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She wakes up somewhere, an infirmary perhaps, and gradually President Snow comes into focus. It's shocking, to see the face she's only seen in posters, on television, on the little button she used to wear on her academy uniform now standing over her, in full, excruciating detail.
"Cashmere of District 1, congratulations," he greets, his lips a red grin.
There's no one else around, as far as she can tell. Perhaps he had requested a private audience. "Thank you," she answers. Her voice is gravely, dry. Dully, but more sharply by the second, she is aware of the pain in her abdomen.
"I am pleased you will be joining us in the Capitol," the President says, looking down at her with the same affection he might give a daughter.
"Thank you," she says again, unsure of what the appropriate response is. She sees an IV pole beside her, but the tubing is unplugged, whatever pain medicine or other drugs are hung on it are not going into her system.
She considers asking the President if he would be kind enough to call her nurse, but before she has time to even turn back to him, the most intense pain is raging through her stomach. She does turn then, and Snow's face has not changed, but his hand is pressing down into her wound, his thumb right atop her bandages. "Please… stop…" is all she manages between gasping breaths.
"You'll do well," he intones, his smile placid, but his eyes devilish. "Just do as you are told, and stay far away from any controversy."
She doesn't understand. What controversies? Who will be telling her what to do? But the pain is so severe, all she can do is lay back and try to bear it without screaming out. Somehow she knows she shouldn't do that. And then, delightfully, it is gone. Snow leans forward, his blood red mouth near her ear. "You'll want to take heed, or else the academies and factories of District 1, in fact, the very prestigious standing of the District itself…" he makes a 'poof' gesture with his hands, and rights himself. "I'm glad we met, I'm sure we understand each other."
She can feel a tear escaping from the pain. She doesn't understand at all. But he is already walking away.
The Victory Tour is eye-opening. Cashmere attends with Gloss, since their Escort, Oracle, explained that Panem was hungry to see the "Twin Victors". Gloss seems less than thrilled with this, and spends most of the tour drinking. Cashmere tries, nobly at first, to experience Panem - she had never been outside of District 1 and the Capitol, of course - but after a bit, it just became tiresome and a bit depressing.
District 12 was dirty from the mines - everyone and everything covered in coal dust, and there were women out - whores, trying to tempt the Peacekeepers. District 11 had that huge wall - the residents looked like caged animals. 11, 10, and 9 blend together, as it was all farms of one sort or another.
When they get to 8, there are factories, and this, at least, is like home, though instead of luxury bags or leathergoods or crystal, these factories are just making basic clothes. She sees the workers go in at the start of the day, like clockwork in regimented order, and tours a factory to see insane precision, each person working on one tiny task thousands of times per day. It's mind-numbing.
In 7, it's freezing. There's snow all around, and the paper mills and sawmills are noisy. The town square reeks of tobacco from all the lumberjacks taking a break with a cigarette or pipeweed. Oracle buys some, as a souvenir, and shares some with her, and she's surprised by the high. She buys more before they leave to get through the rest of the tour.
In 6 there are lines of morphling addicts waiting in line at the community stew pot, hundreds of thin, zombie-like people milling about. In 5, she starts to see a little more of the life she's used to, though the district is in the desert so it's burning hot in the day and freezing at night. In 4, she sees the ocean. It's the only redeeming part of the tour. But then her dinner is still wriggling, so she has second thoughts about that, too. 3 is strange, full of labs and testing grounds, and she doesn't understand much of what she's seeing. But she's so exhausted from the whole affair she doesn't much care.
2 was the district she was most curious about, District 1's "rival" in a way. It is made of beautiful stone buildings built in a valley, and when she passes the academy, they're doing exercises not unlike the ones she grew up doing. It's nostalgic and yet very strange: there are no luxuries here: it's all masonry and austerity, a very honest and steadfast sort of feeling that makes her squirm, as if she was the one who didn't measure up. By the time she gets back to 1, she resents that she has to go to the Capitol, because she just wants the Tour to be over.
But once she's back in the Capitol, she remembers what it's like. To see the lights, to have the cameras on her, to wear the most beautiful clothing. And she doesn't want to see the coal dust or the morphling addicts or the giant wall. She wants to be here, with them, looking at them looking at her.
During the 65th Games, Chrome and Gloss are the official Mentors for District 1. Cashmere comes back to the Capitol as well, but she is learning her role, shadowing the others, not there in full capacity. It's nice, in a way, to have less pressure, and it's also frustrating. She wants to go, but she's stuck waiting.
