Ab Extra, Salus {Part 4 | Chapter 18-21}

[ficofandalasia]

Part Four: The Captive



Chapter Eighteen

I didn’t remember the fighting, not as anything more than a blur of swords and talons and cries and roars. Snatches managed to make their way through: the hot breath of the creatures on my face; my sword snapped at the tip from the hardness of their hide; Helga dragged down by the knees, disappearing in a splatter of red but refusing to scream.

I was on my hands and knees when I realised that they were gone, and I was alone. A buzzing sound filled the air, and I thought for a moment that the first mutts were just being replaced with a second, but when I raised my head, sending the world lurching, I saw a rope ladder unfurling down through the hole in the ceiling.

A ladder. Why a ladder? I realised slowly that it was for me, that the hovercraft had come to pick me up. And I wasn’t dead. I looked to my right; Helga’s body was sprawled on the floor, one arm flung up to protect her face even in death, her thighs and stomach and forearm torn open down to bone and viscera. My stomach was too twisted to even feel sick at the sight.

Blood was dripping into one of my eyes, but I couldn’t remember where from. I tried to get to my feet, but my right leg would not obey me, and I could only crawl, dragging it behind me, to the base of the ladder. The rope was blue and clean and hurt on my hands from the moment that I touched it, but I felt dry sobs shaking me as I dragged myself upright against it, and clung to it as if the whole world was waiting at the other end.

The hovercraft. Alive.

I was the victor.

It was like reading something on far-off paper, completely unrelated to me. I rested my head against one rung as the current froze me in place, my vision blurring and greying as the hovercraft took off again. Hands caught me as I fell into the hovercraft itself, doctors in white and wearing masks, and I was lifted onto a stretcher.

Distantly, I thought that I should try to fight them off. They would realise that I was Mulan, that I was not Ping, if I did not. But the numbness in my legs was spreading upwards, and I barely felt the needle sliding beneath the skin of my arm before, with a sharp unnatural jolt, everything went black.

My eyes opened to a world without pain. The lack of it was actually a strange sensation by now, and I breathed in deeply just to see if the muscles between my ribs would complain. Even so, they did not. The room felt like a hospital, and when I looked around it confirmed my thoughts: a rail-lined bed with white sheets, white curtains surrounding me, a suspended ceiling with a single light set back into it.

It was almost a relief.

I fumbled around for a button to call a nurse. I had been in hospital before, years ago when my body could not keep up with how hard I trained, and I had ended up with a dislocated shoulder and broken collarbone. They had set the bone, put me under, and I had woken up just days later with no signs of ever having been hurt. No doubt this would be the same. This time, though, there was no button to be found, and when I tried to sit up and look around better, I realised that there were straps holding me in place.

A frown crossed my lips, and I reached with my arms to push down the sheets and pull at the widest strap, the one across my waist and hips. It looked like nothing more than white fabric, no more assuming than bandages, but I could not even fit my fingers underneath it without feeling like I was going to leave dents in my stomach from the tightness.

A door opened, and I froze at the sound, then the curtain peeled back and a figure stepped through. Wei; my heart leapt for a moment, then I saw the shadows beneath his eyes, the simplicity of his clothes. My throat seemed to close.

He reached behind my bed and pressed a button that drew me to a sitting position. I hated the feeling, the helplessness, but at least it did not send giddiness running through me.

“Welcome back, my victor,” he said, voice calm and low. He stood beside me, a tall, thin figure in yellow and red. There were still gold threads in his beard; before, he had changed the colour of them to match his robes.

“Wei,” I replied. My voice cracked, and I swallowed. “We made it.”

“You did.” His voice was low, saddened, as if he was speaking at a funeral. “However, you must realise that they know now who you are. President Yensid is angry, Mulan.”

It was the first time that he had used my real name, and for some reason that frightened me more.

“I’m sorry; I couldn’t stop what they did. A testosterone implant has been placed in your body; it is intended to start masculinising your appearance, though you are known as fairly androgynous. Your chest has also been operated on.”

My hands went instinctively to where my breasts should have been. Even before the Arena, I was flat-chested, and the training and time in there would not have helped. Now, though, I could feel that my chest had changed, flattened, the muscle stronger under my touch. I started to shake, gaze drifting to a point somewhere over Wei’s shoulder.

“The surgeons also...” I had never heard him hesitate, but a deep horror was already resonating in my bones. I thought that it could get no worse. “A hysterectomy was performed. No reconstructive genital surgery has been done, because you are only sixteen, but the Capitol wants it to be completed before you are eighteen years old.”

My arms crept further around myself, as if I was trying to hold together those parts of me that still remained. I could see nothing but white, filling my vision like thick snow, and I wished that I could curl up into a ball and return to sleep. Dream this all away.

“I’m sorry, my victor,” said Wei again. His words sounded like they were very far away, carrying along that underground tunnel full of the monsters that had been sent to kill the two Tributes who had remained.

I heard his footsteps turning to go, the rustle of a curtain, and managed to raise my head. “My brother,” I blurted. “Ping. Where is he?”

Wei had already let the curtain fall, and was only a faint silhouette beyond it. “I’m sorry,” he said, for a third time, and then I heard the door open and close. I was left alone, in the terrible silence, my eyes too dry for tears, my throat too tight to scream.

It was a relief when the IV going into the back of my hand flooded me with cold, and I slipped back into unconsciousness again.

I fought against waking up each time that followed. Food would be by my bed, and I quickly realised that I was kept awake only long enough to eat it before being allowed to fall back into the comfort of sleep. With the drugs in my arm, I didn’t even dream.

Finally, though, I woke up to find Wei standing over me, his expression unreadable, the silver and black threads in his beard matching the robes that he wore. I wondered for a moment whether my conversation with him had been a dream, but as soon as I moved my arms I could feel the strange muscles of my chest and it hit me like a blow that this was real.

“Come along, Fa Ping,” said Wei. He did not offer me his hand as I swung my legs carefully out of bed, relieved to find them able to support me. For the first time since waking up in this sterile place, I realised that my vision in both eyes was crystal-clear, and that my hands were polished smooth. Victors could not have flaws, after all; we had to be as perfect as dolls for the Capitol.

