A/N: Sorry this took so long! My biggest hope with this fanfic was to expand the world of Panem, make it bigger somehow. That's always been first and foremost what I wanted to do, make Panem as big as it feels and fill in the gaps where the gaps needed filling. I pushed around some timelines, brought back some people, and hope this chapter is as wild a ride to read as it was to write.
Chapter 49: Ashes
Calliope took a deep breath and secured the bracers around her wrists. She stared at the etched silver mocking jay stretched out against the inky black background for just a little too long. The emblem was everywhere now, on her chest piece, her bracers, her badge. It haunted her. Callie stared at herself in the tall mirror that took up an alarming amount of space in the wide, deep closet. Snow's words followed her like a shadow, the plan to usurp a tyrant clasped its hand and they remained stuck to her heels.
Gale was already gone, tending to Katniss before Snow's execution, and Calliope found herself feeling quite alone in the empty apartment. She ran her fingers over furniture in rooms she had only stepped in once, remained a little too long staring down at the unmade bed. If it all went wrong, this might be the only chance she had to enjoy a small fragment of what could have been her future.
Finnick seemed confident in this plan, but Callie knew better. The plan worked so long as everyone followed the old world rules, but it did nothing to stop Coin's loyalists from taking charge or coming to release her once she was in prison. The thing they all seemed to be betting on was that more of Panem and District 13's citizens would disagree with Coin's methods than agree. Callie hated taking chances on such a paper thin possibility, but it would not be the first time.
The bell chimed at the door and Calliope straightened herself up. She took a deep breath and wrapped her fingers around the long, single-shouldered cloak waiting on the chair by the door. She clasped it against her left shoulder, secured with a silver pin to match the emblem on her chest. Callie draped the cloth over the rifle across her back, tightened the knives against her lower back, and touched the screen to slide the door open.
"Commander," it was Crowe, standing in the hall waiting for her. He wore a similar uniform sans cloak, that was her demarcation of authority, "Ready?"
She could not bring herself to say yes, so instead she nodded consent. Crowe walked ahead of her, holding his rifle against his gut casually while he swept it side to side. It was security, ensuring there were no bodies hidden in the shadows. Something occurred to Callie that she did not consider until they reached the street.
"Why are you here? No offense, but you're not in my squad," She felt bad saying it, worse when she realized just how real it was.
Crowe shot her a wry smile and nodded slowly, "Coin wanted familiar faces together on camera. Better for everyone, I think," he seemed to drop a little at the idea that not all of them would necessarily be familiar.
"How is he?" Callie asked gently, mindful of Crowe's sensitivity about Grouse.
"No change," the older man cleared his throat and gestured with his chin to two others waiting for them up ahead.
Calliope was surprised to see Stark and another soldier when she got closer. The other soldier was turned away, watching the Circus up ahead. The Circus was chosen by Coin for the event, treated with the same fanfare Snow had treated the parade of Victors for so many years. It would pack a thousand people, allow even more to stand. Already, Calliope could see the crowds being ushered in to witness the execution. They were so small from their vantage point, ants running into a colony.
She shifted her focus to the turned away soldier and whistled softly, "Name and rank, soldier."
He turned, his face worn and older-looking than he was. His dark hair was cut short into a buzz along the sides, long and slicked straight back on the top. His eyes still danced when he looked at her and he felt his chest swell with anticipation and joy.
It took Callie a moment to realize who she was looking at, but when she finally did she dropped the authority from her shoulders and reached for him. Perhaps he reached for her, it was impossible to know who's arms found who first.
Tithe squeezed her tightly, remiss when he had to let her go, "Commander Cress," he said playfully. It was meant to be gentle, lighthearted, but Callie saw the wear of war on his face and heard it taint his voice, "Pilot First Class, Commander."
"Captain," she corrected gently and had to force herself to peel away her smile. Still, Callie could not get the glow of it to disappear, "Four of us then."
"Yes Com- Captain," Stark said, correcting himself, "Just four."
"President Coin wants a small squad with faces the Rebels and the Capitol both know. She wants us to stand aside from her, away from Katniss. We're there to look the part we need to play if anything goes wrong," Callie said quietly to them all.
"Among other things," Crowe murmured, but she did not stop him.
"This isn't any different than any other mission. We do the theatrics, we stand and look like sentries, but we are soldiers. All of us," she said more sharply, "do what we were trained to do without exception. Regardless of what's about to happen."
The Circus was a madhouse. Something dark hung over it, something unspoken and heavy that weighed on the very air they breathed. It created a pressure that pushed it through Callie's lungs more than she breathed it in. They were led by a pair of rebel soldiers into a ground-level waiting area, away from the crowds. The hallways were a maze, sometimes opening to glimpses of the lines that moved towards the rows and rows of seats waiting under the open sky. Rebel soldiers stalked the halls like makeshift security, some faces Callie recognized and some she did not.
