FAILURE TO COMPLY ┃ f. odair

3.5 silva and gold

At a certain point, Roman had to tell his daughter to go off on her own. There was a terrible feeling in his gut that he was holding her back far too much. Even if she planned to get as many of them out alive as possible, he could not let her abandon the reality of it all. As such, he'd sent her to practice skills on her own while he stuck to the easy survival stations with Beetee, Wiress and Mags.

That meant axe-throwing with Johanna, knot-tying and trident/spear-throwing with Finnick, and knife-throwing on her own. Projectiles always had been her speciality. Perhaps it was the way it kept her free of blood and free of terrible reminders of what she'd done in her dark past. One knife after another, they landed in the targets with satisfying thumps, far better than the screams and cries they otherwise elicited.

Just as she'd pulled the final knife out of the target, Katniss Everdeen finally approached. It had only taken until the afternoon of the third day of training. Calypso was unsure if it was going to happen at all, but she thought it best to let the girl come to her.

"You can come closer you know," she commented as she came back to the throwing line, holding out a few of the knives to Katniss. "I don't bite unless you're already dead. Or so the story goes."

Katniss narrowed her eyes, either in disgust or discontentment. She hadn't expected a joke from the supposedly hardy Silva girl. Haymitch had made it seem as if she was either overly violent or overly loving with no in-between, and Katniss certainly did not qualify for the latter. Reluctantly, she took the knives.

"It's not a story," she replied. "You literally ate someone, didn't you?"

"I took about three bites out of his arm," Calypso defended. Any lighthearted tone she had in her voice was gone as it turned from a joke to a retelling. Bile rose up in her throat as she remembered the taste of Payton's flesh, how delicious it had been in the moment, and how disgusting it seemed ever since. She bit at the inside of her lip and closed her eyes for a second as her words failed her, only opening them when she heard the clang of a dropping knife. "Don't flick your wrist. It'll make the knife spin too much."

Just to prove the point, Calypso released one of her knives gracefully, landing it just above the dead centre of the target. Katniss followed suit with a less forceful throw, and her knife lodged itself at the very bottom of the target. Her instructor gave a small nod of approval.

"Not bad," she remarked. "You're better off sticking to your bow though."

"Had no doubts about that," Katniss replied in a deadpan voice. She lined up her final knife, opting not to mention the cannibalism again. She'd felt hunger at its worst before, the only difference being that she got food in her time of need, burned and rain-soaked bread that tasted disgusting but ultimately saved her life. She knew hunger, and she knew the desperation of survival. "Did your dad teach you to throw knives?"

"Yeah," Calypso replied, glad for the mundane conversation. "I suppose being legacy has its perks. Where'd you learn to shoot?"

"My dad," Katniss said. She was good at not displaying much emotion, but the small downturn of her lips was something Calypso picked up on. "He's long gone."

The legacy woman looked to her own father across the large training room where he sat with Mags, making conversation and building small traps. It wouldn't be too long until he was gone too, she suspected, either by the games or by his illness. Soon, she'd be an orphan.

"I'm sorry about that," she replied, more sympathy and emotion in her voice than she'd used with Katniss thus far. "I lost my mom a couple of years ago. People like us just seem to be destined for tragedy, huh?"

"People like us?" Katniss echoed. In her eyes, they couldn't be more different. She came from the Seam, the poorest section of the poorest district, while her counterpart was born into a well-known family with all the comforts she required. Calypso grimaced at the accusation and scepticism in the girl's voice.