XLVII. An Unobtainable Dream
So that below, not sleeping, people dream,
Believing they speak truth, and not believing;
And in the last is greater sin and shame.
Crista Cray. 43.
Victor of The 27th Hunger Games.
She's not completely sure it worked.
Scratch that. There's a… very good chance that it didn't work. Crista tried her very best when maneuvering the hovercraft, but still, she's not sure. She knows that she caught him, but whether or not he was too close to the ground when she did.
As she lifted Calsin's body out of the arena, Crista had squinted her eyes, trying to detect any movement. Maybe she's getting too old too fast, or maybe he was just too far away; regardless, she wasn't able to see anything. She never wanted to leave his fate up to chance, but after he stared at her letter in incertitude, Crista was given no choice but to wing it.
Maybe her excessive sentimentality caught him off guard. She hasn't been openly emotional ever since Sapphira's funeral, but elaborate words have more letters, which means more opportunities to let the ink smudge so she can spell out a hidden message.
(Dear Calsin,
I'm just so proud of you, my precious Tribute. I wait eagerly for your return as victor. Don't forget how important you are.
Xx, Crista.)
Perhaps though, Calsin's eyesight was too blurry from his tears for him to properly make out the bolding on some of her letters. She doesn't want to fault him, especially not after he's been through hell in that arena, and maybe it's selfish of her to think he'd prefer to be alive instead of dead. Maybe he wants to be dead, so he can be with Atlantis. Maybe Crista's ridiculous to think that she could play the role of fate itself.
(Sapphira always wanted to be dead. That's a fact she's struggled to admit over the last year. No matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to save her, there was ultimately nothing that Crista Cray could possibly do. Her wife was on a downward spiral the moment she was airlifted from the twenty-fifth Games, and ever her peak, all the films she starred in and the albums she released, was just another step closer to her demise. For some people, there is no such thing as enough being enough, and Sapphira was always doomed to fall victim to her own insatiability. There was never a chance in hell of Crista changing that. Fatal flaws are fatal for a reason, after all.)
(The more she thinks of it, the more Crista realizes that her own fatal flaw is Sapphira herself. Without her, Crista can feel herself fading just the same.)
There's no debating whether or not a fragment of Crista Cray's soul drowned in the pool alongside Sapphira, but that doesn't mean she has to lose any more of herself.
(Maybe it's dramatic of Crista to consider Calsin part of her, but his anger and hatred towards the Collective, the way he's been screwed over by them yet wants to fight back… they're more similar than anybody would think.)
She needs him alive. Maybe need is a dramatic word, but after everything he's been through, Calsin Verrillo deserves to live. There'll come a time where Crista can no longer find the strength to fight the world's cruelties and honor Sapphira's legacies, and when such a time arrives, she needs a prodigy who's motivated just the same. She knows that losing Atlantis broke Calsin, and even if the two of them's connection was of a different nature than her and Sapphira's, it was still strong. Soulmates don't have to be romantic, after all. They just need to be something.
Crista sighs, her back pressed up against the hallway of the Gamemaker's offices' hallway the same way she was standing a few hours ago. The only difference is that she's now unrecognizable. It was shockingly easy for her to pick up two Peacekeeper uniforms once she found their locker room, one for herself and the other for… hopefully. Perhaps that's because they were too busy tending to the fanfare over Panem's newest victor being crowned. She carries the spare uniform in a bag draped over her shoulder, hoping it doesn't draw much attention to her since most officers don't carry bags.
(Hoping is just about all she can do in all aspects of her current situation in life. She can hope that Calsin's alive and somewhat well, hope that she'll be okay even if he isn't. She can hope that Cressida will turn out alright with only one parent, even if she knows she loved Sapphira more.)
There's no use in stalling.
In fact, it'd probably be suspicious if she continued standing up against this wall any longer.
She marches across the hallway, her arms swinging back and forth and her posture strong like the Peacekeeper's she's intimidating. She pays close attention to the signs, making sure she knows the exact way to the big silver door labeled in bold lettering: Tribute Morgue.
Crista holds her wrist up to the censor by the door's handle, smiling underneath her helmet when a sensor lights up green. There's twenty-three tables inside the rancid-smelling room, white shrouds resting atop most of them, though one has a pile of ashes, and another, an odd clump inside a drawstring bag. Each table's labeled with a number, and Crista can only assume it's associated with placement in the Games. She shuts the door behind her and flicks the deadbolt switch upwards, tiptoeing across the room until she finds the table which should carry the body of the third place Tribute in the Games. Calsin.