The room itself was wide and large, well-lit with glossy marble floors and soft red and gold furniture. She walked the perimeter slowly, too anxious to sit down, taking in the art on the walls. Landscapes, all of them. She observed each one slowly and was four paintings down when Callie realized they were all depictions of past Arenas. All over the Circus were hanging landscapes, hand-painted, all renditions of former Arenas. She suddenly wanted to rip them all down.
It was incredible how many had been fit onto the walls of one room. A tundra, a crumbling cityscape, a forest, a desert. The only telling sign of what they were a single, small black human figure holding up its tiny, almost imperceptible fist in victory. Always right at the center of every picture, small enough the Callie wondered what tool an artist could possess that would paint such a small thing. She felt the frustration rise in her chest, the fury at the idolatry of death in front of her, surrounding them. Her head buzzed like it was full of insects, her chest rose and fall more heavily. She needed a moment to herself.
"I need air," Calliope said frankly to nobody in particular, walking for the door.
"Company?" Crowe chimed from behind her. She shook her head without looking back and slipped into the hallway.
Tithe looked from the door to Crowe and frowned, "You just let her go?"
Crowe shrugged and glanced sidelong at him with a hard frown, "You've spent a lot of time apart. She's not someone I worry about anymore."
Callie felt the air in the hallway fill her lungs like a sudden gust of wind. It was like what she had been breathing before was stale, rotten oxygen laden with terror and memory. She scanned the sparse hallway, watched the patterns of Rebel soldiers still in uniform. Her feet carried her towards the grand doors that would open for them into the center of the Circus, flanked by two guards in matching black. One of them scanned Calliope and noted the pin securing the draped fabric over her shoulder, both offering a firm, fresh salute. She knew in their gesture they were District 13's residents, new guards.
Her feet moved slow and lethargic, allowed her to take in the cement pillars and tiled floors, the creamy-orange paint on the walls, photographs and paintings of Victors on their Victory Tours. Calliope sighed and leaned back against a small section of wall pressed back away from the main hallway. She ran a gloved hand over her face and stared up at the ceiling, unsure what to do. She would be the arresting officer of Alma Coin, the Commander that helped lead the Rebellion to victory over the Capitol, the girl who had hardened herself against a cruel and careless world. It felt like it would never stop.
When the war ended, that was almost what Calliope had wished for. She had wished for a moment to breathe, a moment that was not spent ducking a hail of bullets, a moment that was not spent pulling a mask over her face to breathe against an explosion. Now that she had it, Callie craved it again.
Maybe, she mused, I'm not the girl who's meant to go back to normal. Maybe this is my normal.
The curiosity clung to her mind, sat against the walls of it like an inexplicable piece of art that seemed to hover no matter where she went in her own head. It was the murmured voices that pulled her back into the world. They were soft, so close Callie knew they were just around the corner. When she realized who it was, she almost wanted to leave, but something held here there and made her listen despite her internal protest.
"Was it you?" Katniss' voice said softly. Calliope knew who the target of her question was.
A long pause passed between the question and the answer, "I don't know."
Calliope heard the weight of guilt pressing Gale's voice down, the irreparable scar that had been dragged jagged and deep through his soul. She felt the pain of it with him, she wanted to make herself known so he would not feel that burden on his own, but it was not her place. This was a private thing she was not supposed to hear. Callie blushed against the shame of listening.
"Here," the clatter of an object, "Shoot straight, Catnip."
Footsteps sounded on the tiled floor, Calliope's chest went cold with fear. She stared up at the tall, dark-haired figure that rounded the corner. Gale stopped in his tracks, out of Katniss' vision, and stared down at Calliope.
She had expected anger, annoyance, irritation, anything but the nearly grateful softness that crowded his Seam-gray eyes. Calliope stared at Gale unmoving, not knowing what to do or how to react. She tried to stand confidently and seem like her placement was intentional, but Gale knew her well enough to see right through the lie before Callie could even believe it.
Gale considered being annoyed at her for listening, but the grief pushed that feeling away and he felt himself extend his hand outwards to her. Calliope hesitated for a moment, wary of the gesture, but reached out and let him take her hand in his. She frowned cautiously, searching his face for some kind of reaction, and only deepened her frown when she found it.
"Don't do that, Gale," Callie said quietly, "You can't blame yourself for this, no matter who thinks you should." The jab was subtle, tasteful, but still a jab.
"Why shouldn't I?" Gale said, not with venom but with a melancholy that made her chest ache for him, "What part of this says I shouldn't blame myself?"
Callie looked at the floor, searching wildly for the right words to put her thoughts into, "You didn't pull that trigger," she said softly, "You didn't give that order, you didn't set those timers, you didn't launch those balloons."
