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When Enobaria gets home from the Games, she learns from her mother that her father was involved in an accident at the quarry, a terrible collapse that injured four and cost him his life. She knows what this is: a warning from Snow, to stay in line or see the rest of her family end up the same way, but she doesn't dare say as much to her mother. Even when her brother takes her aside, she denies it to his face.
"I was there, that day, Baria," he says. He's older than she remembers, and she realizes that the 6 years since she won have passed in the blink of an eye. "There was no reason that should have happened."
"Are you claiming it was sabotage? Murder?" she growls, pushing back against him. They're in a back corner of her mother's house, their voices low. He has the same frame as her, as their father, thin and tough, stronger than he looks. Her mother and sister are shorter, stockier, but no less imposing when it came down to it.
"I don't know," he says, every syllable slow, intentional. "That's why I'm asking you. What the fuck happened in the Capitol?"
She resists the urge to spit on the floor of her mother's home at the mention of the Capitol, at any allusion to that night. "Nothing that would implicate our family," she says clearly. "I stay out of such squabbles." Her head is held high as she turns away, and though she hears him sigh, he doesn't reach for her, nor does he touch the subject again.
She misses her father terribly, moreso because only she knows the truth about his death. That he had to suffer because Johanna Mason pushed the wrong Capitolite too hard when he was trying to rape her. She lies awake at night, tonguing the sharp points of her teeth and replaying that night over and over again, trying to figure out a way she could have averted the tragedy. But all roads seemed to end in tragedy. Even if she had never invited Johanna, even if she brought Cashmere along instead, she surely would have been punished for failure to deliver the requested Tribute. It was unfair, and she was always bound to lose.
Lyme visits her with flowers to put at her father's grave, which is a thoughtful gesture, as Enobaria hadn't gone to collect any herself. She puts the flowers in some water to keep them fresh, and she fucks Lyme on her bed, the act of having sex that she wants cathartic after weeks of non-consensual Capitol whoring.
After, laying naked under the sheets, Lyme tells her that she thinks the most recent Victor, a girl from 3 named Alva, will probably have to prove herself a Capitol supporter, or she might have an accident on her Victory Tour. "She won with a bomb. He won't want someone with that kind of knowledge running around unchecked. I'm sure they'll be investigating District 3, also."
Enobaria had watched her Victory in a sort of daze, waiting for the Games to be over so she could find out her punishment. But Alva was interesting, she was something different. She played a long game, collecting components and stashing them away, and then at the end, exploded half the arena. The thought was refreshing, in a way- that life as she knew it could just change in an instant.
Enobaria stares at the ceiling. It had never felt hopeful, but with her father dead, Snow's threat made real, it feels truly bleak right now. "I thought you said it was peaceful right now." Lyme had said as much, after Finnick's Games.
"It's true," she concedes. "There's no rebel activity for him to be worried about, and at least compared to before, the relationship between the Districts and the Capitol is very placid."
Enobaria can feel tears forming, and she wills them not to fall, wishes the gravity of lying on her back will help them absorb back into her skull. "Then why? Why would he make Jo and Augustus into whores? You said-"
Lyme is up on her side, propped up on an elbow, and she kisses a tear in the corner of Enobaria's eye. She hates this, the fear that comes with not understanding, the feeling of blindness. It was like her first moments in the arena. "I said he uses the Tributes as whores to placate the Capitolites, yes. They love the Tributes, they get attached to them, they find them darling. But for the Tributes," she coughs. "For the Districts, it's just a vector of control. He lets some go if he doesn't think he needs to keep an eye on them every year, or if the Capitol doesn't find them as interesting. Those two, he must have been worried about."
Enobaria can understand this, Johanna Mason was liable to spit in Snow's face as soon as she would shake his hand, and Augustus Braun seemed docile, a model 1 Tribute, but he had a bone to pick with the Capitol. "And if he makes good on the threat? If he kills her whole family and there's no incentive to whore anymore?"
She doesn't say Johanna's name, but Lyme doesn't seem to need that information to answer the question. "Remember, it's about control. If he decides to kill an entire family, it's because he thinks doing so will give him greater control, somehow."
The 69th Games come too soon, when she's still enjoying time with her nieces, dinners prepared by her mother, and even beginning to get along again with her brother and sister. She'd seen Lyme a few more times over the months she was home, though Lyme was sure to keep the visits spaced out and casual-appearing, paranoid Snow would be able to associate the two of them and use it against one or the other.
When she returns, Enobaria sees Johanna in the Mentor booth, gaunt and doped up on morphling. Haymitch Abernathy is often checking on her, surprisingly gentle for a man she's hardly ever seen without a bottle. "Come on, Jo, you have to eat something," he'll say, or "Let's go to the roof, I want you to roll me a cigarette." She wonders if they're sleeping together and finds she doesn't mind if they are.