I had never asked, not even wondered, how my father had ended up with a scar on his leg still. Now, touching my smooth cheek experimentally, it finally struck me as odd.

“We have a couple of hours to ready you for your show. Come on, now; the time is shorter than it sounds.”

There were words that I wanted to say, but I wasn’t quite sure what they were. My body felt alien as I walked behind Wei, with just a dressing gown wrapped around the pyjamas that I had been wearing in the hospital, my feet still bare. My chest and arms felt as if they were more powerful, tightly corded, like I had been in the gym all day and my muscles were still burning.

Shang, Chi Fu and the other stylists were waiting at the end of the corridor for me, standing in an awkward half-circle. It took all of my composure to walk calmly towards them, especially when Chi Fu began spilling praise for me and the stylists all began talking over each other about everything that had passed in the Arena. Shang caught my eye, reached out, and patted me on the shoulder with just a slight smile and a nod. Somehow, that felt better than anything the others were doing.

The Training Centre was eerily empty; I could not help but remember that it was less than a week since all of the Tributes had been here, training and talking and living. The others formed a sort of guard around me as we made our way up one escalator, across the floor, and up the second to our quarters. Maleficent had avoided me while we had both been here, so at least that did not feel too different. Shang and Chi Fu peeled away, and Wei ushered the rest of us into the dressing room.

The voices of the stylists faded as they worked on my hair and skin, using subtle makeup to mould my features as Wei wanted them. It was like tinnitus, nothing more, though I grunted occasional replies to suggest that I was actually listening.

“You have been a soldier,” I heard Wei say in the distance. “You have been a knight. Now, I will make you a youxia.”

I had never heard of such a thing, but I did not much care. By the time that I actually looked at the clothes which I was wearing, though, I felt a sense of relief rush through me. My pants were made of some soft, dark grey fabric, loose above my leather boots. I wore a long, full-sleeved tunic over the top, white with a silver and black dragon embroidered on it, twisting up from one hip to the opposite shoulder; it looked exactly like the last mutts, though, and I could not look at that for too long. The shoulders shaped it almost like armour. My hair was tied back into a bun, showing off my sharpened features; other than that, I was left plain, with just a loose coat over the top and pendant of some white stone, carved like the token my father had given me so many days ago, hung round my neck.

It was easy, gentle. I still did not want to face the cameras, though, even with Snow White to try to guide me through. I wanted to turn to Wei and beg him for more time, but I did not get the opportunity to before Chi Fu was ushering us away, back through the coolly quiet building to the area beneath the stage.

The crowd above me was already a rush of noise, and I started to tremble even as I stood on the metal plate. Chi Fu, Wei and my stylists disappeared, and I thought myself alone for a moment until movement caught my attention, and I turned to find Shang almost at my shoulder.

“You’ve done well,” he said quietly. I had never heard him doing much other than giving orders to people, and even now his expression was not soft, but he put his hand on my shoulder and rested it there. I wasn’t even sure if he knew who I really was. “You can go home soon.”

Fa Mulan would never go home, and I did not even know where Fa Ping was. But I could see that it had been difficult for him to find the words, and I reached up to squeeze his hand tightly.

“This is just... extra,” he said, and for a moment I was more struck by the pause until I caught the inflection he put on that last word. Extra. I remembered Kidag- no, Kida, her last whispered words from beyond the bloodied rubble. My heart started to pound in my chest, and I looked in his gaze for a sign that anything more had been meant by it, but there was nothing there.

Of course, there were cameras watching us.

His hand slid from under mine. “It’ll be done soon,” he said, and began to walk away. My mind stuttered through a scream, and I wanted to grab him back and ask what he meant, but my feet remained glued to the metal circle on which I stood as if there was a mine placed beneath this one, as well. A roar from the crowd above me echoed down, and I flinched away, although I knew that it was just that my prep team would be being introduced. I had never even bothered to listen out for their names: they remained red tattoos, gold skin and shiny face. I had enough of myself left to hope that they would not be punished for what I did, to hope that Wei would be pardoned, to hope that Shang was never told.

The crowd screamed for Wei, stomping and shrieking, and I supposed that there must have been flowers and jewels raining down on him from the crowds. Wei had been loved for so many years that he seemed to be part of the Games for most of us still young enough to run the risk of being Tributes; surely, surely, they would not harm him. The noise goes on for minutes, and lulls marginally before bursting upwards again for Chi Fu. What Chi Fu had actually done, I wasn’t too sure, but I supposed that I should thank him for the silver parachutes that had bought in what I so desperately needed. My fingers drifted upwards to my cheek again, as if checking that it was still there.

A breath of pause, and then Shang. The announcers had managed to perfect their timing years ago, knowing when to call people so that the crowd would be left bursting with anticipation and excitement all the way through. It made it seem to go faster, as well, which I supposed was a relief for those back home.

Baba had always hated watching this part the most. I hoped that, at least tonight, it would be a relief for him to see me on the stage, alive and whole. Well, in some ways, at least.

Then the longest pause yet came, allowing the crowd to dull down to complete silence, before I heard my name - my brother’s name, now my name; I whispered an apology to Ping for not knowing what he had done to him and thought that I might cry, but somehow could not - boomed out over the loudspeakers, and a circle of light opened above me as the floor began to move. Like entering the Arena all over again, I was offered up to them, and in the pit of my stomach I felt like nothing more than a sacrifice.

Chapter Nineteen

The lights blinded me, and the noise hit me like a solid wall, leaving me blinking and trying not to sway in my spot. From somewhere in the blur of lights and colours, I managed to catch sight of Snow White, wafting across to me in blue and yellow clothes that fluttered around her, silver glitter all around her. I gathered myself and reached out to take the hand that she offered me, bending at the waist to kiss it. The crowd screamed their approval, making it impossible to hear the words: “My lady,” that I added.

Snow White pretended to look faint, throwing a wink to the camera, and I moved as if to cradle her. It was easier, to play along like this. She allowed me to lead her over to her chair and settle her down into it, before taking my own seat in the victor’s chair. It was all gilt handles and plush surfaces, and felt far too much like a throne to be comfortable.

