Chapter 63: Bloodline
_ . _ . _
I turned into a killеr
I'm insane
I'll cry you a river
Down the drain
.
I turnеd into a killer
Played the game
Don't look in the mirror
Feel the pain
.
Are you entertained?
_ . _ . _
The Victor disappeared, and the tree began to burn.
.
In the chaos of the aftermath, the parties, the celebration, Oberon and Dagmara Illura-Pyke were inseparable.
.
Orange flames licked the leaves of the great ash, crowning the tree in fire just for an instant. Winged figures emerged to collect the bodies: two human, one feline.
.
Crowds raged and screamed in delight. They vomited congratulations that went ignored by the couple, too busy locked at the mouth in utter relief to care— an image that will be plastered across magazines and news feeds for weeks on end.
.
In the Valkyrie's firm grip, the cat writhed in terror. They disappeared into the burning tree, but the cameras showed only the destruction carved out by a Victor's wrath, the end of a world. Beneath the surface, a team of doctors get to work on their prize.
.
When they separated, Dagmara buried her face in her husband's shirt and burst into sobs. Hot tears sliced down Oberon's cheeks as well; he couldn't hide them if he tried. Instead, he hugged his wife tight enough to suffocate, as if he could convince her that they were alone, that the people who pinched and tapped and squeezed and touched them didn't matter.
.
Their Victor was a mess, a patchwork of close calls, missing pieces, and broken bits. But they began to stabilize her with IVs and blood bags, resetting broken bones and disinfecting old and new wounds alike while the fires rage overhead; they were safe here, cut off from the surface. If they had retrieved the rest of Venatrix's right hand, they might have been able to reattach it.
The head surgeon wasn't worried— she'd been itching for a new prosthetic design challenge anyways.
.
She won. Oberon could barely hear himself think through the chaos, but that thought stood clear above them all, splayed across the screens in burning flame.
Dagmara's shoulders shook with rapid breaths, her vice grip seared into his wrist. They couldn't stay here— anywhere but here. Pretending he didn't recognize the faces in the crowd, Oberon cut through them like molasses, a beeline to the nearest bathroom, coat closet, anything, just so they could fucking breathe.
.
A few crude surgeries later, the medical crew deemed her stable enough to move. Tentative bandages sat in place, a permanent string of drugs coursing through her nervous system to keep her out cold for the journey; can't have them waking too soon. The hovercraft lifted off without a twitch of Venatrix's sleeping eyelids, without a spike of her beating heart.
A few hours' ride, and then the real work began at the Capitol.
The tougher surgeries, the rehabilitation, the design choices. What to erase, what to emphasize— because every Victor has an angle, and the doctors need to know.
.
Outside the manor, cool night air kissed their faces. Immediately, they hailed a cab. Dag made the call; Oberon's fingers trembled far too much to handle his cellular, but by now, her voice was even.
They stumbled in, and Oberon hardly recognized the dark tinted windows and sleek black paint of the government car until he was watching the city flash past from the interior.
He didn't care, either, as long as Dag was with him. As long as it took them to their daughter.
.
Vague sensations swirled through her mind, sometimes sharp, sometimes gentle, always untraceable. The scent of antiseptic, the prick of a needle— they tugged at Venatrix's brain before something inevitably dragged them under, and she'd liken it to that morning before the end if she had the thought to do so.
Instead, outside hands guided the flow of her consciousness, "Can you feel this? Blink once if you—good, excellent," and she was swept under again.
And that primal part of her despised it, clung desperately to the wisps of sentience she floated between, you're not supposed to let go, you're supposed to keep moving, keep going, wake up— but here there were too many faces, too many needles, too many metal fingers prodding beneath her skin—
That silky void, it welcomed her— within it lived the faces she'd never see anywhere else.
.
This can't be right.
The car squealed to a stop amidst a sea of flashing, glittering, writhing people, and Oberon barely concealed the snarl that crossed his features, thanking the small mercy of tinted windows.
Behind the crowd, above them, glaring red-and-white letters proclaimed the territory of the general hospital, which the flock of paparazzi had apparently confused with red carpet or Avenue of the Tributes. Nevertheless, Dagmara took his hand and kicked open the door. They parted before her, or maybe that was the glinting white armor in his peripheral, but Oberon had eyes only for the set of glass-paned doors ahead.
