CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE —        How The Games Goes ..

______________________

          "Has it yet occurred to you that you are perhaps overestimating my little sister, Dr. Gaul?" Albert sighed. He's had to walk through this woman's laboratory in deep reconstructions for the past ten minutes, and at long last, the walking was starting to get him irritated, especially with a lack of alcoholic beverage in hand to keep him entertained. "You've called me here because you were concerned about what she's up to, but all I have heard so far is mere speculation, nothing of real substance."

"She burned down a whole wing of this laboratory, whether you want to see it or not," Dr. Gaul was undisturbed by the stubborn idiocy of the president's eldest son. After all, no matter how annoying his nature, an aspiring man with the intelligence of a slug would always be more beneficial to her plans than the sharp enemy Daphne Ravinstill had proven herself to be. "She didn't do all of this to hurt me, Mr. Ravinstill, but it's very likely instead that she had chosen arson as a cover-up for a theft."

"All wonderful accusations which I would love to hold against my dear sister, as you well know, but none of which can actually be proven," Albert grimaced. "Your archive has been swept clean and there's no inventory left to cross-reference in order to look for what could be missing. Even with an inventory still available, you wouldn't be able to tell which assets have been lost in fire or to theft, because there's no security footage left either. All you have to back up this assumptions of yours is what my fiancée likes to call a 'female intuition', some bullshit excuse that will never stand in court, and believe me, my sister is many things but she's not some coward. She will take accusations like these to court, without hesitation."

"How about the rat population control project she funded after the fire?" Dr. Gaul offered another fact for his consideration. "It is undeniably suspicious that she's decided to work on a pesticide, of all things."

"Is it really?" Albert dismissed with a sigh. "We have lost Tributes this year to rabies, haven't we?"

"And Miss Ravinstill is definitely known for her endorsement of the Games."

"I don't think I care for your tone, Dr. Gaul," he warned in retaliation to her sarcasm.

"Pesticides are just another name for poisons, Mr. Ravinstill," she continued, completely ignoring his comment; the likes of Albert could not scare her, much as they tried, and unfortunately for her patience, they did try quite a lot. "I believe your sister is setting up a coup d'état."

"Are you sure we are talking about the same Daphne?" Albert shook his head. "Sure, she's always had the ambition of besting me in politics, but she's not cut for this game. You've seen how she behaved in Congress. She's too radical to make it to the top and I am sure she's not delusional enough to not see that."

"Her performance in Congress has been perhaps a little too dramatic," she agreed. "There's always the option that she may have had ulterior motives to join though."

"Didn't you say you are working on removing her anyhow?" He now sighed, exasperated by just how much importance was placed upon his sister in this conversation.

"There's been some unusual hold-ups from Strabo Plinth," she admitted, uncomfortable with the partial defeat on that front.

"I would normally entertain a scandal about Daphne bribing Plinth with unbecoming favors," Albert couldn't help a grin at the thought of such a tabloid title, "but everyone and their mother knows my sister has a talent for unsettling every man in a mile radius."

"Apart from Coriolanus Snow," Dr. Gaul took the liberty of pointing out, fittingly as soon as they reached her office, or at least the room in which her office had to be moved into during constructions salvaging what had been lost of the building to that unexpected fire.

"Right," Albert rolled his eyes. "You can tell a lot about a person by observing their friends and, Dr. Gaul, my sister seems to have grown rather fond of a complete idiot. Perhaps she should have chosen to pursue someone a little harder to sweep off the board for making herself a more reputable lady to run for office, because young Snow is clinging to a vanished legacy. Just a few days ago, I made sure his family received an eviction notice. They can only miss so many payments on rent in this growing city. I reckon we won't be seeing him around soon enough and with a bit of luck, Daphne will stop being such a nuisance after that too."

Dr. Gaul chuckled along, to signal that she approved of the initiative Albert took in removing Coriolanus from the equation. "That should do, yes. Unless of course, Mr. Snow wins his much desired scholarship."

That little detail had darkened Albert's demeanor,  "Shouldn't you have a say in who wins and who doesn't?"