Cashmere is often sitting next to Enobaria in the Mentor booth, her surgery on her nose and jaw successful. She looks like Gloss's sibling, perhaps, but all traces of "twin" are gone, certainly. She wonders if that's the idea, if the first years, the first clients scarred her so much that she wanted to become someone else, someone apart from him, or if this was just a desire to become as Capitol as possible.
Enobaria doesn't ask, not as they're working in the booth, not as she's fucking Cashmere, listening to her call her name as she comes, and not as they lay together after, watching the Games on mute, smoking Cashmere's cigarettes. Enobaria doesn't really like them, but they do keep you awake, and she needs to meet a client in an hour.
"Calpurnia is going to divorce her husband," Cashmere says.
"Why?"
"He thinks she has no time for a relationship, that she neglects him." Cashmere pulls out a handmirror from her nightstand drawer and begins adjusting her false lashes. "It might be true."
"What about you?" she asks Cashmere.
"What about me?"
"Dating anyone? You practically live here now."
"Would you be jealous?" Cashmere says, turning her head to meet Enobaria's eyes. And it's the face on every ad, the face she sees when the Hunger Games cuts to commercials, the most famous, most beautiful Victor, right beside her, naked for her, appealing to her. She wonders if she would be jealous.
"I don't know, I might be," she admits.
Cashmere smiles. "Same. If you started dating Johanna, or Alva, I'd be so jealous I'd kill them in their sleep."
And that's when Enobaria realizes that Cashmere doesn't know. She has no idea that Johanna's family was murdered, that Enobaria's father was murdered, that Alva herself was most likely murdered. Cashmere has embedded herself so deeply into the Capitol ecosystem, she missed nearly all of what was happening around her.
When she's home from the Games, Enobaria spends most of it in the Victor's Village. Her family was all adults by the time she won, so none elected to move with her, all preferring their own homes in the main village, but now it's difficult to even go up there, as her brother and sister are fighting constantly.
One day, she risks a trip to her brother's while he's at work so she can see her nieces, who are both teenagers now, and working on their homework without great enthusiasm. They are enrolled in regular school, not the training academy, so with any luck, they will never see the arena.
"Auntie, father almost came to blows with Auntie Tamora!" they gush, eager to tell her the news. The homework is forgotten, and they are busy showing her this and that - their newest items of clothing, a cake one of them baked, as they intersperse the story here and there.
"Auntie Tamora was saying that there's to be some festival next weekend, and we asked if we could go."
"Yes, every day is the same, we want to see a festival!"
"But father said 'no one in our family is going to see the show of might from the Nut!'" her niece says, in a startlingly accurate portrayal of Enobaria's brother, Tullus.
"And Auntie Tamora said we ought to be seen there, so there's no confusion," the younger adds.
"That's when it got serious."
Enobaria can tell the two of them don't quite grasp the conflict, but everyone in 2 can feel the tension between the masonry guild and the military. She sighs. Part of her wants to tell them they really ought to go to the parade for their own safety, but she knows better than to overstep her brother. "Well that's more exciting than my days," she says, but they are unconvinced, begging her to tell them about the Capitol until she is describing the silliest outfits she's seen and the strangest foods she's tasted. It's nice, it's relaxing, and it makes returning to her empty home feel that much worse.
At the 70th Games, Finnick's girlfriend is a tribute. He perhaps doesn't explicitly say this, but it's no secret. Among the Mentors, this is common knowledge, and even those who are not rooting for Finnick and Annie find it hard to root against them, exactly.
She can feel Finnick's stress, feel the way he is pulling against the restraints of the Capitol. So when she sees him follow a Capitol woman with a clipboard into a backroom of Antioch she follows, afraid he's getting tangled into a rebel plot that will get him and his girlfriend killed. The door closes before she can follow them inside, a lush private room at the back of the club, so she nurses a drink until she can apprehend him when he exits. She keeps an eye on the Games in the meantime, her tributes both still in it, camping out in front of the Cornucopia and shooting down anyone who tries to approach the stream for water, and Finnick's girl was in it too, high above them all in a secluded cave.
She is surprised when Plutarch Heavensbee approaches her. She knows him on sight: he's in charge of the video clips made about each Tribute, and the more extensive videos made to showcase the Victors, so she's worked with him before, but only professionally. But seeing him makes her realize who the woman was: his personal assistant, though her hair was different than the last time Enobaria had seen her.
"Do you have business with Fulvia?" he asks, his smile easy, his tone amicable. He glances towards the door she entered with Finnick.
"No, I'm waiting for Finnick," she says.
"Well, their appointment is liable to take an hour or so. Let's have a drink while we wait." He buys two drinks without asking her preference and nods at the door next to the one she had been standing outside of. She quickly feels over her head, and wonders if she had misinterpreted the situation, if looking out for Finnick was actually screwing herself over.
