Venus's brain seemed to be running a million miles a minute.
"Poison?" She snapped, raising a brow. She took charged steps in his direction, her arms instantly pushing him in his chest. He was a few inches taller than her, and had a stronger build, but the amount of rage building in her body was enough to send him stumbling a bit. "I think you failed to mention that detail when I told you I was cheating the system."
Holding his hands up in surrender, he tries to reason with the girl. "I had to keep you out of it, Venus. You were already in enough trouble..."
"Trouble?" She hit him again, narrowly missing his face. "I'm about to die, Coryo, and you were the one that gave Lucy Gray the rat poison. You killed Dill, you killed me!" Grabbing him by the lapels of his blazer, she shook his body and sent him tumbling to the floor. "You're a liar! I trusted you and you sealed my fate. Was this your plan all along? That you'd do anything for her, even if it's at my expense?!"
"Enough!" A deep voice reverberated against the walls. Dean Highbottom dressed in his elaborate black robe walked into the room. It was the most levelheaded and sober that anyone had seen him in years. "Miss Hummingstill, release him. Obtain some composure and pull yourself together."
Venus complied reluctantly. Coriolanus got up from the floor, smoothing out his uniform and letting go of a breath he was unaware he held in. He wanted nothing more than to tell Venus he was sorry, that he didn't mean to hurt her. Telling her of the compact would have placed her in more danger than she was in already. Why didn't he just tell her the truth? How could he make this up to her?
"I warned you, Mr. Snow and Miss Hummingstill." Highbottom stood with his hands clasped, disappointment permanently etched into his face. "Cheating will be punished. More poetically than even I could have hoped."
Venus wiped an angry tear before it fell. "Where is Lucy Gray?" She asked, wanting to get her hands on the songbird as her last dying wish. There would be hell to pay and if she couldn't harm Coriolanus, she would harm what he seemed to treasure most.
"I would be more concerned with your own survival if I were you. Which we will get to in a moment." He stated, circling the two like a hawk with its prey. Facing Coriolanus, he scoffed. "It's fitting that both of your parents could be here for your big moment. That compact...how many times did I see your Mother use it, I wonder...to powder her beautiful face?" He taunted. "We all know that child from Eleven didn't die of disease or that lumberjack from Seven."
Venus let out a wail. Wanting so badly to hurt something or someone that it was harming her mental state. Her shoulders buckled under the pressure, sobs raking her body that were not met with compassion or grace.
"I said find an ounce of composure and exercise it." The man snapped, malice dripping from his tongue. "And that old handkerchief we found it in the snake tank, appropriately. Condemning you with your Father's own initials. But you know what stumped me?" He quizzed, picking up the glass vial and waving it around. "What was Capitol grade Tuberculosis medicine doing in the tank?"
Venus shook her head in disbelief. "I can't keep doing this." She said faintly.
"Speak up, Miss H—"
"I said I can't keep doing this." She repeated, more base in her scratchy voice. "I refuse to continue in playing this game with you, Dean Highbottom, when I've already lost. This was impossible to win from the very beginning." She heaved, lungs searching for air as she tried to keep her tears stuffed away. "The weakest tribute, one foot in the grave with illness, I had—"
Coriolanus took a step forward. "I take full responsibility."
The girl frowned, eyes growing wide before turning to face him. His blue eyes were full of pain and regret. This is the only way he saw that he could stick up for Venus. To, in a way, tell her he was sorry for always putting Lucy Gray Baird over her...even down to the end of the line. He may not be able to save Venus's life, but, he could at the very least let her know that he was sorry.
"Excuse me?" Highbottom asked, the smirk wiping clean off of his face. He never anticipated for a Snow to be honest and honorable.
Taking one last look at Venus, the boy nodded slowly, his focus now on the Dean. "I planted it, the vial." He began. "I knew there was a chance of me being caught tampering with the snakes and I wanted Venus to go down with me."
"Coryo--" She interjects briefly.
"I couldn't accept the fact that I may lose to her. If I couldn't win, neither could she." He ignored the girl, taking a shaky breath in hopes that his lie was completely passable. Silently hoping that Venus would let him finally do something in her favor and see it through.
The old man chuckled. "Boy, if your Father could see you now." He shook his head in disappointment. "Your family won't ever see that prize money of course. President Ravinstill has left your form of punishment to me, Coriolanus, and I've decided banishment to the Districts where you'll serve your Capitol in exile for the next twenty years as an anonymous peacekeeping grunt." He muttered, as if he had little regard to the weight of what he had just said.
