WIth thanks to Katrace, JadeRavenstone and Technicolor Raincoat for your reviews of the last chapter.

Y184-09-05 T 10:54:00

THE CAPITOL

His head was swimming through a haze, asleep and awake at once- he was aware of the sounds around him, but could not dwell on them.

They were strange sounds, he mused- sounds like "morphling", or "blood"; or "scalpel". If he had been awake enough to dwell on them, he might have tried to get up- but his mind was hazy, and his limbs were heavy, and he was warm and tired where he lay.

His eyes fluttered as a strange sensation emanated from his leg. He did not have the ability to think about it, and sleep took him.

The next time he woke, he was still hazy, but with enough semblance of mind to slowly and excruciatingly wake up. He took stock of what he could- that he was lying down. That through his blurry vision, he could see bright lights, white walls, and not much else.

He could see that this was not the arena, nor was it the forest outside of it.

He was alive, but he was not where he should be.

He wriggled, then, trying to sit up; but a dull ache in his leg, near his ankle, reached a crescendo of pain- he moaned, dropping back to the bed. He opened his eyes properly now; the pain had pushed the drowsiness almost entirely from his head, and it was specific and overwhelming enough to demand his attention.

He had been shot. By the hovercraft. In his side, and arm. He knew this. He remembered it now. He sat up slowly, this time careful of moving his legs. He pulled at the thin cotton sheet he lay under and inspected his arm; he pulled at the strange white gown he was wearing to check his side. He knew the bullets had hit him there, but he found nothing; his skin was smooth, almost perfect, as if nothing had happened at all. He looked closer- tiny, pale scars littered the skin, but almost imperceptibly. Each bullet hole was closed with incredible precision, healed past normal healing.

And yet, despite having taken stock of all injuries he was aware of having recieved, his left leg still ached, just above the ankle. He leant forward, wincing as the motion forced his leg into the mattress more, and pulled the cotton sheets free from his body.

The strange, crinkly white gown he was wearing only reached to knee level So it was abundantly clear for him to see that just above the ankle of his lower leg, was now where his left leg stopped.

He blinked. He couldn't feel his heart beating- was his heart beating? He didn't know. He took shallower breaths, shallower; and then the panic took him. He tried to get up, to stand up, but he stopped just short of standing and sat back on the bed in horror, because he didn't know how to stand. His left leg ended in a stump and he didn't understand, he didn't understand, he couldn't-

He hadn't even noticed the heart rate monitor he was connected to until it started to beep rapidly, and he looked to it in horror as it betrayed his fast-beating heart. Violently, he ripped away the pads connecting him to the machine, breathing shallowly and carding his fingers through his hair as he looked at his leg, except it couldn't be his leg, it couldn't be, it couldn't-

The door to the all-white room opened. A woman in white entered; her smile was kind but her eyes were not.

"Mr Barkwater, please calm down," she said with an artificial smile, approaching him. Quint looked up at her. Her eyes were a cool blue, but it was an artificial blue- her irises were too round, the colour too uniform. Her hair was short, but spiked in precise cones, in a similar shade.

Capitol, Quint's mind supplied, and he wheeled back on the bed, trying to back away, but he couldn't move, not like this, what was happening-

"Mr Barkwater," she sighed, her smile dropping to match her cold, false blue eyes, "Either calm down or I send in security with more morphling."

That stopped him cold. The word 'morphling' had always given him nothing less than an expression of fear; watching his District's people destroy themselves over where the next dose was coming from was so damning to him that even his fear of this Capitolian could not tempt that fate.

"Very good." The Capitolian in the white clothing crossed to stand in front of him. "Mr Barkwater, I am your chief medical supervisor here at the hospital. You were shot in several places, including the arm, side, and leg. Tragically, while we could patch up your arm and side, your left leg beneath and including the ankle was unsalvageable; we were forced to carry out a disarticulation of the limb." She was speaking slowly and with exaggerated expression, as if speaking to a small child. "Do you understand what I am trying to say?"

All but one part. "I wasn't shot in the leg," he murmured. "I wasn't shot in the leg." He wanted to repeat it, over and over; wanted to scream it in the Capitolian's face until she understood, but he had the horrible feeling she already knew.

The artificial smile was back and a deep pit of fear opened in Quint's heart. "Oh, you must have passed out before it happened. It was a horrible trauma you've been through; but I suppose it had a silver lining, after all!"

