Chapter Text
«You see, ladies and gentlemen, and above all Your Imperial Majesty, with a real nightingale one never knows what to expect, but with this artificial bird everything goes according to plan. Nothing is left to chance.»
— The Nightingale, Hans Christian Andersen
*
«Each day, the petty struggle I had begun for that man’s salvation was renewed. I wanted his good, and in return he hated me. Hurt, I had become his demon and his torment (...) It had already become a terrible pleasure not to leave him in peace (...) not knowing that I was obeying one of the things that happen most often in the world: I was the prostitute, and he the saint.»
— The Disaster's of Sofia, Clarice Lispector
*
The scent of the epiphyllum hookeri that grew beneath Lucy Gray’s bedroom window had been replaced by the stench of antiseptic and the metallic smell of dried blood that, despite having followed him for most of his life, still had the audacity to turn his stomach. He felt uncomfortable finding himself in a room he often visited, but whose atmosphere felt foreign to him. For some, perhaps the smell would become imperceptible once they grew used to it, but for Coriolanus it was as if someone had suddenly decided to replace the scent of roses on his mother’s silk shawl.
It was a noticeable change. And he disliked change. Especially those that involved her.
Coriolanus tried, as much as possible, to breathe through his mouth. Though the taste of fresh blood also soaked his palate, it was familiar. Almost comforting. So the discomfort lessened a little, but not enough to calm his unease.
He’d been sitting in the chair beside the bed since three in the morning, and the only thing he could think about was the strong iron scent coming from the bandages on Lucy Gray’s head. The sensation reminded him of that time, in the train carriage, when he watched a scarlet trickle slide down her temple from the scrape on her forehead. Even through the stench of rot and dampness, he’d been able to detect her essence. Or the smell of blood-soaked sheets when his sister was born, Sejanus’s shirt, and Aurelius’s accident. He knew blood surrounded him, but he’d hoped, uselessly, that it would never trouble him again.
He ran a hand through his blond hair and grimaced when he felt the sheen of sweat on his fingertips. Eight hours. Eight hours in which he still couldn’t leave his seat because it was very likely she wouldn’t wake. He thought then of all the paperwork her death would require, paperwork he wouldn’t be able to bury even if the mayor of District Two’s reports and the Peacekeepers’ telegram from Five were of greater importance. He also thought about the repercussions for his family’s image in the press: «Have the Snows stopped landing on top?», though he’d cut out their tongues for daring to suggest such a headline.
Of course Lucy Gray would have thought of that too. She’d made sure to enter his life and leave it with a spectacle worthy of someone like her. Worthy of the constant battlefield that was their relationship. Because how was it possible that the newly appointed President hadn’t noticed the mental state of his poor wife? How was it possible he hadn’t realized she’d slipped out at three in the morning to throw herself off the Union Bridge? How was it possible he hadn’t thought of their innocent children? Then the presidential family wasn’t as perfect as it was supposed to be.
The message was clear, the nails of her coffin would serve for his.
The doctor had spoken of a severe contusion that required mandatory neurological monitoring. He’d also said it was fortunate, as if chance had anything to do with anything in Coriolanus’s life, that the water had been so cold, because it had reduced the brain swelling in the first hours. However, there was no guarantee she’d wake. That uncertainty had kept him on edge for eight damned hours in a room that reeked, checking the breathing of his very foolish wife. Only she and Tigris knew how much he hated uncertainty.
Lucy Gray looked peaceful on the bed, almost as if she were sleeping. Her long dark hair, which she usually wore in intricate buns, at her stylists’ request, was spread across the pillow, and her olive skin was pale and shining with fever in a way that reminded Coriolanus of her moment in the arena. Even so, even in the most miserable state he’d seen her in since marrying her, she still carried a stubborn air that only he could notice because he claimed to know her very well. She might look like an Ophelia, but he knew she was an Antigone.
Coriolanus had married her knowing perfectly well who she was and what she was. At first he’d thought of choosing Livia Cardew. She was a detestable woman, but with a powerful position that would’ve secured him greater and faster financial stability than he’d had with Lucy Gray. Besides, the fact that he detested her gave him the certainty that she’d never manage to dominate or truly know him. And yet, the satisfaction of having a caged mongoose, ready to devour him when it wished but choosing not to, was greater than that of a fangless viper. Because, deep down, Coriolanus wanted a companion who could be as lethal as he was, though within the parameters of his control.