Venus felt her cheeks grow hot. Her red lips trembling as her focus shifted from Coryo to Highbottom and back to the blond boy. Agony, confusion, all swirling within her thoughts as she tried to focus on one emotion. It was no use, everything was hitting her like a ton of bricks. Why did he lie for her? She was already dying. His fabrications may have been what sent Dean Highbottom over the edge with his punishment.
She believed he loved her, he didn't need to pull a stunt like this for her to see it. She was just a bit misguided, the damning of being a teenage girl with emotions that she didn't know how to navigate yet. As if she didn't already feel terrible about his admission of guilt, her own overwhelmed her to a point of illness.
Coriolanus might have maintained a shot at his future if it weren't for her.
The sound of celebratory fireworks could be heard overhead. That is where he should have been, dancing in the glory of his victory with his family. Not accepting punishments on her behalf.
"Do you hear that, boy?" Highbottom inquired. "Finally, the sound of snow falling."
With a flick of his wrist, the Peacekeepers that escorted the pair into the room had changed positions. They appeared at Coriolanus's side, roughly grabbing his arms and dragging him toward the exit without hesitation. The boy tried fighting them, doing anything he could to at least give Venus a proper parting but they were too strong.
"No! No, Venus!" He hollered.
Overpowered by the strength from their training that he would be subjected to very soon, Coriolanus watched a single tear fall from Venus's eyes and hit the floor. That was the last he would ever see of her.
"Coryo?!" She cried out, chest heaving. She looked toward Dean Highbottom, trying to reason with the nasty old man. "Let me say goodbye, please! I've never asked you for anything just grant me this one thing." She begged, any sense of pride obliterated in a matter of seconds.
The man blinked, his eyes drifting to the floor as her scrunched face became unbearable to witness. How quickly the mighty students he dealt with for years had fallen, too wrapped in love to understand that they were each other's weakest point.
Venus's heart shattered as she watch Coriolanus leave. His body disappeared around the concrete pillar and through a set of double doors. She just knew she would never see him again. She never believed in spirits before, but, she hoped that they existed. Her afterlife form would follow and guide him through his journey as a Peacekeeper for the rest of his life until his dying days.
"I know that you and I don't exactly see eye to eye on ... anything, Miss Hummingstill." Highbottom broke the silence. "But, I implore you to listen to what I am about to say very carefully. I'm certain that the expensive medicine we found did not just magically appear in Mr. Snow's possession. According to the labs run on the girl from Eleven's body, she had the treatment in her system since she arrived at the Capitol."
Venus began to protest, being silenced by his raised hand. Taking careful steps forward, the man's demeanor changed completely from when Coriolanus was in the room. He wasn't nice, however, he was more patient than anything Venus had ever experienced.
"I'm not going to ask for the truth because I know I will not get it." He nodded to himself. Tongue running across his teeth as he searched for the proper words to say. "That boy took the fall for you and you should be grateful that he is going away. Whatever feelings of young, naive, love that you were having should fleet and fleet immediately. Because if you give into those emotions that you're doing a terrible job of hiding, it does not matter where he is, he will destroy you without hesitation. He's a Snow after all."
Squeezing her eyes shut, all she could do was run her hands through her hair. Already she missed his touch, his voice, his eyes. Venus was a mess and he had been gone not even five minutes. She felt deranged, like she could not function properly without him by her side. Was this what love felt like? Did her parents experience this sense of insanity caused by another person?
"Coryo was one of the few people here who earned my trust, and you've taken that from me." She couldn't even look the man in the eyes. "As if you haven't taken enough."
"Your punishment was not his call to make, Miss Hummingstill." The raspy voice lurking from the shadows said. Taking a step out of the darkness, still dressed in her fancy clothes, stood Dr. Gaul. Slithering like her pet snakes into view toward Venus. "In fact, it is mine. I've heard of your efforts to win the Hunger Games and might I say, I'm actually impressed."
Venus's hands began to shake. Eyes wildly searching for a syringe or weapon on Gaul's person, as if she would be the one committing murder. "Just kill me." She sniffled, trying to appear brave.
