Author Games: Panem Entangled

When In Panem | Entries 1-6

District 1 Male: Morgan Ruidhir

Morgan Ruidhir had a knack for belonging. In his sunny-eyed, gangly-limbed way, he could make a place feel as if it were made for him, as if the tile or marble or grass on which he stood had been shaped with Morgan in mind. The Training Center in District One had been his; he'd wandered the building with a staff in one hand and an apple in the other, letting the tides of trainees billow past him indifferently. The Ruidhir family home had been his, too—the entire, sprawling neighborhood had been his, but the house most of all—and every doughy blackberry pie his mother baked and every made-up tune his younger sisters whistled had held a sliver of Morgan inside it. That was the secret, after all. Morgan became a place because he gave himself to that place.

But the Capitol wasn't Morgan's. He doubted it ever would be.

Here Morgan felt that detachment keenly, in a stuffy "green room" that he could not have belonged to less. Tributes and mentors jostled one another as they tightened ties, adjusted jewelry, and whispered strategies behind cupped hands. On all four sides, floor-to-ceiling mirrors plated the walls, only interrupted by large, glowing screens that displayed the brightly-lit interview stage. As Morgan eyed the closest monitor, a bedazzled young woman with magenta-curled hair strode across the digital stage and blew kisses to an invisible audience. The entire scene—the people, the screens, the mirrored walls—felt in that instant like nothing at all. Morgan shuddered.

Before stepping off the train a week prior, Morgan had never been in a place he couldn't feel. Just as people radiated energy, so too did places, and Morgan had attuned himself to the energies of every space he had entered. Chesapeake's Hill on the edge of District One had given off a tranquil, blue-and-green energy; Main Street's energy had been cluttered and optimistic, an orangey red streaked with gold.

This room was nothing. This room had no energy. If Morgan had sat for hours, striving desperately to squeeze feeling from the shiny silver couches and the white lacquered floors, he would indubitably come up short.

But it wasn't only this room. It was the quarters to he and Mizar were confined, where they slept on plushy mattresses and stuffed glistening, unidentifiable dishes into their mouths until they felt they would burst. It was the training room in which Hadrian sequestered him during the day, where he'd been urged to intimidate those smaller and weaker than himself ("—show them fear, show them you," Hadrian had whispered, tourmaline eyes glinting with an edge). It was the bathroom and the elevator and the hallway, where every overheard conversation seemed an eerie copy of the one before it.

It was the man Morgan saw when he glanced across the green room. His hair was long and loose, hanging in reddish-golden ringlets around his ears; his face was smattered with tiny freckles; his eyes were hazel, and they were blank. His jaw was bare. The man at which Morgan stared was empty, just like the room, just like the gargantuan, faceless Capitol that towered over them all.

Morgan did not belong here, and yet his reflection—the vacant-eyed, emerald-suited man before him—had waited for this place his whole life. In a few minutes, the mirror-man would walk out under swiveling spotlights and shake that magenta-haired woman's hand, and he would make the stage feel as if it were made for him. He'd chuckle and banter as if the sofa on which he sat had been built with the mirror-man in mind.

And the Capitol would become his, because the mirror-man had become the Capitol.

(One concern: he'd never truly given himself to the Capitol. Mirror-men had nothing to give. But that was all right, because there was nothing to become, either.)

Mizar and her mentor, Fiona, had gone missing at some point, likely to rehash their interview strategy in private. Hadrian had already drilled Morgan beforehand on the plan—the instant he strode onto that illuminated stage, he would need to adopt what Hadrian called the "golden boy balance." Golden boys (regardless of whether they were also mirror-men) were soft yet strong, witty and playful yet innocent and reverent. When a Capitol sponsor looked at a golden boy's face, they would find something worth fighting for. When they looked at a golden boy's body, they would find something capable of victory. Both components—the need for aid and the ability to win—were designed to draw the money out of people's bank accounts, the praise from people's lips, and the latent potential from Morgan Ruidhir.