It's Brutus who takes pity on her, strangely, the older man from 2 taking her aside with a kind smile. "Why don't you come have lunch in the 2 apartment?" he asks. "There's a couple things I want to show you."
She accepts, mostly because she has nothing better to do, and even if District 2 had been her rival, her enemy even, last year, she would take 2 as her ally among the Mentors versus someone like… Haymitch.
Brutus welcomes her into the apartment and the Avox quickly prepare lunch and pour wine, and then he dismisses them, so it's just them alone, and she wonders if perhaps this wasn't a great idea, but Brutus is old, not as fit as perhaps he once was, and she thinks she could probably overpower him.
"Listen, I invited you here because I think I didn't prepare Enobaria well enough for the… politics of the Capitol, and I wanted to try to make up for that," he begins, then coughs awkwardly. He opens a Capitol tabloid, more of a business-oriented one, and looks at her. "I can't write this down, of course, so do your best to remember this."
She nods, looking at the images as he speaks. "This is Septima Crowline, she's the major source of Euphoria in the Capitol. She officially works in a perfume shop, but she has some connection to the black market drug trade, because most of the supply flows through her."
He turns the page. "These four are in charge of the four major banks. Two brothers and their close friends. It's all a scam, they're in cahoots. And known to be violent to women, so if you see them in the lounges, avoid them."
He fingers over to the next page. "Calpurnia Rawley. She is a talent agent. A connection of hers helped me start my television show last year."
He continues on like this for a while, until Cashmere's head is spinning. "I need a break," she confesses. "But thank you. Can we do this again?"
He nods, taking another bite of the lunch. "Sure. When I'm not in the booth, just find me."
She can sense he's lonely, and realizes she hasn't seen him with anyone else besides Enobaria since they've arrived. He was sort of blustering, and clumsy, probably 10 or 12 years older than her, but he was rather handsome, and very kind. She stands, then sits again, leans forward and kisses him. It's short, just a second or two, and after she gathers her things to go. "Thank you again," she says. "I really appreciate the help."
Gloss had made reference to the other thing, here and there, mentioning that he had been forced to entertain this or that famous lady of the Capitol, but she thought his complaint was more that he was forced into a situation where he had to spend a night with a woman, not literally being whored out. She doesn't expect a man to approach her in Antioch and tell her he's bought her company.
"What? No," she protests, but he just laughs, as if she's teasing him.
"Yeah, and it cost a pretty penny too, you don't come cheap."
"I need one more drink," she says, panicking, searching wildly for Gloss. She finds Enobaria. She will have to do, Cashmere decides.
She's sitting at a table with Seeder pulling back her hair. "Can I talk to you?" Cashmere asks.
Enobaria looks her over, her gaze steel. Then she nods, and Seeder lets go, leaving her hair half-braided. "I'll be at the bar," she says.
"Remake doesn't know how," she explains, nodding towards Seeder's retreating form. "What's up?"
"I… someone says they've… bought my company?"
Enobaria nods, her expression sad, but unsurprised.
Cashmere leans in. "He's not lying?"
Enobaria shakes her head. "It's real. It's all arranged with the higher ups."
Cashmere takes a moment to process this, her mind vaguely connecting sex with this stranger, a bloody mouth, pressure on her wound. "Oh."
Enobaria raises an eyebrow. "That's it?"
Cashmere shrugs. "I don't know, I mean, I am getting everything I ever wanted. Of course there's a cost."
"Here, these make it easier."
Enobaria hands her a couple tabs of Euphoria. It's fine, after that. Easy, even.
She is not prepared for her next client to request her and Gloss. The set. She takes a Euphoria tab, but she is so nervous she throws up, and spots the pill mostly intact in the toilet bowl. She tries again with a new tab, sipping wine slowly, forcing the tab to stay down with pure willpower. The wine is delicious, the song she's listening to sounds like it was composed by angels, but looking over at Gloss she is met with pure revulsion. "I can't do it. I can't go," she says.
He sighs, his shoulders stiff, his entire demeanor radiating tension. "I don't think we have a choice," he says.
The winner of the 65th Games is the boy from 4, Finnick Odair. Cashmere can't stop staring at him as he is raised up, out of the arena with his golden trident. He looks older than his 14 years, though she learns he's about to turn 15. She's 18 now, and Enobaria's 19, but she supposes he's still more part of their cohort than not. She thinks of her time in 4, during her Victory Tour, and standing in the surf. Did he do that often? Did the sea-green of his eyes reflect the ocean he called home? She wonders why she is so drawn to him, but she quickly learns it's not just her. The entire Capitol is drawn to Finnick, and he quickly seems to usurp her and her brother in popularity.