"There are more forces at play," Dr. Gaul walked around her desk, "but while I may not be allowed to blatantly interfere with what happens in the arena now that's it's down to the last two Tributes, I may yet ensure Mr. Snow doesn't have his moment of glory within grasp for long, should his little songbird get the last note in the Games." With the press of a button, she finally displayed on a screen she promptly turned around for him to behold the security footage from an elevator that captured the exact moment when Coriolanus Snow dropped his handkerchief in the tank of snakes.

"I knew something was wrong when your marvelous Mutts spared that scrawny girl from 12," Albert puffed, taking a seat in the chair before Dr. Gaul's desk.

"You and everyone else who was watching," she took a seat across the desk from him, holding her hands together under her chin and slowly interlocking her fingers. "I know a certain Highbottom who will order a sweep of the arena when it's done and should Snow's handkerchief still be there..."

"He's done for," Albert's grin grew wrinkles on his features. "And so will be my sister's credibility against me in a run for presidency."

"It's safe to assume she doesn't know about the existence of this footage," Gaul appreciated. "And of course, the day is yet to show us which Tribute will remain alive, but as of right now, we have an advantage that will deter her from her plans, whichever those may be, because with or without winning, Coriolanus Snow will not remain in the Capitol by today's conclusion."

"Do you think I can have a copy of this?" Upon seeing Dr. Gaul question him with a raised eyebrow, Albert sighed, "You wouldn't mind me taking credit for your fault discovery now, would you? I want to be the one who lays the news on her that her political attempts have cost her her boyfriend."

"Are you sure you'd like to provoke her with such a thing?" Dr. Gaul's speech turned numb in hopes of stopping Albert from threading dangerously.

"I'm not afraid of my sister, Dr. Gaul," Albert raised his chin proudly. "She's learnt the hard way that her place is beneath me at the end of the day. If anything, she's the one who's afraid of me."

They say the human brain cannot go without sleeping for more than two days in a row without subjecting itself to severe mood changes and the unpleasant appearance of hallucinations. Daphne had wondered for a while if she should call herself a conqueror of this human limitation for having gotten used to the shadow of her mother existing at the corner of her eyes and to the breath fanning chills on the back of her neck each time the night stretched into days and hours blended together, warped by her mental work.

This final endeavor of hers into chemistry had worn her thin — the past few days, of which she had all but lost count, were spent running around the city between her room, the hospital in the basement of which she toyed with substances beneath a flickering neon, and the zoo, where she was given full reign over the old veterinarian infirmary, an outpost amidst the rodent plagued vestige in the heart of the Capitol. If there had ever been any doubt in her heart that her hatred for biology was misplaced, having to test her poison variations on rats hammered ever deeper into her mind her distaste for this branch of science was justified.

Lately she's been yawning a lot though. Her hands have started shivering on syringes and on the chalk which seemed to be drawing hieroglyphs on her boards rather than cohesive equations. Perhaps Daphne should have gotten the hint that all these symptoms couldn't be heralding something good — the body will claim the rests it needs if it won't receive it —, but since she had ignored each and every sign of fatigue, it was unavoidable for her to end on the floor of her room, knocked out by both the exhaustion and the bump between the back of her head and the ground.

From down there, her senses were easily confused. Daphne swore she was hearing that wretched sound of the rats trying to get out of their cages by scratching through the glass, making her think for a terrible second that she had fainted in the zoo infirmary and that any second now some rat might escape and kill her. 

There was also the matter of time that puzzled her deeply because she could have sworn the last she stood before her blackboards, squinting at what she's been struggling to write, it was still daylight outside; in fact late morning, heading in for lunch time, which she was planning on finally having, in the car with Thaddeus. However, now that her eyes fluttered open, her room was engulfed in pitch black.

Even laying on the ground, she could make out the dark silhouette of her mother, still seated on the edge of her bed. "You've run yourself into a wall, darling," her mother's taunting ghost spoke to her again in a voice coated in sugar, one at the sound of which Daphne couldn't help but grimace.

The rat scratching sound turned into the usual ear ringing as soon as she started forcing a return to her senses by focusing on closing her hands into fists. The chalk was still in her right hand — she could feel it poking in her grip.

"Now's the time for you to surrender," she heard her mother complete that idiotic phrase of hers, the same words she told both of her kids each time they played games together. Teaching them loss, Daphne snared at the idea. Spite fired her up to close her left hand into a fist as well, though it remained awfully numb. 