“So, my Prince, you have returned to me,” she said, folding her hands over her chest. The audience laughed appreciatively.

I tilted my head towards her fondly. “As if I could have stayed away.”

We joked for a couple of minutes, and part way through I rose to my feet and dragged my chair closer to hers, so that I could reach out and rest my hand on hers. The audience barely seemed to stop long enough for us to speak to each other.

Snow White finally managed to wrestle the conversation round to the matter of the three-hour show that will fill in everything else that happened in the last few days. Although I had been there for most of the fighting, there were still questions that lingered with me. The lights dimmed, the Seal lit up the screens, and I wrapped my hands around the arms of my chair as if to pin myself in place to watch it.

The three hours were always meant to tell a story, but I did not expect what this one would be. This time, the Gamemakers had decided to pit Fa Ping against Kidakagash Nedakh, in a three-hour fight for their survival.

We were treated as if we were the two forerunners from the beginning, when I knew that the other tributes had not reckoned me for much before I scored my ten. Kida had scored eleven. By then, though, it had been too late for Rourke or the others to react to me, and we were flung into the Arena in a flurry of action.

The brief, fierce Bloodbath is split between Kida’s fight and the kills going on around her. The first kill was mine, Amelia with her skull cracking beneath the blow; Kocoum came next, killed by the girl from Eight, Jasmine, who snatched the bag from his hands and fled before the cannon had even fired. Maleficent killed Aladdin, throwing a knife into his chest to stop him in his tracks before closing the distance and cutting open his throat in a crimson slash. The camera lingered on a close-up of the wound before he slumped to the ground.

The deaths were cut through with shots of Kida, fighting first Helga and then Rourke, standing in the centre of the Cornucopia with her hair flashing white against the darkness. Shan Yu was kept away from the fight just long enough to kill Megara from District Five, crushing her head with repeated blows, before he too joined them. Then it was as I remembered: the Career pack ringed around Kida, closing in on her, my stepping in to kill Eric and the pack scattering instead.

The camera panned out dramatically as we shook hands, standing on the pile of objects over which we now ruled.

Most of the rest, I already knew. Jasmine was killed the first day, by the Careers who took the pack she had managed to take from the Bloodbath. That was treated as an aside to the work that the rest of us did by the Cornucopia, though, clearing space and setting the mines, destroying the floor of the stadium. The explosion could be seen all the way across the Arena, the dust clouds rolling out, and the screen cut to the Careers as they looked round in shock.

As the night closed around us, the Careers killed Buzz as well, once again taking his supplies. I could almost feel that first evening taking over me again, as if I was living the night rather than watching it on the wide screen. My hands tightened on the arms of the chair until the carvings dug into my skin, reminding me of where I was.

When the water began to flow, the Careers had made their way to the edge of the Arena to investigate, and the others still alive peeked round or kept huddled in their hiding place. Woody and Jessie, camped out in one of the destroyed buildings, had managed to light a fire and erect a sort of screen to keep it hidden, and were sharing their food and gentle words. Tarzan had climbed high above the Arena on a twisted metal thing that might once have been a pylon, and was crouched watching over us like a bird. I hadn’t realised at the time that he could see our group as we scrambled desperately out of the culvert as the water deepened.

A shocked, delighted cry went through the audience when I saved Kida’s life. Again, I wondered why I had done it. They cut most of our argument, and made it look like we had parted ways amicably.

Most of the rest, I already knew. I killed Maleficent, wounded Vanessa, and retreated to the stadium. The next day dawned. Woody and Jessie were killed by Rourke and Helga, Rapunzel died in my arms, and the camera lingered on my expression as she did so. I hadn’t realised how pained I had looked. What I had not seen was Kida, leading her group around the Arena, keeping away from any of the other Tributes, dividing up their food, and doing their own catching with hooks that Kida made from bits of broken metal, tied up with her own hair. They were classic ‘defensive’ Tributes, in my father’s words, surviving rather than killing. But it was working.

Days three and four passed, and the show used the clips of it to build tension for the oncoming storm. I knew what was coming, and it was all that I could do not to shake as the rain began to fall. Tarzan died first, exposed to the rain, skin sloughing from his bones. It made me feel sicker to watch it all over again. Then Vanessa, as I had seen.

Then the fights returned, and with it the Gamemakers’ flare for drama. Suddenly the world shrunk away again, and I struggled to recognise myself as the figure on the screen, killing first Shan Yu and then Hercules, creeping away to tend to my own injuries. Then Pocahontas’s death came, and I hated Rourke all over again.

The final day. It was so close to the real time that it ached, but I had not realised until that moment that the Games had only lasted for six days. Some in the past had gone on for eight weeks or so, especially since the backlash to the flooded Arena that had made it less likely for the Gamemakers to step in and cut things short. The sun rose, the Feast was delivered, and then the deaths poured in one after another. Quasimodo. Rourke. I did not even know why the camera lingered on me, watching the flicker of blue fabric tied to a metal pole not all that far away from me, in the seconds before the final explosion collapsed the ground.

They did not have shots of the deaths of Esmerelda, Milo, Cinderella, or Kida. That actually surprised me. The closest thing that they had was me, looking through the rubble, and then slowly backing away as Kida’s voice stopped. My name has always been Kida... remember it. They had cut some of her words. But then they showed the final battle, Helga fighting even as she was torn apart, and were kind enough to cut the part where I had to crawl to the ladder before I could stand against it. The last shot was me, holding my sword high and facing one of the mutts, ferocity in my face and blood drenching me, before the image faded to black.

I thought that the crowd would explode with applause. My face reappeared on the screen, blank with shock in a way that might almost pass for awe, as the anthem played loud enough to shake my bones. I got to my feet as a spotlight beamed down on President Yen Sid, his long grey beard curled in front of his embroidered blue clothes, his eyes narrow and smile dangerous as he came towards me.

He placed the crown on my head, but it felt painfully heavy, tiny spikes driving into my skin. I tried to smile graciously, to thank him though the words were once again drowned on my lips.

In my role of the youxia, I made my way through the rest of the night, so hungry that my stomach did not seem to fill no matter how much food I shovelled away at the victory feast. I drank wine, which I had never had before, and it helped me to stay in character until midnight struck and I was finally allowed to flee, sinking to my knees in the shower whilst I was still clothed.