Quint frowned. "What?"

She smiled her artificial smile. "The arena was destroyed; but you, and you alone, survived. Congratulations, Quint- you are the Victor of the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games."

She left, then; perhaps she said more, but it did not register in his mind. It did not matter.

The arena was destroyed. The Capitol was sent in to do that in the first place. Then why was he here? Why did they let him live? They must know he was a rebel; then why did they save him? And brand him a Victor?

And what had happened to his leg?

He sat on the edge of the bed, alternating between taking in his surroundings and inspecting his leg; what was left of it, anyway. It was neatly severed just above the ankle, with a healing scar in a raised cross where his skin had been pulled apart and closed together again. The pain was lessening now that he had the semblance of mind to push it down; but the strange feeling of lacking was starting to overcome that. Quint knew the rest of his leg should be there, but it wasn't; he felt as if he should be able to rotate his foot, but he couldn't.

Tentatively, slowly, he placed his right foot on the floor and held onto the bars of his bed as he pushed himself into a semi-standing position. Instinctually he tried to place down his left leg, too, but it hovered above the floor, not hitting the ground, and Quint bit his lip, pushing down the urge to cry.

He had larger problems right now than his leg. He had to figure out where he was- he had to focus.

He turned in place, half hopping and half limping around the bars of the bed, looking out of the huge floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of the room. Unable to bear the strange sensation of standing and not, Quint lowered himself to the ground, leaning against the large, curved window, trying to collect himself.

What was left, anyway.

Beneath him, frustratingly familar, lay the streets of the Capitol. And yet, it wasn't the silent, abandoned Capitol he had become used to; he was back in the real Capitol, and the streets below him, perhaps four floors below, buzzed with a vibrance that almost threatened to overwhelm. Shining people in shining clothes flitted to and fro on the streets; above them, monorails that had been absent in the fake Capitol shuttled residents to and fro in carriages. Without and with people, the Capitol was transformed.

Without, it had been austere and shining, a beacon of brilliance and size, overwhelming to be alone within. With people, it had shrunk; the scale of inhabitants had made the dizzying heights of the buildings next to the streets seem not as unusual. The constant movement, instead, provided the dizzying effect; tackier than the austere depths of the huge buildings, perhaps, but with more life, more passion.

Quint watched the people shimmer in the late summer sunlight, and thought.

So he had faced off against the hovercraft, to save Emil and Cesal; a stupid idea, perhaps, but one he had been firm upon. They had shot at his right arm, his right side; and yet they had amputated his left leg, above the ankle.

He had been a rebel, and yet here he stood, the apparent Victor of the Hunger Games- when the last person to have truly played the game had died by the teeth of a hundred mutts.

He was a rebel and he still lived. They had shot him, saved his life, and yet amputated a leg he was sure they had not shot.

And if everyone was dead-

They were not dead. Quint would not permit himself to think about it. The Capitol lied, he knew that; the Capitol always lied.

And yet- and yet. What reason would there be to lie? What reason would there be to let any of them live? To save Elizabeth? To save Glace? Theon? Any of them?

Quint closed his eyes against the feeling of tears. He was back amongst people, but he had never felt so alone.

They came for him, eventually; he had almost thought they had forgotten him, and had liked the idea of it. Four members of the Capitol Guard arrived- he was told to walk with them. As he struggled to stand, one sighed heavily and had a quick conversation with a hospital official, who supplied some crutches. Quint, feeling weak and vulnerable and hating it, limped down the hallway with four guns surrounding him, was escorted into a small room within the hospital, and told to wait.

Eventually, the door opened and a woman walked in, escorted by a Capitol Guard- she sighed as she looked Quint over, gestured for her escort to wait outside, and closed the door behind her.

"It's Quint, right?" She said, shrugging her backpack from her shoulder and placing it next to a slim suitcase she had also wheeled into the room.

He said nothing.

"It's cool, I'll go first," she said eventually. "I'm Salvia Kim, and I'm going to take over as your chief medical supervisor until your discharge from the hospital. I understand you suffered extreme trauma to your left leg and had a disarticulation of the limb." She looked over at Quint, her eyes drawn to the amputated limb as were his own. "I'm so sorry it happened."

Quint couldn't help but repeat himself, dismally and weakly. "I wasn't shot there," he said, surprised at just how weak his voice sounded; his emotions so rarely clouded his own judgement, but here he could not shake the feeling of melancholy that had swamped him.