Dr. Gaul grinned. With her gloved hand so elegantly positioned under Venus's chin, she grabbed the girls jaw. Reminiscent to the beginning of the week when Venus was given her death sentence.
"Oh how much of a waste that would be."
Venus faltered. "What?"
Dr. Gaul let go of her face, circling her as if she were an artist examining her own work. "Earlier today, amongst the pestering of everyone urging I release the District Twelve girl, I saw that you were the one person who remained silent. Why is that?" She inquired.
"Because my tribute died at Lucy Gray's hand, so why did she deserve to live?" Venus shrugged. Her heart hardened by the loss of Dill, allowing her to tell the truth of how she felt.
"Even though she saved you from the rebel bombing?" The mad scientist asked, stopping in her tracks in front of Venus.
The girl did not have much to think about. Lucy Gray Baird saving her life was a technicality, completely erased the moment Dill drank the tampered water. Lucy Gray knew what she had done and the guilt clouded her. That final night in the Zoo enclosure, where Venus told her the arrangement, was running through her mind as soon as Dill picked up the glass bottle.
Lucy Gray held a heart full of regret and sorrow to the Capitol girl, who she believed to be a friend, that she would never get to express.
Venus stood straighter, head held high as she continued to speak. "I owe nothing to someone from the Districts." She replied. "Dill was my only responsibility and now she is gone."
Dr. Gaul nodded slowly. Kissing her teeth, she began to walk away from the girl, taking her place next to Dean Highbottom. The man remained silent, holding his own reservations to how different Venus's mentality was from the beginning of the Games. How it only took a week to break her morality into submission.
"In the face of death, your loyalty remained with the Capitol." Dr. Gaul commended. "You did everything humanly possible, even cheated, to preserve yourself and build a legacy that would be written into history books. I gave you simple instructions to produce a Victor, and while that did not happen, you were a key source in boosting the public's approval of the Hunger Games. I see a lot of myself in you, Venus Hummingstill, and that is why it was always my plan for your life to be spared for your misguided ways."
Venus couldn't move. Feet cemented to the floor as she expelled a breath. She had so many questions. She was never going to die? The meeting with Highbottom and Gaul on Reaping Day was to just scare her. They took her fear and used it as a catalyst for catapulting the Games into infamy. Venus would always be responsible for the Games continuing. The following year, twenty four more children would be stripped from their homes, only one returning to their family with lifelong mental scars. Their blood is on her hands.
No one ever won the Hunger Games, there were only survivors.
She had done so much work for Dr. Gaul, only for her mortality to be another one of her experiments. Venus was still trying to calm down and accept the fact that she would never see Coriolanus again, which she believed would only be a short period of time. She still has the rest of her life to live, a chance to have her name be one that rings bells across Panem. She was given the world but at what cost?
She'd never get to accomplish any of this with the person she loved most.
Maybe that was the punishment she had to face? A life without true love.
"Thank you, Dr. Gaul." Venus nodded, not able to put up any sort of argument. She didn't have the energy to make sense of it all. Her stomach and heart in knots from being put through the wringer all day. All week.
The woman nodded again, her red lips curving into a sinister smile. "That is not all. I want to extend an opportunity to you, tending my lab this summer before your semester at University. Assist me in my lab and I will mentor you in all things science and genetics." Gaul shrugged, pleased with herself and everything she put this young girl through. "You once told me you were a winner, Venus, would you like to remain a winner?"
The girl was unknowingly fragile. The violent deaths she witnessed, the constant fighting, emotions stretched and broken beyond their limits, Sejanus sneaking into the Arena, the belief that today would be her last on this Earth, Lucy Gray's survival, her involvement in making the Games a success, the loss of her Coryo.
There was no fight left within her to give. She had been demoralized, any hope for a change in this world was gone the minute she decided to play their games. Yet another piece that was used and abused.
Fighting against the system put her in the position to protect it. Against the very people who placed her in the hospital, the people who killed Felix Ravenstill, the creators of the Dark Days. If the rebels would kill the president's son ... no one was safe. Venus did not have the power to put an end to tyranny, however, she held the opportunity to impact it. To put an end to any possible rebellion within the Districts and preserve the Capitol, to end any other attempts on her life.
Venus Hummingstill is a winner and like winners, they stand with each other in solidarity.
Allowing the darkness to swallow her whole, the Capitol girl felt a smile break through her saddened face and only said a few words.
"When do we begin?"