The Games were supposed to be over. I just wanted to go home, go to my father, but I had the feeling that something was being dangled just out of my reach and it angered and frightened me in either measure. The hot water of the shower made it hard to struggle out of my clothes, but it helped to clear the fog in my mind. Sadly, there was only blankness in its place, until I slept, when Kida’s piercing blue eyes stared at me through the darkness.

Ab extra salus, child of Fa Zhou.

The words ricocheted and echoed around my mind until it was like a storm in my head. Explosions and spears and screaming bloody skulls surrounded me, biting me, stripping the skin from my face, and still the voice of the She-Devil of District Four grew louder and louder in my head until I awoke with a scream.

“-salus!”

I didn’t even know the word. Shaking, I gasped for breath, waiting for the silhouettes in the dark room to become shapes. A bed, furniture, the real world rather than the Arena into which I had been flung. Sweat streamed down my forehead and stuck my pyjamas to my skin. Wrapping the top sheet around myself, I retreated to the head of the bed and nestled among the pillows, watching the windows get slowly lighter as the sun rose and the light creeping through changed from artificial to natural.

Throughout the second interview, all that I could think about was how much I wanted to go home. I did my best to stay light and talk well, but I found myself slipping back to quietness. Humble, Wei would probably want to call it. I certainly didn’t want to gloat.

“How does it feel to have won the 74th Hunger Games?” Snow White asked me, her smile always the same to keep the silver flakes on her face perfectly shaped.

“Such... an honour,” I managed. The audience sighed; women swooned; Snow White fluttered at me again. “I’m so glad to be coming back. It was over so much more quickly than I had thought... it’s amazing that so much can happen in such a short space of time.”

President Yensid had surely not looked at other victors like that. I remembered seeing him on the screen, smiling like a kindly old grandfather. They could not have shown the smile that he gave me to the whole country.

“And such a year! How did it feel, to know that Kidakagash Nedakh would be going into the Arena as well?”

I had seen that they had displayed us as enemies.

“I could never have expected to go up against Kida Nedakh,” I replied. Her final words, her name, clung to me. If all that I had ever done for her was pull her from the water and then remember her name, then perhaps that would be enough. “This whole Games has been a real experience. She was such a powerful figure.”

“And leaving that last mine until the end,” added Snow White. She reached over to rest her hand on my arm, but even as I kept smiling I felt my eyes go blank. “Such a brave move! Tell me, what inspired you to do that?”

“I... I don’t know.”

I didn’t do it. I didn’t know who, or what, triggered that final mine to go off. I had not even realised until that moment that it was a mine, although then it made perfect sense.

“Sometimes it’s hard to plan things, you know?” I added, trying to recover. victors came with a capital letter, with responsibilities as well as their riches. As soon as someone was reaped, they belonged to the Capitol for the rest of their lives, whether that was days or decades. “Things change so quickly. I’ve always been a fan of thinking on my feet. This was... no different.”

Her hand squeezed my wrist tightly. “And eleven kills as a result! The highest total in any Games other than the second Quarter Quell!” The astonishment must have been visible on my face as she gave a delighted gasp and a girlish laugh, one hand going to cover her mouth delicately. “You didn’t know? Well, it must have gone so quickly. But yes, eleven kills, including the ones from the explosion! That makes you a new record-holder!”

The boy on the screen looked pleased, and thanked Snow White for letting him know, and I felt more like I was watching him than like I was actually talking myself. They talked for a while longer about the deaths that he had caused as if it was no more important than the weather, and then Snow White signed off - though not before I had reached over gallantly to kiss her hand once again.

“Oh, you are such a darling!” she declared after the cameras were turned off, cupping my cheeks in her hands. Her head barely came above my shoulders. “I can hardly wait to do the interviews with you next year.”

She kissed me on the cheek in a whirl of flowery scent, then vanished away, chattering to the cameramen. A hand came to rest in the small of my back, and I whipped round, ready to punch the person who put it there, until I realised that it was Shang. The dark circles under his eyes, barely visible beneath the makeup, could have been my imagination. I hoped that they were, because I wasn’t sure why they would be there. “Come on,” he said softly. “You can go home now.”

The train journey back to District One wouldn’t be long; if I was lucky, I would be there before midnight, and could spend the night with my family. Tomorrow, I would be expected to move into the new house that they would have built in the Victors’ Village - our original twelve houses had filled up long ago - but perhaps, just for tonight, I would sleep in my own bed again.

I tried not to look at the flashing cameras and waving Capitol fans that I had accumulated as I was settled into a tint-windowed car and driven back to the station. Chi Fu sat and fussed opposite me, and I was surprised again at how comforting a presence Shang was, sitting beside me. I almost wanted to cling to him, but fiercely pushed the thought aside. At the station, I finally got the chance to say goodbye, although the prep team were nervous about being seen anywhere near me still, and I had to be content with waving.

When it came to Wei, he smiled, and his eyes were the oldest that I had ever seen them. How old was he, really? Sixty, seventy? My father had been the last Tribute that he had not been the stylist for. Impulsively, I reached out and hugged him, and after a moment’s pause I felt his arms fold around me in return.

“Stay safe, my victor,” he murmured in my ear. “Stay strong.”

A lump rose in my throat, but the last few days it had been as if I was not even able to cry any more. I released him, stepped back to wave one last time at the crowds, then entered the train and fled to my room to hide.

After a few hours, there was a knock at my door, but all that I did was glare at it. There was no lock, and it surprised me when nobody entered. Finally, unfolding myself from the ball I had curled into, I crossed to the door and pulled it open, a glower already on my face. There was nobody outside, though, just a tray left on the floor, almost overflowing with food and two large bottles of fruit juice.

My stomach still felt hollow, as if nothing could fill it, but I pulled the tray into the room and sat with my back against the door to eat it. We ate well in District One, I knew, compared to some of the other districts: fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, occasional candies and sugared treats. But our food was nowhere near as elaborate as Capitol food, did not have the bright colours and tongue-twisting flavours that were strange and pleasurable at the same time, and I had genuinely enjoyed some of the things that I had eaten before the Games had started. Now I just ate, and didn’t think about what was passing my lips.