"I gave her that plan," Gale spat - at Coin, not at Calliope - and scowled, "I put it in her hands and I let her have it. If I had just shut up, not said anything, stopped being so damned angry at the Capitol-"
"No," Callie snapped at him, squeezing his hand tightly, "You can't let yourself fall down that rabbit hole, Gale," she said firmly. He looked up at her, his face almost startled by her firmness, "A life spent wishing you could change the past isn't really a life at all, is it?"
Gale wanted to refute, he wanted to argue, but just because his whole self felt afire with guilt and anger. He forced himself to replay her words in his head again, made himself calm down, and knew with embarrassing certainty that Callie was right. Instead of arguing, Gale nodded.
Calliope nodded back and let him hold on to her fingertips for a few more moments before making him let go. He stared at her for what felt like a long time before the guard against the door touched his arm.
"Sir," he said waveringly, "We need to start sending everyone out."
Gale nodded and turned back to Calliope, "You need to get back to your squad," she nodded her blonde head and started to walk away, but he stopped her. For a moment, Gale asked himself why he had fallen in love with her, but he knew the moment she looked him in the eyes. It was her passion, more than anything. Calliope was a capable soldier, an admirable commander, an intelligent woman, but above all of that she was passionate. Everything she did she left a piece of herself in it, nothing was ever half done with her.
He wanted to kiss her at first, but something about Calliope's stature, her uniform, her readiness made her seem untouchable. Instead, Gale lifted his fingers and brushed her bangs back just slightly away from her eyes. Callie said nothing, waited a moment, and then left him there to watch her walk away.
The same guard wrapped his hand around the iron handle of the enormous double doors and looked back at Gale, "Ready, sir?"
Gale took a deep breath, readied himself, and nodded. The doors opened under the guards' force with a heavy, ancient squeal to the roar of a crowd beyond.
Calliope let the door slide open and jerked her head towards the hall, "We need to go."
She hesitated, something had changed in the room. Calliope counted the heads one by one, but found herself counting one more than she had left with. A large, bulky figure was sitting in one of the chairs, blue stripe in his hair barely visible from where she watched him. Glory forced himself to his feet and turned to face her, moving with a painfully apparent limp. Callie felt a wave of relief at the sight of him. It was a combination of seeing Glory up and moving in public and knowing the one person to share her burden had been returned to her.
Tithe was smiling, his grin stretched broadly across his face when he looked at her. He had been expecting some kind of emotional reunion, at least something more than a shared, mutual clap on the shoulder and a graceful turn. He wondered about the two of them now and imagined all three of them when they had left District 1. Tithe considered the two versions of themselves and how shocked their past selves would be if they could see them now. The world had moved on, under his feet and up in the air, and the people he felt closest to had become the people who felt closest to each other.
Calliope felt herself slip into her role again, leading a squad towards the giant double doors that had just roaringly embraced Coin, then Gale, then Paylor and Plutarch together, then the other Victors in pairs. It was never an order they had discussed, just one that felt natural. The world felt in place again with Glory at her side, Crowe and Tithe at her back, and Stark manning the rearmost point. In her mind's eye, it was Crowe and Grouse, Pru taking up the rear. All was as it should be.
The concept of what might have been stung deep and cruel in her heart, but Calliope kept her face drawn and stoic. She kept herself emotionless among the cheers and shouts of the crowd. It was almost surreal to her, the idea of such celebrity. It took a moment before Callie heard the blaring music, longer still before she saw the enormous screen at the other end of the Circus. It was humongous, spanned the width of her old District 1 house, and on it was Calliope walking from the entrance of the Circus and pretending she hardly noticed the giant image of her face. The other half was where her focus was.
Images of Calliope during the war played out in clips. She was firing a rifle on the Capitol, pulling her hunting knives on someone in District 2, throwing knives in the District 1 takeover, and finally images of herself in the Tank during the rescue of Peeta Mellark. The crowd went wild for the last clip, screaming and shouting, her last name pulsed in the air like a heartbeat.
Callie could not stop staring at the footage and felt herself wanting to be immediately sick. Coin had known the whole time, had cameras on her everywhere, and left her in moments when she could have been killed without so much as a radio for help. Whatever hesitation Calliope had about arresting Coin evaporated against the heat in her skin.
Glory stared at the screen when he took his place beside her, mere feet from Coin, and watched his own entrance be broadcast theatrically. Clips of him defending Callie, portrayed as the great Protector, danced along the screen to the wild admiration of the people in the stands. Crowe watched, too, and Stark and Tithe. All their entrances on the screen, their images, their details like they were Victors in the Arena. Clips of Tithe's landings and daring rescues, Stark's few moments of heroism in the Capitol and District 2, Crowe's battle with the great muttation, all of it up there like some sort of film preview. None of them moved when they took their positions hardly meters from Coin's podium.