Plutarch sits, easy and comfortable in his chair, and sips the drink. "Don't worry, I just want to talk," he says. "I heard what happened to your father, and about the tension in 2 right now."
"What do you know about it?" she says. She's on guard, unsure of his intentions.
But his calm smile remains. "I know your friend Lyme. She is part of a large network of informants. I dare not say more, in case you decide to turn around and rat her out to Snow."
Plutarch was a rebel? Lyme was a rebel? The latter is less of a surprise, but the fact that she is hearing of it here, now, in the backroom of a club in the Capitol, from a high-ranking Capitol official and not from Lyme herself is making her tremble. "What is this? Recruitment?" she supposes Finnick is next door being recruited as well.
"More of an interest check. I would never ask anyone to give more than they wish, but I had reason to believe you would want to see the Capitol fall."
"It will never happen," she says automatically, her sister's words in her mouth. "You have no chance."
"Not yet, no. It will take time. 5 years or so, I think. We're not as disorganized as you think. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you more unless you join us. You understand why, I presume?"
She nods. She thinks about everyone she knows, everyone she cares about. Cashmere would say no. Johanna would say yes. Tamora would say no. Tullus would say yes. Gloss would say no, Lyme had already said yes. And the unknowns: her mother, Finnick, Augustus. And then she thinks of the arena, of tearing out a man's throat with her teeth, just for the chance to live another day. "I can't," she says. Because the truth is, a rebellion, to her, is not worth dying for, not worth risking the lives of her mother, her siblings, her nieces, the Victors she's come to care about. Snow knows how to precision strike where it hurts, but he wouldn't be afraid to just bomb her whole District. Everyone in 2 knows their history, how their District clambered to favor hand over hand from the rubble of the Dark Days. "Sorry, I can't," she repeats.
Annie wins the 70th Games by default, though the Capitol doesn't find the ending particularly 'violent' or 'exciting'. The hours and hours of waiting for the last tributes to drown are tedious and long, not the tense, hands-on combat the Capitol prefers.
This disappointment seems to be made up for by the fact that Annie Cresta is beautiful, tall and thin and mysterious and strange, but she doesn't come back for the 71st Games. Her Victory Tour was strange, her remarks stilted and interrupted by tics, stomping or covering her ears, or a shout or laugh that didn't seem to make sense, so Enobaria is sure she is not well, but none of them are well, really, yet they are not allowed to stay home.
She listens to the same sentiment over and over from Cashmere as she gets drunk with the twins after the tribute parade, the tributes off at some appointment with the stylists. "She is faking it, probably," Cashmere says, "To get out of coming back."
"Maybe I should do that," Gloss mutters. He's gained weight, his stomach a little flabby now, more of the Haymitch body-type from all the drinking, though Gloss towers over the man from 12.
"Cash, you ok?" Enobaria asks, as Cashmere spills the drink she had been fumbling with for a moment.
"Shit." Cashmere grabs for a napkin to blot up the spilled water. "The doctor isn't sure what's causing that tremor. He says the tobacco isn't helping either, but I can't give it up." Her voice comes out muffled as she crouches to pick up the cup. "Anyways, did you see Blight laying into Haymitch at the Welcome Dinner? Is he fucking Johanna?"
"No, I was looking at Brutus eyeing Elin," Gloss says. "Seriously?"
Enobaria laughs. "He must have been looking past her, at Ceci," she says. "There's no way he would be into someone who 'poisons her body with that disgusting drug'," she says, imitating Brutus's gruff way of speaking, then glances over her shoulder to make sure he's not nearby, since they are on the 2 apartment balcony.
"Speaking of," Cashmere says, "Calpurnia told me one of the staff on Brutus's show said he had some bone to pick with Haymitch, actually." She shakes her head, checking the spill was cleaned before lighting up another cigarette.
Enobaria does a double take when she sees Johanna in Illyria. She hasn't seen the other woman in the club since the year her family was killed, and wonders what has changed that she's suddenly come out to socialize again, but she sees what Johanna is wearing - a mini skirt and black halter top, heeled, strappy sandals, and realizes she's working.
She can't fathom what Snow has on her, who he could possibly threaten to make her work again, when her eyes settle on Haymitch Abernathy. She doesn't know what compels her to go to his table, feels her feet taking her there before she even knows what she wants to say. He looks surprised to see her, and almost smiles, before his gaze turns confused. "Those are nice braids, did Seeder do those?" he asks.
They are nice, and Seeder did do them, but that's not what she's here to talk about. She slips down into the seat across from him, her voice a hiss across the thrumming music, but she knows he'll hear her. "Why is she back working?" she asks. "To keep you alive?"
He raises an eyebrow at this, looking honestly shocked at this guess. "For me? God no, though if you've noticed we'll have to tone it down." He finishes his drink. "It's for Finnick. To keep his girl away from the Capitol."
