It's difficult not to take it as an admonition. Not because he assumes the worst of Jason, but because Cyrus himself is so thoroughly disgusted with being here that he almost mistakes it for something he's thought bitterly to himself in recent weeks. It takes him a second too long to smile, to make the appropriate I know, right? kind of laugh.

God, how long has it been? A lot of his memories of Jason are early ones, pre-politics ones, so old they feel like they belong to another person, a kid who might not even have been him. They'd probably watched the Hunger Games together before, argued over their favorites, run through the same ornate gardens and echoing marble halls. And now here they are-- down a few parents, sitting on far different rungs of the same teetering ladder, and both mired in the Hunger Games.

"A lot has changed," he says, wry. "Don't know if you've been watching-- they bring them from other worlds now." Ha ha. He shrugs, easy, saying I have every reason to be here. "You've got the logistical mess to clean up; they left me with the legal one."