On one hand, it's nice, to have less eyes on her, to be asked to perform less, to have less chances of a truly horrible request. Though most times they were requested separately, there were more than a couple occasions that she was forced to undress with her brother and some Capitol elite in some fancy backroom of a mansion or club, occasions she can dull with alcohol but never truly forget.
And on the other hand, she resents it. She won the Games, and to the Victor go the spoils. How dare they get sick of her after one measly cycle? She watches Finnick during the Victory party, trying to get a sense of what it is that draws people to him, so that she can emulate it herself. She's sure she'll do the same during his Victory Tour.
Enobaria comes by with two flutes of champagne, her fangs flashing gold. "To the end of another round!" she toasts.
She likes Enobaria. She's shown Cashmere which stylists in Remake can undo bruises, cure hangovers, and all sorts of other useful tricks. And she's undeniably beautiful, tonight with sleek black braids and a sleeveless red dress.
"To the odds being ever in our favor," Cashmere replies, and they both drink.
When Cashmere gets back to 1, her mother stops by, lounging on the porch, commenting on Cashmere's empty fridge as if she hadn't just returned from the Capitol.
"You've been back a day and a half," her mother says, "What are you going to have for dinner?"
She looks at her mother, her own features there on her face, but hardly recognizable with wrinkles of age, sun damage, and excess weight. She had a permanent frown etched onto her mouth, and extra skin hanging on her arms where she had lost some weight, but too late for her body to accommodate it. The sort of problems easily managed in the Capitol, but not in the Districts, even in 1. The difference might not seem so obvious at first glance, but now that Cashmere had lived it, it was plain as day. Her mother was revolting to her, after weeks of Capitol perfection. She had forgotten how flawed and graceless humanity could be.
"I don't know, Gloss probably has something." She has no intentions of going over to Gloss's house, no intentions of even seeing him more than she needs to now that she's home from the Capitol, but her mother doesn't need to know this.
"You can't keep relying on your brother for everything," she chastises.
Cashmere wants to ask her mother why she's here. What purpose she was serving besides nagging. She doesn't owe Cashmere and Gloss anything, and they don't owe her anything. But still, she can't be rude. "I know," she says. She won't rely on Gloss, in fact, she can barely stand to look at him currently. Gloss got her through the arena as a Mentor, but the cost of that was unthinkably high. Now, the closer they are, the more the Capitol will want to exploit that, the more they will want the Twin Victors to be a pair together inextricably.
She changes the subject, desperate to get away from Gloss. "Why are there so many people in town?" she asks. She had passed dozens milling about, despite it being a work day.
"It's a work stoppage," her mother answers, as if the words are foreign and she's trying to pronounce them correctly. "The workers are upset about something, I'm not sure exactly. They sent… negotiators… to the Capitol."
Had she heard about this? Had someone mentioned this at one of the clubs? She couldn't recall. "Looks like they're lazing about" she says.
Her mother looks up from the lounge chair on the porch, drink in hand, toward where Cashmere was sitting, smoking a cigarette. "Aren't we doing the same?" she asks. Then she laughs, in the same brainless tone Cashmere always associated with her mother, but the response lingered in her mind far longer than she wanted it to.
During the break, Gloss takes a position as a trainer at the career training academy, the same one they used to attend. It's good, in a way, since she wanted the time apart.
Cashmere never goes to visit him at work. She doesn't want to go back to the academy. She doesn't want to see anyone preparing for the Hunger Games, she only wants to look forward.
In the meantime, she starts working out again. First running, then lifting, then stretching, then climbing stairs and explosive jumping. She buys her own food - none of the junk Gloss enjoyed, but fruits and vegetables, fresh meat and eggs, and whole grains for making her own meals. She does still enjoy a glass of wine here and there, but she switches to smoking - fewer calories, and it gives her a buzz to help her with her workouts.
She trains not as if she is going back to the arena, but to go back to the Capitol. She wants to be ready. She doesn't want to be Cashmere, daughter of Jeweline, destined to be wrinkled and heavy and discolored. She wants to be someone else, someone who has surpassed human, too perfect to have come from District 1.
The 66th Games is a labyrinth, and Cashmere thinks it's a terrible arena. She hadn't particularly liked her own arena, but this one has trap walls that crush people, and blind corners to get stabbed in, and so many spikes. Everyone seems to be dying the bloodiest, goriest death, like in Enobaria's Games.
