innocence is gone // hyacinth reaction

HYACINTH MORTUUS

Every morning she defied her twin sister. The words of Celia Mortuus (“Don’t wake up.”) echoed between her ears, submerging the sounds of the morning birds outside her window. Her own thoughts were white noise, and it wasn’t easy to sort the hatred, the denial, and the jumble of everything else her exhausted mind could conjure. Part of her wanted to apologize for refusing to do the one thing her sister had asked of her, painting her a picture of failure when she was the one slaving for their family’s safety. The rest of her – the logical piece of her frozen soul, still functioning after ten lashes against tender skin – regretted the day she swore loyalty to a monster of a twin, and growled at the thought of dying for her satisfaction.

Not today, sweet sister.

And as she shuffled through her days with anchors attached her bones, she knew better than to make the same mistakes she had before. She would free herself from the prison of ignorance, because the world could always find a loophole in every aspect of her life. She risked so much of her sanity to protect her family’s foundation because she had to avoid the crash and burn. Her family could not be shipped to the Detention Center. They could not be reduced to petty, easily-captured criminals who lost their tongues to a Capitol blade. That was why she made her rounds with wary eyes, never trusting the gentlest of doomed patients. That was why she hid herself within a trench coat in the dead of night, and warmed the beds of as many allies as possible. She could always find their pristine white uniforms hanging in their closets.

The day Celia was Reaped, Hyacinth didn’t think her life could get any worse. The moment Celia demanded her own sister’s demise before strutting toward a death sentence of her own, she was so certain that this was the bottom of the barrel. There was no place darker than this.

They proved her wrong a week later. Peacekeepers dragged her out of her own bedroom with iron grips that left lavender imprints on her arms. They compromised the safety of her only sanctuary. She was ruined once again with violence, and for a fearful moment she thought it was the end, that all of her hard work had been for naught because someone had betrayed her and left her to die. She half expected them to cuff her and yank her toward the nearest train. Instead, her bruised knees met the concrete of the Square, and she was declared a victim of collateral damage. "Ten lashes each,” The Peacekeeper said, and perhaps that was a light sentence for the sins their family had committed. Murder, theft, prostitution, hands stained black by the market they slaved for.

She heard a whisper, then, snarling into Olive’s innocent ears. ”Courtesy of Little Miss Celia.”

What evils had her twin sister committed to condemn them to this? Exposed in front of the District like true criminals (which they were, yet there was not an inch of Olive’s flesh that was spoiled or rotten – it was just her). It didn’t make sense. Celia liked Olive, or had she been pretending to love him all these years while she ignored and scolded Hyacinth for the hilarity of it? For crimes against the Capitol Leave it to her sister to piss off the only thing left that could keep her alive. Her ego alone couldn’t surpass their power, and clearly she wasn’t putting herself in a defensive position.

You’re dead.

The crack of the whip against Olive’s skin was startlingly loud, resonating through her bones like an electric shock. He denied Celia’s involvement (“She wouldn’t want this!”) and all she could think was that it didn’t matter. Celia never considered the consequences of her actions. One of these days, she was bound to curse herself into a grave and drag her loved ones with her. I never wanted to be collateral damage.

The worst part was, she knew Celia wouldn’t care.

She remained stone-faced through every loud crack. It was thunderous, frightening, and she wished it would silence her brother sooner. He didn’t deserve to suffer this way. One lash was another fragment of his sanity wasted. They were stealing his happiness with no justification. It wasn’t fair to use him as leverage against Celia, wherever she was. Would she even get a chance to witness the consequences of her actions? Olive had finally passed out from the pain, resembling a battered doll. The Peacekeeper’s whip was dripping red.

He was going to punish her with her own brother’s blood.

She could not measure the pain on a logical scale. It surpassed everything in her memory, perhaps tenfold that of burning heat radiating from an incinerator. It was a coal mine explosion across every nerve under her skin, and the first lash – of course – was on her back, ripping through her shirt like it was paper. She grunted and groaned through the first minute of her torture because she knew pain and she could anticipate it. However, she was no match for the fury of hell. She screamed in its midst until her vocals were sore and her mind swayed into a blackout. Thankfully, pain was strong enough to claim her before the Peacekeepers did.

She awoke to white walls instead of white uniforms later that day, her skin mummified with various bandages. She would be sore and out of work for weeks as the tissue scabbed over. A prayer for no scars was whispered from her lips each night after. Celia could not ruin her like this.

It was almost fortunate that the entire District had a chance to witness the violent spectacle. It meant her customers – the Peacekeepers – knew she was in no condition to warm their beds. She was too battered and weak to suit their fantasies. Red, gory ribbons decorated pale skin and burned each time she rested in her own bed. Patients were too uncomfortable around her, so she shut herself in and reluctantly focused on the Games.

Celia was popular, she could sense it. Dissecting a child of Eleven and wearing her bones as armor was a memorable spectacle (when did you become so ruthless, sister?). She wondered how long this desire to maim had laid dormant in her sister’s black heart. Her life wasn’t about patients and corpses anymore – these were innocent children whose bodies would not summon a profit. It was just sick, twisted fun. Her sister would be painted as a monster, and perhaps they were right. It had been sitting on the edge of her subconscious since they were children, but remained unacknowledged until denial could no longer shelter her from the truth.

One night she had asked a customer how he contained his emotions, since most of his colleagues were prone to lash out in unlawful anger. He said he had a journal. Each page was filled to the brink with the same word scribbled repetitively and chaotically, describing the emotion he struggled with the most. He said the more he wrote it, the more he could acknowledge it and control it.

There was a journal in her bedroom now, pages coated in the word denial.

Celia survived trial after trial. Apparently, careers were no match for Twelve anymore. She burned one’s body and sliced down another, befriending two in the process. Kite was a blind meat shield that would win everybody’s love before his demise, and Scout was someone she had treated with more respect than her own twin sister. Yet in the end, she still shoved a knife through Scout’s chest. She still proved herself above humanity. She kicked severed heads and looted bodies of their bones, but Hyacinth had learned a long time ago that the Mortuus family would never treat corpses as people.

When people died, they ceased to be human.

Today she discovered that all of the tributes had been stripped of their humanity. They awoke stranded in cages, and Caesar was more than happy to predict that the doors would remain locked until one tribute killed another. The Gamemakers had officially reduced them to animals. Her twin was up against Ezero, a tribute she had admittedly paid little attention to. Curled against her couch with bandages still wrapped around her welts, she watched him claim pieces of her that she long since owed. Then he gashed the side of her face, a deformity to make her resemble the monster she had become.

When she fell, Hyacinth felt as hollow as the cannon that announced her death.