Chapter Text
──── Abner POV ────
The afternoon fell with its usual tense silence when Abner received Erza in his office.
In the gloom, the dark wood and shadows seemed to hold all kinds of secrets and punishments.
Erza was fidgeting, and Abner noticed how she was pressing her hands against the back of the chair.
"She spoke to me today," Erza began, her voice thick. "He says he wants to go back to the aunts, that he can't bear the guilt... that he wants to purge himself."
Abner tilted his head, his gaze cold and calculating.
"I'm not surprised," he replied calmly. "Mayra is a restrained beast, and when beasts feel hurt, they become more dangerous. It's not easy to tame something that has been free and ferocious."
"But going back to the aunts? Do you really think that will help you?" Erza asked, searching for some hope.
"I believe it," Abner said with certainty. "She needs to be completely broken so she can be rebuilt in the right mold. Five months weren't enough to break her spirit. Maybe a little more pressure, more time with the aunts, will make her give in."
"What if I lose her?" Erza's voice was a mixture of fear and resignation.
"You won't lose her," Abner replied, with the cold conviction of someone who has seen too many storms. "Because Mayra has no other choice. Neither do you."
He stood up and walked to the window, looking at the dull sky of District 2.
"The flock must be strong and united. The fire of rebellion will only bring destruction. It is our task to extinguish it and ignite the flame of obedience."
He turned his gaze towards Erza.
"Do what you have to do. But remember: a firm hand is also the hand that holds the district's future."
Erza nodded, though a growing fear throbbed in his chest.
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──── Mayra POV ────
District 2 — House of the Congregation
The heavy gate closed behind her with a loud crash that made her chest tremble.
There was no turning back.
The aunts waited for her in the dimness of the hallway, their faces implacable in the dim light
.
They didn't greet her.
They simply took her arms with a cold force that hurt more than any whiplash.
The room they took her to was cold, with no windows, just a wooden door with a small grille that barely let in any light.
As they lowered her onto the hard mattress, she felt the weight of the past few months become more real than ever.
Mayra stood there, motionless, as the aunts' voices echoed with the Book of Obedience, words she had once defied with fire, but which now only burned her inside.
Anger and despair intertwined with a deep tiredness.
Mayra remembered Romulus's kisses, the hope that had vanished, and the twins who couldn't live.
Was this the price of my rebellion? This confinement, this oblivion?
But still, a tiny spark inside her refused to go out.
Perhaps she wasn't the warrior of the Fortress, nor the victor she dreamed of being.
But she was still Mayra.
And although now it seemed that everything was lost, that small voice, hidden beneath the pain, still whispered that not everything was over.
The battle was tough, but the spirit is not broken so easily.
For now, silent and submissive, she learned to hide the storm.
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──── Margaret POV ────
There was a stillness in the room, that thick stillness that announces an internal storm.
Mayra Dunn sat with her back straight but her head down, her linen nightgown crumpled over her already flat stomach. Her hands, once firm and precise with weapons designed to kill, now trembled with a weakness she didn't know whether to celebrate or lament.
The Aunts did not cry for the death of the little ones.
They were with the Lord.
Pure. Immaculate.
The pain was only for those who had strayed from the flock.
"Your children didn't die by accident," Margaret told him, her voice as flat as the board used to cut bread for widows. "Their death was the price of your sins."
Mayra looked at her with dull eyes.
She had stopped fighting with words. Not because she believed in our justice, but because shame had a firm grip on her throat.
"The Lord does not leave unpunished the blood that cries out from the ground," Margaret continued. "Yours was not shed in the Arena, as it should have been. Then the lives of innocent people were demanded in return."
She trembled.
It wasn't cruelty.
It was true.
Mayra Hadley wasn't raised as a flock maiden, but as a war beast, molded by the Capitol, honed by the Career Academy, wrapped in weapons like a viper among lilies. From the age of eight, she'd been trained to kill, to excel, to seek worldly glory.
And now, she wanted tears.
"You knew you were cursed," she told her as one of the other aunts brought the basin of cold water. "It wasn't the pregnancy that made you vulnerable. It was your hardened heart. It was that indecent laugh you gave in the training yards, it was the silver whip you wielded like a Queen of Sodom."
She bent forward a little, as if the blow were physical.
"Your children died... because you still imagined them in the Arena," Margaret finished in his ear, before throwing the water all over him, as one does to wild beasts when they go mad.
She screamed. Not from pain, but from humiliation.
Margaret knelt beside him and held his face in her hands.
“This is mercy, Mayra Dunn,” she whispered. “You are being purged, like iron in the fire. Every part of you that was forged to kill must be destroyed so something new can be born. A mother. A wife. A servant of order.”
Her lips trembled.
"God doesn't want wild beasts in his flock," he told her before standing up. "Wild beasts either submit or are sacrificed."
And Mayra… she was still breathing.
She still clung to what was
But they had time.