For the best— he couldn't promise anyone in their way wouldn't get hurt. Flashing lights and fervent shouts faded into background buzz as the doors opened without prompting and sealed them off from the public eye.
.
Her hands wrap around a throat.
Through the viscous sludge of dream and time and memory, dark eyes beg; scream. Hold me tighter, they say, and she does, she does.
And it burns— her hands, they glow with a light from within, from beneath, sizzling, searing; summertime girl, how radiant. Venatrix watches as her hands blister and blacken into ash, and a sob crawls up her throat, a laugh. How radiant you were.
"I'm not most people," Mariposa says without a mouth and kisses her with a blade, so tender and thorough that Venatrix can't help but let her, can't help but want this.
It's never been about want—about what she wants—but she welcomes the fingers that break through her ribs and tighten around her beating heart.
.
Immediately, an attendant met them at the door; Oberon could sense the words on her lips before she spoke, and he did first. "Where is she?"
"Venatrix is not ready for visitors yet, please wait in the—"
"Lady, if you don't bring me to my daughter right fucking now—"
Something brushed his arm; Oberon's head snapped towards it— Dagmara. Her eyes flicked towards the walls of the lobby and the officers that lined them; must've followed them in from outside. A shaky breath hissed through Oberon's lips. He let his hands fall, clenching them into fists to disguise the trembling as Dagmara guided them towards the plasticky waiting room couch.
.
The spear sinks into his chest.
"I never stood a chance, did I?" Percy says. "It was always meant to be you."
No, but not even in her dreams can Venatrix find the will to say so. A bitter resignation leaks into the air, into her mind like poison, and she's seen it before, seen it in the eyes of a songbird-boy who knew he was doomed from the start, except this time it's Percy and his eyes fill with hatred.
It was never about want but, "It's always been about you."
She couldn't deny it if she tried, and that's the kicker— her hands reappear, shove the spear further into his body, and the blood that spills from his mouth, from the wound, it burns too.
"You couldn't even wait for me, could you?"
.
The attendant smiled thinly. "As I was saying, Mr. and Mrs. Pyke, if you would please wait in the lobby; the head surgeon will be out shortly to discuss potential options for enhancements."
Enhancements. A dark scowl crossed Dagmara's features, a mirror of his own, no doubt.
The Capitolite paid them no mind, and nor did the others despite Oberon's attempts to lock any of them in a glare so intense they'd have to let him through. Behind the front desk, receptionists languidly shuffled papers and clicked at their computers; above, a decorative clock ticked away the seconds at a pace that seemed to grow increasingly slower with each one. His gaze flitted periodically to the set of swinging doors that led to the surgical rooms just as his thoughts swam with possibilities—with horrors— of whatever the fuck was going on behind them. I need to see her, I need to—
Without warning, they swung open.
.
Bared teeth tear skin.
First it's hers—(the skin or the teeth?)—they sink beneath her flesh, beneath her bone, and the crunch echoes through her skull.
Suddenly she hears everything. The clarity assaults her, the crunch, the click, the snarl that crawls up her throat; a howl rips from her jaws, slicing through the background sea of shrieking screams (and she'd recognize them if she listened, if she cared).
But the sound fills her chest, and it feels good.
Flashes of fur cut within her vision, and she runs—no; chases. Hunts. Dark fur, dark fur, white fur, dark curls—
"Dad—help me!"
—bared teeth tear skin—
(Which is hers, the skin or the teeth?)
—bared teeth tear skin, and they might be mine—
.
He didn't recognize the surgeon— evidently, they'd gotten a new one since Eridan's Victory, and that would be enough to make his lip curl in annoyance if it hadn't already done so. Perhaps he'd been in the Capitol for too long because he'd almost peg the woman as normal-looking (unnaturally black hair and glinting purple eyes be damned) if it weren't for the look of utter elation that stretched her lips into a wide grin. "Ah, the proud parents! Doctor Astic, lovely to meet you—" she passed out quick handshakes firm enough to rattle his shoulders— "unfortunately, we don't have much time to chat before the first test, so—"
"No augmentations," Oberon cut in, and she visibly pouted.
