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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.