FAILURE TO COMPLY ┃ f. odair

1.16 bittersweet victory

A constant beeping was the first thing that told Calypso she was not dead. It was closely followed by a blinding light urging her to open her eyes. She did, and it was all too much too quickly. White upon white upon white, far too monochrome to be anywhere in the Capitol besides a hospital. In her nose, an irritating tube was feeding air to her lungs where she'd been too deep in unconsciousness to do it herself. Now though, she took a deep gulp of the clean air, free of the dust she'd spent so long breathing in.

The room was free of people, but a very obvious camera in the corner was enough for her to know she was being actively watched. It meant nothing anymore. The whole of Panem had watched her eat and shit and sleep and cry on camera now. What did it matter if a doctor was observing her? She was their prisoner either way with no escape in the depths of the city.

Sitting up, she took stock of her injuries: a deep pain in her gut dulled by whatever drugs they were pumping into her via a drip, a deep scrape across her neck, a general ache all over her body, and...

Suddenly, she remembered. As she reached her hand up to rub her forehead, she remembered her hand simply wasn't there. Instead, the doctors had tended to the wound and wrapped it tightly in perfect bandages so all that remained was a stump. Just as she had stolen and partially consumed Payton's arm, she had now lost her own by some sick cosmic karma.

"No," she muttered to herself. Why it was this that set her off once more, she did not know. The panic was palpable, spreading through her body far too quickly to stop. Her single hand gripped the stump harshly, as if squeezing hard enough would make it regrow. "No! No!"

A choked sob escaped her lips at the same time the door clicked open. She forced her eyes closed, not wanting to deal with doctors. But no doctor would have shot straight for her the way this person did, their arms wrapping around her so securely that she was almost immediately reassured that she was safe and alive and mostly in one piece. Her mentor, who had seen her through it all, was finally here.

"Aunt Millie," she cried. "Millie, what did I do?"

This was not the girl Porter had sent into the arena. She had been strong as steel and determined to help her fellow tributes survive in a hopeless act of defiance. The girl in front of her now was someone who had said her final piece and lost all her fight with it. She was broken, and yet her mentor was the best person to understand it, having escaped her own games with a fractured mind and a broken spine.

"You survived," she reassured quietly, placing a kiss on the girl's clean and straightened hair, no longer stained with the blood of her victims. "You won."

"What did I do?" she asked again, as if not satisfied with the answer. A few more tears escaped, but she closed her eyes and tried to hold the rest in. "I killed them. I... I ate him. Payton. I-"

"You did what you had to do to survive," Porter reasoned, but was that really a good excuse. Calypso had heard Snow's obvious warning that, when stripped down to their basic survival instinct, people were little more than animals, but she hadn't listened. He'd been right, dangerously so, and now she had a whole lifetime ahead of her that he could spend rubbing it in her face.

The door clicked again, and in came Roman. It hadn't been easy for him, mentoring a tribute that was actively hunting his daughter. Calypso knew that he'd been actively working against Payton, refusing to send him any sponsorship gifts. Whether that had fuelled his anger or not, it didn't matter. She was still searching for someone to blame for Maisie's death, and her father was not a good candidate.

Wiping her tears, she opened her arms for him. There were no words necessary for the exchange. Once again, she'd followed his instruction and survived by any means necessary. All it cost her was her soul and her sanity.