Enobaria isn't sure if she believes this. Johanna was back, whoring herself for Coriolanus Snow, so that Finnick Odair's girlfriend could stay in her home district during the Hunger Games. "You're full of shit," she says.
Haymitch grabs two drinks from a passing tray and offers her one. She does sip it, just for something to do. "It's true," he insists. "She loves him."
"What a mess," she says, accepting his explanation for now, and putting back the drink.
When Brutus approaches the table, she thinks he's coming for her, to tell her she's late to the Mentor Booth, or some other reason. But he doesn't even seem to see her, all rage as he grabs Haymitch by the collar. "You piece of shit!" he yells, glasses smashing as the table shakes. "She told me what you did!"
Haymitch makes no effort to defend himself, just smiles somewhat lazily. "It doesn't matter," he says. "I messed up. She messed up. But in the end, Elin will never love you back."
They all know Brutus's punch is coming before it lands, with a sickening crunch on Haymitch's left cheek. Enobaria is up after that first hit, pulling him back, but Brutus is sick with rage, trying to get after Haymitch, his shouting incoherent. "You did this! You ruined her!"
And then Johanna is there, after Haymitch falls to the ground, covering him with her own body, daring Brutus to punch her instead. Perhaps it's seeing that, seeing the stupid skimpy outfit that she is wearing reminds him of the other thing: the fact that Haymitch and Elin might have fucked each other up, but there was also the whoring, the impossible demands of young Victors.
Johanna shoots Enobaria a deadly, hateful glare, and Enobaria can't do anything but turn away and take a defeated, desperate Brutus back to their apartment.
Calpurnia sends Cashmere home for a few months before the 72nd Games, "to build up anticipation" for her summer events. She trusts Calpurnia, the woman has done nothing but help her career, but it's frustrating, to have one foot in the Capitol only to be reminded that it isn't really her home, to be sent back to District 1 when she isn't needed.
She sees her mother for the first time in what seems like years, again at Cashmere's house in the Victor's Village, though her mother lives up near the factory where she works managing orders for a crystal chandelier company. "You look nice, I like your hair," she says, "But you reek of tobacco, like a lumberjack."
Her mother looks old, wrinkled now, and gray tainting her blonde hair. She'll never live in a home with the crystal chandeliers she's spent her life sending to the Capitol, but Cashmere has seen them, dozens of times, at parties and other events. "Leave me alone," she says. She's 24 now, old enough to decide to smoke in her own house if she wants, she won't be bossed around by this woman. "I sell these cigarettes," she says.
Her mother makes a 'harumph' sort of noise that Cashmere remembers her sending at both of the twins when they were young. "Gloss tells me you're all over the place in the Capitol, good for you. They taking care of you for all that work you're doing for them?"
Cashmere is turned away, but she can hear her mother pouring another glass of wine. "Better than you did."
She knows the second she says it that this is unfair. That she and Gloss were taken away from her mother and sent to the academy, only returned for a few weeks a year. After the Games, she always came to visit them, but Cashmere was too messed up from the Games, from the Capitol to talk to this woman she barely knew. But she's angry. Angry at someone, and she doesn't know who. Her mother will do.
Cashmere hears the glass lowered to the table, and her mother's footsteps approaching her. "Cashmere, I just want to see if you're alright. I don't know what I should have done differently," she says, her voice thick. "I don't know what you need or want from me."
"I don't want anything from you!" Cashmere says, turning around. "I don't want anything from this place!"
Biting her lip, her mother nods. For a moment, Cashmere sees it, how pretty she once was, how elegant, how composed. She collects her bag and leaves without another word.
Cashmere spends the rest of her time in District 1 staying fit. Calpurnia promised a host of new collaborations when she got back to the Capitol, so she can't lose her edge. She jogs in the morning and lifts weights in the afternoon, spurred on by thoughts of Enobaria suddenly interested in modeling, or Annie Cresta returning to the Capitol, each of them naturally beautiful without surgeries or aesthetician appointments, each of them usurping her as the "face of all Victors".
Her meals become stricter, and the runs get longer, and a little faster too. She passes all the old spots: the factory that makes the fancy handbags, the jewelry district, the shoe factory, and the leathergoods district. Things she can afford now, thanks to her earnings in the Capitol. She nearly trips when she sees Gloss and Augustus together in the woods, holding hands as they hike. So that's how it is.
She supposes she pushed Gloss away, she can't be upset when he doesn't share things with her, or when he seeks intimacy with the other Victor from 1 instead. But it's jarring, to see something so unexpected, something she should have been privy to.
She stumbles again on the way home, and she attributes it to the shock of seeing Gloss, but by the time the Games roll around, she can't complete her normal jog without stumbling, can't work the lighter for her cigarette without a few tries, and she's forced to admit there's something wrong.
