Sheer dread fills me the next day, it's the day of the interviews. This is the most important part of the games, where we convince the sponsors we're worth their money. So much anxiety is going through my head that I barely notice Finnick creeping up behind me. "I caught you," I sing to the boy who lets out a groan at my words. I see his green eyes sink as he flops onto the bed beside me.
"I'm still winning," He responds defensively, referring to the number of times that he's scared me off my feet by sneaking up behind me. It's almost embarrassing that it's happened enough times to have become a game to him. I flopped down beside him and let him wrap his arms around my waist, "What's going through your head, Rory?" He asks me as I feel the warm light from the rising sun creep onto my skin.
"The interviews, how do I get people to like me?" I complain.
Finnick shuffled up to sit upright, I sit across from him cross-legged, "Are you kidding me? Everyone's going to love you, you've got me as leverage," He exclaims, I giggle as Sylvia brings in two trays, claiming that she thought we might like to spend breakfast by ourselves, we both thank her as she leaves the room. Finick dives into eating some kind of flaky pastry and I begin to nibble on a sweet piece of pineapple.
My face sinks when I go back to my conversation with President Snow yesterday, "Yeah, about that," I sigh, "President Snow has asked me to refrain from pretending to be in love with you," I explain, biting on another piece of fruit. Finnick's pastry drops from his mouth as his face visibly pales, I would be concerned at the expression but the way that his mouth is stuffed full of food reminds me of a chipmunk and I begin to laugh, he laughs alongside me, even though it's clear he has no idea why I'm laughing. We regain composure a little while later and I bring back the conversation we were just having, "So I guess I'll have to make myself more likeable, huh," I sigh.
Finnick shakes his head, "You're plenty likeable, I've liked you since the day I met you,"
I blush at his comment, I know I shouldn't, he didn't mean it like that "And you proved that by hitting a guy over the head for me?" I raised my eyebrow.
Finnick shrugged shamelessly, "He deserved it,"
He's right, while we were seven at the time, I don't think either of us regrets the several detentions that both of us got when Finnick hit that kid over the head. It was our first day of training, none of us had ever touched a weapon before, I went for the trident because to a seven-year-old it looked like a really big fork. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, I just assumed it was for a really big bowl of spaghetti or something.
I took one of the weapons of the rack when another boy walked up to me and started making fun of my dress. He said that pretty girls weren't allowed to fight with tridents because they were too weak. He kept making fun of me to the point where I felt like crying when a clang of metal sounded, there stood seven-year-old Finnick holding a trident, the other kid crying on the floor. "Don't listen to him, pretty girls can use tridents if they want to," He said to me as a teacher ordered both of us to the detention room, we linked arms and pranced off into the classroom. We've both been fighting with tridents ever since, inseparable in both detention and combat.
And now, I was about to be separated from him for good, I'd had this fear before Finnick won his games. I was overjoyed when he came back to me and here, he is, about to lose me. The only thing holding me back is him but then I think of Thorn, who I owe so much to for protecting my brother. It has to be me to go, so I decide to spend the rest of my days of freedom with Finnick, every waking and sleeping second of it.
Finnick was ok with that, whenever I went anywhere, he was the first to escort me, we had trained with tridents, learned about plants, painted each other (Finnick wasn't the best but he still gave it a go) and even danced. I loved to dance, we'd both learned together for school when a strange lady from the Capitol wearing a swan feather dress taught us. We both like the District Four dances better, the ones that we have traditionally done in the shallows of the water, waves splashing around our ankles.
It had only just dawned on me that I would never dance with him again, that the feeling of spinning in the water of District Four would only be a distant memory to me now. Everything about District Four, my family, the Cove, Mrs Driscoll's florist, it was all a faraway dream compared to the incoming nightmare I would be induced into.
After breakfast, Gaia leads me to down to the prep rooms where I am to be styled. Venus and Titan talk flat out about my training score and Blaze silently paint a coat of pearly white to my nails. More pearls are placed in my hair which is left half out, the top part braided into a bun. Venus curls the loose strands of my hair as Titan paints a blue-grey colour onto my eyelids with the same winged eyeliner and the same two pearls under my eyes. My lips are again painted with a nude colour as Blaze wraps a silk bathrobe around my body.
I'm left alone in a room with Gaia after the rest of the prep team leaves, she offers me a small meal of strange colourful biscuits called macaroons and begins to ask me a question about my interview. "How has Sylvia asked you to present yourself?" She asks me as I take a bite of another macaroon, inside my head I apologise to her, I know I've gotten crumbs all over my lips.
