Calypso was more than aware of the slavery that took place within the Capitol, from threatened victors forced to sell their bodies to avoxes forced to work for nothing. For the most part, avoxes were people charged with crimes, their tongues forcibly removed, identities stripped from them and livelihoods stolen. Her mother had been one of them, placed in the District Five tribute apartment just to taunt her husband and daughter.
Pollux did not speak for the fact his tongue had been cut out, but Calypso wondered if he would've spoken even with it. He was a quiet and gentle soul, crushed under the weight of terrible memories. While she'd always had the privilege of being rather explosive with her feelings, people like him reminded her that there were others hiding even deeper into those shadows than she was.
And Pollux had been in the shadows indeed, working sanitation, as his brother put it, deep underground in the city's train tunnels. It was nigh impossible for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, despite the white lights on the walls. The tunnels were too wide for it to extend quite far enough, and so she found herself staring at the darkest spots she could, while Pollux kept as close to the lights as possible.
It only got worse as they descended from the train tunnels, that Katniss claimed were too exposed, into the dank sewers that anyone on the surface of the Capitol had most likely never ventured into. Vast, seemingly infinite, enclosed. It was this that she hated. Not the darkness, but being cornered. If the Peacekeepers came, there was no way out. And Monica now had Calypso's nightlock pill. There was no way out at all.
Dry tunnels turned to water-logged chambers. Finnick's arm stayed around his wife's waist as they waded through it, not quite deep enough to swim. Their smaller unit within the squad - Calypso, Finnick, Monica and Peeta - kept hands to shoulders in a linked line that would not allow them to be separated.
When the time came to settle down for a rest, Calypso could not bring herself to sleep again. She'd managed an hour earlier in the day before their death announcements and Snow's speech, but not she was running on pure adrenaline that was sure to run out eventually. Sat at the very edge of their small nest, she kept her eyes on the long dark tunnel they'd come through. The shadows danced, took the form of her usual ghosts as the sleep deprivation started to kick in once more.
"Katniss?" she heard Jackson whisper. She wasn't sure how much time had passed again, lost in her own empty mind. "Your watch."
There was some shuffling, and then Katniss was sat opposite Calypso and Peeta. The two women exchanged small, tired smiles, but said nothing. It was a comfortable quiet, testament to how used to each other they'd grown. No longer wary. They trusted each other wholly.
"You know, the Capitol," Peeta broke the silence. "They used tracker jacker venom on me. That's what the doctors in Thirteen said. You said you saw me?"
"Real," Calypso replied. She didn't want to think about it, but they'd all promised him answers if he sought them. "There was a screen in the room where I was kept. I watched most of the Capitol propaganda, but they made me watch you and Johanna too."
"You know what they did, then?" he questioned. "How they did it?"
"Yeah," she acknowledged. "I remember having to pick apart the truths myself, try and remember how things really happened and how they'd changed them. You resisted at first, said the truth, but you became less and less sure of yourself until they were able to really feed you the lies, warp your reality."
Peeta rubbed his hands over his knees anxiously. He remembered being in that room, but he didn't remember slipping into such falsehoods. His eyes turned to Katniss.
"You were stung once, too. Real or not real?"
"Real," Katniss replied.
"When they used the venom on me, they would show me pictures of my life," he explained to her. He looked at Calypso as if for reassurance on the matter. "But some weren't real. They changed them. At first, they all... They all blurred together. But now... Now I can sort them out a little. Like, the ones that they changed, they have this quality. It's like they're shiny. They've been glossed over."
"You should get some rest," Katniss said. It was softer than Calypso had heard her speak to him since the Quarter Quell.
"You're still trying to protect me," Peeta remarked. "Real or not real?"
"Real. That's what you and I do. Keep each other alive."
Calypso's eyes involuntarily drifted over to a sleeping Finnick, whose head was resting on Monica's shoulder, and hers on top of his. She smiled at her small family being so close. Always protecting each other. Always keeping each other alive.
The silence amongst them returned as Peeta began to drift off, leaving only Katniss and Calypso awake. The latter's eyes returned to the tunnel, watching streaks of inky black twist together into indiscernible shapes, becoming ghosts for mere moments, and then fading into nothing again. Occasionally, they'd lash out towards her, but she gave no reaction.