She goes to a doctor on her first night in the Capitol, before the festivities of the 72nd Games officially begin, and they give her some sort of scan of her brain and spine. "Just as I suspected," the doctor says. He's old, and hunched, but he came highly recommended. Calpurnia is beside her, waiting for the news. "You said you were from 1, correct?"
She nods.
"This is a strange affliction that seems to affect men and women from Districts 1 and 2, specifically. It's seen most often in those who attended the training academies, which I'm sure you did, as a Victor. It presents as lesions on the brain and spinal cord, which can cause mood swings, loss of balance and coordination, and problems with vision. Some think it occurs as a result of the frequent and early injections that cadets receive at the training academies, and others think…"
Cashmere does not here the rest, only tuning back in when she hears Calpurnia speak. "Is there a cure?" she asks.
"A cure? Unfortunately not. There are some treatments available for the symptoms. For instance, we can preserve your eyesight, and there is an infusion to help with coordination and balance."
"Let me get those scheduled."
Cashmere sees her new schedule, filled with infusions, injections, and other treatments, and finds it hard to stomach. She doesn't want to admit her own weakness, doesn't want to share it even with Gloss or Enobaria, and so she grants Gloss the same grace, and doesn't mention his relationship with Augustus.
Cashmere is in the booth when Titus kills her Tribute, when Titus tries to fucking eat her Tribute, and Elin flees the scene with Johanna behind her. What a mess. She wants to vomit, but she's afraid she'll stumble if she stands, and she absolutely cannot allow anyone to know she's ill, so she swallows it down, collecting her things quietly, until she is sure she can stand steadily.
Gloss is waiting outside, his face showing the horror she knows is reflected in hers. "It's over," she says.
"Lets get a fucking drink," he suggests.
They take the elevator back to their apartment to return the things they kept at the Mentor booth - a sweater of Cashmere's, a notebook and pen, a half-finished bottle of wine- but it's eerily quiet inside. The escort has no reason to stick around after the tributes are dead, but it's only been minutes. The Avox are gone during the day, too, which is strange. Cashmere leaves the things on the dining table and peeks her head in her bedroom, but it looks normal.
Gloss does the same, but his gaze lingers a little longer. She comes up behind him and sees a rose waiting for him on his bed. "What did you do?" she hisses. She's only ever seen the roses on television, on a special on the President's famous gardens, but she knows them on sight - and on smell. The one on the bed has the same scent as the only time she met the President, just after her Games - sickeningly sweet.
They enter, looking for a note, but there is none. Finally, sighing, Gloss knocks on Augustus's door, then pushes it open when there's no response. "Fucking… fuck!" he shouts, sitting down on the ground in the hall outside the room, knees to his chest. "Don't go in there, Cash."
But she has to. She has to know. Whatever she is imagining, it's not Augustus on the bed, laying dead on his back, more blood that she can imagine trickling out from his mouth. There's a note in there, and she runs in and grabs it before running out, slamming the door behind her. She does stumble now, and scrambles for the paper on the ground. Gloss covers her hand with his own. "I didn't know!" he says.
"Know what?"
"Nothing! I didn't know anything!" Gloss is beside himself, and she can't tell if it's the grief of losing his lover or the panic of the threat from Snow. His grip is vice-like on her hand, his face deathly pale, and he seems unable to form words.
"Gloss, what did he-"
But Gloss's grip slackens, and he is just shaking his head back and forth in disbelief. She unfolds the note, reading it quietly aloud.
"Let this be a warning to anyone else in District 1, or among the Victors who thinks it wise to attempt to kill me. This is a fool's task, as the seat of the President is stronger than you can imagine, the hand of justice swifter than you can predict, and the eyes of the Capitol see to even the farthest reaches of Panem, and its ears hear even the quietest whispered secrets."
"Auggie, what did you do?" Gloss murmurs, his face in his hands.
Cashmere calls Calpurnia about the body. Gloss gives her a warning look, like perhaps they ought not to involve anyone else, but she is not about to leave a corpse in her apartment, and she has an agent, so she may as well use her.
"Callie, I need help," she says. "Can you come by our apartment at the Training Center, right now?"
When Calpurnia arrives, luckily, she takes over quickly. She looks perturbed by the body, but not as shocked as Cashmere might have expected. "Has Oracle seen this?" she asks.
Cashmere shakes her head. "Ok. Gloss, you go find her, keep her busy. I don't care if it's making a fuss about the meals, or your outfits for the closing ceremony, just keep her out of here for at least two hours."
Gloss looks like he might vomit, but gradually he stands, and does as he is told. Oracle is easy to manage, Cashmere knows from experience. She is often distracted by the most trivial things, so it is not a difficult task, exactly, but Gloss seems like he might rather lie in bed for the next 6 weeks or so.
Calpurnia is walking as she talks, scanning the room. She draws the shades. "Cash, go down to Illyria, I want you to be seen by a lot of people. Don't come back til it's dark. We'll reschedule your afternoon appointments."
