FAILURE TO COMPLY ┃ f. odair

2.2 a sunset's finality

Giving Snow silent confirmation of her obedience and actually following through with it were two very different things. With the commencement of her victory tour came a new kind of anger beginning to fester in Calypso. She would not listen to him. Her mind and heart would not allow it. Whatever was happening to her, she was losing herself to it. Soon enough, anger would be the only thing left.

Roman Silva was strong and untouchable. There was no way Snow would dare to harm one of his victors, beloved by the Capitol. Even if the title was a cage, it was also a shield. No amount of 'little defiant moments', as he put it, could justify him hurting the people she cared for, because they were all victors or Capitol citizens themselves.

And that made her want to burn him in any way possible, just to show her power.

In District Twelve, she'd been quiet, hardly making it through the script Monica had provided her without losing her words along the way. They weren't even her words, but she couldn't manage them. Even if she hadn't known the two tributes from Twelve, their faces were ones she couldn't bear to look at for too long, lest she get lost in the games again.

"Now, Eleven is going to be a lot more personal for you considering your allyship with Poet," Monica mused, pacing back and forth across the few metres in front of where Calypso sat on the sofa, legs pulled up to her chest. Beside her, Roman was sitting with the bridge of his nose pinched between his fingers. "I've added a touch of this to your speech, something nice about Poet that will help you connect with his family, but no more than this."

Calypso took the cards from Monica, the first giving a brief introduction, and the next talking about the tributes. It was only one sentence mentioning Poet by name, calling him her friend. The escort had no idea. No one would ever know just how much the boy she'd met and lost within days of each other truly meant to her. It felt wrong to have someone else tell her what to say about it.

The carriage of the train hummed softly as it moved, less than an hour away from the next district. In the armchair to her left, Porter was quietly mulling over several of Vega's drawings for outfit concepts. each one vaguely inspired by the districts they were visiting. Behind Calypso, the Visionary was fiddling with her blonde hair, pulling strands this way and that to figure out how he would style it.

"This is stupid," she finally replied, tossing the cards onto the coffee table as Monica passed by once more before turning on her heel and doing it again. Her father gave her an exasperated look. "I'll just say I'm sorry and be done with it."

"It's not stupid," Monica argued, offended that her work wasn't being appreciated. "You may be my cousin, but right now this is still a professional relationship. I'd appreciate a little more respect and decorum."

"Sorry for what, anyway?" Roman questioned. "You didn't do anything to these people, Cal. You survived. They don't have to understand it, they just have to accept it."

A hard ask of people who didn't know her as anything more than the savage cannibal killer.

"Maybe that I'm sorry for their loss," she pointed out the obvious, her tone cold and mocking. Calypso hadn't intended to sound so standoffish in a room full of people she loved, but their unintentionally oppressive natures were making the walls close in. "That their kids had to die, while I-"

"You're father's right, Calypso," Porter cut in, voice soothing but just as patronising as the rest. "You did what you had to do to survive. I know you wanted it to be Maisie, or Poet, or anyone else. But you're here for a reason. We understand. We've been there."

"No, you don't get it," she countered. "You were both victors decades ago. The games keep changing and evolving and only get more fucked up. And even then, you only killed when you had to. I-"