She watches Cobalt fight the boy from 9 who had been trying to pick him off in the night, and Cobalt ends up impaling the boy against a spiked wall until he has dozens of stabs in his back. The boy manages to get at least one good hit in, a blunt hit to the ribs with the bat he was holding, but it's too little too late. Still, Cobalt is guarded now, his flank tender and sprouting a large bruise.
She goes to Enobaria's apartment before they are called to see clients that night, and Enobaria takes a tab of Euphoria while Cashmere smokes. "How can you stand the tobacco?" Enobaria asks, but already Cashmere can see her gaze has softened, her normally harsh expression placated by the pill.
"If you get furtiva, it doesn't make you cough at all," she says. "They smoke it in 7 and 11 so they can work long hours without stopping, I guess."
"You think that's what Blight sent, in that soil?" Enobaria asks, referring to the strange gift that seemed to invigorate the girl from 7.
Cashmere shrugs. "Doubt it. There's no way drugs are allowed in the arena." The first thing the girl had done was kill both of Enobaria's tributes. But in a way, it was better, so that Cobalt didn't have to kill anyone from 2. It made their friendship easier.
Enobaria sits down on the bed, beside where Cashmere has been doing her makeup. "Why do you bother? Getting all pretty for them?" she asks.
Cashmere doesn't know how to explain it. Enobaria is naturally gorgeous, she doesn't need to worry about hiding anything. But Cashmere needs to hide what she really is. She needs to hide traces of her mother, to disguise any clues that she hasn't been in the Capitol her whole life. It doesn't matter that someone is already paying for her company. This isn't about this one person, this is about everyone who ever sees her. The act can never be stopped. "I feel better if I wear it," she says.
Enobaria reaches up, so her hand rests on Cashmere's jaw. Her touch is gentle, but she pushes Cashmere's face in her direction, so they're looking at one another. "I like you without," she says, smiling. She looks hungry, full of desire, and Cashmere feels a thrill, in the idea that she's caused this. Enobaria being attracted to her had not been on her mind, but now that she has it, she wants it, she wants it more and more.
"Then I'll only allow you to see it," she says, her voice solemn, and she means it. If anyone can see her completely barren, it can't even be Gloss anymore, they were too broken at this point. But Enobaria is her closest friend. Enobaria likes her, regardless of her mask, and Enobaria knows what it is like to come from a Career district, from a training academy, to win the Games and then to have her body sold. She leans forward, until she can feel Enobaria's breath. Enobaria catches her upper lip, a gentle, tentative kiss, and it is Cashmere who deepens it, Cashmere who reaches for Enobaria, Cashmere who pulls them down onto the mattress.
Enobaria pulls away a few moments later, breathless and flustered, propping herself onto her elbows, a small smile on her lips. "We really ought to get downstairs," she says.
"I guess so," Cashmere agrees, but this start is enough. Enobaria's desire is enough to sustain her through whatever is asked of her tonight.
Cobalt comes in second place behind the girl from 7, Johanna Mason. There is no reason he should have lost, no reason he shouldn't have been able to beat a girl half his size even with the injuries he had sustained, and yet she murdered him in the end. As she is lifted from the arena, filthy and bloody, she reminds Cashmere of a smaller, paler version of Enobaria, a Games she had watched with her brother and classmates at the training academy, when the Games were a distant hypothetical, not a bleak reality.
It seems that Enobaria sees the resemblance as well, as she is watching the screen at the Victory Party and eyeing the door, as if waiting for Johanna to appear, paying little attention to Cashmere despite her repeated attempts to flirt and bribe Enobaria with her favorite wine, an annoying vice she had in common with Gloss.
"Is she really 16?" Enobaria asks, leaning over a railing to where, presumably, Johanna Mason has just entered the party.
Cashmere goes to look too, just out of curiosity, and sure enough, there is a girl there, with straight, dark brown hair, pale skin, and rather unremarkable features. She does look younger than her alleged 16 years. "They're usually short in the outer districts, there's not as much food. That's what Chrome says at least."
Enobaria makes a noise, considering this, and continues her appraisal. Cashmere pretends to do so as well, but really she is watching Finnick, who is talking with Haymitch Abernathy on a different balcony. Now what would that drunk want with Finnick?
"You're not really considering befriending her, are you?" Cashmere asks Enobaria, after another minute.