She, too, does as she is told. As always, it is nice to be told what to do. She is certain that when she returns, the body will be gone, the blood will be gone, the roses and their sickly sweet smell will be gone, and she will never have to know how it happened or where they they went.
She sips a drink at the Illyria bar, and though she doesn't usually drink alcohol, it helps calm her down, from the body she has just seen, and then, distantly, through the chatter of the other patrons, from the other thing, that had faded in her memory: the 6 boy, the cannibal, eating her poor tribute.
Blood from his mouth. Blood into his mouth. Distantly, almost like a dream, she has a vague memory of Snow talking to her after her Victory. Until tonight, she had half thought it a fever-dream, but now she can feel it, as if it is happening now, his thumb pressing into her wound, his influence always felt, his gentle, blood-red smile the whole time.
On the television in Illyria, she watches as an avalanche comes down, crushing Titus. "Fucking Gamemakers," Chaff curses. Then he notices she's two seats down and looks abashed. He moves over so he's at the next seat, so they can speak more quietly. "I'm sorry," he says. "I think he should be killed, after that… mess with your tribute. I just mean… If the Gamemakers can do things like this when they want to… aren't the Hunger Games sort of a sham?"
She looks up at the screen, her mind hazy after Augustus, after the memory of Snow resurfacing. She rarely talks to Chaff, he's usually with Haymitch Abernathy, and she'd rather do a lot of things than deal with his stinky drunken presence, but Chaff himself she finds… tolerable. "Are you saying the avalanche was just… a trick? A switch?"
He looks at her strangely, then nods. His voice is quiet, but clear. "The avalanche, the dam, the way the walls closed in at a certain time in the labyrinth arena? The Gamemakers set everything up ahead of time, but they definitely have some kill-switches they can pull, too."
She truly can't comprehend what he's saying. It's not rebel-speak, exactly, it's just… to antithetical to what she's grown up with, to the code of honor they recited every morning in the academy. "You're saying… the best tribute might not be the winner…"
He smiles in a 'now you've got it' way. "Not if it's not what's best for Panem."
She sucks on her teeth, unsure of what to make of this. "I need a cigarette."
She stands outside, smoking, the lines of the code of honor floating wisp-like in her mind. I vow to represent my district with honor. I vow to train with courage, integrity, and valor, to one day be a symbol of my district. I vow to unite Panem ever closer with my performance in the Games.
She pauses, cigarette forgotten, as she picks up a tabloid someone left on a bench. There's a picture of herself, smiling and laughing as she exits some art gallery opening party, and another of Finnick Odair seen with an education secretary at a Capitol ball. But neither of them catch her attention. The picture that does is the Head Gamemaker, Seneca Crane, seen exiting a club with Johanna Mason, his arm around her shoulders, her gaze upward as she seems to be telling him something, whispering in his ear.
Cashmere stays in the Capitol between the 72nd and 73rd Games, for work and for the frequent appointments Calpurnia has scheduled for her medical procedures. The treatments work, and she almost forgets about the symptoms, until she has to delay one of the infusions due to a location shoot on the outskirts of the Capitol for a few days, and she is tripping over nothing by the time they get back to the city proper.
She spends time with Brutus, one of the only Victors around in the offseason. Sometimes they sleep together, but often they watch old television in the screening room where Brutus can review his show's takes. The screening room is in a library of sorts, and there's all sorts of tapes to be played, Capitol television programs and other things - older things - locked away, but there's some that they can get their hands on just by sucking up to the attendant, old films with cowboys or about bank robberies, films about lovers in foreign lands, or about car chases. They watch them, enraptured, amazed that there were people around, before the Dark Days, to create such things.
"I don't understand why they're locked away," Cashmere says.
They're back at Brutus's apartment, and he's sipping a glass of whiskey, and she's got her usual cigarette, though she knows he doesn't approve. She stands by the open window, looking out at another glowing night in the Capitol from his high-rise apartment.
"It's because they were happy," he says. "They had money, freedom, you name it. It's not good to remind people that there was ever a time better than right now."
"It's all pretend, though, isn't it?" she asks. "Just like your show. I mean they had money and success in the film, but in real life…"
Brutus shrugs. "Who can say? But it makes you wonder." He finishes his drink, leaning back in his chair. His hair is buzzed, and he looks every bit the strict 2 Victor that he is, but somehow, right now, he looks like he is coming undone, just a bit. "You know, in 2, it's illegal to display public art?"
"What?"
He nods. "You name it. Paintings, movies, music, it all has to be done in private, and it has to be approved by the Capitol. Our only "art" is in our masonry, and even that is being taken away, as they try to get more and more of our District into the Nut instead."
Cashmere tries to remember if there is any art on display in District 1, but it's been so long since she's been back, and when she was, she wasn't really paying attention. "Why?"
