Look What You Made Me Do :: [Mayor Calliope Bloom, Oneshots]

Before it seeps into my ears
And fills me up from the inside

"I mean, y'know, I've just got more important things to worry about than my house keys," she comments in the kind of nothing-conversation that passes between strangers trying to kill awkward spans of time. There's a whirrrr as the machine cuts small grooves in the metal, replicating the key Calliope handed over, so that she doesn't have to worry about what happens if she loses it. The lie about it being her house key almost doesn't feel like a lie at all, considering how she sleeps in the justice building more often than her bed. "Now I've just gotta find a safe place to keep this back-up." Wouldn't want to get locked out.

risk it, risk it
risk it til the last —

Calliope Bloom is part of the problem.

Time after time she lies to herself and says: If she didn't cook the meth, someone else would. Then they would cut it. They would cut it with things that make it more dangerous, more deadly than anything she makes. Those drugs would fester in body after fallen body, foaming from the mouth with eyes rolled blankly into the backs of heads that would never have hope of being held high again. She tells herself this as if she doesn't know exactly what the drugs she makes are made of. She tells herself this as if she doesn't know that scientifically pure poison is still fucking poison.

Calliope's poison is exquisite. The maddening luxury of it would ravage the streets of District Six and that's why she packages it up, neat and tidy, and sends every bit of it far, far away from the streets of her home to places she pretends don't really exist.

District Four is a fairy tale.

District Nine is a campfire ghost story.

District Two is a rumor.

District One a fanciful myth.

Eight is childish make-believe.

Twelve a boldfaced lie.

Three is hearsay.

Eleven is wild speculation.

Ten is fiction riddled with too many plot-holes to take seriously.

Five is an urban legend.

And Seven? District Seven is certainly a tall tale if she ever heard one.

She tapes the package shut tightly enough to cause a freshly sharpened box cutter to struggle and then she tapes it some more. It has a long, long way to travel.

can't say it's gonna get me far
do no good to say what you are

The empty room is haunted, or —

Perhaps it's that the empty room is waiting to be haunted. Hopefully... hopefully? She doesn't know. Oh, Calliope picks anxiously at a button on her blouse, just below the one fastened at the collar. She stares at the face of her contemptuous, comatose brother and wonders if there's a ghost of his soul left in his body or if he's been vacant all these years. She wonders this not for the first time, not for the hundredth time, not for the thousandth time. His breathing might simply be a looping echo of his death rattle. Sometimes she hopes so. Sometimes she doesn't. Even with more than a decade to contemplate her emotions toward the last piece of family she has left, she doesn't know what she hopes for.

If she keeps that empty room locked, if she doesn't step inside, then she doesn't have to acknowledge that it's there. She doesn't have to think about why she set it aside or why it's empty, always empty. Well... probably. Maybe the room is haunted. She'd have to go inside to know.

i'd forgot how to daydream
so consumed with the wrong things

Calliope's skin looks sallow in the fluorescent lights of the thrift store.

Day after day, month after month, year after year her secretary has walked into the office and given her a little look up and down. They know each other well by now, as well as the Bloom woman knows anyone... anyone still living, at least. Each day clothing is quickly assessed to sort out exactly how many days Calliope has been wearing the same thing and how long that indicates it has been since she has slept or showered. Food stains are counted to keep tabs on her meals and whether or not she has been too fixated on work to remember to eat like she ought to. Rarely is a word said unless it's to offer to fetch a few pieces of fruit with the morning's coffee or the like.

Never has Calliope been called out for being such a hapless mess until yesterday when she was suddenly and bluntly asked if she has something clean, something appropriate to wear for her upcoming election speech. It's still difficult for her not to roll her eyes and insist that campaigning in her brother Aesop's old, unmended, oversized clothing during her first election was anything other than perfectly fine. That never goes over well with anyone. But hey! Her last election she even wore a dress — a very nice one. "I'll just wear that again," she shrugged, trying to remember where it's stored without letting her thoughts fumble over themselves and into thinking about the person who gifted it to her.

Apparently, no, she was not allowed to wear the same thing as before.

Despite her instinct to argue, not a combative word crossed her lips. Calliope doesn't remember much about her mother anymore, but the gentle, loving chiding tightened her heart and now —

Now here she is, absolutely wasting her time, trailing her fingers down racks of secondhand nonsense. When she was a girl she loved clothes, but the excitement disappeared with each loss of someone to show new dresses off to. There are few places she feels lonelier than staring into a fitting room mirror, silently trying to figure out if a color is weird with her complexion or if the fit is bad or if it matters. She sighs into the mismatched hangers and picks a dress and a couple of suit jackets off the racks at random, slinging them over her arm and dutifully marching onward.

She looks sallow in everything she tries on, but buys something anyhow. It doesn't matter what. It's not for her.

been lookin' for a star-sent sign that I'll be alright
look to the skies

"State your emergen—"

Calliope hangs up, takes another swig from the bitter bottle in her hand and dials half of another phone number she knows by heart before she's thinking about anything other than her frustration. It's habit. She slams the phone down and puts her head in her hands, sucking in big breaths that should be calming but instead just make her feel like she's about to burst.

Io won't answer because Io isn't there because Io has never really been there because no one has ever really been there. Trying to force herself to accept that just makes the frustration bubble up again. Bigger. Brighter. Angrier.

The phone is in her hand again, following through on calling the only person who has ever consistently answered, even though the only comfort he can give her is his misery. By now Mace Emberstatt knows better than to pick up the phone when it rings suspiciously in the middle of the night. He answers anyhow. He always does.

what you'll see is the worst me
not the last of my kind

It's not that she decided to play hooky, it's just that...

Well, if Calliope knew the answer to that then she'd be far less confused about how she found herself in Poe's hospital room when she was clearly told to go home and change.

The light through the window is dim and wanting, looking out onto a few dreary feet of empty space and a brick wall. This early in the day the light can't yet reach into the tiny courtyard below and touches little more than the highest windows up above. It's only ever during the peak of the afternoon that a few beams find their way to Poe's windowsill, as empty of cards and get well flowers as it has always been.

"It's rude not to greet your visitors," she sighs and turns her attention to the pallid face of her comatose brother. It seems silly that she ever thought of him as tan. She can't imagine such a thing now. "Other people have applauded my appearance today, but it's not surprising that you can't be bothered."

Slumping into the chair at his bedside, she leans her elbows on the edge of the mattress and rests her chin in her palms, idly blowing air at his face. His eyelashes rustle slightly. It's more movement than she's seen him make in years. "Napoleon?" Nothing. "Poe?" Nothing. "Can you keep a secret?" It's with horrible irony that she realizes he's probably the only person in her life that she really can trust to do so. "If I tell you about the people I've killed, do you promise not to tell anyone? It's too many now. I don't think I'm big enough to keep carrying them all around like this." Her body is too small to be haunted by this many lost souls. "I think..." Her brother is as silent as her body count. "I think I'll be charged for war crimes if you ever tell. I mean—" Exhaling softly, she watches his gently trembling eyelashes once more. "I know I will."