"Well, alright, but you know it's important—especially in our case here, I think—that we have a visible sign of Venatrix's Victory aside from—" A rapid red light blinked on the doctor's watch, cutting her off. "Ah, drat, she's waking up—"
Oberon bolted for the doors.
"Hey—keep him out of my operating room!"
.
Red swam through her vision.
It lingered while the rest of her consciousness caught up. Muffled noises bounced through her skull, quick to fluctuate, rise again, then dissipate into stale air.
The acrid tang of antiseptic remained, as did the red. The stiff softness beneath her body. The gentle ache in her muscles.
The red.
Venatrix opened her eyes.
Immediately, a white glare assaulted her from overhead. She hissed, half a snarl, half a whimper, recoiling into the soft-stiff pillow, retreating into the red behind her eyelids.
Quick footsteps, a muttered apology, and the red—the light— dimmed into a gentle darkness. Venatrix cracked her eyes open again, fingers curled within the scratchy blanket as her squinted glare attempted to locate the other entity in the room. They made no effort to hide their presence, marching directly towards the edge of Venatrix's bed. Hospital bed..? "Apologies for the light. It's easy to forget that fluorescents aren't very friendly, especially for patients recovering from something like this."
Like what? Venatrix grunted in response.
Steadily, her eyes adjusted to the room, to the calm yellow light that now soaked the atmosphere. It was bright enough to see, and she wondered who to thank for that— the lights, or the surgeon who'd fixed up her eyeballs. Or however that worked. The flash of katanas and blood and nothingness still echoed through Venatrix's mind, but now a strange woman occupied her vision, all black hair, white teeth, and whiter coat— Doctor? Capitolite.
Something Venatrix couldn't see caught the woman's attention. She glanced away, brows furrowed, and Venatrix strained her ears, picking up muted sounds of a scuffle and low voices from outside the room.
But they faded, and Venatrix found herself once again the subject of the doctor's uncanny violet-eyed gaze. "Doctor Astic, at your service. Such a pleasure to work with you Venatrix," she said, her mouth stretching into a thin-lipped smile. "I'm sure you must have a lot of questions..?"
She stared expectantly. Venatrix stared back. "Where are my parents."
"You will see them soon. As for right now, there are a few tests I need to run you through…"
The doctor dove into an explanation, but Venatrix's attention had already drifted away again, to the room (door), to the light (yellow), to the mass of black-and-metal that used to be her right hand—
Venatrix blinked. Astic took notice, and began babbling about the intricacies of the device, a load of technical jargon that went in one ear and out the other, but all Venatrix could think about, really, was how it got that way in the first place.
"Mari," she murmured.
The chatter abruptly cut off. "Oh… terribly sorry about your little girlfriend." Venatrix's eyes flicked upward; the doctor's, unsettling as they were, flicked away. "She's… well, she is dead."
"I know," Venatrix said. "I won."
"Yes—congratulations, by the way."
Venatrix said nothing. She willed her steel fingers to curl into a fist, as she would flesh-and-bone ones. To her surprise, they cooperated.
How odd… The metal skeleton seemed to sprout from within the reddened flesh of her palm. It smarted with the movement, and yet she felt nothing from the digits themselves, save for her thumb. She ran it across the black plating of her index finger just to be sure— for some reason, it wasn't as cold as she'd been expecting. She flexed her fingers, tapping at each rubbery pad with her thumb.
"It'll take some getting used to," the doctor said, and Venatrix didn't doubt it.
She didn't feel the fingers, and yet they functioned at her will. Not unlike my sword. An extension of her arm—that had always been the goal. Venatrix felt her lips twitch in an almost-smile before it disappeared; she seemed to remember a sword through her stomach. And of course… "What about my collarbone?"
"We've done the best for you that modern technology can offer." The doctor began listing off her fingers. "Most of your minor scrapes and lesions have been fixed up, your bones are being fused back together, the muscles and tendons are healing nicely though we're still finagling with the scarring—" Venatrix made a face— "and it will take time for things to be fully back to normal."
The doctor paused—no; hesitated.
Venatrix scooted upwards into a sitting position, giving the shoulder a tentative roll. Still stiff. "But they will go back to normal. Right?"
Astic licked her lips. "You are young and fit. There's no reason they shouldn't."
