Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━
JUPITER had been close to nineteen when she realised she was doomed. She still remembered the event that had cemented it in her that she would never escape what she had done and the cloud that hung over her. She had been a Victor for almost three years, and nothing had changed. No amount of glory or gold could make her glad she had won, and no amount of that would make her feel closer to her father.
Her name compared to his in the news, her portrait hung on the same wall of the Academy as his, seeing the name Marrow in the Victor's Village again after three years. But Jupiter would never be Saturnus Marrow, and she was more aware of that everyday. She saw him in the one person she wished she didn't– Mars.
Her brother had still not moved out, and Jupiter dared not ask him to. He came and went when he pleased, and he owned any room he stepped into. Jupiter had long learnt to keep her head down, as her brother said, 'she never had to win again.' It was a thinly-veiled threat that she was not in charge anymore.
"Why're you looking at me like that?" she had asked that day as she packed her things for the train.
"Look how excited you are," he had cooed. Jupiter narrowed her eyes but stayed quiet. "This won't last forever, you know?" Don't bite, don't bite, she repeated to herself. Mars moved towards her, and she winced out of reflex. "I'm talking to you," he snapped.
Jupiter swallowed thickly. "I know."
"Then look at me when I talk to you," Mars jeered.
Jupiter looked up at him, not hiding the frown on her face or the way her eyebrows pinched. The expression only seemed to make her brother look more smug, all sharp edges and red eyes in her own bedroom. Someone she felt like the house had its own spirit, turned dark and cold by everything around them– it had never been home.
"You're the Capitol's bitch until you're not interesting," Mars had told her, looking her straight in the eye. "Just remember that."
He had said it to taunt her because he was jealous of her apparent success, that she was whisked away often and taken to the Capitol to be gawked at and celebrated simply for existing. Of course it was so much more complicated than that, but she was past begging her brother to shed a single tear over her.
But it was her father. In that moment he had looked like him, telling her her fate in twisted tongues and with angry eyes. She had cried before the train ride once she had left the house, and her stylist, Lux, who was still new, had no idea how to deal with her.
Jupiter, as always, had pulled herself together and made nice, she had let herself be pampered and prodded until she was enough for the Capitol, before being sent into the party like a lamb for slaughter.
Mars' words did not leave her. For so long she had been content in her miserable but predictable routine, but now she wasn't so sure. As she accepted drinks and mingled, all she could do was manage her widest smile and bat her eyelashes. She didn't want to be stuck in that house– she didn't want her brother to win.