He leaned toward her and brought a strand of her hair to his nose. The scent of the epiphyllum hookeri flower was stronger there, even though the plant was outside and his wife had spent nearly an hour submerged in water. In that precise moment, Coriolanus realized how foolish he’d been in deciding to keep her close. It had been easy that time at the lake, it would’ve been enough to squeeze her throat or put a clean bullet in her head, but his senseless attachment to his Tribute had prevailed. Now Lucy Gray had taken up so much space that it was impossible to remove her without removing himself in the process.
Coriolanus glanced at the clock on the wall, eleven forty-five. He wondered, not for the first time, what had gone through his wife’s mind to decide to commit such a distasteful act. She wasn’t impulsive, only passionate, and she valued life enough to write songs about its beauty and argue with him every morning to make him stop his plans for the Games. So if she’d walked to the Union Bridge at three in the morning, she’d thought about it a great deal. That was what left an irritating itch at the back of his mind. Something didn’t quite fit.
Then, an almost imperceptible movement stopped his train of thought. Lucy Gray moved. It was only a slight adjustment, her right hand closing over the sheet, but it was enough to make Coriolanus’s heart skip a beat.
He released her hair carefully, tucked it behind her ear, and waited.
Lucy Gray’s eyelids fluttered a couple of times until Coriolanus could see the stormy gray he’d grown used to over the years begin to show. Lucy Gray didn’t look at him immediately. Her eyes traveled slowly over her own body and her surroundings until, when they finally did, Coriolanus didn’t find the fire that used to consume her gaze, but a deep absence that made him forget, for a moment, everything he’d spent so long thinking of saying to her. He pressed his tongue against one of the sores on his palate so the sting would bring him back to the present.
“Hello, my dear. You’ve finally woken up,” he said, trying to make his voice sound as calm as possible. Lucy Gray used to scoff at that, because it was the tone Coriolanus used before informing someone they’d displeased him, and that they probably didn’t have much time left to exist. Perhaps she hadn’t been entirely wrong about that perception.
Coriolanus stood and pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle from the inner pockets of his jacket. He carefully uncovered it and placed it on the bedside table. The scent drew a faint smile from him, it was a white rose. One of the few left in the attic greenhouse where they’d lived for five years before he was appointed Head Gamemaker and they moved to the most luxurious apartment in the Corso. One of the roses Lucy Gray herself had cultivated after his grandma'am died.
It had seemed like an appropriate gesture when he cut it from the garden. A rose the day they met and a rose the day she tried to run from him. A fateful, yet beautiful symbol that meant the inevitability of their relationship. She was his. His girl. Coriolanus thought Lucy Gray would bring the rose to her lips, as she’d done many times before, and eat one of its petals. But when he met her eyes again, the same disconcerting blankness stared back at him. His smile faded.
“You were reckless, dear. I thought we had an agreement,” he said, returning to his chair and taking her hand. The diamond ring on her middle finger gleamed under the warm light. “I didn’t expect that from you.”
Provocation was a powerful and seductive weapon they often used in their exchanges. Coriolanus liked to think it was his purest way of expressing affection. So when Lucy Gray pulled her hand back and said nothing, it felt like a slap.
“Dear?” he insisted.
“Who are you?”
Coriolanus Snow was not a man easily surprised. In fact, he remembers exactly four times when something managed to have that effect on him. His mouth twisted in displeasure, deepening the small lines beginning to form on his face with age.
Now he’d have to count five.
He studied his wife’s face. There was no performance in it, no malice, none of the small tells he knew because he’d spent twenty-four years learning to read her, the slight tightening around her eyes when she lied, the way she clenched her jaw when holding something back. None of it. Only that clear, cautious gaze of someone who genuinely doesn’t know where she is or who stands before her. That took his breath away in a way only his first kill ever had.
Dr. Cassian Virex was one of the best doctors the Capitol’s money could buy. Still, his status wouldn’t be enough if he couldn’t fix whatever had happened to his wife’s head.
“How much do you remember?” he asked, with that measured softness Lucy Gray wouldn’t remember hating.