"So you don't know."
"That's not what I said." The doctor's stare hardened. "You will be fine, Venatrix. You're a Victor now, remember?"
Something in her tone made the hairs prickle at the back of Venatrix's neck.
"We can discuss this matter at length later. As I was saying before, it's important that we run a few tests on your prosthetic to make sure it's functioning correctly!" She clapped her hands together. "Now, while many aspects of the device are body-powered, this is a myoelectric prosthetic, which means that the implants will still need time to heal, and we want to make sure they heal correctly, which means…"
Venatrix tried to focus as the doctor outlined the series of tests yet again, but unwitting exhaustion began to creep in from the back of her mind. Keeping her eyes open and following basic instructions took more effort than it should. The doctor handed her a pen, a paper, a padded plastic lap desk to lean against, and instructed her to write her name— the resulting chicken scratch made her lips curl in a scowl.
Then, her year and title— Victor of the 151st Hunger Games. Barely legible.
Her closest allies in the arena…
She managed Mariposa's name. Each letter wavered in her unfeeling grip, and when she finally finished, she exhaled a quiet hiss at the effort. Swallowing, she began Percy's. She scratched a line in the paper, and the beginnings of a white-knuckled curve—
"You don't need to hold it so tightly," the doctor commented. "Just—"
'You couldn't even wait for me, could you?'
Venatrix dropped the pen. "I can't."
To her relief, Astic didn't press further, instead switching out the materials in favor of directing her on various combinations of fingers to hold up. Venatrix obeyed. "Excellent! It's holding up quite well, if I do say so myself. In time, your dexterity will increase, and we can even exchange the components to allow you to carry heavier loads. But for the moment, the device is especially delicate—"
"You know a lot about this thing."
The doctor huffed. "Well, of course I do. I designed it," she said proudly. "Truly, it's the only one like it in the world right now. Quite a unique injury— most tributes don't grab swords by the blade and live to tell the tale."
Venatrix held up three fingers at her instruction, mirroring the action with her good hand. "Mari didn't give me much of a choice."
At that, the doctor chuckled. "Ah, but you're here, and not her, no?" Something in the doctor's smile made Venatrix stiffen. "Working with you Victors is quite fascinating. Now, put your hands together and move them like this." She held her hands flat against each other and tapped her thumbs together first, then index, middle, ring, and pinky fingers.
Venatrix copied the motion. The doctor chattered away, but her previous words lingered in Venatrix's mind.
I'm here and not her…
It couldn't be anyone but me. That's what I wanted—this is what I was supposed to want. It was the only option. But where does it end? When does it end?
It's over. It's over, and I won, and they still left me—
"Now make a fist around this." The doctor passed Venatrix a palm-sized metal ball. "Squeeze it as tight as you can, okay?"
Venatrix did.
"Very good— nice and strong."
Steel fingers curled around the ball, tightening, tightening. Venatrix watched the joints move, willed them tighter. The knuckle in her thumb went white from the pressure.
"I've got the readings, Venatrix, you can…"
She squeezed the ball harder, entranced. Skin turned white where it met with metal, a stark contrast to the design of the prosthetic, and rapid beeping suddenly filled the air. A grind-pop! shot through metal to tissue to nerve.
"Venatrix, drop it—!"
Beads of red bloomed at the metal-flesh fault lines, running down her wrist in warm rivulets. The tighter she squeezed, the more they burned.
I had no choice. I wasn't allowed to have a choice.
Something cold began to flood her veins, and Venatrix could only watch as she was forced to let go.
.
Oberon pressed the ice pack to his jaw with a scowl. It stung from when the officers had tackled him to the floor; he'd barely made it through the threshold of the doors, enough to see the long white hallways that awaited them still.
And yet— confined to the waiting room.
Anxious energy buzzed through his veins, channeled into the knee that bounced involuntarily beneath Dagmara's calming hand. She was trying; he appreciated it. Oberon placed his own hand— still encased in its splint— on top of hers and thought about asking the receptionist for a coffee.
Instead, Dagmara jerked her chin towards the set of vending buttons on the far wall. "When was the last time you ate something?"
"When was the last time you ate?"
She shot him a look.
.
Icy molasses whirled around her, suffocating in its numbness.