"Panem's Sweetheart," I mock in a Capitol accent, I know Sylvia's only trying to help but I hate that I'm pretending to be this innocent bubbly little girl.
"I'm guessing you don't like that," Gaia chuckled at the way I had said it.
"It doesn't even make sense anymore, the biggest part of the play was to be 'Finnick's girl', but Snow shut that down before I could say 'Mockingjay'," I sigh, suddenly feeling full. Gaia looks livid at this point, but there's an underlying sadness in her eyes that makes me wonder if she knows something that I don't.
She doesn't say anything further on the topic, instead, she stands up and helps me to my feet, passing me another macaroon for the road, "Come on," She says, "Let's get you into the dress," Again I find myself closing my eyes and being led by the hand towards another room, feeling the silk bathrobe slip off my shoulders and onto the floor. The dress slips over my head and I slip my arms into the short sleeves. I haven't opened my eyes yet; the dress feels wider in comparison to my silk parade number. Gaia tells me to open my eyes and when I do, I'm not disappointed.
The dress is a grey-blue number, the colour of the ocean after a storm has passed, it comes down in a deep V-neck style and cutting deep into my back. A spray of pearls a blue gem fills the bodice of the dress in an intricate pattern of strands of pearls following from the waistband down into the skirt. While the skirt isn't a complete princess ball gown style, it's not far off. Layers upon layers of blue-grey tulle pile on top of each other to make an extravagant dress. I look like something that has just stepped out of the stormy ocean.
"Let's not forget your accessories," Venus sings, placing Finnick's pearl necklace around my neck along with a collection of rings and on top of my perfect hair, Titan sits a silver tiara, laced with smaller pearls.
"You look wonderful," Gaia compliments, she's not allowed to accompany me to the stage, leaving that position to be filled by Blaze. Truthfully, Blaze is my favourite of the three people that make up my prep team, he's very conservative for someone from the Capitol and it hasn't left my memory that he asked for consent before even looking at my naked body. He's very introverted, something I can appreciate as he allows me to be alone in my thoughts without it getting awkward.
We walk silently for a short while before he turns to me, "Are you nervous?" He asks, guiding me down the empty hallway, my throat is so dry that I can't even say anything, I nod for an answer and he gives me a small smile, "I-I got you this, I'll touch up your lipstick when we get there," He presents me with a pink macaroon and I can't help but smile gratefully. Eating the macaroon, I decide that Blaze has just been upgraded from my favourite prep-team member to one of my favourite people I have ever met.
We reach the backstage of the interview section where Sylvia, Mags, Finnick and Thorn stand waiting for us, I shove the rest of the biscuit into my mouth so that Sylvia can't scold me for having it. The Capitol woman lets out a loud gasp before bounding over to me and pulling me into a tight hug, "You look beautiful, darling!" She cries, stepping away from me to admire my dress, "Gaia's really done well for you," She adds as Blaze fixes my lipstick. Mags gives me a short hug with a warm smile, complimenting my dress fondly.
"You look like a dork," I tease Thorn who sticks his tongue out and gives me the middle finger in response. He's wearing a pair of grey pants with a white button-up shirt, half of the buttons undone, a shark tooth necklace around his neck, a grey blazer is over the top of his shirt, both the shirt and blazer being rolled up to a three-quarter length as an act of defiance from his stylist.
"You look incredible," Finnick twirls me under his arm, causing my dress to poof out as I spin, "They're going to love you," He promises, slipping a silver bracelet around my wrist, it's got a small shark tooth hanging from the chain.
"I'm getting littered with presents from you, why am I getting so spoiled?" I ask as he clutches my hand, I can see Thorn smirking out the corner of my eye.
"No reason," He shrugs, I know that there's definitely something, it's probably to do with the fact that he knows he's about to lose me.
Opal's interview is first, she flounces onto the stage in a flash of pink and white ruffles, she's managed to pull off a sort of untouchable charm, the entire Capitol loves her smiley attitude towards the games. Next is Clovis, who wins over the crowd with witty insults for most of the tributes, but it turns serious when he discusses what he plans to do in the arena, "I'm not going to have remorse for anyone in there, sympathy isn't something you can have in the Hunger Games, it makes you weak."
