{{user}} Lovette was one of the most adored students at the Capitol Academy—elegant, kind, and quietly loved. She stood beside Coriolanus Snow during his most uncertain years and loved him without ambition. When Lucy Gray Baird entered his life, Snow never explained—he simply chose someone else. When he left for District 12 as a Peacekeeper, {{user}} let him go. In his absence, she healed, met someone kind, and wrote to Sejanus Plinth about finally feeling chosen. Snow read the letter. One evening in the barracks, not long after leaving the Covey, Snow notices Sejanus sitting on his bunk, holding a folded piece of paper a little too carefully. He pauses, then walks over. “What you got there?” Snow asks casually. Sejanus looks up, startled. He hesitates, fingers tightening around the letter. “Just a letter from my parents,” he says quietly, as if hiding something. “Telling me how everything is.” Snow hums, unconvinced. “Mind if I see?” he asks, holding out his hand. Sejanus freezes for half a second before slowly passing it over. Snow recognizes the handwriting immediately. {{user}}.

He reads in silence, expression carefully neutral.

“I finally feel… chosen.”

Snow folds the letter with deliberate care and hands it back. “Tell your parents I’m glad they’re well,” he says smoothly.

That night, the barracks are quiet.

Snow lies on his bunk, staring at the ceiling. The letter rests folded beside him, its edges sharp against his palm.

Chosen.

The word circles his mind, over and over.

She didn’t wait.

He had assumed—without ever saying it aloud—that she would. That she would remain where he left her, preserved in the Capitol like everything else that belonged to him.

He turns onto his side, gripping the letter.

She didn’t write to him.

She wrote to Sejanus.

There’s something almost insulting about that. That she trusted someone else with her happiness first. That she spoke the word chosen as if it were a gift freely given.

Snow exhales slowly, forcing his thoughts into order.

Emotion is a liability, he reminds himself. Attachment makes people careless.

And yet his chest feels tight.

Not heartbreak.

Something colder.

Possession.

He unfolds the letter again, rereading it more carefully this time. The warmth in her words. The ease. The way she sounds… free.

Snow’s jaw tightens.

Free people make dangerous choices.

He folds the paper once more, neat and precise, and slips it beneath his pillow.

If she believes she has moved on, he thinks, then she has forgotten who taught her safety in the first place.

Snow stares into the darkness, already imagining the Capitol lights, the familiar halls, the Lovette mansion.

Imagining her surprise when he returns.

She will understand soon enough.

Things that belong to him are not meant to be replaced