She lightly tugs at the zipper towards the body's head, hoping that when she pulls it downwards, it'll reveal a perfectly alive and healthy Calsin Verrillo. If he is alive, Crista doesn't want to wake him with the zipper. She'd prefer to gently tap him. Once the zipper's all the way down, Crista gives him a heavy look. Despite his scabbed wounds and ruffled hair, it's undeniable that he's at peace, more so than she's ever seen him, and a part of her doesn't want to disturb that. However, if he is alive and she doesn't wake him now, there's a chance he'll open his eyes to the lid of a coffin.
"Calsin…" Crista whispers, lightly tapping at the boy's shoulder. "Are you with me? Can you hear me?"
She leans down closer to him, a smile forming on her face as she notices the rise and fall of his chest. For a second, she swear's she's dreaming.
After setting her helmet on the ground, as not to confuse him when he wakes, Crista taps him again. "Can you hear me, Calsin?"
His eyes flutter open and shut as he speaks soft and slow, "Am I in heaven? Was heaven always real?"
"You're not in heaven," she says, watching as he slowly awakens.
"Does that mean I'm in hell?" Calsin mutters in a confused tone. "What the fuck… I tried my best."
"You're not in hell either," Crista responds. "Open your eyes. Look at me."
He blinks several times until his eyes make contact with hers. "What the fuck? Did I win? Why does it smell so bad here?"
"You didn't win," she tells him, shocked that he's unfazed by this news. "You're in the morgue. You were falling when the girl from Three pushed you, and well… I caught you."
A tear wells in Calsin's eyes, and that's all Crista needs to be assured that she did the right thing when she saved him.
"Why'd you do that?" He asks, haphazardly. "I mean, thank you; but why'd you do whatever you did to get me out of the arena in one piece and breathing?"
"I knew if you won, Shane would kill you within five minutes of being back in Four," Crista explains, Calsin nodding in agreement. "That doesn't mean you don't deserve to live, though."
"Thank you," he repeats, tears now dripping down his face. "Thank you so much, Crista."
"I did what I had to do," she responds. She lifts up the spare Peacekeeper uniform and holds it in front of him. "Once you put this on, we can stuff the shroud with my bag, and then get out of here."
Calsin's brows furrow, as if he still doesn't believe this is real. At least he seems ready to take a gamble. "Where are we going?"
"Home. We have work to do."
With him alive and well, some of that work is already done.
Surprise shawties!
Happy April Fools… did you know Calsin Verrillo is not dead?
Or maybe he is and this chapter is a joke.
Nah, he's in fact alive, for better or for worse. I know I wasn't exactly subtle leading up to this (R-B, good job guessing, I am so sorry your kid is the only finalist that is actually dead), but I felt that being too subtle with it would make it not make sense. In all honesty, I never thought that this verse would have a survivor who didn't win the Games, but the more I thought about it, the more I decided it was realistic if in 75 years of Games, one of them got away. Most of this came down from me refusing to say goodbye to Calsin because of how quickly I got attached to him, and knowing that I couldn't make him victor because then Shane would kill him, and also Verdigris, my beloved. This was the best option, and unlike previous times where I've considered letting Tributes live, I can actually justify this one because of my subplot. So yes… big plans for Calsin, very big plans.
Dyl, thank you so much for submitting this chaotic bad boy turned golden retriever to me. I really cannot express just how much I adore him, and in a lot of ways he's changed me as a person, if I'm being completely real with you. There's just something about his turbulence mixed with the fact he does genuinely want to make the world a better place that I somewhat envy, and I just overall adore Calsin Verrillo with my entire being. Really, there's not enough words that'd do it justice.
Next epilogue, we'll be hearing from the lucky bastard who emotionally gaslit me into not killing him himself along with Lucien, Liana, Ludo, and Coriolanus. Why do most people in this verse have either L or C names? Congrats to Verdigris, Haymitch, and Sapphira for being special snowflakes, I guess.
Fuck this shit, Calsin and I are out,
Linds
(No but seriously… Liana, Lucien, Livia, Lysistrata, Ludovicus, Lana, Lucretius, Coriolanus, Crista, Caspian, Calsin, Clemensia, Caesar, Cressida… what the fuck?)