lost but not forgotten // minx's awakening

"The weight, I'm gone
In my skin, I'm lost
Tangled in the bones of this love
Melding to the flow of your blood"

Voices like static. A ringing in his ears. Vision tunneling, tunneling, black - You're dying, Minx. Heartbeat in his ears slowed, tick-tock, tick...

One last gentle heave of his lungs, and he passed. The world swallowed him whole and spit him back out.

He didn't expect to open his eyes again. Disoriented, blinded by white lights, he tried to catch his bearings. The memories of blood and pain were fresh. He knew exactly what happened, he remembered fading, so where was he now? The afterlife. The stories were true then; the heavenly white lights, the existence after one's demise -

A voice.

He tried to move his right arm but it was stone. He raised his left hand instead, a shadow against the haloes above his head, and found all of his fingers intact. The angel's voice belonged to a woman. She wasn't making sense - a tracker in his body, transportation out of the arena. Wasn't he dead? "You're in the Capitol now." No, that wasn't right. That was the last place he wanted to be.

Realization dawned on him, injecting him with adrenaline. His heart thundered in his chest. He began to feel all of the sensations that went along with being human - hunger pangs in his stomach, sandpaper in the back of a parched throat, sweat beading around his forehead. He turned his head and spotted the IV in his arm. This wasn't heaven, this was a medical center. This doesn't make any sense. He sat up in confusion and found himself in a small room of medical beds, Capitolites dressed in white doctor's coats. The translucent curtain to his left revealed an exit. Was he allowed to leave?

Too stunned to make a move, he waited for a nurse to remove the IV. As his feet touched the cold floor, he shivered. He didn't feel as weak as he remembered but he was not himself. Something was off, as if he was a drained battery forced back to life with an electrical surge that was far too strong for his body. He stumbled beyond the curtain and the first thing he heard were voices. People were sitting at a table in the center of the room but he didn't care about that - he followed the voices to a large screen. There stood his killers, as bloodstained and sweaty as he remembered them. If they were out there, then where was he?

This certainly wasn't heaven. A paradise wouldn't have white coats staring at him through a window as if he were an animal in a zoo exhibit. His eyes wandered through the room for the first time, flickering from face to face, pausing when they found Maxwell. He gasped instantly.

Every single dead tribute was here in this room.

Legs turned to jelly, he sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands. This was it, wasn't it? What made this the 80th Quell. He had nearly forgotten that this Games was supposed to be special. But what was this? If he wasn't dead and he was back staying in the Capitol, what was in store for him next? He counted their heads - one two three, eight nine ten, another one and another -

Then he found her, and shot up like a spring.

Sable.