You were currently trying to fall asleep on the bed provided on the train, not cause you were tired, actually, you were far from tired. You just needed to forget, no, run away from today's events, from the harsh reality, even if it was for a few hours, hell, you'd be glad with a few minutes.
The hope you had for winning was gone the moment you saw the tributes from Three. How the hell were you supposed to make a bunch of strong 16-17 year olds, that you and Finnick were strong? They'd probably laugh the moment they see you.
Screw this, if you can't fall asleep, you might as well try to look for weaknesses in the other tributes. You got up and looked through the drawers on the bedside table before grabbing the notepad and pen, and then walking out.
The hallway was deathly silent, well of course it was, everyone was asleep. Finnick's door was slightly open, but you thought nothing of it, he probably forgot to close it or something.
It took a while to get to the other cart, not because it was far or anything, more of you trying to keep your footsteps quiet, and miserably failing at times, but no one really woke up. You grabbed the remote off the ground before sitting on the ground, the couch was empty but sitting on the light beige velvet carpet was a lot more comfortable for you.
It didn't take you long to realize that the Capitol had a different type of TV and remote, and you struggled to turn the thing on. After what felt like an hour, was probably five minutes, you had figured out how it worked. You skipped over the first three, cringed at how awkward you looked before moving onto the District Five. You began writing, and pausing once or twice, you write down on anything you found to be a potential weakness, and that's when you realized that you are terrible at analyzing people.
You were staring at the female tribute, trying to look for anything.
"So are you just going to keep on staring at her?" A voice said behind you, causing you to jump a little, and drop the notepad and pen.
"You seriously need to stop doing that." You turned around, looked up at him, and then hit in knee.
"And you seriously need to stop hitting me." He shot back.
"What are you even doing here?" You said, while he sat down next to you.
"Well you woke me up, you can't sneak around even if you life depended on it" He said, while inching closer, to get a closer look at your notes.
"I'll hit you again." He completely ignored you and grabbed the pen and notepad.
"Is this all you wrote?" He said looking over the three sentences you wrote, "Your handwriting is terrible." Well he wasn't wrong, you never really needed to write much and when you did, only a few people knew how to read it, not including the teachers, the only reason you were still passing was because your verbal answers were a lot better
Ignoring the handwriting comment, "You can't expect me to get a lot of information based on that video?"
"Of course you can, she's basically an open book." He took the remote off the ground, "Here look," he played the video again, "See how she keeps her eyes down, and crosses her arms?" You nod, "she's not confident about this."
Oh. That definitely makes sense. Out of the corner of the eye, you see him turning to look at you, "Why don't you try with the male tribute?"
"Uh," You look at the male tribute, he definitely seems confident, his back was straight, he was looking up, but then you saw it, "He's scared," You said, taking the remote from him and pausing the video, "His brows are furrowed, his eyes are shifting, and he's looking around a lot."
"Was that right?" you looked at him.
"Yeah! I don't really pay attention to their faces, but the fact you did was impressive."
You guys spent an hour looking at the different tributes, with you looking at their facial features, while Finnick looks at their body language.
"And District 12 has no chance of winning," Finnick says while finishing the last sentence. "We might actually have a chance at winning," he says proudly, before a comfortable silence fell over the both of you.
"Did you know I'm spending my fifth birthday at the captiol?" You said, breaking the silence. Finnick laughed, before his eyebrows scrunched up in confusion, "Wait you're older than me?"
"Yeah, I'm literally in the grade above you."
"I thought it was because you're smart." You smiled at that, smart was never the word someone used to describe you, you weren't dumb, but you weren't smart either, you were average at best. Finnick noticed at, he was about to say something, but was interrupted by the flashing lights and cheers that surrounded the train.
You were in the Capitol now. You quickly moved to the window, put on your best excited face before waving to the colorful people around, Finnick quickly realized what you were trying to do and joined you.
