel brushes Marius off and makes to stand.
And -- no. No.
She can see it now, the images unfolding in her mind like a bad dream that doesn't go away when she opens her eyes. Rigel pushing on despite his injury like he always does -- like she always does, like CO like soldier -- taking another hit (the leg? the side?) and still going because he's stubborn and proud and reckless. Making it all the way inside, except that Emin is not one of the corpses slowly cooling on the ground, she'll be in there, waiting. He'll see her and he'll hesitate, of course he will, because Rigel is flawed and human and above all chooses life above duty in the end.
Emin won't.
Rigel's head explodes into a spray of blood in Petra's mind, and without another thought she moves, taking him down with a full-body tackle as the others move out past them. "Petra!" Rigel shoves her off, and his voice is commander-sharp and tightly furious. "What are you --"
"Did that hurt, sir?" Petra demands, and Rigel's face devolves into a knowing 'oh' that's almost sheepish, and above her despite the death and destruction Marius' eyebrows creep up and one corner of his mouth twitches. She finds the spot of red blooming out on the shoulder of his uniform, sticks out one knuckle and jabs it hard into the bullet wound. "Did that hurt? Did that? Are you injured, sir? Do you think you should maybe stay back?" She continues to poke him, hard, like little kids in the Centre used to do, and all around them the city is on fire and their friends are dying but Marius lets out a bark of laughter at the look on Rigel's face.
"I think she has a point," Marius says. "Rigel, you're hit. Stay back and guard the entrance, keep us safe from the backup when it arrives. Petra, you stick with him. Dash, with me."
Petra starts to protest -- she's not hurt or hit or compromised, she's fine -- but then Marius shoots her a solemn, understanding sort of look and no, shit, yes she is. Because they're going to find the president, and after everything she's heard, all the intel she's gathered, Petra still can't bring herself to believe that the man who personally requested her for more than one honour guard and remembered her favourite kind of cookie and never, ever patronized her for being too small or too old fashioned could have done all the things they said he did. Just like Emin and Rigel, if the order came to put a bullet in his brain, Petra couldn't do it.
"Yes sir," Petra says, and Marius nods. Dash looks back at them, agonized, and something tears free in Petra's chest because this could be the last time they see each other. (It won't, she tells herself firmly, it won't, he's going to live and come back to them because he can't die here, not after everything they've done -- but it could. She knows it could.) There's no time for goodbyes or speeches but she can't leave it like this, something screams at her in her head and she doesn't know what it is but she can't --
Before she knows what she's doing, Petra fists her hand in Dash's uniform, yanks him down and kisses him hard on the mouth. Their teeth clash and he tastes of soot and gunpowder and blood and he's startled enough that he freezes, but he starts to kiss her back right before she shoves him away. "Wha --"
"Come back and we'll talk," Petra says, head roaring and ears ringing, and she doesn't like boys, what is she doing, but the jangling in her chest settles.
Dash gives her a bewildered look, but then his expression resolves and he nods. "Okay," he says, and Marius's expression is amused for one more second before he claps Dash's shoulder and they're gone.
"You have a flair for the dramatic, chipmunk," Rigel says, and Petra grunts, unzips her jacket and tears off a strip from the hem of her shirt to tie around his arm.
"Chipmunk me again and I'll shoot you in the head, sir," Petra snaps, and it's not funny with their friends lying dead but they're all Careers here, and they all understand Arena humour.
"I'd let you if you could reach," Rigel shoots back, wincing when Petra pulls the makeshift bandage tight.
"If I kneecap you first, then I'll be able to reach," Petra says, and Rigel laughs and pulls her in with an arm around her shoulders, ruffling her hair before they turn back to watch the entrance.