"They think it will give people 'ideas'. I almost lost my mind on Enobaria's Victory Tour, when I saw that massive mural in 11. I thought the Peacekeepers would have found who was responsible. That's when I learned it's only the law in 2…"
Cashmere knows the mural. It was on the wall that surrounded the District. Brown fists clenched and pointed skyward. "Is that why you make your show?"
Brutus laughs, a little self-derisively, then stands to join Cashmere by the window. "No," he says firmly. "My television show is not art. It's just a job. But it's proof I was here, proof of our era."
She isn't sure exactly what he means, but she likes the phrase 'proof I was here'. Her face plastered all over the Capitol is exactly that. In a sea of ever-changing, ever-dazzling fantasy, her photos were permanent, her beauty eternal.
Cashmere almost does a double take when she sees Johanna, fresh off the train from 7, arriving for the 73rd Games. She looks like a brunette version of Elin - her cheeks sunken, her skin a little sallow, she has the drooping, slowed-down look of someone on morphling.
It's easy to hate her, easy to wrap up a lot of her frustrations into Johanna: her continuing with her thinly-disguised rebel activities while the rebel her brother grew fond of was murdered; her influence over the Gamemaker, while Cashmere felt powerless, despite her obvious superiority to Johanna Mason; and an odd, misplaced frustration. Elin had broke Brutus's heart, Cashmere had heard so time and again, and here was this woman who looked so similar, colluding with Haymitch.
So she takes the opportunity to shove Johanna into a room out of sight, to get a couple good hits in. Johanna is dazed, the morphling obviously dulling her reflexes, and it feels good - to hurt someone. She's tamed now, out of the arena, and she can't do as she pleases, but every once in a while she needs to let off some steam. "Bitch," Johanna curses at her, but she can't even keep her eyes in focus.
She wouldn't tell Snow, wouldn't risk the chance that Snow would see the opportunity - using her as an informant, she doesn't want his eyes on her any more than they already are - but Johanna doesn't need to know that. It's enough if Johanna does as she hopes: send Seneca Crane her way soon enough.
It's exhausting, to entertain the clients, do her work as a model, go to the appointments for treatments for the 'Victor's Palsy', take her shifts in the Mentor booth, and make sure everyone knows only what they should. Her tributes cannot catch on to the seedy undertones of attaining sponsorships: she needs nothing weighing on them mentally before they enter the arena. Anyone in the Capitol cannot catch onto her infirmity, she needs them all to see her at her shining best. Any sign that she is lacking, that she is less than she was might be a it: her decline.
She finds of everything, she's failing as a Mentor. When the first tribute dies from 1, she realizes that she never sent "send" on a gift, one that may or may not have saved the boy, but they'd never have the opportunity to find out, because she had been almost on autopilot.
Enobaria, on the other hand, is locked in, both of her tributes doing well, her gifts well-timed and appropriate. Cashmere steps out of the booth to let Gloss take over, silently hoping her remaining tribute will make an alliance with 2, not that she's done anything to set this up ahead of time. But when she makes it back to the apartment, a surge of nausea overtakes her. She hasn't been drinking, of course, as she was just doing a night shift in the Mentor booth, but she can't do anything but run to the bathroom and vomit.
Sitting there, leaning against the wall, she wonders if she's messed up. If she's done something to irritate Snow, if she's been poisoned, if soon pints of blood will be leaking from her mouth. But she has nothing to lose, so she tells Calpurnia when she picks Cashmere up for her afternoon appointments, and Calpurnia quickly reschedules the work, changing some sort of magazine interview to another trip to the doctor, the main one, the original man.
"This is a rare condition," he says, his posture even more stooped, his glasses askew. "As a result we don't know all the effects of the treatments, especially not how they interact with other… biologics."
"I don't understand," Cashmere says. It's true. As usual, everyone is speaking in riddles.
"It appears one of the treatments is rendering your contraceptive injection… ineffective."
"Are you saying she's pregnant?" Calpurnia asks, and for once, her hands aren't moving to fix the problem.
The doctor nods.
When they leave the clinic, when they're safely back in Calpurnia's car, she speaks quietly, more serious than Cashmere has heard her in some time. "Do you know who's it is?" she asks.
"No," Cashmere says. It's a half-truth, she had been with several men since the Games started in order to fulfill her obligations, to get sponsor money, so 'do as she was told'. But secretly, she knew she had been feeling off for longer, and there was only one person before the Games started. One person that she was never, ever going to tell.
Calpurnia sighs. "I cannot help you. I…" Cashmere can see her hand shaking on the wheel. "My divorce is complicated, it's still going on, even now. My husband is looking for anything he can find to come after me. If I purchase the drug you need, or if I get someone to do it, he'll find out, I know he will, and he'll tell the court I was both unfaithful and illegally ending a pregnancy."
Cashmere nods. Calpurnia got rid of a body for her and Gloss. She cannot ask for more. "I can figure it out," she assures her.