From amidst her struggles to awaken before that teaching of her mother's would become a haunting choir unaware that all those words have ever done for her was sediment a foundation to a boundless ambition to win, Daphne recalled — shouldn't she be holding that final vial of poison in her left hand?

The sheer panic born from the mere possibility of having lost that last vial pushed her to sit up directly, wide eyes scanning first her empty left hand and then the rest of the floor. "No, no...," Daphne scrambled to her feet, kicking off her heels in order to avoid the risk of just falling back down while still dizzy. The risk was high because the room taunted her with the sensation of spinning without her. 

Her worst fear was to find the vial shattered and the poison scattered on her floor, but even though that disaster seemed to have been avoided after a quick glance around the dry floor, free of shards, she still had to find the darn thing — she couldn't accept that all these days of work would come down to her falling victim to the weaknesses of human nature.

"You fucking idiot," she mumbled her scolding of herself, and went to her knees. Some fragment of reason told her that it was most likely for the vial to have rolled under the bed if it was still in one piece, and fortunately for her pounding headache corrupting her vision in dark spots as soon as she bent over and neared her forehead to the ground, her reasoning had been proven sound and she sat back on her heels with the vial in hand.

After this madness, Daphne repeated in her mind the very same promise that got her that far into this project without seeking the blissful relief of comfort that being around Coriolanus conferred her. We've earned ourselves a break. A weekend spent together, locked away from a city about to turn hostile. 

She used that image of a little heaven on earth and what she could still remember clearly from the last time they saw each other on that rooftop to fuel her motivation — even just a tiny spark was much welcomed in its help to get her standing up again and pulling herself together one last time. At this point, she would have liked to hug his shirt again, but that little trick got ruined for her by her own vice, his shirt no longer smelling like him, but more like her hours of spent cigarettes. 

Getting ready was taxing business without the distraction of scent to back up her memories. She first prepared the vial into a new syringe. Time was essential in everything that happened these days, so she had bagged a bunch of syringes from the hospital, in hopes to save herself some journeys. Then, while fixing her attire and her hair, she checked the radio in hopes of hearing news of the Games. A promise had been made to Coriolanus and though sometimes the extra noise turned irritating, she tried to stay caught up with everything that happened in that arena. 

There was nothing on the radio though, and since night had fallen, she could only assume that there wasn't really anything happening in the arena worth speaking about. Another quiet night, she sighed in exasperation. The fifth in a row. How much longer will this take? It had been a true miracle that Lucy Gray was one of the last two tributes left, but now everything was just dragging itself out in unbearable fashion that she almost wished she could toss a gun in that arena and tell them to get it over with already. She couldn't even begin to imagine the tension Coriolanus must be feeling watching as both tributes stalled towards the much anticipated ending, but she could wonder just fine if he had found time amidst all his stress to think of her.

She was aware she has been thinking about him quite a lot, though no thought felt nearly enough anymore, not as she yearned the real him. 

After a quick curse left her lips upon finding her pack of cigarettes empty, Daphne decided she will simply have to go for a night walk to get a new one later, after giving Thaddeus the syringe. They have decided amidst planning that it would be for the best that he, with the experience of having carried out espionage missions during the war, poison the two bottles of alcohol most cherished in the president's and her brother's offices. As much as she would have liked to carry the stain of their deaths herself, letting someone trained for such things handle it seemed like the wiser option, the one that Coriolanus would approve of her to make — either way, though she couldn't bring herself to trust him completely, she trusted Thaddeus' faith in her vision and that was enough.

It's perfect, Daphne rolled her shoulders after having pocketed the syringe and left her room with one final yawn escaping past her lips. After the poison is in place, it's only a matter of patience, which means it's the perfect time to lay low with Coriolanus. The further I am from the suspect list, the better. The symptoms of the poisoning will cause a panic once they grow visible anyway.

"There she is!" Noise broke her concentration as soon as she was about to turn the corner for the staircase leading to the business running side of the building. A fragrant scent of pine invaded her nostrils and made the hair on the back of her neck sit up long before her brother's heavy arm captured her from around the shoulders. "You've made yourself such a hard woman to get a hold of with your community projects that I feared I won't be seeing you today in time to congratulate you."