(Behind its veil, the doctor let out an annoyed sigh as nurses flooded the room to scrub the new Victor clean of the mess of her own making— Apolline Astic loved challenges, not lunatics.)
Outside, her body was still; inside, Venatrix fought the drug tooth and nail, neuron and cerebral cortex, but of course, it won.
You had no choice.
You cannot stop it— you cannot stop.
(They sliced into her, restitching, rewrapping, disinfecting. The Capitol's technologies were near-magical to an outside observer, sure, but someone still had to make them work.)
You have no choice. They gave you no choice, and then they left you.
Do you really think this will be enough?
.
Oberon ground his teeth around the dry, sandpaper pretzel, ignoring the flare of pain in his jaw. They won't let me see her. I have to see her.
Instead, he was stuck in the lobby eating cardboard snacks that Dagmara had to open since he'd resorted to tearing the first one open with his teeth when his arm wouldn't cooperate. Crumbs still crunched beneath his shoes, his bouncing leg.
His eyes tracked the hospital staff as if he were back in the arena, looking for any whisper of words passed between lips, a hesitation of clicking fingers, a notification in the reflection of the computer screen on the framed photograph of the Capitol skyline that sat behind the reception desk. Fucking nothing. Awkward looks passed between them; they knew he was staring, but Oberon didn't care.
Something had to give.
.
Nameless emotions slithered through Venatrix's mind, nipping at her consciousness before fading entirely into strange words, stranger deeds; bonfire haze swept over her body in its acrid mist, tongues of fire and blood that laughed as they scorched her skin, do you hear it? Do you remember?
I don't want to, but something tugged her towards it, a thousand fish hooks latched into her skin and pulling—
Her eyes flew open.
Something held her arm in front of her, the broken one, the jagged-metal one, only even more metal bits stuck out of it now, fingers splayed wide and flayed-steel tendons. A hand cranked a screwdriver into her flesh—
All she felt was fire. Only the lead on her tongue stopped her from screaming, but the howl itself was a raring chainsaw at her ribs, thrashing to escape—
"—think she can feel this? Shit, knock her out—"
.
The peacekeepers watched him too. Unlike the attendants, their stares carried weight, a promise to strike again if necessary; the longer they trapped him here, the more it might be necessary.
Maybe he'll never learn, but he could feel Dagmara growing just as antsy at his side.
Oberon's gaze flicked between the officers to the receptionists to the swinging doors, as if they'd pop open the harder he glared. The clock ticked overhead; whispers passed between the receptionists; a flock of white-coats and scrubs flew down the hall behind the doors, and Oberon stood.
He handed Dagmara his ice pack, ignoring the way the officers flinched for their batons. "Mr. Pyke," the main receptionist began, but Oberon cut her off.
"You need to tell me what is going on, right now."
.
Somehow, she felt the shift. The wind-down, the blend from wakefulness to nothing to red-light yellow-light, empty room.
Blink once, and the doctor was there, arranging her tools on a roll-away table, the ones that picked her apart and screwed her together. Blink again, and the doctor was gone, and Venatrix found herself gone too, buzzing through dreams and back again.
A stiffness in her neck, and her head lolled towards the table and its screwdrivers and calipers and disinfectants.
Alone again…
But outside, muffled voices, pitched accents— someone appeared at her bedside and hit a button, and the sudden, vivid anger followed her into oblivion.
.
"Sir, you can't—"
"We have a right to know," Dagmara cut in; Oberon shot her a grateful look as she appeared at his shoulder. "She is our child."
The two Capitolites shared a look, and Oberon had to fight back the urge to resort to violence, forcing his fingers to relax before they could form a fist— PK's were still watching, after all. "Listen, I don't care what you were told, we need to be there with her, do you understand?"
Silence— they were saved from responding when the doors flew open, heralding Doctor Astic's reappearance; she glanced between the two Victors and her staff. "She's ready for visitors now."
.
She thought she'd never see this forest again. Dead trees, red sky, that hunted feeling in her bones—she's on four legs and running; a howl teems in her lungs but she's too afraid to use it.
He's on her trail, she knows it, sees him— he catches her with a bullet to the shoulder, and Venatrix feels her body quiver and cower as the hunter approaches. "You left me!" she howls, but he says nothing.