Enobaria finally turns away from the rail, back to Cashmere. "No," she says at last. "She wouldn't let me."
Before she leaves the Capitol, Brutus comes to the 1 apartment. "You should come to this party with me," he says. "I want to introduce you to someone."
She goes, not because she much feels like meeting another Capitolite, but because Brutus was kind to her, in the beginning, when she was still feeling her way through the Capitol. The party is in the back of Illyria, roped off from the 'normal' clubgoers, and there Brutus introduces her to a woman with a blonde bob and sharp, almost carved features.
"You must be Cashmere," she says. "My name is Calpurnia Rawley."
"Calpurnia got me connected with a television director to launch my show," Brutus explained. "But she mentioned how she was looking for a Victor to do some modeling."
Calpurnia smiles at her. "Yes, I see why Brutus thought we should meet. Let's go have a drink. Or perhaps you would prefer a cigarette?"
She would prefer a cigarette, and tells Calpurnia as much, and they step outside to see Elin and Haymitch talking about something outside the club. But they seem to end end their conversation once Cashmere and Calpurnia arrive, and Elin goes back inside, and Haymitch stalks off.
By the end of the night, Cashmere signs a contract for a month of work, and spends her time in the Capitol working on her assignments, with paid spa days, aesthetician appointments, cosmetic procedures, and staff to perfect her hair and makeup. Calpurnia guides it all, so Cashmere need only go where she is told. She doesn't mind it at all - this was more what she had in mind after winning her Games. Brutus is there too, shooting his television show, and she guest stars in two episodes, some drivel about healthy eating and another one about managing stress.
The stress episode is the funniest, as she spends her time between takes smoking tobacco, but Brutus is a good sport about the whole thing, and she reads good reviews about her episodes in a tabloid the next week. Calpurnia even hosts a screening party in one of her associate's homes, and they all smoke and drink and laugh as they watch.
The last week she's in the Capitol she begins seeing her face around - in store windows, on newsstands, even on posters in the town center - there are no advertisements out yet for Johanna Mason's Victory Tour, but there sure are posters advertising Cashmere's collaboration with a famous perfume, and her custom sneakers, and her modeling the latest luxury watch.
It feels good, and she's riding the high as she returns home, even as the train takes her back to 1, because she knows that her work will follow her. 1 is the maker of the luxury goods, so if Cashmere is the face of their products, she will now be more Capitol than District 1 to them. It's almost enough to get the unsatisfying second-place finish in the Games out of her head.
By the time she returns to the Capitol for the next Games, Cashmere feels better than she ever has before, and also worse. She is fitter than she was when she entered the arena, all muscle, all hints of her genetic predisposition for extra weight hidden. She's done growing, surely, not quite as tall as Gloss, but now surpassing Enobaria, close to 6 feet. Her hair is sun-bleached and golden, and halfway down her back. Her eyes are the same blue-grey they've always been, but the Capitol gave her some treatment to extend her eyelashes, and it seems to be permanent.
She resents, a little, having the same slightly snub-nosed look as Gloss. Or the way her jaw is a little too square. Things she never would have noticed before, but now that she's so close, so very near perfection, they haunt her, make her not want to look in a mirror. When Oracle comes to bring them back to the Capitol, Cashmere can't help but stare at her high cheekbones, her delicate chin, the fine bones of her fingers, all of the natural-born Capitol traits that separate her from Cashmere, the impostor.
Finnick is there, as a Mentor, and Johanna Mason beside him at the Welcome Dinner. She can tell they've been told about the Other Thing from the way they're focused on getting drunk rather than eating anything. They're about the same age, 17 or just about, Cashmere realizes, Johanna older by a few months, since Finnick was so young when he won. Cashmere and Gloss are now 19, Enobaria 20. She supposes there isn't that much of an age difference between them all, and she tries to talk to Finnick as the interviews are going on.
"So, you found out the secret," she says, careful to keep her expression pleasant and neutral for all the escorts circling the room.
He might have replied, too quiet for her to hear, but he just stands there looking shellshocked, mostly. She can't blame him. He's beautiful, tall and sturdy, handsome and exotic to the Capitol. He'll be in high demand. "Everyone knew?" he asks, after a moment. "And they didn't tell us?"
She supposes he is including himself and Johanna in this 'us', but she chooses to hear it as 'new Mentors' instead. She nods. "Same thing happened to us." Better to have him feel camaraderie with her than opposition, she reasons.
"But-"
"Will you tell your tributes? Your family?" she challenges.
He lapses back into silence.