If there is anything Pyxis Flannan was, head riddled with confusing thoughts and brain slowly failing her, it was a survivor. Into the arena she had gone, but she had come out. Every day she tempted the waves, and yet never had the claimed her - even when sometimes she had tempted them to by sitting on the bottom and letting the light refract over her.
When the world started shifting in front of her, she knew it was like moments before the sea decided to kick up waves of such anger it could sweep you away. Much like she did when the weather turned out on the waves, Pyxis had reacted much the same - she ran back to safe harbor, docking among her family to weather a storm. Some may call is cowardice. Who flees a fight? As far as Pyxis was concerned, however, she had given enough of herself to Panem. They did not deserve to make her a martyr as well. The Vox had started their overthrow, and quiet as a current, Pyxis had returned to Four and her cottage by the sea. Her dinners with her family. And since now her headaches had at least been tamed by illicit substances (first supplied in the Capitol, sure, but it was amazing how connected a fisherman could be) she could make her way back to the bottom of the sea.
It was a strategy that worked, too. The new order had sorted itself out, and she had continued to work. It was not as if she resisted - she swore her allegiance to the new order, because at the end of the day it was true that the Flannans and Pyx herself did not care who was in power so long as they could have each other and continue to be one with the seas they had loved for so many years.
_ _ _ _ _
But then. Oh, but then.
Was that not how happy stories always ended. They lived happier every after . . . but then.
As barbaric as the games and Panem was, at least the rarely brought the violence to her home. No, you went and killed people in a new location. Pyx had learned that this perception was of course one that was unique to her and some from other districts in her time in the Capitol. Twelve had the violence brought to them, as had Seven and some others. Panem against their own, Four missing a good chunk of the violence. The redhead had remained ready, of course. If the violence had come to her door, it would have been met with a hunting knife and a group of fishermen ready to rage.
At the end of the day though, it was not Panem or the Vox that had come to her door. Not even Snow, who she did have a sick pleasure in watching get shot. Served that family well, for the hell they had put them through.
No, it was people who didn't know the sea at all but now wanted to claim it. Tribes from the brutal north of the continent, presuming the could fill a vacuum that the Vox had left open. It was then Pyx had started to move again, to remember who she had been before the stagnation of her flight to safe waters. Once again, she strapped a dive knife to her leg just to walk about. The world had changed, and nothing would be the same. But this time, it had come to her, and was trying to take the sea.
That? Now that was unacceptable.