The train would be taking the direct route back, I knew, and I watched the sky darken outside with a twist of fear and hope in my gut. The waning moon flickered into view, behind trees passing so quickly that they were a blur, and I wrapped my arms around my knees because wrapping them across my chest only reminded me how wrong it felt.

Finally, the train started to slow. This time, when there was a knock at the door, I stood up and opened it. It was Shang, dressed down and with the shadows under his eyes clearly visible now. “We’ll be at the station soon,” he said.

“One minute,” I replied, and crossed to the washbasin to splash cold water over my face. It didn’t do much to help, but it felt like a good gesture anyway. Steeling myself, I followed Shang through the train, feeling it slow down, grateful that there should not be any cheering crowds awaiting me here. Some cameras, perhaps, to see me reunited with my family and capture the moment on camera for interviews later in the year, but nothing like the chaos that there had been in the Capitol.

Finally, the train stopped, and my heart seemed to fill my throat. I reached up to touch the dragon pendant hanging round my neck, struggling not to wrap my hand around it and cling to it like a safety rope. Chi Fu stepped aside and ushered me up to the door first.

I was home.

Chapter Twenty

The train doors opened far too slowly, my body was shaking, but it didn’t matter. In a matter of heartbeats I had run the length of the platform and flung my arms around my father, feeling his arms wrap tightly around me in return. I squeezed my eyes shut, held on, and tried to ride out the waves that threatened to capsize me.

“My child,” he whispered in my ear. I thought that I might cry, but still tears would not come. “You came back to me. You came back.”

“I’m here, Baba.” My voice thickened; it had seemed lower these past few days, but I had put that down to a lack of use. His hold on me grew looser, and though I did not want to let go, I allowed him to step away.

Somehow, I knew that my relief would only last as long as I kept looking at him. Even if the lines on his forehead seemed a little deeper, even if his beard seemed a little greyer, it was surely because I had been around the strange doll-like features of the Capitol for too long. I had always said that he and I could take on the world.

Then he stepped aside, and my delusion crashed down.

My grandmother was not here. My mother looked at me with vacant eyes and a plastic smile. And a girl wearing my clothes stood beside her, looking almost like me but not quite: prettier, more feminine, larger-eyed and softer-lipped. She looked like I might have done, if I stopped training and started using makeup, if somebody else used my body for a while.

The girl ran over, eyes bright and teary, and threw her arms around my shoulders to hold me close. She smelt wrong, but of my home as well. I put my hands on her back to steady us, hoping that my look of horror was lost in her hair.

“Mulan?” I couldn’t help it being a question.

She laughed. “Of course, Ping. Look, they even made me wear a dress to welcome you back.”

Her voice sounded almost like mine, but the words were wrong. Releasing me, she stepped back, but grabbed hold of my hand and held tightly to it. I looked down at our fingers clasped together, and was shocked back in time.

I had held Ping’s hand like this when we had walked to the Reaping.

The girl who had answered to my name led me by the hand out of the station, speaking just once to tell me how proud she was, and to squeeze my hand. The cameramen seemed to lose interest after the first reunion, and we were allowed to leave quietly to the road back to the Victors’ Village.

It was fall, though I had honestly forgotten that. The leaves were turning, starting to be shed, and turning to reddish-brown mush at the roots of the trees. Soon the colours of the furs that some of the families collected would be starting to change, as well. I allowed the girl to lead me by the hand, though I kept looking over my shoulder to my parents. My father had taken my mother’s arm, seeming to lead her even though he still had his cane in his other hand. I tried, and failed, to catch his eye.

The new house - it was difficult to think of it as mine - had been built close to my father’s. It was the same shining white as the others, though the plants and trees outside looked fresher, the edges of the lawn sharper. I refused to be led in that direction, and slipped my hand out of the girl’s. She gave me a look that was mostly hurt, and partly fear. It sent shivers down my spine.

It was only when I reached our front door that I realised that I no longer had the keys for it. I tucked my hands under my armpits, hunching my shoulders and turning my face away from the outside world, whilst I waited for my parents to catch up. Even with his scars, my father had walked quickly before. It seemed to take a long time for him to catch up this time.

My mother slipped inside without saying a word, and immediately went upstairs. The girl in my clothes, with one glance my way that did not quite disguise the fear in her eyes, fled as well. My father remained standing behind me, close enough that I could feel his presence.

“What happened?” I said, voice growing husky.

He gently closed the door again. “Come to the arbour.”

It would have been quicker to walk through the house to the rear garden and the shrine, but everything felt wrong and it was easier to be outside. At least, I could hope, the air itself had not changed. I walked at my father’s side round the side of the house, passing windows with drawn curtains, and we entered the garden through the side gate.

Our garden was tranquil, quiet. Master He came up three times a week to tend to the flowers, clear stray leaves from the lawns and the stream, and clean the outside of our family shrine that nestled beneath the trees. Outside the shrine, we had to call it an arbour, in case a camera or microphone from the Capitol was anywhere nearby. My father cleaned the inside himself, to be as sure as he could be that there were no such devices there.

We sat on the steps and looked out over the sweep of lawn, the peach trees with a few leaves still remaining, the rippling artificial stream. When the weather had been good, I had persuaded Ping to train out here, just sparring and running, keeping me company.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was only the second thing that I had said to him since the cameras turned off. It wasn’t enough. My lips started to tremble, and I felt almost as if I might cry, but again there was nothing but burning dryness in my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Baba.”

One of his hands closed fiercely over mine, and when I looked round he was staring at me, intensely, eyes wet. “Never apologise to me for being brave, my child. You have done one of the courageous things that I have ever seen, and you are still here...”

His voice cracked, and his hand shifted on mine as if confirming that it was real, that I was not some figment of his imagination. I didn’t even know what to do, but wrapped my other hand around his as well, as if just holding on would be enough.

“You are still here,” he repeated, nodding as if composing himself. He blinked a few times. “You... they cannot take away. They cannot break. After all that they have taught you, you still know to do the right thing, even if it is the hard thing.”