Though she was holding back the repulsion that came from his cologne, Daphne managed to gulp down her disgust just about enough to inquire bluntly, "For what?" However, there was no strength in her to actually resist being pulled aside and into her brother's office; even fully rested, he was taller and bigger than her in all ways that counted physically.

"For your little boyfriend's win, of course," Albert beamed. He made sure to close the door behind them, since he had no desire to have her run off and deny him a glimpse at how defeat looked on her features. "I would offer you a drink, but —"

"I don't drink," Daphne cut him off, crossing her arms over her chest as soon as he let go of her. Though he moved further into his office, passing the stand with bottles throning amongst his reduced library to the left side of the room, Daphne chose to remain besides the door.

"Yes," Albert shook his head, walking to his desk, "you insist on being uninteresting, I remember that. But then again, this is a time of celebration, not lecturing. I admit, I didn't expect Coriolanus Snow's tribute to win. Oh-!" He stopped. "Sister, you look lost. Didn't you hear? Haven't you been watching the Games? That little songbird from 12 won. Fair and square. Well, as far as the plebs are concerned."

Daphne regretted not having been just a little better rested to handle this conversation properly. Every single layer of nuance it presented itself with before her promised deeper meanings that all stood, at that point, just a little out of her reach. 

With her ears still ringing and her mind exhausted, the best she could do was remain silent, though she wished for better company to be able to boast about Coriolanus' success and she definitely wished to just turned around and leave for his house, to let him know how proud of him she really was — and she was, even as she loathed herself for missing the announcement of his victory. There went her puny need for sleep, ruining another thing for her.

"But we are no plebs. It's just, I believe none of us saw it coming that poor little Snow had it in him to cheat," Albert tilted his head to the side, his hands grasping the edge of the desk behind him.

"Coriolanus is no cheater," Daphne responded promptly. She's always believed that defending the people you care about when they are not around is the bare minimum to a baseline of respect. "He won on his own merits. A concept I am certain you are unfamiliar with, but I must ask nonetheless for you to grasp."

"But then again," Albert grinned at her defensive reaction, "you cannot deny that he had all the reason to be desperate for that prize. Being poor and a step away from living on the street can motivate a man to do a great many things that are unethical."

"Yes, that's all very fascinating," she sighed. "Always a pleasure hearing your uneducated guesses about people you don't know, brother." It wasn't so out of the ordinary that Albert tried to pick apart anything she was remotely passionate about and Daphne was ready to ignore his deplorable attempts merely to save herself the headache. She turned towards the door and grasp the handle, "If this is all you had —"

"I have proof," Albert interrupted with a carefree, downright insultingly innocent tone. 

Though his words were the ones that froze Daphne into place, him pressing play on the recording was the sound that actually got her to turn around. 

There was a single monitor in the office, placed on his desk and facing his chair. He motioned for her to approach it and see for herself.

Coriolanus is no cheater, Daphne repeated in her mind, sparing some time to glare at her brother before letting go of the doorknob and making her way to his desk. She went around it, but did not waste her breath with sitting in his chair first. 

Not even a second after gazing at the recording though, she wished she had taken a seat — her knees had almost instantly grown weak. Within a second, watching Coriolanus drop his handkerchief in that snake tank, crowded Daphne's mind, drowning it in overlapping thoughts trying to make sense of what she refused to believe it was true. I told him, she thought at first. I told him we had to gain our power legally.

It's a fake, the loudest thought in her mind countered instantly. 

Even if it is a fake, her next thought tortured her further, it looks real enough to cost Coriolanus his whole reputation along with the right to that scholarship.

The setting of the recording also prompted Daphne to eventually recognize that it was footage which could have only reached Albert's hands if it had been given to him by Dr. Gaul herself. At that point, she chose to tear her eyes from the screen and look up at her brother, "And I assume you're showing me this because you want to blackmail me into doing you some favor?"

"Blackmailing is for children, dear sister," Albert straightened himself up proudly. "The recording has already reached the hands of the Dean. My educated guess is that your poor companion is on his way to District 2 to start training in the Peacekeeper program by now, with twenty years ahead of him of serving in disgrace for his interference with the Games. I merely wanted to be the first to see your face when you realize your chances of winning against me in a run for office are gone forever. Congratulations."