She blinked. She glanced to the door.

"So I'm Doctor Salvia Kim," She repeated. "I've been assigned to your case due to your disarticulation; I happen to be the Chief Medical Officer within the Technological Innovation Committee."

Quint, for the first time, looked up properly into the doctor's eyes. She looked afraid but firm.

"Like Lexus Valerian," he murmured. "Right?"

Salvia nodded. "I am- was- good friends with him. I mean-" she glanced around her, as if afraid of being watched. It wouldn't surprised them if they were being watched. "-His ineptitude caused hundreds of deaths and he is to not to be remembered favourably for this, but he was."

Quint blinked. "His ineptitude?"

Salvia Kim looked at him searchingly. She lifted her suitcase onto a table and began unclasping it. "He and Seneca Crane; our former Head of the Committee, the same as Lexus; they have been named as those most responsible for the accident at the arena."

"The accident?" Was that what they were calling it? How could you call such a thing an accident? Didn't the Capitol see what happened?

She frowned. "Has nobody told you anything?"

"Only that everyone was- dead." The words took considerable effort to form.

"They told us the arena's weapons systems suffered a catastrophic fault. The hundreds of staff beneath the arena all perished, along with the tributes. Except for you." She looked up from the suitcase, staring into his eyes for a long time. "That's what they told us." She was almost daring him to tell her otherwise.

"I see." Quint did not know what to say. There was something in that that was grating against his hazy memory; something that didn't ring properly true. But what could he tell her? He wasn't sure how many ears were listening. He wasn't even sure if she was truly a friend of Lexus and Seneca; she could be an agent proper of the Capitol, testing his loyalty, testing his ability to lie.

"Lexus was my friend," she said, her voice shaking. "Seneca too." She took a deep breath. "My sister- Vesta- she was working on-site as a chief weapons officer. They've all been named inept, and to be posthumously expunged from the record for their negligence."

What did she want from him? He had lost people too. He didn't know what was right and what was wrong.

Until something occurred to him. Something terrible.

Lexus and Seneca had said they had evacuated the arena so they could be the scapegoat. But if Salvia's sister had died too- then either Lexus and Seneca had lied, or the Capitol had killed its own citizens, hundreds of them, to protect the truth.

Quint's mouth was dry. With eyes potentially everywhere, could he say that to this shaking, grief-stricken doctor? Could he say anything at all?

"I'm sorry," was all he said, and looked down at the ground. Salvia took a deep breath.

"No, it's not your fault," she said weakly, smiling. "Not very professional of me. Okay, so- the reason they called me in is because my job, as ever, is getting Victors back on their feet before we put you in front of any cameras. Now, sometimes people refuse our help- I'm sure you know Chaff."

A Victor from District Eleven, who had only the wrist of his right hand remaining. Quint remembered him.

"But I would really recommend you take our help, because it's going to make things a lot easier for you. Besides- you'll look better on camera, and people like that."

Quint disliked the feeling of taking help- he still remembered being given golden coins by a Capitolian, prior to the Games. But he was vulnerable, and in pain, and could barely stand.

"Anything you can do, I'll have." The words were difficult to say but he said them anyway, holding her gaze.

Salvia smiled. "That's what I hoped to hear." She stepped forward, gently wrapping a tape measure around what was left of the bottom of his left leg. "Okay, that's smaller than I expected, but thankfully I brought a load of sizes."

"What are you going to do?" He asked. She hummed to herself vaguely, fishing through her suitcase- it was opened so from his angle he couldn't see the inside.

"The Innovation Committee has always been devoted to developing neural-technological relays; Lexus Valerian was especially a proponent of it, but didn't realise its medical applications until I came forward." She lifted a strange metal device from the suitcase; the bottom of the device was a single, curved, flat blade of metal. "Electroactive polymers, connected to a myoelectric prosthesis. We're still working on the osseointegration, but for now it's just suction- connecting directly to the bone holds too much chance of the bone breaking under stress."

Quint was a mechanic by trade, but he had been left behind after she had said the word 'electroactive'. She looked up, seeming to sense his confusion.

"It's a prosthesis, in short- an advanced one, but the concept is the same as any other."

"And you're- giving me that?"

"No, not today. We measured you up for it and constructed it while you were unconscious, but we don't have calibration with your muscle response yet; today, we calibrate this up and give you an interim prosthesis, and tomorrow morning we'll have mapped the bionic in preparation for your big TV interview."