Had it been right? All that I had been thinking of was keeping Ping alive, of keeping him safe. The same thing that I had done when we were children, and the older Careers would try and pick on us but I would fight them off; the same thing that I had done in school, when I would take the blame for fights that he had got drawn into. Had it ever been right, that I had lived for both of us?

I could barely think those thoughts, let alone speak them. “Is Grandmother well?” I said, hesitantly. My thumb stroked gently over the back of my father’s wrist, out of time with my words.

He swallowed. “She is in the hospital. I hope that she will be well again soon. There seems to be some sort of ‘influenza’ going around at the moment, affecting mostly... those more senior in years.”

It was as if somebody else was standing at my shoulder, taking some message from the words which I could not comprehend. “Please, let me know-”

“She will be well again soon,” repeated my father, his whole body stiffening for a moment, his voice turning to the harsh command which I had not heard in years. My mother had been disappointed with me far more often than my father had, and I had rarely clashed with him. “And your mother will stop having to take medication for her head pains, and I...”

His gaze turned away from me, into the middle distance over my shoulder, and I looked over his face again. It was not my imagination; he did look older, more weary, than the last time that I had seen him. Less than two weeks. I had seen old pictures of him - hidden away in albums that I was probably not supposed to find - where he had worn the same haunted look. From the dates on them, they had been in the months after he had won in his Games.

“And I will still have you,” he finally finished, looking back to me again. His hand slipped out from between mine and rose to touch my cheek gently. “Things will be better soon, I promise. Finally, we will have survivors of the Hunger Games.”

Nobody would tell me any more. Days passed, and I felt as if I was cut out of my own world, dropped in to some sort of parallel universe where different people had the same names. On my first day, I slept until well past noon, and when I crawled out of bed spent a long time sitting under the shower. Just having clean water and fresh clothes was strange now, and it wasn’t until a stabbing pain in my stomach reminded me that I should eat that I made myself go downstairs.

Nobody else was around. The girl was nowhere to be seen, the door to my parents’ room was closed, and though I could hear my father moving around in his study I could not bring myself to disturb him. I returned to my room, sat on the bed and watched a man far too young to be Master He move around the garden, raking up leaves as he went. Master He was eighty-four years old, a decade older than even my Grandmother, with about three teeth and a face full of wrinkles, but he had still been healthy and hale enough to keep several of the gardens in the Victors’ Village. Perhaps he, too, had this ‘influenza’.

I let myself fall asleep to escape the fear. I had hoped that the Games would have ended by now.

On the second day, I was moved into ‘my’ house. Normally, victors shared with their families, but as my father already had a house there was no call to. It was too large, too empty, and I wandered from room to room looking at furniture and decorations and wondering how it managed to reek of the Capitol without being a part of it. There was something artificially shining, disturbingly attractive, about everything. Some people came from the town to help move my things, and it was not until they were doing so that I realised some of my clothes, my books, my childhood belongings were missing. My underwear had been replaced with boy’s, the bras that my mother had optimistically bought me were gone, and the unofficial books about the Games which were passed among Careers had vanished. The last, I hoped, would at least go to more Tributes, to give them more of a chance in the next few years.

Hopefully Shang would want to mentor the male tributes for a few years longer. Even as the most successful District of recent years, more likely than not I would be watching children go to their death, no matter how hard I fought to find sponsors to save them. Children. Next year, it was likely that a Career would volunteer again. They would be a year older than me. But I certainly did not feel like a child.

I lost the next three days. They must have happened: I must have slept and eaten and dressed and done something other than lie on my bed and watch the hands on my clock tick round. I just could not remember what they were. I must have had thoughts that were not about the deaths that had happened or that would take place in years to come, but I could not remember them. And I must have had dreams that did not fill in the details of those last minutes in the Arena with shot of Kida’s broken, mangled body, but perhaps they were just lost beneath my screams.

In the middle of the sixth day, it felt as if I woke up. Standing on the doorstep, a thick sandwich in one hand, with the door open and the girl in my best dress standing in front of me, I woke up to find fury blasting through my veins, and everything snapping into crystal clarity.

I grabbed the girl by the collar, dragged her inside and slammed the door behind us. Before she could even scream, I had her against the wall, one hand over her throat, the other pinning her arm with the wrist twisted round on itself so that her skin turned white. Her eyes went so wide that I could see white all the way around her iris, her breathing fast and shallow. If anyone had attacked me, even when I was young, I would have fought them for it. Even Ping would have struggled. This girl was almost too scared to breathe.

“Who are you.”

The words came out flat, more an accusation then a question. When I dug the blade of my hand into the bottom of her chin, she gave a whimper. “My name is Fa Mulan.”

“I am Fa Mulan,” I snarled. For years I might have answered to Ping’s name, and he to mine, but we knew that we were doing it. It was our game, our secret, blurring our identities a little but remaining two separate people knowing who we were. “Who are you?”

I was pinning her body to the wall with my own, one leg pressing over hers so that she could not move. With anyone my physical equal, I would not have been able to do it.

“My name is Fa Mulan,” she repeated. She tried to squirm in my grasp, but I only pressed the inside of her wrist tighter against the wall until she cried out. “My name is Fa Mulan!”

“That is not your name,” I said, half-shouted, each word a punch that made her cringe against the wall. Tears filled her eyes. Now that I was this close, I could see a faint line beneath her ear, not quite a scar but a place where a scar might have been, two pieces of flesh meeting where they were not supposed to. “That name is mine and you will not take it from me. What. Is. Your. Name?”

“If it is not Mulan, then I do not know!” she cried. Her words rocked me back on my heels slightly, and I loosened the twist of her arm, let my hand slide down her throat. Her lips trembled, and tears started to bead in her eyes as she looked at me, so close that we could barely focus on each other. “They told me that my name was Mulan, and it is all I know... please, please,” the tears started to fall, her eyes and her nose to redden. Black - make-up - tinged her tears. “I don’t know any other name.”

Time ticked by as I took four slow breaths, holding each one before letting it out again. The girl’s nose began to get runny, and she hiccoughed back a sob, but she held still in my grip. “What happened?”