She remembers when she asked all those months ago, and what she was told: 'It's harder with people,' but that only means it's easy with animals.
It's even easier with fucking monsters.
Her father passes her the knife.
.
"Ah— only her mentor," Astic said when the pair made a beeline for the door; her pointed look landed on Oberon.
"What?!"
"Are you kidding?" Oberon spat. "Fucking bullshit, don't you dare even think about trying to—"
Dagmara cut him off with a look— "Go."
.
Expectation lays thick in the air; Venatrix doesn't resist.
She drives the knife into her stomach. That lovely wound reopens, and she tugs the blade upwards, yanking out twitching coils and throwing them at his feet.
They burn to ash the moment they hit the ground.
Venatrix chokes back a sob, digs the knife, and all her father does is watch. She pulls out whatever she finds—one lung, two, liver, spleen, heart, and when they all crumble before her, the apology tastes like blood.
.
Oberon forced himself not to run. Astic guided him too slowly down the glaring hall, dumping meaningless chatter into the air, except it wasn't meaningless; it was "the surgeries went well, we did a full reconstruction of her collarbone," and "her wounds are healing decently, but she's struggling to adjust to the prosthetic," and "you might want to be careful with how you speak around her, we still don't know—"
"I think I know how to speak with my daughter," he cut in. Astic nodded, gesturing to the last room in the corridor.
Oberon pushed open the door.
.
"I'm sorry," she wails, "I'm sorry it's not enough," but she gets no answer.
It's like his blank stare doesn't even see her, doesn't see the mess of blood and organs and fur that seeps into the cold dirt. Just leave me then, she wants to say, if you were always going to leave then just do it! But she can't find the words; they escape her, bleeding into nothingness from her open wounds.
He stays anyway; at least the blood is warm.
.
The room was dim; it took his eyes a second to adjust, and when they did, Oberon's breath caught in his throat.
How small she looked, how real; it was as if his mind hadn't let him believe it until now, that despite the blood and bruises and broken bones, she still breathed, still lived— but her rest wasn't peaceful, and her face… "You left the scars?"
"They're good for her image."
.
In an instant, she forgets; tufts of moss cradle her head, a soft breeze sweeps across her cheeks, but an iron tang still lingers on her tongue— she's still being watched.
It's a feeling more than anything, and it tugged at the edges of her mind. Sharp, then dull, then sharp; she tried to cower away from it, to will herself to move, but the message wasn't strong enough.
She misses the warmth— and the bloodstench that came with it.
.
Without thinking, Oberon reached out to brush her cropped hair back from her face— he stopped, pulled back; the touch would only startle her. "I'll take it from here," he said, nodding for the doctor to leave and trying to ignore the hole forming in his chest.
They'd made her look so much larger through the screen.
.
Stronger things began to weave through her nostrils—clean things, stale things—and with them, stiffness, tingling.
They swooped down on her in a vicious barrage, and Venatrix clung to the warmth around her body, the burning howl in her chest. Forget the apologies, it said, forget the people who want to drag them from your teeth.
.
It felt like ages before he took a seat in the chair at her bedside, struck again with the urge to reach out to her; make sure she was real. He settled instead for picking at the splint on his arm, unable to quell the bouncing in his knee.
.
A steady beat ticked through her mind; she knew if she screamed, she could drown it out. But something about the knife's-edge reflex that zipped through her waking muscles wouldn't dissipate.
.
He kept careful track of the rise and fall of her chest, the ticking of her heart on the monitor, the flutter of her eyelashes— he pinpointed the shift immediately.
.
She knew it, that feeling, but it wasn't a dream anymore— she wasn't alone.
.
"Venatrix, I know you're not sleeping."
His words woke the spark of anger in her chest.
How often she'd feign sleep in her childhood, to avoid a lecture, to avoid a pre-dawn workout, to avoid anything. At some point, she'd stopped— she'd never been very good at it.
You can't avoid this one.
Venatrix let her eyes fall open. They landed on that yellow overhead light; such a perfect square, so neatly inlaid in the ceiling with its evenly distributed source of light—
A silhouette hovered in front of it— a hand. It retreated with a heavy sigh, and she tracked the movement back to its owner.