Quint had stopped listening after 'while you were unconscious'.

"How long have I been out?" He murmured, scared of the response. She looked at him with a strangely sad expression.

"Three days," she said softly. "How much did they even tell you?"

"That I was shot in the leg. That everyone died. That I was the Victor." He looked at the tiles of the floor pensively. Those three facts, swirling in his head. He only had what he could see as evidence for any of those facts- and what he could see was the grief of the Capitolian in front of him, and the awful, aching /loss that was the base of his left leg.

Everyone could be dead. Everyone was dead. The Capitol lied. The Capitol was grieving. The lines were starting to blur.

"Okay," Salvia said, forcing a smile. "Okay, let's, ah- let's look on the bright side!" Her voice had taken on a far more sugary tone, one he recognised as the artificial tone of the Capitol escorts- apparently, it was a universal quality the Capitol's residents could call upon in their voice. "You survived, and you're the Victor, and that's going to be great for you! First and foremost, let's calibrate up your leg, and then I'll give you an interim prosthesis, just for today. Okay, if I connect this up, then you start flexing your leg as if you were moving your foot up and down-"

Quint had spent several hours in the small medical room; it could have been an hour, but Salvia Kim had patiently and literally walked Quint through his first tentative steps on a temporary prosthesis. It didn't have bionic properties, just a few artificial joints; it was painful to step onto a still-healing scar, and it was an uncomfortable reminder that his leg had been severed just above the ankle. Still, he didn't complain about the excessive time Salvia gave him to learn to somewhat walk on the prosthesis- he did not relish the concept of leaving the medical room, and the doctor that seemed, unlike the majority of the Capitol, a nice person. He wasn't sure if it was related to her wish for information regarding her family, but he couldn't tell her anything- he wouldn't. He had been certain all of the staff had been evacuated; if her sister was dead, either Seneca lied or the Capitol executed her, and he had an unfortunate hunch which it was.

But he valued his life above her desperation, as much as it pained him to admit. So he left without saying a word, despite Salvia's hopeful and semi-desperate glances in his direction.

Crutches abandoned for a plastic and metal prosthesis, Quint limped down the hospital corridors with his armed escorts in tow. Salvia had told him that he would find it easier to walk with them in the early days, but he was nothing if not proud, especially in the presence of the Capitol, and he walked despite the pain and uncomfortable feeling of wrong that walking on a prosthesis elicited. However, despite the hours of practice balancing on a false limb was still nigh-impossible; Quint was relying on the cane Salvia had given to him as much, if not more, than his leg.

He found his hospital room emptied of the devices that had been hooked up to him; the bed had been cleared of everything but a simple white sheet and a small pile of clothes. Quint dressed quickly and with consideration towards the ever-watching camera in the corner of the room; he glowered down at the two socks and shoes he had been provided, flinging one of the shoes idly at the wall as he dressed.

The escorts returned and by now he knew the drill- he walked with them slowly, limping and leaning on his slim metallic cane, through the hospital and out to a walled courtyard, into a shuttle on a monorail with glossy black paint and shimmering tinted windows.

From within the shuttle, the Capitol could not see him but he could see the Capitol; and now as he watched it from just above ground level, he noticed something profoundly odd about the multitudes of people moving through the streets. His experience of Capitolian dress had taught him that they were colourful and eccentric; their outfits were flamboyant and avant-garde to a degree that was almost obscene, and they moved as so many shimmering moths in the night.

But here, in the late afternoon of the Capitol streets he passed, the people were almost uniformly dressed in black. Their surgically enhanced and makeup-encrusted features were contorted in grief-stricken sadness. The gambling emporiums, with their glittering glass interiors, were nigh-silent; the bars, from what he could see of them, were full of people, but they were not there for the social activities the Capitol so prized. The few Capitolians stumbling from the windowless interiors of the bars were thoroughly drunk and miserable; the cool, collected and false emotions of the Capitol's usual mob had dropped, to something Quint almost recognised- something almost human.

The Capitol were mourning a tragedy they had never faced the likes of before. Of a hundred thousand citizens, all of whom spent their lifetime making social connections and nothing else, at least several hundred had died suddenly and tragically. And, it seemed- if Quint was right- at the hands of President Snow himself.

What could have happened in three days? Quint thought in horror as the mourning Capitol changed beneath him.