“I woke up. They... doctors... told me that I was Fa Mulan. They told me all about my old life. How I was the son of Fa Zhou, victor of the second Quarter Quell on behalf of District One. Where I went to school, where I went afterwards each day for training, where my house was. How my brother Ping had been Reaped for the Games, I thought you were my brother, I thought you were Ping, Idon’tunderstand-”

She began sobbing in earnest then, but I let her go, stepping back a pace. The girl seemed to crumple in on herself, burying her face in her hands and squeezing her elbows together as if she might hide behind her arms, shoulders hunching. I listened to her sob, almost rhythmically, trying to suppress the fierce shaking that was starting in my chest, working its way out across my body. I had thought that this girl was an actress, or a Capitol spy. Now I did not know what she was.

Slowly, the girl slid down to the floor, folding at the knees and curling into the foetal position. I took another step back, felt myself sway, and caught at the wall for support. It hit me like a wave: my mother’s morphling-glazed eyes, my father locked away in his study, my grandmother who had not been in hospital even to give birth, now there for some sickness that seemed limited to those over sixty years of age. This girl, confused, crying on my floor, still asking between sobs whether I was her brother or not.

Snow White had credited me with eleven victims. Here, I was looking at more.

My mother had never wanted us to train for the Games. I remembered arguments, when I was younger, although I did not understand them for many years more. Father had seen it as a necessary evil - the children of victors were reaped more often than chance would allow, and his voice had broken as he said that he wanted us alive. Mother had replied that if we trained, we would be Careers, and we would have no choice but to go in - and that the Gamemakers would have loved to put us in the same year.

When I was twelve years old, I promised myself that if Ping and I were put in the same Arena, I would protect him and kill everyone else, before dying myself. I would fight to make him the victor.

Perhaps I should have volunteered instead of Maleficent, and followed my original plan. Perhaps Ping would be here now, and I would be honoured with a plaque in the cemetery where children who take part in the Games are immortalised, and things would be as they were meant to be.

But perhaps I was too determined a survivor.

I scooped up the girl, putting my hands beneath her arms and pulling her back to her feet. Still, she did not fight me, even as I led her through the hallway and into the kitchen, putting her on to a chair and placing a glass of water in front of her. My movements were mechanical again, as automatic as they had been in the last three days, but this time I was watching myself and waiting for my moves, knowing what I planned. She ignored the water, but accepted the tissues that I handed her, clutching them to her eyes and nose in a damp mess. I supposed that it was a start.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “If your name is Mulan, then I will call you Mulan. But I need... I need you to tell me what has happened here, while I have been gone.”

Chapter Twenty-One

She spoke to me like a child, head bowed, sniffling her way through her sentences. And it made me feel old. There was nothing in her memory before waking up in a hospital bed, being told that her name was Fa Mulan, being given details of my life and being told that they were hers. It had all felt so right, she said, so real. She remembered sitting with my father and watching the Games, remembered training, remembers how my mother had tutted and disapproved of getting a dog, let alone calling it Little Brother, and Grandmother had winked at me behind my mother’s back.

I didn’t know how the Capitol had done it. I didn’t even pretend to understand half of the things that they were capable of there, I could guess why, though: to frighten me, to frighten my parents, and to make it easier to carry out their charade.

So she had my memories. But it hadn’t made her like me, hadn’t managed to make her into the same person. She was too frightened, for a start, and when I had attacked her she had allowed herself to be overcome. She had never trained.

She did, however, tell me what my father could - or would - not. That my mother had started taking small doses of morphling to help her sleep, and curb the terrible headaches that had started seemingly from the moment I was Reaped, but that they had rapidly consumed her instead. That a team of doctors had been sent round to give everyone inoculations against the ‘influenza’, only for my grandmother - and most of the oldest people in the town or the Village - to fall ill within forty-eight hours. That there had been visits in the middle of the night, men in suits or uniforms wanting to talk to my father.

“Did you hear what they said?” I pressed, leaning towards her. She shied away from my hand as it slid across the table, shaking her head.

“I don’t know. Something about Atlantis, about what it was. Unrest in District Four. Something about extras. I didn’t understand.”

My throat suddenly went dry. Kida’s last words, sighed to me from beneath a pile of rubble. Shang, just before I went on stage. My father, talking about survivors as he had not done in all of his life. Atlantis.

Smaller things, things that had seemed stupid at the time, began to join them in my head. Chi Fu had complained, at the victory banquet, about how there was no fish to be had, until he had seemed to catch himself and fall silent. Kida had fought all of her life to take part in the Games when she had every right to hate them. In the weeks before the Games, there had been a major recruitment drive for Peacekeepers, something that only occasionally happened outside District Two.

“Rebellion...” I said. It felt strange on my lips, foreign and dangerous and forbidden, because this time it did not mean the Dark Days. This time, it meant all of the fragments of hate that were scattered across Panem were starting to form into a whole.

A knock sounded at my door.

I remembered, too late, the ever-present microphones.

If I did not answer the door, whoever was there would enter anyway, and then I would not be on the doorstep with some chance of people in the other houses seeing me. Muttering something at the girl that might was meant to tell her to stay still, hoping that she would understand, I got to my feet and made my way to the front door. My hand twitched for a weapon as I neared it, but there was nothing, not even a vase that was not made of some highly-breakable material.

No choice. I put on my best greeting smile and opened the door. I was surprised - but rather relieved - to find Chi Fu on the doorstep, fidgeting and nervous, fussing with some printed transcript that he held in his hands. Two Peacekeepers stood behind him, stun batons at their hips but otherwise not visibly armed.

He looked at me, clearly waiting for an invitation inside. I stood squarely in the middle of the doorway and folded my arms over my chest, tilting my chin up. With an irritated look, Chi Fu snapped the transcript flat and looked over it once again.

“Due to the remarkable nature of your success in the 74th Hunger Games,” he read, somehow injecting derision into the words, “it has been requested that you give extra interviews this year, with your father. You are to return to the Capitol, and the interviews will be practiced and broadcast tomorrow.” Finally, he looked up to meet my eyes. “You have two hours.”

I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. One of the Peacekeepers peeled off from behind him to the end of the driveway, where a sleek black car sat waiting. I hadn’t even looked that far. The door opened and Wei folded out, regal in black and royal blue, sweeping towards me while the rest of the prep team scurried to keep up with him.