It was when the darkness started to make noise that she grew concerned. She was in the middle of staring down Payton's shadowy form when an incredibly faint rumbling sound carried through the tunnel. She stood quietly, walked through the ghost and looked beyond into the black abyss. Even with a torch, it was simply impenetrable.
"What?" Katniss questioned, arriving behind the woman with an already activated and beeping Holo. Calypso pushed the device away from her person so she could better hear the distant noise.
A whisper. One at first, oddly familiar, then one that was louder and angrier. They spoke phrases Calypso could barely remember now, threats she'd said herself in a haze of deep and dangerous psychosis. Those four white walls suddenly had her trapped again, and she was willing to say anything to get out of them.
"I'm going to fucking kill you..." the whispers spat. It was definitely her voice, reverberating off the tunnel walls and slowly awakening their comrades. Katniss' face pulled into an expression of confusion. "I'm going to gut you like a fish... I'll make it hurt... I'll slice you open..."
"What is that?" Jackson asked.
"Blood Mutt," Calypso muttered to herself, hoping Finnick and Monica were not yet awake to hear the ghosts in the tunnels say such things. Maybe they'd think it was false words, things she hadn't actually said. But she knew the truth. She remembered it just enough to know they were, for certain, hers. "Me."
"We gotta go," Peeta called out frantically, pulling himself from the ground and urging the others awake. "We gotta get outta here now. Mutts! They released mutts!"
"Pollux, what's the fastest way out?" Katniss questioned.
"Shhh," Calypso urged. She pushed Katniss forwards in the opposite direction of the whispers, no matter whether it was the right way out or not. Behind her, Finnick's hand once again caught her shoulder, and Monica behind him. He gave a gentle squeeze, but it was not nearly enough to stop the panic that was spreading through her body.
"I'll pull out your organs..." the whispers came, echoing more and more as they moved through the dark sewers with as much silence as possible. Gale took up the head of the group, firing his incendiary arrows that lit a clear path. "...use them to decorate my walls."
Calypso clung so tightly to her spear. Somehow, the tunnels grew smaller, especially after crawling through a tight gap that threatened to squeeze all the air from the lungs. Monica and Katniss were on the other side, pulling her through into the more open space. She could not meet their eyes as her sinister whispers continued to echo through the thick air.
"I'm so hungry... I miss the taste of human flesh..." they said. She felt like dying. "Payton's was delicious, tender meat... bloody and rich..."
A growl. A screech. Calypso looked over her shoulder to see Jackson was the only one who had not made it through. The pale mutts piled atop her, no longer sounding like Calypso. No longer were they stalked by the Blood Mutt. This was what true mutts sounded like and looked like. Humanoid, but lacking any real face or discerning feature. They were nothing. They were just beasts bred to kill.
How familiar a feeling that was.
Katniss released an arrow, hitting her target with a glorious explosion that left the creatures doused in hot flames, many of their guts strewn across the walls. Some one was yelling for them to go, to run and not bother looking back and trying to fight. Calypso wasn't sure who it was, but she grabbed the first person she could and dragged them along beside her without a second thought. She and Pollux took charge to lead their group to safety, and yet the screams and cries behind them made them want to stop against their very best survival instinct.
Gunfire. Explosions. Those sounds were becoming far too familiar. Calypso abandoned the avox and moved to the back of the line. The knife detached from the end of her spear. From her hand, it soared across the tunnel into the eyeless forehead of one of the mutts. She swung the spear upwards, cutting a closer one across the neck just in time for the knife to return to its magnetised place of pride.
"Move!" Finnick urged. She wanted desperately to stay and fight, to spill the blood of an enemy she could kill without remorse. But he forced her towards their escape, ensuring she always stayed either at his side or just ahead of him. The mutts were too close, splashing water from their stampeding onto the backs of their uniforms. Calypso struggled to breathe.
If Snow could see them now, she was sure he'd be foaming at the mouth with how delicious their destruction was going to be. No longer did the mutts whisper with her words, but it somehow still felt like Calypso was fighting a part of herself. These were her demons, the very ones Monica said they needed to fight together. And now they were. And they were going to die.
But it did not matter, because the cousins fought back to back as the mutts kept coming. Monica held steadfast, gun blazing, while Calypso twirled and stabbed her spear with an ease she had not felt since the Quarter Quell. But the hoard was endless, coming from every possible escape despite the explosive arrows being fired by Katniss and Gale to try and lower the numbers. They leaped through the flames, dousing themselves in the water of their new battleground.