Librae, and Mags woke up from the cheers, and guided you to the exit. You and Finnick continued to look excited and waved, to make a good impression. Exhaustion finally hit you the moment you got to the car, and you spent the whole ride trying not to fall asleep incase there was another crowd nearby.
It was around 11:30 when you guys got to the tribute center, Librae and Lesliuan signed you all in, while Mags took the both of you to the apartment. You couldn't even get a word in before Mags sent both of you to bed, not that you blame her, it was incredibly late.
Despite how exhausted you were, it took you a while to fall asleep. You didn't think about how busy tomorrow will be, or training, not even the game itself, you thought about your family. Your sister is probably sleeping in your parents room, its better than sleeping next to an empty bed.
Your heart hurts at the thought of her waking up one night, and looking over and seeing you and everything in your side of the room gone. She'll move on one day.
Your mom probably cried herself to sleep, woke up once or twice, and cried herself to sleep again. She's going to stay in bed for the entire day. That was exactly what had happened last year, when her parents had died.
Your not sure what your dad could be doing, he is probably not sleeping, but thats all your sure of. He's always been hard to read, the only time you know what he's feeling is when he's happy, on those days he's always smiling. Maybe he's shedding a few tears, or has just gone completely emotionless, you weren't sure.
You miss them, you miss your home, and thats when you started to cry, you just wanted to go home. You covered your mouth to hold back the sobs, you were shaking slightly and before you knew it, you were asleep.
---
The sunlight woke you up, the alarm on the bedside table read 6:12 am, you weren't told what time you had to wake up but you assumed your early since no one had come to wake you up.
You walk into your bathroom, and remove the dress you were wearing since yesterday, to your surprise, the dress hit the floor with a small thud. You quickly pick it up and go through the pockets to see what it was, and finally, you found a ring in the pocket on your skirt.
You looked at the ring, and immediately recognized it as your father's work. The ring was silver, the thickness of it allowed there to be a design in the middle, a wave, which forms into an anchor in the middle, and much to your surprise, the wave and anchor were made with real gold.
Tears clouded your vision when you realized how much detail he put into the ring, you quickly blinked them away. The ring was big, which means it was meant for your thumb. You put it on your left hand and admired the way it looked on your hand before taking it off and going into the shower.
It takes a moment to understand the different setting in the shower, before turning it to warm. The warm water felt nice on your skin, you move over to the different scented soaps, and pick out the less strange one, floral. You scrub your body clean, but skipping the hair, the styling team is already going to do it.
You slip out of the shower, wrap a towel around your body before getting a simple outfit in the drawer, a white T-shirt with blue sleeves and collar, zip up shorts, and white socks. You quickly dried yourself with the towel, so that the clothes won't stick to your body and put the outfit on.
You put the ring in your pocket, afraid to get it dirty while eating, before heading out to the dining room. You take the seat closest to you, with no one sitting next to you.
The Avoxes serve you food immediately, a few slices of toast, eggs, and some fruits on the side. You expected the eggs and fruit to taste the same as they did back home, but even they were different. The fruits were a lot sweeter, and fuller? You weren't sure if it made sense and the eggs were a lot richer, you weren't sure how to describe it but it was of higher quality.
You knew the bread would be richer, and it was, but you hadn't expected it to be spicy. It wasn't too spicy, nor did it make the bread taste bad, it actually tasted pleasant.
"Here, put this one your toast, It'll taste good." Librae said as she was passing you some cream cheese.
You actually never had cream cheese, they sold it at a ridiculously high price at the stores. So why not try it? You spread some on the toast, and took a small bite, and Librae was right, it tasted amazing.
"Your right, it tastes great," you said before taking another bite. She didn't say anything, only smiled in response.
Finnick finally arrives, and takes the seat next to you. You were surprised at how energized he looked. When the avox tried to serve him, he just apologized before telling them he wasn't hungry.
"Are you not hungry?"