I'm ninety per cent sure he's talking to me when he says that, he and Finnick are the only people that know I'm planning to keep Thorn alive over myself, clearly, he's warning me of my own weaknesses. Sage moves to the stage next, that Capitol loves her fierce attitude from the moment she steps out in a fiery red dress, she's elusive, mysterious and everything a winner should be. The district two boy, Lark, has a sort of sarcastic charm about him that the Capitol loves, it reminds me of Thorn who stands beside me, tapping his feet anxiously. The girl from Three, Toni speaks so intelligently, her understanding and the amount of detail in her answers holds the audience's attention. Soon I find myself being led up to the stage as the boy from Three goes to the stage. I completely miss everything he says, as I play with a tulle layer of my dress soon, I hear them call out my name.
Pushing the butterflies down I move onto the stage, a happy smile on my face, I wave shyly at the crowd who cheer my name. Caesar kiss my hand and I smile bashfully as he compliments my dress, we sit down opposite each other on velvet red sofas, his hair matching the shade of pearl white that my nails are painted. "Now Aurora, let's talk about your strategy for the games, how are you going to win," Caesar asks, leaning forward in curiosity.
I flinch back at the eagerness in his voice and blurt out the first thing that comes to my head, "Wow, starting with the intense questions so quickly, aren't we supposed to start with something easier?" I joke, straightening my dress nervously. The Capitol bursts into laughter at the comment and Caesar lets out his infamous terrifying laugh.
"What would you rather me ask then?" He narrows his eyebrows in amusement, he seems so genuinely friendly which I wasn't prepared for.
I chuckle and respond with a shrug of my shoulders, "I don't know, if I was a fruit what would I be or something like that?" I bite my lip as the crowd continues to giggle.
"Alright then, Aurora, if you were a fruit, what would you be?" Caesar leans forward.
I tap my chin for a second before responding, "Probably a pineapple, sweet but a little sour at times,"
Caesar grins at my response, "Well I don't know about you folks but pineapple just became my favourite fruit!" The crowd cheers, clapping and screaming at Caesar's comment, I try not to scoff, they'll get over me soon, I'll probably be dead tomorrow, "Now let's get back on the serious train, Finnick Odair, seemed to know you quite well at the reaping, let's hear about that," The crowd falls deathly silent as they await my answer.
I shake my head with a smile, feeling President Snow's snakelike glare burning into my neck, "Good news for all you ladies out there, he's still on the market," The crowd seemed to grow even more excited at my comment as I felt my heart slowly sink to my stomach.
"Now let's talk about the young boy that got reaped from your district, Andante, that was your brother, correct?" Caser asks me, the crowd goes solemn as if they're mourning my families' hardships. The words they don't care ring through my head as I find the right words to say.
"Yes, he's my brother," I barely utter, my heart shattered.
"What were you thinking when Thorn volunteered in his place?" He asked, I don't want to say anything. This feels too personal; I can't be telling the whole world my thoughts and feelings; I wish we'd just go back to fruit.
"I feel like it's a bit of a lose-lose scenario, I was going to have to go in there and die for my family and now I have to go in there and die for someone who's become like family to me," I confess, and I've done it. The entire crowd seems to be sobbing at this statement, this pure act of selflessness, the truth. "For what he did for my brother, for what he's done for my family, Thorn deserves to live," I add, the buzzer goes off at this moment and I stand up.
Even Caesar looks somewhat crushed at my statement, he takes my hand and holds it above my head as the crowd applauded in a bittersweet way, "We wish you all the best Aurora Hartley, may the odds be ever in your favour,"
The rest of the interviews run by in a numb sort of a blur, I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying, I couldn't watch Thorn's interview through the blurred line of tears forming in my eyes. The only feeling I felt was the small arms of Elsie wrap around my waist as it slowly came to her turn on stage. After Beck's interview, I could hear the crowd applauding loudly but I couldn't move, I didn't move until Finnick ran downstairs and placed his hand on the small of my back, leading me slowly out of the interview room and back into the tower.
Mags pulled the pearls from my hair and removed the makeup from my face, gently putting me in a pair of pyjamas. "It's going to be ok," She whispered, stroking my face gently. I shake my head slowly, feeling a tear sliding down my face, Mags pulled me into a strong hug, stroking my hair as tears leaked from my eyes. I didn't want to sleep, the longer I slept the quicker I would go into the arena. The older woman left the room as Finnick entered, putting my hands in his.
"Can I stay with you tonight?" He whispers in such a vulnerable voice that I almost believed I imagined it. I'm too weak to say anything, I merely nod my head in response.
I never could say no to him.
ONE MORE CHAPTER FOR PART 1 BABYYY GET READY FOR FINNICK DEPRAVITY!!