As if she could ever truly ignore that presence. The air caught in her throat. "Dad," she croaked.
She barely recognized him.
At the same time, she'd recognize him anywhere.
He looked like hell— dark circles, unshaved beard, more stress lines than she remembered— and Venatrix was sure she didn't look much better. But he looked at her with those same eyes she'd inherited, and it all seemed to soften. His face flooded with relief.
(It didn't make sense. He'd left her. She'd won, but it wasn't enough—she knew it, and so did he.
It was nothing to be proud of.)
"Trixie, you're… I'm so pr—"
"Why."
Just like that, the relief dissipated.
(Some part of her ached to see it go. Once, her father's face had meant a haven, safety, home. What a fool she was for thinking she could go back.)
"Why?" she repeated in the growing silence.
"I–I don't—"
"Why did you—why did you do this to me?"
Something cracked through his mask, already so worn. "Venatrix, I'm so sorry, I… I didn't—the Capitol—"
"No." She swallowed, her voice thick. Her eyes flicked towards the door (closed), the bedside table (tools), her hand (steel)… Nowhere to run, no escape— not for me, not for him. He looked at her still, her father (?) and opened his mouth— "Don't," she cut him off. "Don't try to— it was you."
"Trixie…"
"It was you, all my life. You wanted me to—you made me. You made me into this—"
"I trained you because I love you, Venatrix!"
"YOU ABANDONED ME!"
The sheer volume of her voice silenced him.
Truth be told, it stunned even her; Venatrix clenched her shaking hands—metal and flesh alike—into fists. "You left me! Why would you do that?!" Some part of her registered the words (apologies? Excuses?) falling from his lips, her stiff shoulders and crumpled blankets, the ache of disuse in her throat; most of her didn't care. Not when his face twisted in pain, and not when he reached out to her— she recoiled. "You said NOTHING!" The words tore at her throat. "You abandoned me, just like you did Bell, 'cause I'll never be enough for you! And I'm still not—"
Her voice cracked— how she hated it, hated the way her father was looking at her right now.
"Venatrix—"
"What, is this not what you wanted?"
"Please, don't…" He swallowed thickly. "You were always enough, Trixie, you—"
"No."
"You know that! You know I mean that; I love you—"
"No!"
"—and I'd love you whether you lived or died, I don't care—"
"You should've cared!"
"—I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—"
"Shut up!"
(Bared teeth tear skin.)
"Shut up!" A sob slipped through her gasping breath, hot tears slicing into her cheeks. "You abandoned us! You were supposed to do EVERYTHING, and you let her DIE!"
(The spear sinks into his chest.)
"You left me to DIE!"
("I'm sorry, I love you—")
"SHUT UP!"
(Her hands go for the throat.)
She lunged for his throat. The steel-hand got there first— sharp, unfeeling fingers dug into his neck as they crashed into the table; tools scattered overhead and Venatrix drew back a fist, sent it into his cheek. He gasped, scrambled; pinpricks of fire raced down her arms as plastic tubes ripped free, but Venatrix had one thought in mind, one voice. Her flesh-hand closed around something solid, and the words spilled like blood.
"SHUT UP!"
He didn't answer. Hands scrabbled at her steel fingers, desperate—useless—
"SHUT UP!"
She drove the thing—(screwdriver?)—into his chest. Over. And over.
"SHUT UP—"
and over.
"—SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT—"
and over.
"—UP SHUT UP—"
and over.
"SHUT!"
and over.
"UP!"
and over again, and the red— the wolf in her voice dissolved into a scream-sob-howl — (bared teeth tear skin) — and it didn't bother resisting anymore, the thing beneath her — (the spear strikes home) — she was killing him, you're killing him, some part of her said, you're killing your father — (she goes for the throat) — she went for the kill, and she doesn't care because all she knows is red, all she sees is red, in her ears her eyes her hands, it's in my mouth—
it tastes like true fucking vengeance, and it hurts.
(amidst the red, a small flicker of green— then nothing.)
Killer by CHVRCHES
true vengeance 151 . weebly . com
AN: I very highly recommend reading this one on AO3 rather than here. I've always thought of this chapter as the finale for the story itself while the previous one was the finale of the games/part iii.
So... yeah. Happy birthday Oberon...!