Daphne had to admit, she hadn't heard much after Albert had told her the recording's already been passed to Highbottom. So it was done. The move had already been made and she slept through it all. 

As soon as that part had reached her ears, Daphne could have sworn her heart dropped out of sight and took with it her ability to focus her sight. A blurred shadow stood somewhere behind her brother and she heard her mother's voice distort itself along voices she did not fully recognize, "Now's the time for you to surrender."

In hopes of escaping that vision, Daphne shook her head and, over her deafening ear ringing starting to become painful to endure, she inquired, staring down at the desk, "When was this?" Or rather said, she sought to know when exactly had Coriolanus been sent away from her.

"Around lunch time," Albert shrugged, dismissive of the detail and of the heaviness of the news as they took a toll on his sister. "It so seems you've missed your chance to even say goodbye to him. If you ask me, it's for the better. You'll forget him sooner this way."

You fucking idiot, she scolded herself at that moment. How could you not see this? How did you not anticipate this? How can you consider yourself capable of ruling a country when you can't even see threats ahead of time? 

Each lash of shame she threw on her own mind made her ear ringing grow ever the more pitched. A drill in her skull turned to chalk dragged across the board and soon became something that much worse, without terms of comparison to any sound she thought the real world could conceive. 

Daphne expected herself to grow deaf there and then, but instead, she was surprised to find the pitch took an abrupt dive into complete silence — why that felt as if something had snapped within her, she didn't know, but her gaze lifted and the tension in her jaw was simply gone.

"Well played," she said, though she couldn't believe those words were actually coming out of her mouth. "May I have that drink now?"

"Certainly," he nodded, slightly taken aback by her swift admission to defeat. 

He stepped away from the desk and as soon as he turned around, towards his shelves, Daphne returned her panicked gaze to the screen replaying the same security footage. Oh, Coryo, she thought, her worry only growing. What have you done?

The more self-aware side of herself rephrased that question — What are you making me do?

"I must admit," Albert spoke, turning his back on her to retrieve a glass from the bottom cupboard, "you are taking this defeat far better than I thought you would. It cuts from my satisfaction, but it is admirable. Mother taught you well, though her lessons never really stuck with me. Knowing how to lose and how to tell when that loss is inevitable are both reputable skills, but I do not spare my vanity the truth that I have yet to need them in my work."

As she was watching the screen, her right hand slid into her jacket, finding the syringe in the inner pocket. When her fingertips touched that cold syringe, she finally looked up at her brother's back. Her heart was in her throat and her ear ringing had abandoned her to hearing it fret.

"You don't have to mourn your loss too long though," Albert begun pouring two glasses of whiskey, unaware Daphne had quietly moved around his desk to come behind him. "Once I become president, I won't have the time to care for our uncle's business. I will let you and your future husband, whoever that may be, have it. I'll even convince our uncle personally to sign it over to you. I may loathe you, but we are still blood and I wouldn't have you rot away, dragging our prestige down with you."

She gulped, images of her experiments flashing before her eyes. Rats squirming in their cages of glass, foaming at their mouth, losing their hair to horrible reptilian muttations that should have never crossed with their species in the schemes of the Creator.

Hesitation suffocated her and without oxygen, paranoia took over just as her hand uncapped the syringe's needle and this created weapon had been released from under her jacket's shadow. 

Daphne couldn't help but look back at the door of the office, expecting it to fling open any second now. She expected to be discovered amidst the act she wasn't half as committed to as she should have been. She still couldn't believe what she was doing — this wasn't the plan.

Spotting Albert's movement from the corner of her eyes broke her trance of hesitation. Within the second, she stepped forward and stabbed the syringe into the side of his neck, pushing the poison into him. 

Half of the syringe had been emptied, far more than she had intended to administer him.

The centric trait of the venom she had altered was that it had an immediate effect on its victims; even with her diluting it into a feasible poison to use in the long game and over a large quantity of liquid, the first symptoms would always manifest within seconds from the first ingestion.

Albert was no exception. And he had received a concentrated, large dose.

Daphne pulled out the needle the second he gasped. She was forced to take a step back in order to dodge his flailing hands, throwing the glasses he's held until that moment onto the ground. Thankfully, his floors had been carpeted and that luxury of his, absorbed the noise.