All that I wanted to do was fold against the door and weep. Or possibly punch a wall until my knuckles bled.

But, like the victor I was, like the possession of the Capitol that I was, I stepped aside to let back in the people who were to prepare me for whatever the Capitol had planned.

Extra interviews were strange, but any other year I would have held on to the thought that stranger things had happened. When my father was invited to board the train with me, I felt the first rush of fear, but we both knew that nothing was ever an invitation when it came from the Capitol. Wei greeted my father cordially, like an old friend, and the prep team were given half an hour with him as well. He re-emerged in a darker version of my grey tunic, the dragon design made more discreet in colour his shoulder.

I was handed a speech to do before the camera, allowing the occasional pause for my father to interject and say how proud he was of his son. The reporter and the camera crews looked teary-eyed and proud at how choked-up he sounded.

I wondered where his son was. Whether I had caused my brother’s death anyway, in that stupid instinctive move made to save it.

We were hustled off to the station, served a meal that barely managed to interest me, and then escorted to our rooms for the night. I heard the door lock behind me, and spun on the spot, but no amount of rattling or cursing or requesting for it to be opened gained any response. Perhaps there was not even anyone outside.

I paced the room for what seemed like hours, until tiredness got the better of me and I slumped down, head going into my hands, on the edge of the bed. I had never gone looking for any of this. Had barely been looking for anything, because looking was a word that suggested far more thought about things than I ever gave them.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, I must have fallen asleep, but I woke up curled on the floor to a hammering on the door. The blinds on my windows were drawn, but bright light crept around them, and I groaned as I unfolded myself from the floor.

“I’m up,” I croaked, staggering to my feet. It was only then that I heard the click of the door unlocking, and Chi Fu stepped in to hand me a pile of clothes. He wrinkled his nose at my state - crumpled clothes, messy hair, the side of my face marked with the creases of my shirt - but said nothing. I caught a glimpse of a Peacekeeper outside the door as he left again, and I took it as read that I was supposed to wear the clothes that I had been given.

They were identical to the previous day’s, although the fabric felt slightly different. Lighter, slicker, something that I couldn’t really put my finger on. I washed my face, brushed my hair and changed, hoping that there would not be crowds on the platform that I would be expected to wave at again. There were shadows under my eyes, and before I could even ask questions - even about breakfast - I was ushered down the train and away.

The platform was empty. No cameras, no crowds. It must have been deliberately closed off. A hand came down, hard, on my shoulder, and I spun to slap it away. The Peacemaker whose arm I struck scowled at me, but before he could say anything my father appeared between us.

“It’s okay. Stand down.”

My father spoke quietly, but apparently even here the words were enough. The Peacekeeper gave an inclination of his head and stepped back, and my father turned to me with a tired smile.

“Thank you,” I said. His hand brushed against my cheek gently in response, then Chi Fu approached, still flustered and glancing around all the time.

“Come along, then. A car is waiting outside.”

He looked different than he had before I went in to the Arena, I realised distantly: more drawn, his clothes hanging differently on his frame. Looser. Every part of the world had seemed different when I exited the Arena than it had when I had gone in, but now I was wondering whether parts of it really were different.

I wished for a hand to take hold of as I left, even if it would have been under the guise of giving comfort rather than looking for it. Our footsteps echoed down the corridor, the harsh clack of the Peacekeepers’ boots, the tapping of my father’s cane. The cars waiting, right outside the door, were plain black with tinted windows, no banners or balloons like there had been on the cars sent to carry the Tributes around just days ago. Trying to think back to it felt like trying to remember a past life.

“Hey!” I protested as my father was led to one car and I to another, steered apart by Peacekeepers that slipped between us. “No, let me-”

A gun appeared in front of me, and my mouth went dry. It took me a moment longer to look beyond the gun itself to the Peacekeeper holding it, a stern woman with lines around her steely eyes and lips set into a grim line. “Get into your car,” she said, in clipped District Two tones. When she gestured towards it with her weapon, I saw the stripes on her shoulder that meant she was an officer, and backed off a step or two.

Surely, they would not shoot a victor. Well, not to kill, at least. But it was amazing what could be healed, what could be fixed, and I did not want to find out whether a bullet in the leg hurt more or less than the injuries I had experienced in the Arena. The very thoughts troubled me, adding to the spreading realisation that I was, if anything, less safe than I had ever been before.

I sat almost huddled in the car, back to a corner, back straight and hands balled into fists in my lap. Two Peacekeepers were in the back of the car with me, while the officer sat up front with the driver. I had assumed that we would take the short route to the Training Centre - there was a longer one, used for parades, but the streets were eerily quiet and clearly there were no celebrations planned for us today, Silence hung heavy on the air, seemed to stick to my skin, and despite the pleasant warmth the Capitol always seemed to enjoy, I shivered.

“Get out,” barked the officer, as soon as the car stopped. I undid my seatbelt as the door opened, but apparently took too long exiting as a hand was placed on my back and I was shoved forwards.

The tarmac bit into my hands as I stumbled, my reactions dulled with fear. There was a time that I never would have allowed my feet to be taken from under me. I was grabbed by the shoulder and hauled upright, almost picked up off the ground, but I simply shook off the Peacekeeper responsible and looked around. There was no other car in sight.

“My father. Where is he?”

The officer walked right up to me, getting uncomfortably close so that it seemed she was almost ready to place her gun against my chest. Her eyes bored into mine, pupils small and bottomless.

“He will be at the interview later. You have practice to complete.”

“I want my father here,” I insisted. It was not about me, or my fear. They could do what they wanted to me in the Capitol, as long as they did not hurt my father. To that end, I wanted him in my sight as much as possible, so that I could know what they were doing.

She shook her head, once, whip-sharp. “You will see him again later. Now get moving.”

The gun in her hands twitched, as the car door closed and it smoothed away again. We were standing in some sort of underground garage, all cool concrete and bright yellow-white lights. No people around me but the Peacekeepers, nowhere to go but through the door at my back. Wishing that I could fight back against my enemies, I held my ground as long as I dared, then turned with my head held high to walk as they directed me.