The Reception Hall, as it was apparently called, was opulent and beautiful.

However, Quint had liked it better when it had been on fire with the rest of Snow's mansion.

"How long are we gonna wait?" He asked, keeping his voice rough and abrasive so as to hide his nerves. An aide in pure white clothing tutted at him vaguely.

"As long as the President chooses, Mr Barkwater."

"Is this a normal Victor thing?" The word 'Victor' tasted sour in his mouth when he remembered six others standing with him, but he needed to know what was happening.

"No," a sonorous voice said from behind him. Quint twisted around in his hard wooden chair to see the President walking in from another room. "No, Mr Barkwater, it is not normal."

Quint stared in a mix of anxiety and anger as the President slowly halted next to Quint, observing him carefully.

"When the President stands in a room, Mr Barkwater, nobody may sit."

Quint had to fight to keep the wince from his face as he forced himself upwards to half-lean on his cane and half-lean on his recently amputated leg, forced painfully against the plastic and metal prosthesis. Snow was observing his face with a horrifyingly sadistic smile, and that alone was all that fuelled Quint's determination to keep his expression still.

"Very well." Snow crossed to sit behind the desk, and it was all Quint could do not to gasp with relief as he took the weight from the lacerated bone and scar tissue that constituted the bottom of his left leg. "Mr Barkwater, there will no doubt be questions about the past three days. Questions you have, questions I have." He sat back. "But they are irrelevant."

They were not. None of his fellow tributes had been irrelevant. Not even the staff were irrelevant. Quint knew that hovercraft had been sent in to kill them and for all he knew they were all dead and that was not irrelevant. He was about to intervene when Snow cut in first.

"I want to turn to history. Ancient history, in fact. Thousands and thousands of years ago. That's not taught in your District schools, now is it? It's not even taught in our schools here."

Quint didn't care about ancient history, he cared about now. He seethed as the President picked up a shining, sharp letter opener and began twirling it, the point poised tantalisingly against the pad of his finger.

"My predecessor President Sanchez told me once of a great land, its history now sadly lost to us. Its name was China; it held a dynasty that lasted many thousand years. And it was so powerful because it was so simple; so clever; so brutalist. There were five punishments dealt in ancient China. Five only. One for murder, one for theft; and so on, as you can imagine. But there was a punishment in the five set aside for treason. And for treason, death was not enough. Death was too kind. For treason- to have /rebelled against the highest authority and risked peace- it was believed that to have taken something precious from the people, something precious should be taken in return." Snow tilted his head towards Quint, and his blood ran cold, because now he knew why his leg had been amputated. Snow continued, either unaware or very, very aware of Quint's fear. "Sometimes they took a hand, sometimes a foot. But for continued treason, there was always the option of taking another. For grevious treason, there was always the option of taking them all." Snow smiled, and it seemed gentle but his eyes, oh god his eyes. Quint could feel cool sweat resting on his skin, burning against his useless leg.

"Do we understand each other," Snow murmured, "Quint?"

Quint nodded. It was all he could do. He was Victor because there had to be a Victor, but any further out of line and he would lose far more than a leg.

"Very well, then," Snow said, standing again and clearly taking pleasure in the length and pain it took Quint to follow suit, "You have much to do- you are crowned Victor tomorrow. Good day, Mr Barkwater."

Quint was surrounded by guards again as he began to make his way out. But he couldn't stop. He couldn't just back down. He couldn't.

"Mr President," he managed through pained breaths. He turned around despite the extra movement this took, because he needed to see Snow's eyes. "Are they dead? All of them?"

Snow regarded Quint. "Yes."

But his eyes, oh, his eyes. His eyes were just as uncertain as Quint's own were. Snow couldn't be certain. Snow didn't know if they were dead.

They could be alive.

Deep in Quint's chest, a tiny flicker of hope kindled itself again.

Quint nodded. "Thank you, Mr President."

The walk was painful, but bearable. Quint had to bear it for the tiny chance that he would one day have other people's pain to bear with them.

Quint had to keep moving, in the hope that the last three days remained as uncertain to Snow as they were to him.

Days writing, hours formatting on a tiny mobile screen,and I still don't like this chapter. Go figure.

Thank you for all your submissions so far- more tributes would be greatly appreciated.

I'd go into more detail these notes but my mobile's going to give in if I make this file any longer. As ever, thank you for reading this far.