Her eyes showed a flicker of caution as she answered, “My Covey. The Meadow. I was at the lake with Maude Ivory. We had a performance that afternoon.”
She said it with the same caution she looked at him with, as if she didn’t trust that the information was safe to give. It made sense. Anyone who woke in an unfamiliar room with an unfamiliar man leaning over them, holding their hand, would have that instinct. That Lucy Gray now had it, directed at him, was a novelty Coriolanus wasn’t prepared for. A novelty that turned his stomach.
The Meadow. Maude Ivory. Before the Reaping, then. Before the Games, before the Capitol… before him.
Twenty-four years before everything.
It irritated him. It was irrational, but it irritated him all the same. Twenty-four years of marriage, of fighting, of yielding what he didn’t want to yield and taking what he did want, and what remained in Lucy Gray’s memory was a handful of musicians who had long since put down their instruments. As if he’d never existed. As if everything between them had left no trace.
And yet, within that irritation, Coriolanus glimpsed a fracture of opportunity. A First Lady of Panem without memory of the last twenty-four years was a problem, yes, but a shaped problem. One with edges that could be worked. A Lucy Gray who didn’t look at him with that resigned weariness, eroded affection, and resentment he’d come to consider their permanent climate, was a Lucy Gray who could, in principle, become something else again.
He fixed his gaze on her. Despite the blankness and caution, she was recognizably his Lucy Gray. She’d always had the habit of weighing intentions in silence, of analyzing every gesture. She wasn’t naive, though she had far too much heart for Coriolanus’s taste. Over the years, with every lie he whispered, that heart had shrunk. This Lucy Gray was a blank canvas. The girl whose hand he’d held at the zoo, the girl he’d kissed through the bars. The girl who’d trusted him without hesitation.
Coriolanus decided then. He let genuine concern settle on his face as he squeezed her hand with something like desperation.
“I’m your husband,” he said, letting his voice break on the last syllable. “You’re in the Capitol, your home.”
The effect was immediate. Distress crossed Lucy Gray’s eyes with a clarity that almost had color. Not panic, not yet, but that first realization that something was very wrong, that the world she thought she had wasn’t the one she was in.
Coriolanus acted before it could become anything else.
His eyes burned, not from tears, but from eight hours without sleep. He let her see the redness. Then he lowered his head and pressed a brief, chaste kiss to her knuckles, something that might’ve belonged to a completely different story than anything they’d shared in recent years.
Lucy Gray would’ve laughed. With that musical laugh that made her whole body tremble.
«You know you’re not a good actor, Coryo» she would’ve said. «I know you too well.»
But the Lucy Gray lost in the Meadow, the one who wasn’t yet his wife, looked at him with eyes bright with distress and something else, something forming as he held her hand so carefully.
“We met when I was sent to District Twelve,” he began. “During my assignment as a Peacekeeper. I saw you perform with the Covey and couldn’t let you go. I came back for you. I asked you to marry me, and you accepted. We married in Twelve, under the Meadow sun, by the tree where you used to play for your birds. Maude Ivory made you a flower crown, and Barb Azure placed a daisy in my lapel. We’ve been together twenty-four years.”
It was a simplified version. The version they’d once imagined together, free of Games, death, and lies. Better for her mind. Sweet, with a hint of truth.
Lucy Gray listened, staring at him, and Coriolanus, who knew every nuance of her gaze better than his own reflection, saw the exact moment something in her gave way. Small, a slight relaxation around her eyes, her jaw less tense, her hand shifting beneath his, fingers curling.
She believed him.
Of course she did. She had sixteen years of memory and no reason to distrust the man holding her hand with tearful eyes.
“Don’t be afraid, darling,” he said, squeezing her fingers. “You’re safe. You’re home. I’ll take care of you.”
Lucy Gray looked at him, still cautious, because even without memory she was who she was, but that caution now had something softening it. Trust, or the beginning of it.
There was much to do. There was always much to do.
But for now, he remained there, holding the hand of the wife who didn’t know she was his, who looked at him as though he might be someone she could trust.
«Trust is more important than love. If I don’t trust you anymore, you’re dead to me.» she’d once told him.
Coriolanus would make sure she did. No one would take her from him. Not even herself.