With one hand holding the side of his neck, Albert had turned around only to loose his balance completely and fall over without a single sense left to save him from a heavy impact with the ground. He was foaming at the mouth and it was hard to tell if his lips were moving in an attempt to breathe as a fish trapped on land or in an attempt to speak his last words, as dying men often did. The way his bulging eyes whose whites had quickly gained a yellow tint seemed to remain focused on Daphne in their terror, had immediately compelled her to believe that he was trying to talk with her while he convulsed at her feet.

She took another step back so his hand couldn't reach her foot, then tilted her head to the side, observing. Once again, she found herself incapable of looking away from the face of death, but unlike with Dr. Birches, his pain did not herald the return of her torturous ear ringing. Everything was silent. 

She had expected to be disgusted or even repulsed by this sight, much as she had been during the testing period when so many rodents died before her eyes and she begged for breaks in which to look at anything else but monstrous puddles. 

If she had to describe how this made her feel as she continued to stare on, she would perhaps sooner call it a 'moment of pure clarity' than a terror.

"Curious," she mumbled to herself, looking down at the syringe with half its contents still intact. "I suppose I have you to thank for how incredibly easy it is for me to kill you," she appreciated out loud, comfortable to speak thanks to knowing all too well that the residential side of the building had no cameras installed. She hummed over her brother's gagging, retrieving a napkin from her purse and removing the needle from the syringe with it, tucking it in a small pocket, besides her lighter. "You've been so adamant in making me forget there was ever a time in which you were my beloved brother, that I fear now those memories have been utterly eradicated. I look at you now...," she descended her gaze upon him and his skin growing spots of rainbow scales in real time. "And I just don't care."

Daphne looked next at where the glasses had fallen, then up on the shelf at the bottle standing out before the rest. Without a moment of hesitation, she took another napkin from her bag and walked over her brother, whose convulsions have dialed down. His skin had now turned from pale to a sick yellow, beginning to bruise all over. 

"You'll be dead soon," she reassured him after removing the bottle cap and dripping some of the poison inside the bottle he had poured whiskey for them from. Only touching the bottle through the napkin, she sealed it back up and lifted it for a good shake before setting down as it had been left by him. "The poison destroys all tissue by trying to muttate every single living cell it reaches. It's an awful way to go. But then again, you are an awful person."

Finally she walked over to the stain on the carpet and let out two drops of poison over it, though she doubted anyone would actually go that far with the investigation of his death.

Hearing some groans of pain from him prompted Daphne to sit up and walk over. "Oh, no," she shook her head looking down at Albert. "There's no salvation. You're done. The cure should be administered within the first thirty seconds from infection, so even if I had it, your fate's already been sealed." She dropped the syringe with the rest of its contents, wrapped in a napkin, inside her bag and straightened up, even finding the serenity to bring a smile to her features. 

Finally, she was looking at a corpse in the shadow of which she could never be again. 

"I like it," Daphne noted, shamelessly allowing herself to feel grateful that her plan went off the rails and allowed her to be the executioner to her vision. "I like how defeat looks on your face."

With a deep inhale, taking in all she could from her victory before tomorrow came with all its consequences she heard the murmur of already, Daphne raised her gaze a final time. She walked back to the monitor and, settling in the place she had previously stood, she let out a guttural scream for help.

Their Games might have ended that day, but thanks to the animalistic nature of her enemies, Daphne's game had just begun.

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE :   
          Lucy Gray may have played in the Games, but Daphne played The Game.

Let it be known that I find it so satisfying to know that Daphne's first official kill is her brother who had abused her basically all her life. Like — you go girl, he got what he deserved. 😌✨️ You won't catch me holding my baby accountable nuh-uh. She's innocent!

I am aware this chapter was posted wayyy later than I usually post my updates, and I am sorry about that. I believe since Christmas Eve is tomorrow it would be safe to announce that for this holiday period my updates will be posted like this, in the evening. I am planning on writing and updating during the holidays, of course 🥰💖✨️

Now buckle up, 'cause next chapter we get the second and third casualties to the New World project 👀 Note that we return to a more Coriolanus-centric pov in Chapter 27 hehe