"I ate too much yesterday," he says sheepishly, which makes you laugh a little.
Mags and Lesliuan enter a few minutes later. Mags takes a seat next to Librae, while Lesliuan takes a seat at the 'head' of the table.
"The styling process might be a bit painful, and annoying," Mags starts, and you see Librae shudder at the thought, "but don't resist or complain."
"It can't be that bad," Finnick says, and Librae cackles at that, "Nope, it's worse than Mags made it out to be." Mags responds by glaring at her.
After Librae finished eating, Lesliuan takes you to the styling center, where the prep team splits you and Finnick up and takes you to a different part of the building.
The most colorful of the three is Imersel, she was covered in hot pink, from her curly hair to her cowboy boots. She, just like Mags, explains that the process will be painful before waxing your underarms.
It was definitely more painful than you had imagined. You had to hold onto the edges of the metal table and bite the inside of your cheek, it wasn't enough to make tears appear but it still stung. She went down from your arms to your legs.
They scrub your body clean, getting every speck of dirt off your skin, dirt that you didn't even know you had. You weren't sure how to explain it but your skin felt, uncomfortable?
The boy, Tesrej, with purple hair and a black bedazzled suit, worked with your hair. After he finished, he applied some type of fragrant oil in your hair, you weren't sure what the scent was but it was pleasant.
He moved onto your nails, cutting them short, filing them, and cutting off the cuticles, after that, he basically just left the room.
Imersel seemed to be done with her work, but then she spreads lotion all over your body, it definitely stings at first but then your skin stops feeling uncomfortable.
She looks around your body to make sure she's done with her work before leaving you in the room, naked. You didn't notice before but the room was freezing, you tried to cover your body with your arms but it obviously didn't do much.
Suddenly, the door opened again, making you look over. There stood a tall man with a very pale complexion. His black hair was slicked back leaving only a few stray strands on his face. He held a white robe in his hands, which he carelessly threw over to me, turns out the prep team forgot to give it to me.
"Jemene." was all he said, "wear the robe and follow me."
You jump off the table, before following him while putting the robe on. You take your time with putting it on, tying it tightly at the front. He makes you enter the dressing room.
---
"And we're done." Jemene says with a satisfied smile, while spinning you around to face the mirror, and you had to admit, they did an amazing job.
The dress was ten different shades of blue, green, and purple, layered perfectly with a few ruffles around to resemble the ocean, and the back of the dress dragged on the floor and with the sea foam design added on, made a somewhat realistic ocean effect. The dress showed some skin but it was modest enough. On the skin that was shown, including the face, they sprayed on some blue-ish green, before sticking on some pearls, a staple of District 4. Along side the pearls they added these clear blobs, made to look like water droplets on your skin, he later decided to not add them on your face.
With the jewelry, they didn't do anything over the top, long water droplet earrings, different lengths on each ear, some gold wave bracelets on both hands, and no necklaces as they didn't want to clash with the pearls stuck on your neck.
With your hair, Jemene decided to keep it wet, deciding to give you a 'came out of the water' idea. He strategically placed shaped some of the strands on your face to frame it perfectly.
But the most impressive part for you was the makeup. He covered any imperfections before placing green and blues around your eyes, before adding some orange to make them stand out, and then he hand-painted on realistic water in different shapes around your eyes.
"What do you think?" He smiled when he saw your shocked expression.
"Wow," he smiled even more at that, "I-I-I mean, you made me look great, and the eye makeup, ohmygod."
He chuckled a little bit, "Oh wait before I forget," he left the room for a few minutes before entering again with something in his hand, "Now this doesn't really go well with the dress, but sentimental items often gain sponsors so," he said while placing your father's ring on your thumb.
You look up at him, and smiled.
"Thank you."
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WOWOWOW
I updated so quickly, just shows how awesome I am.
Btw the Tiktok acc is artemisesarrows with the name as Hermi!!
-Hermi