At the sound of a struggling Peeta, Calypso leapt across the water, detaching her knife and plunging it into the head of the mutt atop him. Its weight fell, but the boy pushed it off with incredible ease. Slicing the blade through his wrist restraints, she then placed it in his hands, trusting he would know exactly who the enemy was at that moment. Remember who the real enemy is. She'd told him that once after temporarily escaping her containment. Now, an understanding of it shone in his wild eyes as the two supposed Capitol mutts regained their human strength.
Gale was her next save. Now using his gun, it was inevitable the man would eventually run out of bullets. That was what Calypso had always liked about the weapons provided in the games. For the most part, ammo was never a problem. She could slice and dice as much as she wanted, and the only thing that could stop her was death itself. She struck the beast atop her fellow soldier with the twisted end of her spear. A pale, mucousy blood spewed over her as she released it and let it fall into the shallow water. Gale fired his gun over her shoulder, taking down another mutt that had been heading for the pair. There was that tolerance he spoke of, disliking one another but fighting in unison anyway. Sharing a nod of gratitude, the pair separated to continue fighting their battles.
"Go! Go, go, go!" Cressida yelled over the cacophony of growled and screams. Calypso just about saw Peeta get shoved up the central ladder, an escape she'd deemed impossible until now. They hardly had time between kills to get there. Peeta, Messalla, Cressida and Pollux all went up. Safe.
Distracted for just a split second, Calypso was plunged under the water with the weight of a hefty mutt on top of her. The pole of her spear pressed into its neck, just barely keeping the biting teeth away from her face. She held her breath, despite how terribly she wanted to breathe in her panic.
But no beast was a match for Finnick Odair and his dangerous trident. Less than a week ago, he'd made a vow to protect his wife. One life. One purpose. Hell if he wasn't going to uphold it now. The weapon went deep into the creature's skull. Under the water, Calypso felt the cold and sharp tip of it scrape against her nose. When it pulled away, the whole head went with it. Finnick lifted her with ease.
"Sorry," he breathed out, seeing just a tiny speck of blood on her. Calypso shook her head, flustered by the near-death experience but equally by his heroics.
"Don't be," she mumbled. "Just duck."
Finnick did as he was told. The spear flew over his head, landing square in the chest of another mutt. Giving her the trident and pushing her towards the ladder, he strode over and retrieved her spear before following.
"Monica!" Calypso called out as she started to climb just behind Katniss and . That gun was stick firing every which way, keeping the monsters at bay. "Mona, time to go! Finnick, come on!"
Both the warriors heeded the words, heading for the ladder. Finnick was mere seconds behind his wife, pushing the spear to her once she was safely up. Her hand came down to pull him up too.
"Monica!" Calypso cried out, urging her cousin on.
"Calypso!" Monica yelled in reply, though she wasn't sure what for. She didn't want them to jump back down to her aid. She wanted them safe, and they almost were. Her gun kept firing in her attempt to climb the ladder one-handed. One rung, then the next. Another. Another. "Calypso!"
Monica was pulled back down into the fray, gun slipping from her hand. The combat below went quiet, giving way to the same snarls and screeches that had first overtaken those terrible whispers. She cried out in pain, in horror, in helplessness. She cried out for her cousin, the only family that remained. Before the beasts swallowed her, forced her under the water, Monica saw Calypso's face one last time.
"Monica, no!" Calypso screamed back. Without a mind to do anything else, she flung her weight over the edge of the drop only to be pulled back with mighty force. "No! Stop!"
Finnick held his wife tighter than he ever had before. It took all his strength to stop her from jumping down to her doom, but he knew in his heart Monica would not have wanted her to. So he held her, whispered desperately in her ear, stroked her hair with his hand, as if any of it could provide even a sliver of comfort as they heard Katniss speak those words.
"Nightlock... Nightlock... Nightlock..."
The Holo dropped. The concrete walls of the tunnels shook with the explosion. The screams stopped.
How many more did she have to lose? How many people were left for her to lose. In her immediate family, there was only Finnick now. No. No. He could not join them. He could not join her. He could not die. He could not be one of the ghosts that haunted her day in, day out.
Priya.
Roman.
Porter.
Monica.
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a/n: HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT! cried writing this one. i love monica, i fucking loved her :( sorry