Suddenly, the whole air of the crowd changed. The joy and elation changed to deep, dark hatred and rage. Shouts of negativity, a deep rumble of distaste echoed along the walls of the Circus. Calliope hardly had to turn her head to know Snow was being lead by two Rebel soldiers. He would stand a few yards in front of them, forced to kneel with his back to President Coin. The crowd never stopped shouting obscenities and wildly displaying their hatred of Snow.
For a moment, Calliope felt pity for the old man. He looked feeble now, aged and dusty with time. The crowd itself was a calloused backdrop against his otherwise well-kempt figure. She mulled over their conversation in the rose garden and felt herself steel against what was going to happen next, she tried to imagine his death before it happened to make it seem less real somehow. The guards, Coin, everyone let the tension dissolve naturally. Coin made no speeches, gave Snow no last words, just motioned to someone so far away at the end of the Circus they looked like a mistake on the otherwise flawless horizon.
Suddenly, the crowd stood in silence. A wave from the farthest end to the nearest, all of them got to their feet. Calliope knew it was Katniss, she knew the Girl on Fire before she saw her in her regal Mockingjay uniform. Katniss' face was blank, her eyes cold and decisive. She walked with the bow in her hand, the quiver strapped to her back rattling with each step and shook the lone arrow Gale had left her with. As she passed, hands lifted in a three-fingered salute, an eerily silent show of support and gratitude. Calliope found herself fixed by the young woman, rinsed clean of jealous film on her eyes, and could see her for the captivating figure she was.
The only sound in the Circus was shifting clothing and uneasy feet. It would be a death of silence, unceremonious quiet in a life that otherwise lived in noise and chaos.
Katniss reached behind herself and drew the arrow from its resting place. She notched it, raised the bow, but seemed to take pause in her actions for a fraction of a second.
Calliope could not point to what it was in that moment, just that she felt her stomach drop and knew she was witnessing something in Katniss change. It was so sudden and invisible that anyone could have missed it or mistaken it for a trick of the light. Callie saw the angle of the arrow move ever-so-slightly.
Katniss loosed the arrow.
There is a moment when something so shocking happens that all the world goes silent, all sound becomes silence, all motion becomes pause. Calliope turned her head to follow the arrow and she felt that moment play out in front of her, she lived that deep silence for the briefest second.
Coin blinked slowly and pointedly, she felt the pressure and force of the arrow push her back a step. The woman tried to lift her hand and brush off whatever nuisance had landed on her chest, her eyes were drawn down to the disruption. For a second, she stared dumbly at the arrow sticking out of her body as though she herself could not believe its existence. The light flickered and faded from Coin's eyes so quickly it was almost an afterthought.
Calliope saw it all, she watched the shift in the arrowhead, the pulse of the bowstring as the arrow sought its target, the thud of the metal tip when it was found. Where her soldiers saw shock, Callie saw fear. She saw death, chaos, a vacuum. She saw the shadowy clouds that overtook the future the secret internal rebellion had prepared for. She watched the picture of that future crack and shatter into a thousand tiny pieces cast wide along the ground. It seemed like Callie's body knew what to do before she did.
The former Commander broke into a sprint for Katniss, she grabbed the girl - still and numb under her hands - and pulled her to Callie's side. She threw the cloak around Katniss' shoulders and head, concealing her, and began to move the two of them towards the great iron entrance. The doors remained open, the guards in shock. Suddenly, the screaming began. It was chased on its heels by the sounds of footsteps, the sounds of riot. Calliope half dragged Katniss towards the doors, shouting at her to move, when suddenly a great arm wrapped around Katniss and lifted her up.
Glory dragged her and his bad leg as quickly as the three of them could move, staying fixed on their target. Calliope could never remember a moment where she was more grateful for Glory and his hulking strength than in the one they were living. None of them knew where to go, but Crowe's voice sounded over the shrieking and the sounds of bodies moving with thunderous urgency around them, guiding them back to the room they had been held in. Glory dropped Katniss against the couch, Calliope and Crowe forced the door closed, Tithe tinkered with the gears and engaged the locking mechanism.
Unsure whether it was rage or fear or admiration, Calliope whirled on her heel to face Katniss. The two women stared at each other, one aghast and the other emotionless. Callie wanted to ask her what she had done, wanted to scold her, demand an answer, scream at her for her idiocy, but she could not bring herself to do it and certainly less bring herself to feel it. Instead, Katniss sank down into the cushions and stayed fixed on Calliope's cool, swirling blue eyes. She was watching the young woman with some kind of questioning, like she had acted with someone else's hands and was as surprised at her actions as anyone else in that room. All Callie could bring herself to feel was pity for the District 12 girl who had just begun and ended the single greatest war Panem had ever known and now had plunged it into a potential chaos the might not come back from.
Calliope and Katniss watched each other from across the room, numb to the cacophony around their small, isolated bubble. Neither of them knew what to do next.
