FAILURE TO COMPLY ┃ f. odair

2.10 here on business

In a sick twist of fate, Aspen had been killed in a similar fashion to her first victim. She'd made it all the way to the final three, only to die in her sleep to a seventeen-year-old boy from District Two. Stabbed not only once, but three times in the gut and neck. Despite the brutality of it, Calypso silently told the girl's ghost to be happy that she still looked like herself in death. Payton had not been so lucky.

The games were over now. The victor, that same District Two boy, had come out and attended his interview and crowning. He'd gone home, and so had almost everyone else involved in the games. And yet, as it was for more than half of her time now, Calypso was stuck in the Capitol, spending every other night with a new man or woman resting comfortably between her aching legs. Snow would not let her go home, and he'd left her lonely. No father, no Porter, no Finnick. The only people she knew within the city were Monica, Vega and Cinna, but all had thriving careers and busy lives outside the games. All she had was her used body and far too much time.

The one good thing to come from it was gaining her own space. Apparently, she was a good enough porcelain doll to warrant having her own dollhouse. Snow had set her up with a penthouse apartment of all places, fairly small but with a view that she would've considered impressive if not for the fact that it lined up almost perfectly with the one from the tribute centre. It reminded her of too many things, but above all else of Payton. In some ways, that night that he kissed her was the first step to her losing all rights over her own autonomy. He'd given her a mild taste of losing control.

And it was Finnick who had given it back. In the ways he held her after seeing their clients, in the ways he reassured her or gave her advice. In the way he'd taught her how to fish so that she could overcome her dietary troubles and in the way he sent her fresh packages of it when she herself wasn't able to catch any. Whatever she did to warrant his sweetness, it felt like the one thing that was holding her together.

But now, she did not have it. Finnick had been gone for almost six weeks, the longest time yet. Calypso's loneliness had grown and grown and grown until it had near swallowed her whole. When she wasn't with a client, she simply sat alone in her apartment and either wasted away or bathed until her skin felt raw. Cleanliness felt like an impossible feat. It was worse now than it had been in the games, covered in blood and grime. Now, it was the living that taunted her more than the dead.

A knock at her door pulled Calypso from her thoughts. She'd been sitting idly on her sofa watching the sun set over the still lively city. In the same way that they had pills and drinks for induced vomiting so that they could keep eating, she was convinced Capitol citizens had something that kept them awake through nights and days until their bodies simply gave up on them. The city never slept, and it was frustrating considering she was now one of its inhabitants. She missed the dead quietness of her village back home, as scary as it was when she first started living alone.

Standing up, she moved to the door, fully prepared to see a client that she hadn't been expecting. At least once before, they'd simply shown up at her door with a wad of cash in hand and a lustful look on their face. She'd always let them in, the numbness of it all becoming second nature.

But this time, when she opened the door, she was met with the pale face of Johanna Mason. Her eyes were red and puffy with tears streaming down her cheeks, her back slouched and arms wrapped protectively around her middle. Calypso hardly had the chance to process it before she was being wrapped in a desperate hug, Johanna sobbing into her shoulder. She was utterly destroyed.

"Jo-" Calypso said, trying her best to comprehend what was happening. She wrapped her arms tightly around the other woman, responding to the hug just as fiercely. "Johanna, what happened?"

"My family," she choked out, too trapped in her own grief to realise that Calypso was slowly pulling them into the apartment and kicking the door shut. "That bastard... he killed them all."