When she gets back to the apartment, she is losing her mind, however. She feels like she can feel the baby inside of her, her own dark secret. She can't tell Enobaria - how could she tell Enobaria that she was pregnant with Brutus's child? And that she needed to get rid of it? And that it had only happened because of the other thing… the illness? The whole pile of secrets just felt uncrossable.
She knows Cecilia has children, doesn't know whose. Chrome fathered a baby as well. But Victors with children were few and far-between. It was unthinkable, really, to want a child, after the Games, knowing what could happen to them. And it was unthinkable to want to be a parent, as messed up as they all were.
Gloss arrives home soon after she does, and pours his usual glass of wine. It's late, the tributes are asleep, but she ought to get back to the Mentor's booth soon while he goes out to see the sponsors. It really never ends. Instead, she catches his eye.
"Pour me a glass, would you?"
He complies, bringing her a glass of wine, and sits in the living room with her. The Avox are gone, it's just them, and she feels like a dam about to burst, like the baby inside of her is pushing out her secrets- she is unable to contain all of them, so they're being forced out. "I need to tell you something," she says.
But she tells him everything - the weakness, the infusions, the sex, the pregnancy, and how Calpurnia was no help. He sits and listens, wide-eyed and serious, and she sees herself in his face, a mirror-image, before remembering that she doesn't look like that anymore.
"I still think Enobaria is a good bet," he says, after. "She's never let us down."
Cashmere shakes her head. "No. No."
Gloss sighs. "Fine. But you can't just go get it yourself, it'll be all over the tabloids."
The tabloids. It hits her like a moment of inspiration, and she runs into her room to grab the copy she wants, the one she snatched from a bench outside the club ages ago. She shows the picture to Gloss whose eyes widen in disbelief. "You can't be serious," he scoffs.
"I already told her she owes me," she says.
In the night, Cashmere's second tribute is killed by Enobaria's. Cashmere is watching from the club with Enobaria beside her, both Gloss and Brutus manning the booths. Cashmere bites her lip, unsure what to say to Enobaria. She can't leave - she told Johanna she'd stay til close - but she doesn't want to stay, either.
"Are you alright?" Enobaria asks. She keeps looking between Cashmere and her own tribute on the screen, as he now is gathering his things, and the things he's taken from Cashmere's girl, and is getting ready to move.
Cashmere nods. "Just tired." She wonders when she became so distant from Enobaria, when she stopped being able to tell her things. She wants Enobaria to kiss her neck, to tell her she's beautiful, but she can't bring Enobaria back to the apartment because Johanna Mason might show up.
Still, the thought of someone else, another woman, in bed with Enobaria makes her burn with jealousy. "I'm so tired," she repeats, realizing it's true. She's been working non-stop for years, and she has money to spare, now - with her royalties, her regular paychecks, and her Victor's pension, but no time to spend it.
She supposes some of it was going to the expensive medical treatments, and to the apartment she bought to live in the Capitol when the Games aren't going on, but otherwise, she only spends money on clothes and cigarettes. She thinks of the others: Enobaria, Finnick, Haymitch, who just go home and relax for eleven months while the Games aren't going on. There were a few, like Brutus and his television show and Gloss who worked at the academy who also had jobs, but they were the exception, not the rule.
"You should tell your agent you want a break," Enobaria says. "I'm sure you've earned time off." Her tribute seems to have found a safe place to sleep, away from the scene of the murder, in some sort of grotto.
It's true, she could. But did she want to? The fear of obsolescence was ever-present. The concern that if she took a break, the demand would be gone when she returned. "True."
"Besides," Enobaria adds. "Don't you miss going home?"
Cashmere wonders if she does, and then is frustrated when she still pictures District 1 when she imagines 'home'.
When she returns that night, Gloss is back, both of them trying to sleep in the pre-dawn hours, now that their tributes are dead. But they sit awake, awaiting Johanna, and the knock doesn't come until the Avox are there. Cashmere wants to send them away, but she is on edge, paranoid, and wonders if that would be too suspicious.
Luckily, Johanna tells her she's brought her tobacco, and she does - packing the crappiest tobacco Cashmere has ever tried into the bag, along with a periwinkle blue capsule. She takes it immediately, before she has time to second-guess herself. She spends the rest of the Games with cramps and bleeding, trapped in the 1 apartment in the Training Center. She likes it in the living room: the wall of windows looking down at the central boulevard is a nice view.
When it gets dark, the view changes from Capitolites walking on the streets below to her own reflection in the glass, no makeup, hair unwashed, eyes tired. She spends hours staring at herself, trying to decide if she's still herself, or someone else, if she's transcended and if so, to where. She wonders if there's been anyone in the world who's as simultaneously selfish and insecure as she is, but when she sun comes up again, she's gazing down at the answer dozens of times over.